SharePoint Skater

Some of my best discoveries come from forum questions. Not that I'm the first one to discover it, mind you -- I'm well aware that my wheel has probably been invented countless times -- but my mind grows best when I have to research a solution for someone else's problem (maybe that's why I like consulting).

This happened to me in a client's WSS3 environment, but it seems to apply to 2010 as well. I had a site template created in one environment, but upon moving it to another, the Create Site operation resulted in a neat little error, complete with stack trace: "A duplicate name 'YourField' was found". Upon investigating, I found that one of the lists in the newly-created site did indeed have duplicate fields. What was odd in this case was that the the list was based on a content type, and only one of the duplicates came from said content type. I deleted the extra fields, re-saved the template in the new environment, and created again -- only to have similar results. Several forum posts recommend cutting open the template on your local machine, editing the XML, and rebuilding the solution CAB, but in my case, all it took was a quick "Delete list" followed by re-creating it and re-adding the content type. Save as template again, and this time -- instant site creation satisfaction.

In just over a week, I'll be speaking at SharePoint Saturday Houston. My topic will be Manipulating SharePoint with Client-Side JavaScript; we'll address client-side coding as a whole, look at the Client-Side Object Model, and then dive into a working sample app using the CSOM and jQuery.  Come see how easy it is to develop complex solutions for SharePoint 2010 without ever opening Visual Studio.

I almost didn't make it out alive.  I followed the instructions in every piece of sample code and every forum post by someone who had no idea why their client OM code wasn't working, and my code still wouldn't get past the page load.  I kept getting "'Type' is undefined" errors when sp.core.js tried to register the SP namespace.

SharePoint brings more power than ever to the end user.  As usual, this is a double-edged sword.  Its utility as a development platform is unmatched, but since many of the development tools are accessible from the browser UI, the dividing lines can get blurred.

Here at Improving Enterprises, we have a relatively new annual tradition of forming a moustache team for Movember.  For those who are new to the concept, Movember is a month-long fundraising effort for men's cancer research.  Each year, men (Mo Bros) from around the world join in sprouting a symbol of solidarity -- with the goal of eradicating men's cancers.

Typical SharePoint 2010 install.  I had created all my domain users, set up my servers, and started installing the prerequisites.  When the first box in the farm restarted and the preparation utility came up, I was asked for credentials and provided them, only to be rejected.  At first I thought it was a standard "access denied" error, but a look at the fine print revealed the error titling this post.

Custom list.  Custom New/Edit/View forms.  Everything works perfectly... until the latest round of updates.