The importance of synchronous event handlers

Finally a good explanation on the issues we face with SharePoint 2010 compared with SharePoint 2007. We have a global unique document id which enables us to support quality requirements such as FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and ISO 9000. Everytime a document is added to SharePoint we give it a unique id and makes a MD5 hash of the metadata and document in order to prove that the document was indeed created on the specific date. When making a major approval, publishing, we run a workflow which prompts various users for a electronic signature which is stored with the document.

This works great in SharePoint 2007. We use ItemAdded to add the unique document id. However, we sometimes face some issues with SharePoint 2010. Obviously it is related to the timing om ItemAdded which is used. As it runs asynchronous we cannot be certain when the code is run - so sometimes we experience that the code is run and a unique document id is assigned to the document, but when we check the document afterwards the field is empty.

Setting ItemAdded to run synchronous solves our issue. Thanks for the hint.

#NoEmail - New Year promise - no more emails

Read this acticle about our New Year promise - no more internal emails. In danish - but use Google Translate.

Another article - also in danish - can be found here.

SharePoint content - Anywhere

Exformatics Anywhere enables access to SharePoint content behind the firewall from your iPhone, iPad ogg Android device.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions can now be accessed from mobile devices. Several links refers to this.

Find application on Android Market.

Lean med SharePoint

ESDH OG LEAN SIKRER EFFEKTIVITETEN I TELE GREENLAND

Læs mere om Lean og ESDH hos  Tele Greenland her.

SharePoint is case-sensitive - documents upload into root-folder

It took us quite a while to figure out this issue. It turns out that SharePoint sitenames og document libraries are case-sensitive. If you try to navigate to a folder using it's URL and type the site og document library in the wrong case it seems to work. However, when trying to upload documents it fails. Documents are then placed in the root-folder of the document library as outlined below.

Given a standard document library "Documents" you create a new folder "Folder1".

Navigate to the folder

and then click Upload to upload a document, "My New Document.docx", and everything works as it should:

Now, try to enter the URL of the folder directly in your browser in this case enter

http://intranet/TV2/documents/folder1

where "Documents" is modified to "documents" (little d).

As you can see everything seems to work as they should:

However, when you try to click Upload

the document is not uploaded into the folder

but instead the document ends up in the root-folder of the Document library:

Quite a scary error in a standard product used by so many people in the world. When I presented the problem to a Microsoft representative claiming SharePoint to be case-sensitive they didn't believe me until I presented the above example.

Therefore. Remember that site-names and Document Libraries in SharePoint are case-sensitive.

Sæt strøm til processerne - fra arbejdsgang analyse over BPMN til digitale arbejdsgange

Exformatics har i foråret 2010 sammen med Kommunernes Landsforening arbejdet med at digitalisere arbejdsgange. Med udgangspunkt i en arbejdsganganalyse og efterfølgende modellering i BPMN er arbejdsgangen placeret i KL's arbejdsgangbank.

Exformatics har på baggrund af fremsendt BPMN diagram (i XPDL) mappet dette til vores arbejdsgang motor (Exformatics Process) således at arbejdsgangen efterfølgende er faciliteret digitalt.

Læs om projektet på KL's hjemmeside.

Exformatics detaljerede besvarelse af KL's opgave kan findes på dette link.

Processer og IT

Exformatics taler på seminaret arrangeret af Alexandra Instituttet. Læs mere her.

Office 2007 and MOSS - custom document properties

When adding Office 2003 documents to MOSS custom document properties in Office 2003 are added as SharePoint properties in a content class. Setting custom documents properties in Office 2003 is easy and well known.

When uploading Office 2007 documents to MOSS with custom documents properties set in the same manner as in Office 2003 documents, MOSS properties are not set.

I found this blog which points out a solution and it works fine if you're working with Office 2007 templates. However, if your template is a Office 2003 DOT-file and saves the document as an Office 2007 it doesn't work anyway.

Update: I found the following msdn blog which is worth reading.

Identify Publish a Major Version

For some strange reason SharePoint doesn't raise an ItemCheckingIn or ItemCheckedIn event when documents are published in new major versions, unless you do a Checkin and select major version in the same operation.

How can you identify a "Publish a Major Version" with other events? I did some googling and experiments and found out that using BeforeProperties and AfterProperties in the ItemUpdating handler might do the job. Similar posts can be found here, but I didn't get the same result.

int iBefore, iAfter;
iBefore = int.Parse(properties.BeforePropeties["vti_level"]);
iAfter = int.Parse(properties.AfterPropeties["vti_level"]);

Using the value of iBefore and iAfter I was able to identify the following events:

Event	iBefore	iAfter
CheckIn Minor Version	255	255
CheckIn Major Version	255	1
Publish a Major Version	2	2

So if (iBefore == iAfter) you a facing a "Publish a Major Version" event.

Images in a dropdown list - SELECT

Rumours says that Microsoft will announce support for jQuery in SharePoint 2010, so better get started. We have used AJAX and more recently jQuery for the last 3 years in combination with SharePoint and it has proved very useful. And even if Microsoft don't support jQuery I believe it will be a major development platform for advanced end-user interfaces in the future - also for SharePoint.

Check out this example for how to enhance your existing drop down lists to include images - yes, it looks so much nicer - and navigation is like a dream.

Panel for dokumentoplysninger kunne ikke indlæses

When opening an Excel dokument based on a standard Excel XLT template stored in SharePoint I get the error outlined below. Ideas appreciated.

An English example can be found in this blog. The error Outlined is:

The form contains schema validation errors.

Content for element '{http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/metadata/propertiesRoot}properties' is incomplete according to the DTD/Schema.

Expecting: {http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/metadata/properties}properties.

How can this happen?

The schema is outlined at MSDN.

Errors have been reported by many here and here.

Få forretningen til at håndtere arbejdsprocesserne

En af de centrale udfordringen at sætte strøm til arbejdsprocesser er at få forretningsbrugerne til at formulere processen og efterfølgende få denne designet og implementeret af IT folk. Der tales forskellige sprog og der er langt fra tanke til handling.

Tænk hvis det var muligt at forretningsbrugeren på en og samme tid udtrykker arbejdsgangene og dermed samtidig designer og implementerer processen i et IT system. Dermed vill man sikre at forretningsbrugeren kunne tage ansvaret for arbejdsgangene da de ikke som udgangspunkt skal have IT folk involveret i processen.

Exformatics taler på ITU seminar mandag den 7. december 2009 om udfordringerne ved at realisere en sådan tankegang.

Linking iPhone with SharePoint

Exformatics now links SharePoint with Apple iPhone in order to facilitate mobile connectivity to corporate knowledge bases. Read more here.

Here too or here.

Eller her.

Scan-Jour lukkes og Exformatics overtager.

Creating a Web Part Page programmatically

Using Microsoft.SharePoint API is often not the most easy thing in the world. As an example adding a web part page programmatically is not an easy job - unless you're lucky and hit the right page on MSDN.

I have been trying to add a pages using the SPFolder.Files.Add(, SPTemplateFileType.StandardPage) - but the page was not added as a WebPartPage so I couldn't add web parts to the page in a proper manner.

It was not until I came across the NewWebPage method on MSDN that I managed to get the job done.

Explore SharePoint from F#

Check out this blog on how to explore SharePoint's object model from F#.

jQuery library for SharePoint services

Using AJAX and jQuery to retrieve data from SharePoint and present it to end-users in advanced end-user interfaces is certainly the way forward.Check out this library for more information. Looks quite promising and have done some tests.

Create a Wiki page programmatically

If you have ever tried to figure out how to create a web part page or  wiki page programmatically you'll find it very hard to find any information.

Microsoft MSDN doesn't have a lot of information.

Recently I came across this blog. So some information is out there - not much though.

Writing to SharePoint Unified Log

Writing to Windows EventLog sometimes causes issues in SharePoint, especially if using NTLM security. In this situation you might have to allow anonymous write access to the Event log by adding information to a specific registry key (Google if you wish more info on the matter).

As an alternative you can write to SharePoint own log, Unified Log, as described here on msdn.

Btw - I wonder why people in other blogs copy the content from MSDN and place it on their own blogs. What's the idea? It doesn't add any value - it only created confusion as I tend to ask myself. What is the difference?

Creating a site-collection programmatically

How do you create a new root site programmatically in C# or VB.Net. Check out this blog for more information.

Office - There has been a network or file permission error

Some of our clients are occationally experiencing the following error in Office "There has been a network or file permission error".



It's hard to find an explanation for the issue but I found this blog quite interesting. Indexing services on Windows Vista could cause the problem.

Another great blog describes ways to solve it for Windows XP SP2 and Office 2007.