Calculated Field Formulas

MSDN article for calculated field formulas: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb862071.aspx

Multiple views in InfoPath 2010 forms

I have not used InfoPath much before until recently when I was asked to proof-of-concept (POC) a approval form in SharePoint. So I explored SharePoint 2010 for providing storage and routing engine (workflow) and InfoPath 2010 for designing the form.  Contrary to my initial expectation, I was actually pleasantly surprised with what I learned about InfoPath 2010. There are a few cool features that I find very useful for form designing. One of them is Views.

We can create multiple views for the same form. In my case, I created a form submitter view, approver view, add approver view and Watcher view. The first 3 are self-explanatory. The Watcher view is a read-only and will be activated when the form has been fully approved or being viewed by persons other than the original form submitter or approvers.

To create a view, you have to click on the Page Design tab and click New View. Once, the views are created, we can use the rules to activate them accordingly. In my case, I created rules during form load. To get there, Click on the Data tab and choose Form Load. On the Rules window, create rules and add conditions and actions ( = switch views).

In this example, Submitter view will be activated/shown when the current user is the form submitter. By the way, you can also switch to another view based on a button click.



Have fun with InfoPath 2010 !!.

Error while visual upgrade

After mounting MySites DB, we performed the visual upgrade using the commands below:

$webapp = Get-SPWebApplication <web apps url>
foreach ($s in $webapp.sites)
{$s.VisualUpgradeWebs() }

but encountered the below error

Exception calling "VisualUpgradeWebs" with "0" argument(s): "Access is denied.
(Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))"
At line:2 char:22
+ {$s.VisualUpgradeWebs <<<< () }
+ CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : DotNetMethodException

This is because at least one or more of the site collections are in read-only.

To find out which ones, run the commands below

$webapp = Get-SPWebApplication <web apps url>
foreach ($s in $webapp.sites)
{$s | Get-SPSite  | Where {$_.readonly -eq "true" }} ; readonly is the column name !!


We then need to unlock those sites

Set-SPSite -Identity <site collection url> -LockState unlock

Manual creation of a MySite Site Collection

It just happens that sometimes we need to do something out of the normal process. In this case, I had to manually create a MySite site collection for a user.

Manual creation using UI doesn't give any error message but it doesn't work. Site was created & the structure in place but when I click My Contents (content if for a different user), nothing happens.

So I tried using PowerShell. Below is the code that I used, which was adapted from another blog post.

$mysiteHostUrl = "<your MySite Host URL>"
$mysite = Get-SPSite $mysiteHostUrl
$context = [Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext]::GetContext($mysite)
$upm =  New-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager($context)
$AllProfiles = $upm.GetEnumerator()
foreach($profile in $AllProfiles)
{
   if ($profile.DisplayName -like "User Name")
   {    
      if($profile.PersonalSite -eq $Null)
      {
           write-host "Creating personal site for ", $profile.DisplayName
           $profile.CreatePersonalSite()
           write-host "Personal site created"
      }
      else
      {
           write-host $profile.DisplayName ," has already personal site"
      }
   }
}
$mysite.Dispose();

A Few important notes:

1. Initially, when I test this in my dev environment, the line below returned null all the time even though the personal site exist.

$profile.PersonalSite

I guess something is wrong with the User Profile Service (UPS). When I tried the code in another environment, it returned the expected values. So we need to verify first if the our UPS is working fine before attempting to run the code.

2. If line below gives you an error,

$upm =  New-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager($context)

give the account you are running the powershell full control in 2 places - see below



Code above was adapted from: http://blog.bugrapostaci.com/2011/10/03/create-all-users-personal-site-via-powershell-script-sharepoint-2010/

Retrieving SharePoint List programatically

Code below gets you the list object

string srListURL = <list url>

SPSite mySite = new SPSite(strListURL);
SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb();

try
{

SPList myList = myWeb.GetList(strListURL);

}

catch(Exception)

{

//error handling here

}

Listing a site's owners or users with full control

Code below will list down a site's owners or users with full control

//first try the code below, should work most of the time

//unless users/admins mess up with the default groups

try
{

SPGroup myOwnerGroup = myWeb.AssociatedOwnerGroup;
foreach (SPUser myOwner in myOwnerGroup.Users)
{

//do what needs to be done here

}
}

catch (Exception ex)
{
//just ignore & proceed with the fall back mechanism to get the owners
}

//if the code above didn't return any values then the code below is the fall back mechanism

SPSite mySite = new SPSite(<website url>);
SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb();

try
{
foreach (SPUser myWebUser in myWeb.AllUsers)
{

if (myWeb.DoesUserHavePermissions(myWebUser.LoginName, SPBasePermissions.ManagePermissions))
{

//do what needs to be done here

}
}

}
catch (Exception ex)
{

//error processing here

}

Customizing SharePoint 2007 "Access Denied" Page

In SharePoint 2010, we can run the powershell command below to "tell" SharePoint that we have our own "Custom Access Denied" page & which web applications should use that custom page.

Set-SPCustomLayoutsPage -Identity <None | AccessDenied | Confirmation | Error | Login | RequestAccess | Signout
| WebDeleted> -RelativePath <String> -WebApplication <SPWebApplicationPipeBind>
[-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>] [-Confirm [<SwitchParameter>]] [-WhatIf [<SwitchParameter>]]

However, we don't have the same feature in SharePoint 2007. Below is a workaround to achieve just that. Explanation follows.

1. First make a backup copy of out of box version of the  AccessDenied.aspx file. Keep it safe somewhere.

2. Open the Accessdenied.aspx file in your favourite editor (Notepad? Visual Studio?)

3. Insert the code below in the file between the last register statement line and content place holder code

<script runat="server">

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string strIncoming = Page.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri.ToLower();

string strTargetURL = "";
string strSource = Request.QueryString["Source"];
string strType = Request.QueryString["type"];
string strQuery = "";

///Check if its customized web apps
if (IsCADeniedWebApp(strIncoming))
{

//check  if user is trying to sign in as another user
if (!strIncoming.Contains("loginasanotheruser"))
{
strQuery = "Source=" + strSource + "&Type=" + strType;
strTargetURL = "/_layouts/<your custom folder>/<your custom page>" + strQuery;

SPUtility.Redirect(strTargetURL, SPRedirectFlags.Default, HttpContext.Current);
}
}
}

private bool IsCADeniedWebApp(string strURL)
{
try
{
string strWebApp = "";
string[] arrWebApps = File.ReadAllLines("C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Web Server Extensions\\12\\TEMPLATE\\LAYOUTS\\<your custom folder>\\CustomisedWebApps.txt");
int intNumberOfWebApps = arrWebApps.Length;

for (int i = 0; i < intNumberOfWebApps; i++)
{
if (arrWebApps[i] != null)
{
strWebApp = arrWebApps[i].Trim();
if (strWebApp != "")
{
if (strURL.Contains(strWebApp))
return true;
}
}
}

return false;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
return false;
}
}
</script>

The code makes use of a text file which contains the list of web apps that will use the customized access denied page.

Basically, the code above will check for 2 conditions.

i) if the URL that user accessing belongs to a web apps that uses customized access denied page. If not, just ignore it.

ii) if user is trying to login as another user.  For some reason, MS is re-using the AccessDenied.aspx to handle "signing in as another user".

If, the URL belongs to the web apps that uses customized access denied page and user is not trying to sign in as another user, the code will redirect the user to another page. this is where you need to add your custom code.In my case, i will display the list of users with full control to the site or resource.