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Posts Tagged ‘SharePoint 2010; MOSS 2007; C#; ASP.NET’

SharePoint 2010: Configuring incoming emails on a Production Environment (non-Exchange Server)

September 17, 2012 1 comment

Recently I needed to setup incoming emails on a SharePoint 2010 site sadly, after researching this subject a lot, I was not able to find a blog that provided a complete answer of how to set this up on a Production Environment. There are some variations in the way this can be setup but the method I will be explaining in this blog involves a non-Exchange Server method.

Assumptions

I am assuming that:

  • You have setup an SMTP server on one of your SharePoint WFE’s (Web Front End) if you are not sure on how to do this then please check out this post.
  • You have a domain name registered and that you can modify the DNS records

The Solution

The solution involves:

  • Setting up the DNS Records
  • Configuring the SMTP Server
  • Configuring Central Administration
  • Configuring a SharePoint List

Setting up the DNS Records

In this example I am using a domain name: http://www.shareheaven.co.uk that is registered with GoDaddy.com.

Login to your domain name’s control panel and add a DNS A (Host) record in the following format:

Setting up a DNS A (Host) Record

Where the host (‘notify’ in this example) can be anything of your liking. The IP address should be the IP address of the server that hosts the SMTP Server.

Next we need to add a DNS MX Record in the following format:

Setting up the MX Record

Wait for the DNS changes to take effect, you can use this website to check if the changes have taken effect.

Configuring the SMTP Server

On the SMTP Server we will need to add an alias. Open IIS 6.0 Manager > Expand your SMTP Server in the list on the left hand side > Right click on ‘Domains’ > New > Domains.

SMTP Alias Setup

On this screen (screen shot above) select Alias and click Next and then fill it out as below (based on your domain name):

Creating an alias

Configuring Central Administration

Next we need to setup Central Administration to enable incoming emails in our SharePoint Farm, in Central Admin browse to System Settings > Configure incoming e-mail settings and set it up as below:

Central Administration Setup

Configuring a SharePoint List

Finally, we can now setup a SharePoint List to receive incoming emails. In this example I will be setting up a Document Library to receive incoming emails. Browse to Library Settings > Incoming e-mail settings of the SharePoint List you would like to setup to receive incoming emails. Fill out the form as below and click ‘OK’:

Configure the SharePoint List

Testing the Solution

To test the solution send an email to the email address we setup to receieve incoming emails which in our example was: test@shareheaven.co.uk (replace shareheaven with your domain name of course!):

Sending the email

Screen shot below shows the .eml file arriving in the drop folder of the SMTP Server:

Mail drop folder

A SharePoint Timer Job picks up this email, processes it and then adds an item in the Document Library:

Document Library Item Added

Categories: SharePoint 2010 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Archiving documents in SharePoint 2010 OTB

September 13, 2012 Leave a comment

There might be other ways of setting this up but I thought I should write about a way of achieving this by purely utilising SharePoint 2010 out-of-the-box features.

Scenario

You have a document library, we will call it Documents, that has a custom Content Type (we will call it ER Documents). Based on a certain criteria, lets say 6 months after a document has been approved, you would like to archive the document by moving it to another document library called ‘ER Compliance Archived Documents’.

Assumptions

You have two identical document libraries setup with the same content type enabled.

The Solution

The solution involves:

  • Enabling the Content Organizer Feature
  • Creating a Content Organizer Rule
  • Configuring a ‘send to’ connection
  • Configuring the Document Library

Enabling the Content Organizer Feature

On the root web of your Site Collection browse to Site Actions > Site Settings > Manage Site Features and activate the ‘Content Organizer’ Feature.

After this feature is activated you will notice two new options in Site Settings (highlighted in the screenshot below) and a new document library called ‘Drop Off Library’:

Content Organizor Options

Click on ‘Content Organizer Settings’ and make a note of the Web Service URL:

Web Service URL

Creating a Content Organizer Rule

Click on the ‘Content Organizer Rules’ link and add a new item to create a new rule and set it up as below (click on the image if it appears a bit blurred):

Content organizer rule

This rule basically specifies where and how to route the archived documents.

Configuring a ‘send to’ connection

Browse to Central Administration > General Application Settings > Configure send to connections. Select the correct Web Application and create a new send to connection by filling out the form as below pasting the Web Service URL you copied earlier:

Send To Connection

Click on ‘Add Connection’ and then ‘OK’.

Configuring the Document Library

Browse to the main ‘Documents’ document library > Library Settings > Information management policy settings > ER Documents (this is our content type) > Check ‘Enable Retention’ and fill the form out as below:

Enable Retention

Testing the solution

Add a document that matches the archiving criteria (i.e. Approval Date more than 6 months ago).

Go to Central Administration > Monitoring > Review job definitions > select your Web Application and manually run the ‘Information management policy’ timer job. This job process and marks the documents, that match the criteria we have setup, for transfer. After the job has completed manually run the ‘Expiration policy’ timer job this timer job does the actual transfer of the marked documents.

After this the relevant documents that match the Information management policy criteria will be moved to the archived library.

You can also test this manually by browsing to the ‘Documents’ document library> Accessing the context menu > Send to > ER Compliance Archive (screenshot below).

Manually archive document

The document should then appear in the archive document library. Please note that the manual send to method moves the document immediately but it is a useful way of testing whether you have configured the routing correctly.

Categories: MOSS 2007, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

SharePoint 2010: Basic List search / filter WebPart

April 19, 2012 60 comments

I have created a very simple SharePoint list search / filter WebPart which was inspired by the following blog post. This WebPart allows you to search records in a list where a selected field contains a specified text. It is useful in scenarios where you dont have SharePoint Search setup and just need a simple way of performing some search operations in a SharePoint List.

Adding the web part to SharePoint List View

Simply drop this web part on top of a page that contains a SharePoint View and it will allow you to apply a very simple search criteria.

The screenshot below shows the WebPart in action:

Main view of the List Search WebPart

The field name DropDownList allows you to select from the fields that are present in the view. Once you select the field and add the text to search by, the relevant results are displayed:

Screenshot showing search results

You can also specify multiple text values by seperating the text with a semi-colon (;):

Screenshot showing search results, multiple text criteria

In the above example the specified criteria will display all the records where the manufacturer’s name contains ‘Honda’ OR ‘Audi’. The screenshot below shows the pagination working as expected:

Screenshot showing search results, multiple text criteria

Adding the web part to a page with an XsltListViewWebPart

You can also add this web part to a page that contains an XsltListViewWebPart. The web part will automatically detect that it has been added to a page (rather than a List View) and display a message asking you to select an XsltListViewWebPart that you would like to apply the filters to:

The screen shot below shows how to select the XsltListViewWebPart:

You can download the solution by clicking on the link below:

SharePoint WSP Download link

You can view the codeplex project site by clicking on the link below:

Codeplex Project Site

Please note that this is setup as a Farm Solution and not a Sandboxed Solution therefore it will not work if you deploy it to the SharePoint Solutions Gallery, you need to deploy the SharePoint Solution via Central Administration, via stsadm commands or via PowerShell commands.

How to it works

On a page that contains a ListViewWebPart you can apply filter by adding a couple of query strings:

  • FilterName
  • FilterMultiValue

In our example, when a user types ‘honda’ and then clicks on the search button we simply append ‘?FilterName=LinkTitle&FilterMultiValue=*honda*;’ to the query string and redirect the user to that page. Please note that ‘LinkTitle’ is the internal name of the ‘Manufacturer’ field.

The * in the *honda* is used to do a wildcard search (contains). If you would like to search for multiple texts you can seperate them by a semi-colon for example ‘FilterMultiValue=*honda*;*audi*;’ will search for records where the ‘Manufacturer’ name either contains ‘honda’ or ‘audi’. If you would like to search for an exact match rather than apply a contains filter then simply remove the *’s from the filter value text.

Although, this WebPart does not allow you to filter / search by more than one field this is very much possible. To apply filters on additional fields you simply need to append ‘FilterField1=Model&FilterValue1=Accord’ to the URL. You can apply further filters by incrementing the number i.e. FilterField2, FilterField3 …. and so on. I am not sure if there is a limit on this.

Please note that I haven’t found a way to get the wildcard search to work with this (multiple filters) approach.

Building the WebPart

In your Visual Studio solution (assuming you have created a Blank SharePoint Project) add a ‘Visual WebPart’. A Visual WebPart loads a UserControl that contains most of the code. Below is the code of the .ascx file:

<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>
<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Web.CommandUI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls"
    Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="Utilities" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="WebPartPages" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages"
    Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ListSearchUserControl.ascx.cs"
    Inherits="Exaction.ListSearch.WebParts.ListSearch.ListSearchUserControl" %>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/Exaction.ListSearch.Javascripts/jquery.min.js"></script>
<table>
    <tr>
        <td>
            <strong>Search Criteria:</strong>
        </td>
        <td>
            <asp:TextBox ID="TbSearchText" runat="server" Width="300px"></asp:TextBox>
        </td>
        <td>
            &nbsp;
        </td>
        <td>
            <strong>Field name:</strong>
        </td>
        <td>
            <asp:DropDownList ID="DdlListFields" runat="server">
            </asp:DropDownList>
        </td>
        <td>
            &nbsp;
        </td>
        <td>
            <div align="right">
                <asp:Button ID="BtnSearch" runat="server" OnClick="BtnSearch_Click" Text="Search" />
                <asp:Button ID="BtnClearFilter" runat="server" Visible="false" OnClick="BtnClearFilter_Click"
                    Text="Clear Criteria" />
            </div>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function () {
        var base_RefreshPageTo = RefreshPageTo;
        RefreshPageTo = function (event, url) {

            var filterName = getQuerystring('FilterName');
            var filterValue = getQuerystring('FilterMultiValue');
            var newUrl = url + '&FilterName=' + filterName + '&FilterMultiValue=' + filterValue;
            if (filterName != '' && filterValue != '') {
                base_RefreshPageTo(event, newUrl);
            }
            else {
                base_RefreshPageTo(event, url);
            }
            return;
        }
    });
    function getQuerystring(key, default_) {
        if (default_ == null) default_ = "";
        key = key.replace(/[\[]/, "\\\[").replace(/[\]]/, "\\\]");
        var regex = new RegExp("[\\?&]" + key + "=([^&#]*)");
        var qs = regex.exec(window.location.href);
        if (qs == null)
            return default_;
        else
            return qs[1];
    }
</script>

The code above is pretty self-explanatory but very briefly it contains the UI elements (TextBox, Labels, DropDownList and Buttons) and some jQuery. The jQuery code overrides the ‘RefreshPageTo’ SharePoint javascript function. This is basically to get our filtering to work with pagination. If you have a SharePoint List View that is displaying paginated date to you then clicking on the next or previous page calls the ‘RefreshPageTo’ JavaScript function. The problem is that when this function is called it clears the querystrings we use to filter the data. To ensure that the filtering is maintained we override this function, modify the URL ensuring the filtering querystrings are present and then pass it in as the second parameter to the function.

using System;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Exaction.ListSearch.UI.Entities;
using System.Text;

namespace Exaction.ListSearch.WebParts.ListSearch
{

    /// <summary>
    /// User control that deals with the registration process
    /// </summary>
    public partial class ListSearchUserControl : UserControl
    {

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the share point list field items.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="filterCriteria">The filter criteria.</param>
        private List<OptionEntity> GetSharePointListFieldItems()
        {
            List<OptionEntity> fieldItems = new List<OptionEntity>();
            fieldItems = new List<OptionEntity>();
            OptionEntity item;
            SPField field;
            StringCollection viewFieldCollection = SPContext.Current.ViewContext.View.ViewFields.ToStringCollection();
            foreach (string viewField in viewFieldCollection)
            {
                field = SPContext.Current.List.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName(viewField);
                item = new OptionEntity();
                item.Id = field.InternalName;
                item.Title = field.Title;
                fieldItems.Add(item);
            }
            return fieldItems;
        }
        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            base.CreateChildControls();
            List<OptionEntity> items = GetSharePointListFieldItems();
            DdlListFields.DataSource = items;
            DdlListFields.DataTextField = "Title";
            DdlListFields.DataValueField = "Id";
            DdlListFields.DataBind();
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Raises the <see cref="E:System.Web.UI.Control.Load"/> event.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="e">The <see cref="T:System.EventArgs"/> object that contains the event data.</param>
        protected override void  OnLoad(EventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnLoad(e);
            if (!IsPostBack)
            {
                if (Request.QueryString["FilterName"] != null)
                {
                    DdlListFields.SelectedValue = Request.QueryString["FilterName"].ToString();
                }

                if (Request.QueryString["FilterMultiValue"] != null)
                {
                    TbSearchText.Text = Request.QueryString["FilterMultiValue"].ToString().Replace("*", "");
                    BtnClearFilter.Visible = true;
                }
            }
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Handles the Click event of the BtnSearch control.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender">The source of the event.</param>
        /// <param name="e">The <see cref="System.EventArgs"/> instance containing the event data.</param>
        protected void BtnSearch_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string redirectUrlFormat = "{0}?FilterName={1}&FilterMultiValue={2}";
            string[] selectionCollection = TbSearchText.Text.ToString().Split(new string[] { ";" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
            StringBuilder sbValues = new StringBuilder();
            foreach (string selection in selectionCollection)
            {
                sbValues.Append("*" + selection.Trim() + "*;");
            }

            string urlToRedirectTo = string.Format(redirectUrlFormat, Request.Url.GetLeftPart(UriPartial.Path), DdlListFields.SelectedValue, sbValues.ToString());
            Response.Redirect(urlToRedirectTo);
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Handles the Click event of the BtnClearFilter control.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender">The source of the event.</param>
        /// <param name="e">The <see cref="System.EventArgs"/> instance containing the event data.</param>
        protected void BtnClearFilter_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Response.Redirect(Request.Url.GetLeftPart(UriPartial.Path));
        }
    }
}

The code behind above initialises the controls and handles the Search and Clear Search Criteria Button click events.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace Exaction.ListSearch.UI.Entities
{
    public class OptionEntity
    {
        #region "Fields"
        public string Id { get; set; }
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the title.
        /// </summary>
        /// <value>The title.</value>
        public string Title { get; set; }
        #endregion

        #region "Constructor"
        public OptionEntity()
        {
        }
        #endregion
    }
}

We set a collection of the OptionEntity items as the DataSource of the Field name DropDownList.

That is basically it. In this simple manner you have a WebPart that you can drop on top of any List View and apply some basic free text Filterting.

Known issues

There are two minor known issues which I haven’t found a solution for yet:

  • Adding the WebPart on top of the page of a List View takes the focus away from the ListViewWebPart which in turn hides the ribbon. Once you click on the ListViewWebPart and focus on it then the ribbon becomes visible.
  • This WebPart does not work properly with Views that use groupings that are collapsed by default, it works if the groupings are expanded by default
  • As pointed out by Goran (see comments) it might not work with External SharePoint Lists

I hope you find this WebPart useful. Please post your comments and feedback and it would be helpful if you can rate this post.

Categories: C#, MOSS 2007, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

ASP.NET LinkedListBoxes UserControl

January 5, 2012 Leave a comment

I needed a simple Linked ListBox control for a project but couldnt find one that was available for free so I ended up developing one myself.

I have created a project for it on codeplex and published it. Please feel free to use/modify the control as you require. If you have any suggestions or feedback then please feel free to leave a comment.

The control uses two ListBoxes with two buttons (add, remove) in between that allows you to add and remove items by using some Javascript. The screen shot below shows the control in action:

LinkedListBox UserControl

You can download the complete source code from the link below:

LinkedListBox UserControl sourcecode.

You can also download a sample Visual Studio 2010 project that shows the control in action by going to the project home page and clicking on the Download button:

Project homepage

Categories: ASP.NET, C# Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

SharePoint 2010: List column that renders as a dynamic hyperlink

April 18, 2011 23 comments

A while back I worked on a project where we needed to add a column to a SharePoint List that would display a link based on values in other columns. For example: “/myWeb/pages/mycustomPage.aspx?Reference=[ValueToComeFromAnotherColumn] i.e. similar to the way the Title field link is rendered where the URL is dynamic and based on the ID of the row in question.

In MOSS 2007 we did this by adding a calculated column that constructed the HTML using our specified formula. However, the problem was that the link would appear as:

 <a href="myWeb/pages/mycustomPage.aspx?Reference=45">View</a>

To ensure it rendered as a nice and friendly hyperlink we used a script created by Christophe from PathToSharePoint.com (his blogs on the subject dont seem to exist anymore). It worked pretty well in MOSS 2007 but we found that in MOSS 2010 it didnt work if your list view had grouping by any column.

Initially I tried to get the script to work but then realised that there was a much better way to do this in SharePoint 2010. In 2010 you can control how any field is rendered by creating a custom XSLT stylesheet. In our scenario we created an XSL file which was deployed at “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\XSL”. The XSL file must be named in the following format fldtypes_*.xsl, where * is any valid filename string value for example fldtypes_MyCustomDefinitions.xsl. Our XSL file looked something like this:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" version="1.0" exclude-result-prefixes="xsl msxsl ddwrt" xmlns:ddwrt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/runtime" xmlns:asp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ASPNET/20" xmlns:__designer="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/designer" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:SharePoint="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" xmlns:ddwrt2="urn:frontpage:internal">
  <xsl:template match="FieldRef[@Name='FormLink']" mode="Computed_body">
    <xsl:param name="thisNode" select="."/>
	    <a target="_blank" href="/appeal/pages/appealapplication.aspx?ApplicationRef={$thisNode/@ApplicationRef}">View Application</a>
  </xsl:template>
 </xsl:stylesheet>

The important bit is the match attribute in the xsl:template element where we specify the internal name of the Field we want this custom rendering applied to. What this basically does is that where ever a field with an internal name of FormLink is being rendered in a view it will render it as a hyperlink. Below is the definition for our SharePoint List Field:

<Field ReadOnly="TRUE" ID="{2DD3638A-56A0-4021-B2B9-7BBB19E191F1}" Name="FormLink" StaticName="FormLink" DisplayName="Application" Type="Computed" Group="My Custom Group" SourceID="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3" />

That is all there is to it, now when ever and where ever our field is rendered in a view it renders it in our custom way.

Update: For this to work, the column you are referencing must exist in the view. In my example above I am referencing a column called “ApplicationRef” therefore for it to work in my scenario the SharePoint List View I want it to work in must have “ApplicationRef” column otherwise the value wont be picked up. Hope this makes sense.

I have created a sample Visual Studio SharePoint Project that demonstrates this functionality. Please click on the link below to download it. Just deploy the solution from Visual Studio and it will create a list with a dynamic hyperlink column.

zip DynamicHyperLink.zip

[Update: 08/10/2012] Depending on your scenario you might find this simpler solution more feasible: http://trainerms.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/dynamic-hyperlinks-in-sharepoint-lists/

Categories: SharePoint 2010 Tags:

Be very, very careful when you use SPSite.OpenWeb()!

September 27, 2009 5 comments

I recently came across what can only be described as a shocking and dangerous bug in the SharePoint API.

According to the MSDN documentation the SPSite.OpenWeb() method:

“Returns the site that is associated with the URL that is used in an SPSite constructor.”

Below is an example of how it is very commonly used:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://www.myserver.com/parentSite/childSite"))
{
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
{
//Do your stuff
}
}

Going by the MSDN documentation the code above should return the web site located at http://www.myserver.com/parentSite/childSite. This is further confirmed by the following statement:

“When used in conjunction with an SPSite constructor, the OpenWeb method returns the lowest-level site specified by the URL that is passed as parameter for the constructor.”

This is all true if the site located at the specified url exists. But what if it doesnt exist?

Consider a scenario where an SPWeb with the url http://www.myserver.com/parentSite exists but an SPWeb with the url http://www.myserver.com/parentSite/childSite does not exist. In this scenario you would expect the code above to throw an exception, however, it does no such thing instead it ends up opening a completely different SPWeb. In this specific scenario it returns an SPWeb with the url http://www.myserver.com/parentSite. If an SPWeb didnt exist at this url as well then it would have returned the RootWeb! (i.e. http://www.myserver.com if it existed)

In other words you would end up opening and performing actions on a totally different SPWeb! As you can imagine this can have very dangerous consequences as I only very recently found!

Categories: MOSS 2007, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tags: , , , , , , ,
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