My Sharepoint Learnings

At times we would be faced with situation that the page does not load, due to some webpart issue. In SharePoint 2010, there might be a link in the error message to open the webpart maintenance page directly. In certain cases, it is not provided. So to open webpart maintenance page directly from url just append ?contents=1 at the end of the URL of respective page and SharePoint will open the Web Part Maintenance Page for it. For e.g, if the url is http://sharepointserver/sites/pages.aspx, make the url http://sharepointserver/sites/pages.aspx?contents=1 to open the webpart maintenance page. Note - the user need to have edit access on the page to open the webpart maintenance page.

The user profile properties values are stored in SSP tables in MOSS 2007. The values can be found in UserProfileValue table in SSP The values are stored for each of the Record ID. Each RecordID corresponds to one user. Also in the table, the values are given for each PropertyID The mapping of PropertyID and its corresponding description can be found in the table PropertyList. Note - it is not advisable to manipulate the SSP DB's.

The error came when trying to install a hotfix/patch to the sharepoint server. The issue had occurred because there was an old copy of the database which was used for detach and attach. Had tried to create a new webapplication using a copy of the running webapplication in the same farm. It encountered error since there was a DB id conflict in the configuration DB. So deleted the web application, but the content DB had not been deleted completely. So ran the stsadm delete old database command to remove it Stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases 0 More about deleteolddatabase -  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263196.aspx

Difference between Site Template and Site Definition <<http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/Roji.Joy/differences-between-site-definition-and- site-templates/>> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa979683 What is feature stapling http://www.etechplanet.com/blog/understanding-feature-stapling-in-sharepoint-7c-stapling - features-to-site-definitions.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kunal_mukherjee/archive/2011/01/11/feature-stapling-in-sharepoint - 2010.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb861862(v=office.12).aspx difference between sharepoint 2007 and 2010 solution << http://www.milesconsultingcorp.com/SharePoint-2007-versus-2010 - comparison.aspx#SoftwareDevelopmentChanges>> feature upgrade steps http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2010/06/feature-upgrade-part-1-fundamentals.html http://www.rharbridge.com/?page_id=103 http://blog.petermunch.net/2010/04/30/versioning-and-upgrading-your-features-with - sharepoint-2010-application...

The requirement was to have a custom tab which would get search results only from one site in the site colletion Steps done In the SSP, do the following 1. Create a new content source, with the site url and setting "Crawl only the SharePoint Site of each start address" selected 2. Create a new scope - Add rule to include content from the newly created custom content source 3. On the all site content source, add a new rule to exclude content from the custom content source 4. Run a full crawl on custom content source In the Site Settings, do the following 1. In Site Collection Administration settings - click on Search Scopes 2. Create a new display group  and select the custom scope created 3. Go to Search site and create customsearch page, customsearchresults page and customadvancedsearch page 4.In Search site, default page , click on Edit page 5.Click on Add New Tab and for Page, give the newly created search page url. Click ok and publish 6. Click on Custom ta...

The custom list had a column called as Snapshots which was of the type Hyperlink or Picture. The need was to customize the search results page to display an indicator for list items with images. To do so, go to SSP - Search Settings - Metadata properties - New Managed property In the New Managed Property window, do the following- Enter the property name and select the property type as text In Mappings to crawled properties - select 'Include values from a single crawled property based on the order specified' Click on Add mapping and find the custom list column and click Ok Click OK on the managed property window. Then Do a full crawl Edit the search results page and edit search core results webpart In Result Query option - selected columns, add the custom column In the XSL editor - add the following <xsl:variable name="Customicon"> <xsl:value-of select=" <enter the column name> " /> </xsl:variable> <xsl:choose> ...

When trying to deploy the wsp thru stsadm command for MOSS 2007 site, the installation failed. In the command prompt, it just showed, the Solution installation failed. Or  When trying to deploy it thru VS2008, it gave error VseWss 1.3 - System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Attempted to perform an unauthorized operation. To resolve – Open inetmgr and check the app pool for VseWSS. Ensure the app pool has complete access on the site collection and on the farm.

The above error occurred when trying to set alerts for users in one of site in MOSS 2007. The outgoing email is configured and there were no errors during that time. [Note - the SMTP server was configured months after MOSS was installed and site was up and running in the server] Go to SSP and in User Profile and Properties and select View Import Connections. If no connections are present, create a connection with the ad. Then do a full import. This would solve the issue. The error could still be coming because, the emails are sent based on the email address stored in the UserInfo table and it has not been synced with the email address in the user profile properties in the SSP. Would have to run the stsadm commands to sync the both. Command - stsadm -o sync -synctiming m:3 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263196(v=office.12 ) If the issue still persists, delete the users from Sharepoint users and groups in the site, and add them again and run the sync job. This wou...

Had a requirement to include images to a custom list (along with single-line and multi-line columns) in Sharepoint 2007 server. There were around 100 items to be added and wanted to find a work-around than adding as attachments to the respective items. Created a standard name format for the images Eg Name1, Name2 etc in the harddisk Created the custom list with the required columns and for image created Hyperlink or Picture column and selected the format for image as Hyperlink. Create a picture library in the site. Opened the picture library in Windows explorer and copied the images to the Picture library The image url now would be http://<siteurl>/<listname>/<imagename.imageformat> for eg - http://xyzsite.com/Piclib/Name1.jpg With a little of formatting in excel the column with the url's can be created. Edit the list in datasheetview and copy-paste the url row to Image column, in the list If required, can change the Image column format to Pict...