Tools

DeliverPoint :Permissions - Registered License for free

Paul Schaeflein — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:16:00 GMT

We released an update to our product today. DeliverPoint :Permissions v3 includes a limited-functionality license for free. All the details can be found on http://www.deliverpoint.com.

All of us at Barracuda are excited about this product. And we've hit our groove with quarterly releases, which means you can expect much more going forward!

Porting a SharePoint Designer (SPD) Workflow to Visual Studio.Net – Part 1

Paul Schaeflein — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:33:00 GMT

I am working on getting a community site up to host these articles as well as the code. My hope is that all interested developers will contribute their solution to the various Actions that can be selected in SharePoint designer.

This post is the first in a series. The series will discuss the porting steps as we presented in Seattle, but with the details filled in. (We had only 75 minutes to present, which is way too little.) Part 1 will discuss the virtual machine setup and the creation of the SharePoint Designer workflow that will be ported.

Virtual Machine Setup

When a workflow is created in SharePoint Designer, the site is updated with a few pieces that enable it to work. We want to ensure that we port all of these pieces, so we will be using two different web applications. The first at http://spdflow will be used for the SharePoint Designer workflow. The second at http://vsflow will host the Visual Studio workflow. Rather than use different port numbers for the web application, the hosts file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) is updated with each of these host names.

The virtual machine will also have the necessary applications installed: SharePoint Designer 2007 and Visual Studio 2005 with the Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK.

SharePoint Designer

We will use SharePoint Designer to create a workflow. The workflow will perform the most popular actions -- collecting data, creating a task and writing to the history list. This is accomplished via the following steps:

In SharePoint Designer, open the site http://spdflow.
Click File | New | Workflow. The Workflow Designer wizard is displayed.
Name the workflow SPDFlow and attach it to the Announcements list. Leave the start options at the default, which is manually. (We'll be starting it often.)
Click on the Initiation button on the bottom
Add a Workflow Initiation Parameter named InitiationField with a default value of Barracuda. Then click OK
Back in the Workflow Designer wizard, Click Next.
In Step 1, click on the Conditions button and choose Compare Announcements field.
Choose the Modified By field and the account name of the current user.
Click on the Actions button and choose Collect Data from User.
Click on the "data" link to invoke the Custom Task Wizard.
Enter "Collect Data Task" for the task name and click Next
Click Add to create a field.
Name the field "TaskField" and enter a default value of "DeliverPoint"
Click Finish on the Custom Task Wizard. You will receive a warning about running instances, which can be ignored.
Click on the "this user" link in Step 1 Actions. Select the account name for the current user.
Click on the "Variable: collect" link in Step 1 Actions. Rather than put the data in a generically named variable called "collect," choose "Create a new variable" and name it "ListItemID"
Click on the Variables button at the bottom of the Workflow Designer form. Even though we did not choose the variable named "collect," it was created for us. Remove it, and any other unused variables, from the list.
Click Finish.

SharePoint Designer will save the workflow and associate it with the Announcements list. Test the workflow by returning to the browser and navigating to the Announcements list.

On the context menu of a list item, select Workflows
On the Workflows page in the Start a New Workflow section, click on the name of the workflow (SPDFlow)
The initiation form is displayed. Click Start
The Announcements list is displayed, with a new column on the far right. The column name matches the name of the workflow and the value is "In Progress"
Click on "In Progress" to display the Workflow Status page
In the middle of the page is the name of the task: CollectDataTask. Click on this link to display the task.
Click on Edit Item in the tool bar. This will display the custom task edit form for this workflow
Click on Complete Task
At this point we have a workflow that was created in SharePoint Designer. The next post is this series will move us further along our path. Stay tuned!

Porting a SharePoint Designer (SPD) Workflow to Visual Studio.Net

Paul Schaeflein — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:02:00 GMT

Many have asked. Many have said it is not possible. At the SharePoint Conference in Seattle today (March 4^th, 2008), Todd Bleeker is presenting the steps necessary to take a workflow created in SharePoint Designer and port/convert it to a workflow template in Visual Studio!

The process started with an innocent question back in the fall of 2007 at Mindsharp's TechWeek. All of the Mindsharp Authorized Trainers, and one lucky developer (me) we assembled to share what we know and learn from others. One session address this workflow topic. The session ended when the steps we attempted crashed the site collection. (Thank goodness for virtual machines!) The topic list of that week was submitted to Microsoft as potential sessions at the SharePoint Conference. They selected the workflow porting session to be presented.

The task fell to SharePoint MVP and superstar presenter Todd Bleeker. As usual, Todd threw his considerable enthusiasm at the topic. I had the privilege of being a second set of eyes and a sounding board to Todd during the days leading up the presentation. Not only did I learn a ton about workflows, but I also interacted with many smart people who contributed ideas, encouragement and humor to us in the last 48 hours. I am honored to be the one to make this post, but I am not solely responsible for its content. I want to specifically mention Todd Bleeker (of course), Kimmo Forss of Microsoft, Marilyn White of White Consulting, Rob Bogue of Thor Projects, David Mann of Mann Software and Woody Windischman.

[Details to follow]

SharePoint Utility: Adminstration Extension Download for SharePoint

Paul Schaeflein — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:12:00 GMT

One common pain point for SharePoint administrators is the Windows SharePoint Services Timer Service, also known as OWSTIMER.EXE. The Timer Service is responsible for executing several processes that are part of the product. A few of the more well-known processes are the search crawl refresh, recycle bin processing and the workflow processes. Also, the Timer Service is the process that SharePoint uses to push web.config modifications and solutions to all front end servers in the farm.

Two specific issues that are related to the Timer Service are its memory consumption and limited user interface. The Application Extension Download for SharePoint (AED for SharePoint) from Barracuda is designed to help system administrators deal with these issues. The download can be found in the Premium Content section of the Mindsharp web site. (The utility is free, but you will need to provide your name and email.)

Timer Operations Syntax

Restart Timer

stsadm -o restarttimer
{ -farm | -server ; }
[-exclude ;]

Restarts the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service
on servers in the farm.

Use the -farm parameter to restart the service on all servers
in the farm that have the service installed.

Use the -server parameter to specify the servers on which to
restart the service.

Use the -exclude parameter in conjuction with -farm to restart
the service on all servers except those listed.

Enumerate Timer Jobs

stsadm -o enumtimerjobs
[-view {service | webapp}]
[-service ]
[-webapp ]
[-schedule]

Displays the Timer Job Definition information.

Start Timer Job

stsadm -o starttimerjob
{ -service | -webapp }
-job

Forces a one-time execution of the specified job.

AED for SharePoint

Paul Schaeflein — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:39:00 GMT

At my new job, I work with a lot of very smart people. I was chatting with Ben Curry, and he remarked about the troubles that a lot of administrators have with the OWSTimer.exe program. So, I wrote an extension to STSADM that will help manage this program. You can find the Adminstration Extension Download for SharePoint on the Mindsharp site.

Feedback is appreciated.