Tuesday, January 25, 2011

How to identify which version of SharePoint you are using

It first seems obvious that you know what version of SharePoint you are using.
When I say version, I dont mean if you are using 2007 or 2010, I mean to say if you are using Express, Standard or Enterprise.

To find what version you are using in SharePoint 2007 (MOSS),
  • Go to Central Administration
  • Click Site Actions
  • Click Site Settings
  • Under Site Information you will see that version is installed

To find what version you are using in SharePoint 2010,
  • Run SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (Power Shell)
  • Run the command get-spfarm | Select Products
You will get all Products listed

For a complete list of Product GUID

SharePoint Foundation 2010: BEED1F75-C398-4447-AEF1-E66E1F0DF91E 
Search Server Express 2010: 1328E89E-7EC8-4F7E-809E-7E945796E511 
SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Trial: B2C0B444-3914-4ACB-A0B8-7CF50A8F7AA0 
SharePoint Server 2010 Standard: 3FDFBCC8-B3E4-4482-91FA-122C6432805C 
SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Trial: 88BED06D-8C6B-4E62-AB01-546D6005FE97 
SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise: D5595F62-449B-4061-B0B2-0CBAD410BB51 
Search Server 2010 Trial: BC4C1C97-9013-4033-A0DD-9DC9E6D6C887 
Search Server 2010: 08460AA2-A176-442C-BDCA-26928704D80B 
Project Server 2010 Trial: 84902853-59F6-4B20-BC7C-DE4F419FEFAD 
Project Server 2010: ED21638F-97FF-4A65-AD9B-6889B93065E2 
Office Web Companions 2010: 926E4E17-087B-47D1-8BD7-91A394BC6196

Reference:

Monday, January 24, 2011

Windows Phone 7 Challenge

Dear Students,

Windows Phone 7 Challenge is a competition to help students discover and cultivate their interests in the areas of Windows Phone 7 compatible applications development technologies. The competition is very demanding and inspiring and Students are required to design and develop Windows Phone 7 compatible applications to address the theme: Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems. You can design and develop applications from scratch, or develop or improvise on known Windows 7 applications.

TO REGISTER:

Getting started is easy: In a four step procedure you will be eligible to participate in this competition:

Step one: Register yourself and your team (of up to four members).

Step two: Submit your Application Synopsis, which includes you XAP application, a short description of your team’s XAP application, including how it addresses the Theme Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.

Step three: Submit your XAP Video following the outlined technical requirements and provide us the link to the video through the Contest Site, which should be uploaded on youtube. This Video should present your XAP application’s functionality or game play and provide an opportunity for your Team to explain the features as they are presented.

Step four: Your Team will present your XAP Application Source Code.

In round one, a team Pi Maxies from FAST National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences, Karachi won the contest. This proves that your participation will be nothing short of fruitful! Additional material is available on the contest site, including tools, e-books, help tutorials and videos.

PRIZES:

Register for this student technology contest, MEA Windows Phone 7 challenge and in reward stand a chance to visitMicrosoft Corporation for five days! Also, you gain real life experiences, make new friends and an opportunity to turn your ideas into reality! Other prizes for winning students include cool devices like Notebooks and Netbooks!

For detailed information on the competition, registration and rules and regulations, tools to get started and other related news go to the MEA Windows Phone 7 Challenge.

Warm Regards,

Business Lead

Microsoft | Innovation Center – Pakistan

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Planning guide for sites and solutions for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Part 1

This book provides information about planning for deploying Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Subjects include site Security, Governance, and Enterprise Content Management. The audiences for this book are Business Application Specialists, Line-of-business specialists, Information Architects, IT generalists, Program Managers, and Infrastructure Specialists who are planning a solution based on SharePoint Server 2010. This book is part of a set of four planning guides that provide comprehensive IT planning information for SharePoint Server.
You can download the book by clicking here

AUC Technologies Offering Courses on Microsoft Technologies at Sir Syed University

AUC Technologies will held a seminar on many Microsoft Technologies at Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan on coming Sunday i.e. 23rd January 2010 from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM.
Its an open invitation to all those who are interested for a 4 hour FREE Training.

Agenda:
  • Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and .NET Framework 4.0
  • ASP.NET 4.0, AJAX, ASP.NET MVC and LINQ
  • Silverlight and Windows Phone 7
  • SharePoint 2010
  • Augmented Reality
  • Entrepreneur and Blogging
  • SQL Server 2008 R2
Speakers:
  • Muhammad Atif Hussain
  • Shayar Javed
  • Usama Wahab Khan
  • Umema Adil
  • Mauhib Iqbal

The AUC Team would be glad to see you there.

Missing PDF Icon in SharePoint 2010

Notice when you upload a PDF file in document library of your SharePoint 2010 site, the icon is not there. SharePoint does not have the definition for icon of PDF files.

To get the document library show PDF or any other icons, follow these steps
  1. Open folder [drive]\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\14\Template\Images.
  2. Copy PDF icon in this folder. (You can get PDF icon from http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html. It is recommended to download 17 x 17' )
  3. Stop IIS by running iisreset/stop on command prompt.
  4. Open folder [drive]\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\14\Template\Xml
  5. Make a copy of DocIcon.xml file.
  6. Open DocIcon.xml and add < Mapping Key="pdf" Value="[Name-Of-Icon-File.gif]" />
  7. Save and close DocIcon.xml file.
  8. Start IIS again by running iisreset/start on command prompt.

Now go to your document library where you uploaded PDF file and verify the icon.


Note:
For SharePoint Portal Server 2003: Use 60 in place of 14
For SharePoint Portal Server 2007: Use 12 in place of 14

Open vs Save Dialog box in Document Library of SharePoint 2010

I uploaded some files in Document Library of my SharePoint 2010 site. When users clicked them, instead of opening them in browser, it gave them Save Dialog Box to save it to the local disk.

This was a surprise for me because SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) has this feature. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 says that it has closed this option intentionally as there are security threats as there is a possibility that some unwanted code snippets are uploaded in the document.

To solve this problem
  1. Go to Central Administration
  2. Click Manage Web Applications
  3. Select the web application for which you want to change the default behavior
  4. Click General Settings from the top ribbon
  5. Scroll down to Browse File Handling
  6. Change the option from Strict to Permissive
  7. Click OK

Now go to document library of the site again and test the new behavior.


Email Notification Delays in SharePoint 2010

I was having problems when my custom made Visual Studio workflow initiated a task. The problem was that I was getting email notifications at least after 5 minutes. I had every thing configured perfectly. The problem is not only related to custom workflows, the original issue was that any notification being sent either from lists, Announcements, Alerts were delayed.

Upon investigation, I found out that there is a job in Sharepoint 2010 called "job-immediate-alerts"
which is by default configured to run every 5 minutes.

As stated my Microsoft it specifies the frequency to check for alerts that are to be sent immediately. The value specified is in minutes.

Open command prompt and browse to 14\bin and run the following command to identify if the job is running on the site

stsadm -o getproperty

propertyname job-immediate-alerts

-url < your-site-URL >


To set the property run the following command

stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname job-immediate-alerts -propertyvalue < A valid Windows SharePoint Services Timer service schedule > -url < your-site-URL >

Property Value can be set in the following manner

stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname job-immediate-alerts -propertyvalue "every 1 minutes between 0 and 59"

By running the above command you set the job to run every minute

References:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262432(office.12).aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/f53c0c3c-ec31-4a40-b822-055eac2d0e3e/