In the above scenario there are few steps which needs to done in order to have your application work without affecting your global proxy settings.

Proxy settings are stored per user separately. You can set this for any user by navigating to Internet Explorer –> Tools->Internet Options->Connections tab->LAN Settings button.

Certain times due to security restrictions App Pool Accounts are not provided LogOn permissions.  In such cases workaround has to be done to add the account with LogOn permissions and later removed.

Steps to get the External Sites accessible from you Web Application

1) Login to the web front end server where the web application is hosted using the Service Account, in my case AppPoolAccount1.

2) Open Internet Explorer –> Tools –> Internet Options –> Connections –> LAN Settings

3) Provide the Proxy settings. If required add the exceptions and bypass any local URLs.

4) Save the settings.

5) Test the external service URL accessibility.

6) Log out of the server.

Note: Make sure rest of your application functionality is working after having the proxy settings done.

Once these steps are followed your web application should be able to connect to the external service successfully. The same steps would apply when you are trying to connect to services from WCF or other services.

On a typical SharePoint site the response headers would be as below.

Cache-Control:no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate
Connection:Keep-Alive
Content-Encoding:gzip
Content-Length:63955
Content-Type:text/html; charset=utf-8
Date:Tue, 25 Aug 2015 06:38:25 GMT
Expires:-1
MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices:14.0.0.6108
Pragma:no-cache
Server:Microsoft-IIS/7.5
SPRequestGuid:e3cad3b6-64a8-43f0-925d-81ef1ae50529
Vary:Accept-Encoding
X-AspNet-Version:2.0.50727
x-frame-options:SAMEORIGIN
X-Powered-By:FE3
X-SharePointHealthScore:0

Firstly, lets talk about HTTP header “MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices”. The HTTP header “MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices” is added to IIS “HTTP Response Headers” by SharePoint during web application provisioning. It is used by SharePoint search engine during crawl so that sites will be considered and crawled as SharePoint site.

Impact of removing MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices Header :

If this header is removed, it will cause search related issues. Refer this KB article which mentions the impact of removing this header. It is mandatory for search service to crawl SharePoint site because this header is the indication to the search service application that this is a SharePoint site along with its version. Besides, the “MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices” is also used for Client Integration feature, Disabling the “Enable Client Integration” option on the “Manage web applications” page on Central Administration will remove it from the HTTP Response Header for the corresponding IIS Web Site. Removing this header will impact the Office Integration with SharePoint.

For example, InfoPath forms.

Also you would not be able to open this site using SharePoint Designer when this header is removed.

Just in case you are not using SharePoint designer feature and any client Integration features but need just search to work for your site. You can consider doing the below steps.

- Extend the current web application with two zones. One zone internet facing and other one internal(default zone)
- On the internet zone, disable “Enable Client Integration” to remove the HTTP Response Header “MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices”.
- Replace start address in content source with default zone URL and do full crawl again as SharePoint search service always needs to crawl default zone.
- For SharePoint Designer, you can edit and make changes with default zone only.
- For Office Integration feature with SharePoint like InfoPath form, only default zone will work.

Note: It is not recommended removing the HTTP Response Header “MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices” on IIS Web Site manually as it is critical to let other SharePoint components know this is an SharePoint site along with its exact version. Instead follow the above steps to enable search to crawl on default internal zone.

This Blog will provide steps to Create a Project on TFS online and add a user(with Live id) to the project. Blog also contains steps to access the Project for any member who is added to the project.

With Team Foundation Service on Cloud, Software development team can check your code directly into the cloud using either Visual studio or eclipse. It also provides other features like Collaboration, Agile Planning, Test Execution, Continuous builds.

Creating Project and Adding Users to TFS Online

One can signup for free Account for Online Team Foundation Services from https://tfs.visualstudio.com . Once signup is completed and TFS online URL is ready you would see a screen which is as below. Free account as some limited functionality, site would list down all types of subscriptions.

This screen will include options to create Team Projects either using Team Foundation Services or Git.

Once User clicks on Create Team Project, he is provided with a Popup which asks for few details about the project. 

Once the project is created, clicking on Navigate to Project would take you to Online TFS site. 

Once the Project Page is loaded. Clicking on Manage members would popup a dialog, using which users can be added.  

Add the Live ID and Save changes.

Now users who are on this list should have access to the Project.

Adding Source code to TFS Online

Open up the Visual Project which is intended to be added to TFS Online.

Navigate to Team –> Connect to Team Foundation Server.  Select the required Project, in this case it is Test Project. 

Accessing Project Code by Contoso User(contosouser@hotmail.com)

Any Microsoft Account(Live id) user who has been added to the members group of TFS online will be able to access the Project from Visual Studio. 

Navigate to the Project URL, should be some URL as below.  When a user tries to access the site he/she will be prompted for credentials. Provide the live id email address and corresponding password.

https://gababu.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/TestProject 

Once sign in is done you would be landed with a page as below, this page would list the Project details like Activities, current Members of project and other details related to the project.

Click on the Link “Open new instance of Visual Studio”, this would open up a popup asking to Allow access to Visual studio. Make sure Visual studio 2012 is already installed on the machine from which we are trying to access the URL. 

Once prompted for the Access, click on Allow.

Once visual Studio is launched you should see Team explorer Pane listing the option “Source Control Explorer”. Clicking on this will take you to a place where you can see all the source code in a Tree view.

Select the Solution/Project which you would like to open.  As you select the Solution file .sln the Local Path initially would say “Not mapped”. Double click on the .sln file and you should be landed with a popup asking for Map location.

Provide a Map location to a local folder on your computer and select Map.

Once the Solution is mapped you would see the projects loaded when you Navigate to View –> Solution Explorer in Visual studio.

With these steps you are now connected to TFS online. Next time you open the project freshly you would be asked to enter credentials again.

Thanks!

SharePoint Online imposes Resource Usage Limits on Sandbox solutions. Every user solution that is deployed on SharePoint online is subject to resource usage restrictions.

Each and Every resource used by the user solutions are monitored by SharePoint monitors. All user solutions in the site collection will be blocked automatically if the daily resource points exceeds the Usage Quota mentioned by the Site collection administrator for that site collection.

SharePoint Online administration center can be used to set the Resource usage Quota for every site collection from the total resources available.

Figure 1: SharePoint Online Administrator Center with Resource Usage Quota Option

Figure 2: Screen for setting the Usage Quota for site collection

Every site collection will have the Max Resource Points set and can be monitored by site collection administrators from the screen as shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: Site collection administrator view of resource usage for Current day and Average Usage for last 14 days.

These points are calculated based on Microsoft proprietary algorithm that takes into account the use of resources in the several resource categories by the sandboxed solutions that are installed in the site collection.

UnhandledExceptionCount is one of the resource categories that is measured and has a weightage of 50 Resources per point.

Unhandled Exception has an absolute limit of 3 which strictly means that if there are unhandled exceptions in the user solutions three within a day then all user solutions are blocked for that day.

If there are unhandled exceptions in an on-premise SharePoint solution, there is not much impact, except user will be shown an error message on the screen. However this is not the case with SharePoint Online solutions.

Developers and in turn site collection administrators cannot afford to have unhandled exceptions in the code.

A good approach is to handle every exception in the code and perform some logging. As SharePoint online doesn’t support logging to ULS or Windows Event logs or has access to file system logs, best way to do logging is to write to SharePoint list within the same site collection.

Note: Make sure the logger list and other resources exist before logging takes place, otherwise there are chances of unhandled exceptions within the catch block as well.

try

{

//User Solution Code

}catch(Exception ex)

{

//Perform logging to SharePoint List – Make sure List exists before logging begins.

}

Never throw an exception that is not handled by your code, no exceptions should get propagated to sandbox worker process.

Every developer should understand the criticality of unhandled exceptions and how user solutions are penalized in SharePoint Online environment.

Happy Sandboxed Coding!!

Although RSS Viewer web part shows up in the web part list, when you try adding it to the page you get the below error message displayed.

Error message when you try to add an RSS Web Part in Microsoft SharePoint Online: "Web Part or Web Form Control on this Page cannot be displayed or imported. The type is not registered as safe"

As we are aware that none of the Sandbox web parts can connect to external data sources, RSS Viewer Web Part is no different. However future version of O365 might support RSS Viewer functionality.

This blog provides you workaround to achieve RSS Viewer Functionality.

We can achieve RSS viewer functionality by below methods.

1) Using jQuery Plugins

SharePoint Online web parts cannot directly connect to external sources. We can use Either JavaScript or Silverlight web part to accomplish connectivity.

jQuery Plugins can we used to connect to RSS Feeds. One of the jQuery plugin available is https://www.zazar.net/developers/jquery/zrssfeed/ 

Once the plugin is included in your JavaScript file, use the below function to fetch the Feed.

function LoadFeed(target, rssFeedUrl, itemCount) {
    jQuery(target).rssfeed(rssFeedUrl, {
        limit: itemCount
      });
}

2) Using Silverlight Web Part

Other alternative for jQuery is Silverlight WebPart. As we are aware that Silverlight web part run on client browser and has no restriction on connectivity to external source irrespective of whether they are deployed on SharePoint online or not.  Using Silverlight web part to achieve this is a wise choice.

From the Response of the RSS Request, read the xml elements and display it in a list.

Silverlight can not access the web resources which are on other domains without a crossdomain.xml or clientaccesspolicy.xml file in place. So make sure you load only such feeds which have either of these files at root location.

Note: Connectivity can be established only to Anonymous RSS Feeds and not to Authenticated Feeds.

Workaround: In order to fetch fetch user profile properties we will have to sync user profile properties to SiteUserInfoList which is a hidden list and fetch profile properties from this list. User profile properties which are replicable can be synchronized to this list. To check if a property is replicable or not we can edit property in UPSA and look for replicable attribute.

Sample code to access SiteUserInfoList

private SPList userInformationList = null;

private SPUser user = null;

private SPListItem userItem = null;

using (SPSite site = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Web.Url))

{
       using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
       {
               // Instantiates the User Information List 
               userInformationList = SPContext.Current.Web.SiteUserInfoList;

               // Get the current user 
               user = web.EnsureUser(web.CurrentUser.Name);

               // The actual User Information is within this SPListItem 
               userItem = userInformationList.Items.GetItemById(user.ID);

              string officeLocation = userItem["Office"].ToString();

       }

}

SharePoint Online Steps to set the Property Replicable

Step 1: Open SharePoint Online Admin portal and select Manage User Profiles

Note: Only SharePoint Online Administrator will have access to the administration center

Step 2: Under People section select Manage User Properties

Step 3: Select the property which you would like to sync, Edit the property

Step 4: Under Policy Settings section check Replicable property.

Note: Synchronization would take some time before it appears in the SiteUserInfoList

Packaging the CQWP Customizations into WSP is necessary when the customizations have to be developed in developer box and deployed onto SharePoint Online.

This post provides the steps to be followed to package the CQWP customizations to a Solution File(WSP) using Visual Studio.

Step 1: Creating an Empty SharePoint project in Visual Studio

In order to package the customizations we will create an Empty SharePoint project as a sandbox solution so that it can easily deployed to SharePoint Online.

Open the Project Properties and set Include Assembly In Package to false as we don't need the dll to be copied.

Also verify if the Sandbox Solution is set to true.

Step 2: Adding the customized xsl to solution

In this post I have considered customizing ItemStyle.xsl, however the same steps can be followed to customize other style sheets as well.

Editing the default ItemStyle.xsl will affect all the webparts referring to this style sheet, Instead it is a best practise to create a copy of this and work on it.

I have created a copy of ItemStyle.xsl  and named it ItemStyle_News.xsl. I will be packaging this style sheet into the solution. 

Custom Style name can be provided. To be more specific to the topic I am not providing the steps to customize the xsl in this post.

In the Empty SharePoint solution which we created in step 1 we have to add a style sheet.

New Module Has to be created by Navigating to New Item -> SharePoint 2010 -> Module.

Stylesheet can be adding by Navigating to New item -> Data -> XSLT File. Change the Name to the same name which was given earlier for Custom ItemStyle, also provide the extension as .xsl instead of .xslt, in this example "ItemStyle_News.xsl".

Copy paste the File or content from Customized ItemStyle_News.xsl to Visual Studio ItemStyle_News.xsl.

 Once the xsl is ready we have to mention the destination of xsl file by opening elements.xml file. I have chosen Style Library/XSL Style Sheets/ItemStyle_News.xsl the same location where Default Styles are present.

Step 3: Including the CQWP webpart to the solution.

Once the CQWP is added to the site, export the webpart and make the necessary modifications like including the View Fields.

We have to mention the Custom Style sheets reference in .webpart file.

Open the .webpart file and modify the property ItemXslLink.

<property name="ItemXslLink" type="string" >/Style%20Library/XSL Style Sheets/ItemStyle_News.xsl</property>

You can also modify the Style you want to reference by modifying the property ItemStyle.

 Build the solution and deploy to SharePoint site.

To deploy the solution Open Site settings of your SharePoint Online Site by navigating to Site settings -> solutions.

Upload and Activate the solution. 

 Once you activate the solution you should be able to the StyleSheet copied to XSL Style Sheets folder and CQWP webpart populated to Site Webpart Catalog.

Note: The steps provided also works for On Premise environment, however it is deployed as sanboxed solution not as farm based solution.

Hope this post helps in quickly packaging the customizations into solution files. 

Follow the below 4 steps in order to remove language packs.

1)    Uninstalling the language packs

Uninstallation has to be done using Control Panel (Programs and Features)

Note: Make sure you uninstall the same set of language packs on all the servers in the farm before executing the SharePoint wizard.

In the below steps Uninstallation of French language pack is demonstrated.

For consistency, check if the language packs is installed on all the servers from Central Administration -> Servers in Farm Page. In the below snapshot there is only one language pack installed (French).  Uninstallation of this language pack has to be done on all the sharepoint farm servers (exclude SQL server) 

Uninstalling using Control Panel

i)                    Navigate to Control Panel -> Uninstall a Program

ii)                   Select the Language pack and uninstall it.

iii)                 Repeat these steps for all the servers.

 Don’t proceed to next step until uninstallation is done on all the servers in farm.

2)    Force a timer job to run

Run the command Get-SPProduct -local on all the servers.  Doing so forces a timer job to run that does some version fix up. 

Note: Missing this step will lead to error messages as in snapshot below during wizard execution.

3)    Execute the SharePoint wizard

SharePoint Wizard can be executed either through UI or psconfig command line.

Note:  Wizard should be executed on servers in the below order.

WFE's, APP, APPCA

a)      Execute wizard from UI

Navigate to All Programs -> Microsoft SharePoint 2010 -> Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard

b)      Execute psconfig from command line

> PSCONFIG.EXE -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait 

Reference link for PSCONFIG https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263093.aspx

           If psconfig execution stops abruptly with the messages as shown below.

Then execute the command  > stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname command-line-upgrade-running -propertyvalue No 

Once this commands executes successfully then rerun psconfig command.

4)    Uninstallation of Language Pack Features

          1. Navigate to SharePoint Management Shell and execute the below command

>Get-SPFeature

2. Once the features are listed, check for ALL the features ending with Language Pack ID. In this case French Language pack ID is 1036. Snapshots below show few features Highlighted for Language Pack 1036.

3. The Features associated with the Uninstalled language packs will have Scope Empty.

4. Pick all the Features Ids for the uninstalled language packs and uninstall all of them using the below Command.

> stsadm.exe -o uninstallfeature -id <featureId> -force

5)    Verification of Language pack Uninstallation

a)      Navigate to Central Administration -> System Settings ->Servers In Farm

b)      Make sure the uninstalled language pack(s) are not appearing Under SharePoint Products Installed section.