great news, the crawling problem that appeared with the SP2 of SharePoint has been patched with the August Cumulative Update. (see my previous post for detail about the problem)

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/973410

·         You install Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 2 and the cumulative update that was released in April 2009. You create some sites in the Server_Name\sites format. However, you do not create a root site collection (\). When you run a full crawl, you receive the following error message in the Application event log:

·         Log Name: Application 

·         Source: Office Server Search 

·         Event ID: 2436 

·         Task Category: Gatherer 

·         Level: Warning 

·         Keywords: Classic 

·         Description: 

·         The start address <https://Server_Name> cannot be crawled. 

·         Context: Application 'Shared Services Provider', Catalog 'Portal Content'

++,
Philippe 

After long troubleshooting, I realize that it was because my customer do not have a ROOT site collection.

If you are in the same case, you can consider to create a blanc one or play with managed path (didn't try it).

Hope this help :) 

My customer recently developed a Web Part with a tree view control inside an user control and couldn't catch events generated from the treeview.

After investigating, I realize that he didn't inherit his class from the WebPart class. In this case, you will need to implement the INamingContainer interface in order to catch the treeview events.

I small post to avoid you to lose your time.

If you get this error message when you try to install MOSS on a virtual machine via Remote desktop with local disk enable

"Microsoft sharepoint Server 2007 encountered an error during setup ",

it is because you cann't install MOSS from the local disk mapped as \\tsclient\c:\xxx

I used finally Virtual PC and map my local drive as X:\...

There is an issue on the delay activity of Windows Workflow Foundation and SharePoint 2007. It happen when a workflow is redeployed on the platform.

The workaround for this issue is to:

1. Install the last SharePoint Update (the fix is included since the infrastructure update https://support.microsoft.com/kb/953630/
2. If you can not install update and still want your platform works, a workaround is to restart IIS and the SharePoint Timer with the following command:

net stop IISAdmin /Y

:: Now stop SharePoint's Timer Service

net stop SPTimerV3 /Y

:: Now restart things in reverse sequence from how we turned them off

net start SPTimerV3

net start W3SVC

How to Debug a workflow with Visual Studio

As the workflow published on SharePoint run under the IIS process, it is possible to debug via Visual Studio by attaching the IIS process. 

On the Debug menu, select “Attach to Process…”

Tips: If you have many “w3wp.exe” processes running at the same time, to determine which process you have to debug, you can use this script that gives you some information about the process that can help you.

Under a Dos prompt, type “c:\windows\system32\iisapp.vbs”.

For instance, if your workflow run under port 80, then chose to attach process id=3716.

Attention: Another point to be careful is sometimes, when attaching a process to debug a workflow; your Visual Studio may crash. If this happen, make sure to manually select the code type to “Workflow”

Remark: If your workflow contains a delay activity, you will have to attach the owstimer to debug it once the owstimer rehydrate the Workflow instance.

Avoid many dropdown List

There is a performance issue with Internet Explorer version 6 if the form contains a lot of “drop down list” controls. Internet Explorer version 7 do not have this issue due to its JavaScript engine improvement.

This issue happen when there are more than 5 Dropdown lists on a form with hundred of values.

Workaround: Create multiples views in order to limit the number of control displayed on the page.

Remark: Dynamic retrieve values for each dropdown list on an action is not a solution except if once you use it, you remove it from the form. Otherwise, at your last dropdown list, you will have all the dropdown lists present in the form and you will meet the performance issue.

A little post about backward compatibility with Form Services

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 is a tool to both design and fill out electronic forms. Associated with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Forms Service, InfoPath forms will be viewable directly by all supported browsers without any client deployment.

Why Not authoring with “Microsoft InfoPath 2003”?

Because it doesn’t respond to the business need, only version 2007 of Microsoft InfoPath allows the deployment of forms to Form server.

Remark about InfoPath 2003 backward compatibility:

It is possible to design InfoPath 2007 form that is backward compatible with InfoPath 2003 with some limitation. The form must not have .Net code behind as InfoPath 2007 has new object model. Also, Form server does not support InfoPath 2003 scripts or object model.

InfoPath 2007 and SharePoint 2007 provide standard functionalities to achieve it without any code.

Sample scenario:

Let’s say you have two views in your form (ViewUSR and ViewUSR_RO) and depending on the “CDPSStatus” field value in the main data source, the form will change the view displayed to the user when he opens the form. The “Status” field can be modified externally by the user on the published form library column or within a workflow.

Here are steps to do it:

·       Create a field "CDPSState" in the InfoPath form Main Data source

·       On the form option, add rules, add condition and action that will switch to the required view.

·       Publish the form and add "CDPSState" field to be available in MOSS. (This action is called promoting the field and it will be synchronized automatically with the value of the library  column)

·       Modify this field by editing the field to "Completed" and your form should be synchronized and display the correct view (depending on your rule condition).

Working with Workflow: You can use this approach to display different views of your form depending on your workflow step. Just modify the promoted field within your workflow code.

Sample code to modify the promoted field by code (just as a SPListItem column)

            using (SPSite site = new SPSite("https://Site"))
            {
                using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb("/"))
                {
                    SPList list = web.Lists["ListName"];
                    SPListItem item = list.Items[0];
                    item.Properties["CDPSState"] = "Completed";
                    item.Update();
                }
            }

Without your workflow, you will use "workflowProperties.Item" to get the SPListItem.

*Philippe*