SharePoint 2010 + supports Joins in the SPQuery for over more than 4 year. But would like to take this blog on it to clarify the concepts the way I have understand the things.

Foremost to create a join, We should make sure that we are not stuck because of any of the restriction mentioned in below note.

SPQuery.Joins and SPQuery.ProjectedFields, together these two properties when used in conjugation Joins the two or more SharePoint list.

 We will look at each of these in more detail when we will discuss and understand the syntax. But definition is as below

Joins Clause : 

The Joins element contains one or more Join elements. There are two types of possible Joins inner join or left outer join between two lists. 

 At least one of these joins must be from the parent list of the view, called the primary list, and some other list, called the foreign list. But there can be additional joins from that foreign list to another foreign list, and so on.

ProjectedFields

The ProjectedFields element creates fields from the foreign lists so that they can be used in the list view. 

There is very less documentation available on calling a userprofile web service. Though we can use SPService.js a codeplex solution which is a jQuery wrapper and calls the webservice using jquery Ajax method. A very neat solution but it adds another file to be downloaded to client when i don't need the entire library (this is completely my view as per my understanding). So I decided not use it SPService.js library and call the UserProfileService.asmx directly.

The UserProfileService.asmx uses SOAP messages to invoke a method and response is returned in a SOAP format.

List of methods can be referenced from MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa980957(v=office.12).aspx

To call a web-service we need to create a SOAP envelop. Example to Add a collegue

var soapEnv = "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/' xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'>
<soap:Body>
<AddColleague xmlns='http://microsoft.com/webservices/SharePointPortalServer/UserProfileService'>
<accountName>"+loginName+"</accountName>
<colleagueAccountName>" + account +"</colleagueAccountName>
<group>Group</group>
<privacy>Public</privacy>
<isInWorkGroup>true</isInWorkGroup>
</AddColleague>
</soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope> "

AddCollegue is the method Name in UserProfileService.asmx class, and it take five parameters namely accountName, collegueAccountName, group, privacy, isInWorkGroup. All needs to be the part of soap:Body as defined. Also remember SOAP is case sensitive format so elements names should follow the case as defined in the MSDN method description.

Second thing make sure the xml namespaces are correct

Third you need to add a SOAP Action in the Request header in beforeSend

.
var SOAPAction =  "http://microsoft.com/webservices/SharePointPortalServer/UserProfileService/AddColleague"

Notice the name of the method at the end.

ServiceAddress will look like

var serviceAddress = window.location.protocol + "//" + window.location.hostname + "/en-us/_vti_bin/userprofileservice.asmx";

And all together call to web service will look as below:

$.ajax({
    url: serviceAddress,
    beforeSend: function(xhr) {
           xhr.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", SOAPAction);
    },
   type: "POST",
   dataType: "xml",
   data: soapEnv,
   complete: function(xData, status)
   {
        if(status == "success")
        {
              //Do your javascriopt to notify user that collegue added successfully
        }
    },
    contentType: "text/xml; charset=\"utf-8\""
});

Strom is is one such tool that helped me testing the Operations

You can create two or three images one for each to show different states of button like: Selected Tab, Unselected Tab, and one for Hover.

For each View in a form I have Kept Image Button when user clicks on it. It switches the view and loads a different tab. To set the picture use the property menu to set image for hover and display image, initially just to save effort set all images such that all show image you created for Unselected Tab.

Create a view for each button and to add a switching view action use Add a rule on a button of type Action>Switch View to Desired Tab.

Now Copy the Menu Layout we just created on the views. And change the image of selected view on each tab with ‘Selected Tab’ image.

This is is just a trick to achieve it in InfoPath as it doesn't come with a Menu Control. Similar way we can create a vertical Menu also.

~Hope you enjoyed reading it.~

What all you need to do is to extract the .xsn file (Extract it by changing the .xsn extension .Cab). There will be file with the name MySchma.xsd. But before that you need to add a repeating control to your form. You can locate this field in your Schema and which will have properties as minOccurs and maxOccurs

So here maxOccurs will control the maximum number of occurrence which here is set to 10 and minOccurs control the minimum number of repeating fields that should be visible when the form will be first uploaded. The default values for the designer for minOccurs is 0 and that for maxOccurs is unbounded.

So when you are done with the changes save the schema file and open the manifest.xsf file in design mode and publish it. You will view minimum 5 occurrence for Letter Number Control and if you click on insert item it will not let you add more than 10 items and will show a message in a popup.

Hope this is a helpful post. Thanks for reading.

Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell"
$site = "http://myweb"
$context = Get-SPServiceContext -Site $site
$web = Get-SPWeb -Identity $site
$group = $web.Groups["Owners"]
$upm = New-Object -TypeName Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager -ArgumentList $context

$userslist = Import-Csv -Path .\UserProfile.csv
for($count=0; $count -lt $userslist.Count; $count++)
{

#Create User Profile
$upm.CreateUserProfile($userslist[$count].UserName)
$profileproperty = $upm.GetUserProfile($userslist[$count].UserName)

#Custom User Profile being updated for the user
$profileproperty["Location"].Value = $userslist[$count].Location
$profileproperty["BusinessGroup"].Value = $userslist[$count].BusinessGroup

$profileproperty.Commit()


#Adding users to the owner groups of the site
$group.AddUser($user.UserName,"","","")
$group.update()

}

The script is useful to add user in bulk. It assumes that the users are already created in AD. It reads a CSV file for the users and custom properties are updated..Though user profile can be synchronized with AD

UserName | Location | BusinessGroup 

So, To Adjust the Offsets, We need to find the TimeZone of the Web and Convert that UTC. From The UTC date can then convert be back to User's TimeZone preferences stored in the UserProfile with TimeZone property.

Here the screen shots will show you where these setting are there in UI. For web this setting will be under SiteAction>SiteAdmininstration>Regional Settings

To get the user's time zone from the UserProfile Store.

Hopefully the approach and information discussed here will be useful. Thanks for reading.

~Bye for now~

I tired to Disable feature in Powerhsell after loading the DLLs of my application in my application and webtemplate activated the features successfully. But when I went ahead and tried Disable one of my application feature it gave me the following error.  

PS C:\Build6\Release\Deployment\PowerShellScripts> Disable-SPFeature -Identity "WebActivityFeature" -Url http://contoso.com

Disable-SPFeature : Failed to load receiver assembly "Web.WCM, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=817f6507759ed875" for feature "Web.WCM_WebActivityFeature" (ID: bb566682-2405-e8a-905d-accf318f6213).: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Project.Web.WCM,Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=817f6507759ed875' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

File name: 'Project.Web.WCM, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=817f6507759ed875'

   at System.Reflection.Assembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase,

Evidence assemblySecurity, Assembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection)

   at System.Reflection.Assembly.InternalLoad(AssemblyName assemblyRef, Evidence assemblySecurity, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean forIntrospection)
   at System.Reflection.Assembly.InternalLoad(String assemblyString, Evidence assemblySecurity, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean forIntrospection)
   at System.Reflection.Assembly.Load(String assemblyString)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFeatureDefinition.get_ReceiverObject()

WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF.

To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1.
Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging.
To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].
At line:1 char:18
+ Disable-SPFeature <<<<  -Identity "Project.Web.WCM_WebActivityFeedFeature" -Url http://contoso.com
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Share...tDisableFeature:   SPCmdletDisableFeature) [Disable-SPFeature], ArgumentException    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletDisableFeature

This deactivation of feature was the part of my script. and I want to do it in the same window. Here is the solution I tried and it worked for me well.

SOLUTION : I tried following approach to overcome the issue, I Invoked all my command in a separate PS Session.

$session = New-PSSession -Name "SessionName"

Invoke-Command -Session $session -Script {Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell}

Invoke-Command -Session $session -Script {param([Parameter(Position=0, Mandatory=$true)] [string] $siteUrl); Disable-SPFeature -Identity "WebActivityFeature" -Url $siteUrl -Confirm:$false} -ArgumentList $subSite.Url

We can tackle this problem by creating a Feature. The  Activated event of this Feature Event receiver will hold the responsibility to determine the webapplication. We can create a key siteUrl in AppSettings in the web.config file and key will hold the web-application url. 

public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{

  SPSite currentSite = (SPSite)properties.Feature.Parent;

string strWeb = currentSite.RootWeb.Url.ToUpperInvariant().Split(new string[] { "/SITES/" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)[0].TrimEnd('/');
appUrl = Convert.ToString(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[siteUrl], CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
//Compare this appUrl and strWeb if it doesnot match; thow a SPException
}

Throwing a SPException will stop your feature from getting activated on anyother webapplication that will not have matching siteUrl key in its webconfig file. So this feature will not be activated.

Now you want to stop all you features that are the part of your solution from getting activated unintentionally. So, Lets make all our solution features dependent on our above feature. Thus, None of the feature will be able to activate as the above feature can only be activated on the desired application and dependent feature will be activated only if our master feature will be activated.

The solution may be obvious, but useful and handles the scenario very well. Thanks for reading!

PROBLEM

I have a HTML where in some of the nodes have been added by Created html elements document.createElement(). And child nodes have been appended to it as innerHTML.

          var newDiv = document.createElement('li');

            newDiv.innerHTML = "<div class='items' data-item='" + itemName + "'>

 <div class='classA'>

 ...

 </div>

 <div class='classB'>

 ...

 </div>

 </div>";

 parentNode.appendChild(newDiv);

This parent node contains other child nodes with similar HTML structure but they are not added dynamically. Now I am trying to get all the nodes using jquery selector. item

$('.item[data-item="itemName"]') ==> This should ideally give me the node where data-item is itemName and class is .item. This works good in IE8 and but doesn't select the node in IE7.

Work Around

child = $('.outerClass div').filter(function () {
return this.getAttribute('class') == 'items' && this.getAttribute('data-items').toLowerCase() == "itemName " })

And I was able to select the desired node.

Hope it helps.

Thanks!

What I am doing is, I am creating a List Instance OOB, Add the New fields as per my business requirement and extracting the schema by saving it in a List Template(.stp file) in such a way that I can use it in Schema.xml definition. This method helps me creating List Instance and package it very fast and makes my task simple.Though some knowledge of schema file gives a better understanding of what we are doing. But any one can do it by following simple steps.

But Before I talk about extracting the List Schema from the List Template. I will be preparing the Solution Structure. 

Assumtions: I am assuming that we have already created SharePoint Project in Visual Studio 2010.

Preparing Solution Structure

1. In your visual studio instance, Right Click on your sharepoint project and click on Add > New Item.
2. From the Wizard, choose the SharePoint List Instance.
3. a) Give some name your List Instance(Display Name), I will give this 'MyNewCustomList'
   b) Choose a List Template, You can choose any List Template, and choose a List Instance, Let me choose Custom List to keep it simple.
   c) Give List a URL, "Lists\MyNewCustomList"
   d) Click ok to close the wizard. 
4.  After step 3, we will be having a SharePointItem  'MyNewCustomList' of type List Instance with a element.xml file, instantiating it from TemplateType=100, that will create a custom list with a Title Column in it. But we wanted to add the fields to this custom schema.(In SharePoint 2010 we can create a List Instance without creating a ListTemplate by specifying CustomSchema property for ListInstance. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms476062.aspx
   
   

   <ListInstance Title="MyNewCustomList" OnQuickLaunch="TRUE" TemplateType="100" Url="Lists/MyNewCustomList" Description="My List Instance" CustomSchema="MyNewCustomList\Schema.xml" />

   
   
   
5. Now Lets Add a Schema.xml File to your SharePointItem. 
6. Also include this file into your SharePointItem.data file.
   This is how we do it it. Click on the your 'MyNewCustomList' in Solution Explorer in Visual Studio. Right click Open Folder in Windows Explorer. Open SharePointItem.Data in notepad
   <ProjectItemFile Source="Schema.xml" Target="MyNewCustomList\" Type="ElementFile" />

We are done with Solution Preparation steps.

We will now create a Custom List in SharePoint with ''MyNewCustomList". Go to List Settings and Add the columns, as per the requirement. After doing with all changes whether it is a addition of List Column, Creatiypeng a View, addition of some content Type etc. 

1. Save this list as Template. Go to Template Gallery, and Download your list template. This file will be a .stp file.\
2. Change the File Extenstion to .zip.
3. Open the zip file, it will contain a manifest.xml
4. Open Manifest.xml file in some nice editor like notepad++.
5. Carefully, Locate node "<List>" in this xml. Copy this entire section of <List>...</List> and now paste it in your schema.xml file we created in above steps.

Few Final Modifications and we are done in Schema.xml file.

1. Remove the name attribute containing List GUID of your previous List.
   <List Name="SomeGUid" ...> remove this Name attribute, we don't need this in our schema

2. Replace the following  nodes <View>
   
   <View BaseViewID="1" Type="HTML" Level="1" ContentTypeID="0x" WebPartZoneID="Main" OrderedView="TRUE" DisplayName="All Links" DefaultView="TRUE" MobileView="TRUE" MobileDefaultView="TRUE" SetupPath="pages\viewpage.aspx" ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/links.png" Url="AllItems.aspx">

   Also replace the Forms Node with the below one.

   <Forms>

   <Form Type="DisplayForm" Url="DispForm.aspx" SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
   <Form Type="EditForm" Url="EditForm.aspx" SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
   <Form Type="NewForm" Url="NewForm.aspx" SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
   

   </Forms>
   Great we are done, Now we can include this ListInstance in a feature and create a package. Activating that feature will create a ListInstance.

Hope the technique saves a lot of time especially for the beginners :)