HOW TO: SharePoint
I demonstrated how to make an external content type programmatically during the SPC 405 - Business Connectivity Services Runtime and Object Model Deep Dive session at the 2009 Microsoft SharePoint Conference. Since the conference I have received a couple of dozen emails about the this topic. Most of the emails ask for the code samples and an explanation of the code, and at least half of the emails inquire about when and why you may need to create an external content type programmatically. Because this is obviously a hot topic I decided to write it up in a blog post.
Sample...
In part 1of this blog post series I showed you how to create a .NET Assembly Connector to read data from a flat file. This blog post shows you how to register an external content type associated with a .NET Assembly Connector with the SharePoint search search service so you can index and search the data coming from the external content type.
The Business Context
As I mentioned in part 1 of this blog post series, it’s commonplace to find critical business data stored inside flat files in large, mature organizations. In addition to being able to browse the data inside web...
The Business Context
In many large organizations business data is stored inside of flat files from mainframes or other legacy systems. These systems chug along just fine everyday and support many key elements of the business; they aren’t going away anytime soon. Traditionally, accessing flat file data, making it viewable in a web pages, and making it searchable requires an enormous amount of custom code.
The Solution
New functionality inside SharePoint 2010’s Business Connectivity Services (BCS) makes it extremely easy to connect to flat file data sources (or any other data source), display it in web pages, and make it searchable. This...
Creating SharePoint themes used to require editing CSS style sheets manually or using a tool like SharePoint Designer. Furthermore, packaging and deploying the themes required administrative access to the server. This is no longer the case! Now you can create a SharePoint theme without ever having to see a single CSS style and you can easily deploy it to your server and apply it all within your web browser! Here's how it's done with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010.
Create the theme
First, open Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and proceed to create an Office theme just like you would for a PowerPoint presentation. See this...
This article describes how to create a custom site definition in SharePoint 2010. The process to create a custom site definition has not changed much since the last version of SharePoint, the only differences are the directory names and some of the XML in the WEBTEMP files. See this blog post if you would like to see how this is done in WSS 3.0 / MOSS 2007.
Site Definition basics
Site definitions are located in the following folder on the SharePoint server:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates
Each site definition has its own sub directory under this folder.
Inside each site...
If you look hard enough you can find several articles on the Internet which describe different ways to enhance SharePoint User Profiles with the Business Data Catalog. Each of the articles takes a different approach to implementing this functionality, however none of the articles provide a prescriptive step by step approach and end to end example. This article is geared toward someone who has limited or no experience with the BDC and provides a prescriptive step by step approach and sample code.
The other articles I found on the Internet about this topic include the following, they are well worth reading.
...
WOW! What a day! First, I got to meet Greg Lemond! He is a very down to earth guy and I really enjoyed spending some time with him. It was an experience I will certainly remember forever! Then, believe it or not, Master Chief himself showed up in our booth in the expo hall! As soon as I get a copy of the pictures I'll post them here. :) As if those two things were not enough excitement for one day; then I presented my Creating Solutions with the MOSS Single Sign On Service session and finally the day wrapped up...
What a fun week it has been so far at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference! I just finished presenting my Creating Solutions with the Business Data Catalog (BDC) session and I'm looking forward to presenting my Creating Solutions with the MOSS Single Sign On Service session tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who came to my session today! All the code and materials for today's session are now available here. Enjoy!
Note: This is a repost of an article I posted while WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 were in the Beta stages. The article was lost due to a server crash and many people have asked me to repost the article so I updated it with additional information, updates screen shots, and a handy little Windows Forms Application you can use to test these concepts out yourself, or build upon the code base to meet your own needs. Enjoy!
In the previous version of SharePoint the QuickLaunch menu was controlled via the ONET.XML file and ASPX pages that made up a Site Definition,...
This is a repost of an article that was lost due to a server crash.
Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Documents can be deployed to or utilized as templates for a SharePoint Document Library. The process to develop VSTO Documents, deploy them to the SharePoint server, and set the proper security policies on the client machine in order for the documents to run properly can be easily repeated once you understand all the pieces of the puzzle.
I have not been able to find complete documentation for this process on the Internet to date. I have found several web pages...
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