I thought this was funny, so I wanted to share. Microsoft has a knowledge base article explaining how to ask a question! http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375 Enjoy!

If you haven't experienced it already, when you have an InfoPath form live on your server, and you make a change to the schema of the form and upload it over the existing copy, your old forms won't open. There is a work around we have applied with our customer which works well for us and I'll continue to explain it here.  If you are stuck right now, and you already uploaded a new form and lost access to your old forms: find the previous version. Whether from backup or source safe, roll back... [More]

A while back I ran into this issue: I had two web parts in the same project but I wanted them to share settings. As my experience as an ASP.Net developer was pointing me to use the web.config file, instead I thought SharePoint must have something similar to this without me having to mess with the web.config file. After searching and posting on MSDN, I did finally find a solution that uses the properties of SharePoint Sites and Webs. Below is a sample code that stores the Employee Prof... [More]

One great feature of SharePoint and versioning is the ability to have versioned comments. This can allow a small discussion to occur on almost any item. It also allows someone to keep a running log of notes on certain items. I had the wonderful task of figuring out how to get this to work the same in InfoPath. Below is a function that will append the notes into a repeating group. On submit of the form, I call this function and it works great, everytime! public void AddAnalystNotes(){ try&... [More]

This appears to be a well known issue, but I just ran into it with a customer of mine. It appears that when you insert a custom list form in SharePoint Designer, it doesn't have the correct objects for attachments. Check out the following article for the fix. http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=953271 You will need to install a hot fix, make sure you installed SharePoint SP1 first, and then update the code on the pages. A few of my own notes- Pay attention when you're pasting the cod... [More]

It appears my customer and I are on the cutting edge of InfoPath development with Form Services. We are CONSTANTLY running into issues and bugs. I try my best to post what we find to help anyone else running through the same issues. This issue is a doosy.   Our scenario is this: We have 3 server farms setup, one for development, one for staging and testing and one for production. We are creating InfoPath forms in Visual Studio 2008 and each have loads of codebehind (handling loading,... [More]

A customer's MOSS implementation stopped sending alerts after items were being updated. If someone was to sign up for an alert they would get the initial email but then after that no more alerts. If you look in Central Administration and go to Operations then Timer Job Status, you should see a job Immediate Alerts for your website url. If you do not, the timer job was removed. Don't ask my how it was removed, good luck finding that out! Anyway, run these two easy commands and you'll be back up... [More]

This is an issue I'm seeing a little too often on SharePoint installs. Trying to access a site that is hosted on the same server will prompt for login credentials 3 times then display Page Cannot be Found. From what I've gathered it's a loopback check issue. I've seen it come up as a result of installing WSS SP2 a few times as well. I've seen it "randomly" happen on customers' servers all over the place. I say randomly because I'm guessing that customers have installed Windows updates on these ... [More]

Now this might be common knowledge to some, but it came as a pain in the butt surprise to myself and my team. There are a few gotchas with using CAML in SharePoint, specifically with the SPQuery object. The results of using it incorrectly can cause missing data, which will cause a man to go crazy looking for a solution. I primarily use U2U CAML Query Builder Tool to create my CAML queries and then modify them as I need in the code. I recommend downloading this free tool and use it to generate yo... [More]

I wrote a web service that queries the users in certain groups and I bound a dropdown in my InfoPath form to it. The web service requires two values, the site name and the group name. In using the InfoPath Data Connection wizard I specified the values. We now are looking to move this form to another server (from dev to staging to prod) and this form is going to become the base for about a dozen other forms, so changing this value manually every time will become a hassel at best. I figured out... [More]

Microsoft announced March 30 that SharePoint Designer 2007 is now a free download! http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA103607611033.aspx SharePoint Designer is a great tool for easy customizations of your existing SharePoint sites. You can make simple workflows, cross site data shares and customize the look and feel of the site.  

Every once in a while a WSS installation won't search. When searching in WSS we get the standard nothing was found. In the Application Event Viewer we see the following Level: WarningSource: Windows SharePoint Services 3 SearchEvent ID: 2436Task Category: Gatherer Event Data:The start address <sts3://dhq/contentdbid={20ef7238-e02f-4938-94cb-791b0581042c}> cannot be crawled. Context: Application 'Search index file on the search server', Catalog 'Search' Details: Access is denied. Check... [More]

When using the XML web part in SharePoint, I received the error: The XSL specified by the XSL property or XSL Link property is not valid, or the XSL file cannot be accessed. Make sure you have specified a valid XSL style sheet for this Web Part, or if the XSL file is linked that it can be accessed by the server. For assistance, contact your site administrator. More about making XSL files accessible. I received this error after using SharePoint Designer to update the default.aspx page by a... [More]

So, I've been using WSPBuilder to create my solutions, such a great add on for Visual Studio. I created a WSPBuilder Project and loaded up some app pages and web parts. I then realized I needed a workflow. So I right clicked on the project, selected Add then New Item. I selected Sequential Workflow Feature and clicked Add. It added all of the wonder files and references itself. I did have to combine the new feature.xml file with my existing so this would install under a single feature. When I ... [More]

In many scenarios, we SharePoint developers want to take two different lists and join them and present a single set of data. For instance, one list contains customer information and the other list contains products with serial numbers and customer-related specific details like connection information and versions. There is a lookup field in the product list that selects the customer the product belongs to. So far so good. Now, some silly manager would like to see a single report of all customers... [More]