Using Web Services in Infopath 2007 and Deploy it in MOSS 2007

i will share few important things when working with IP and SP; first let me show you how to access and use a simple web service in IP and then deploy  the IP doc to SP.

1. Create a simple web service with the default “Hello World” web method and deploy it

2. start IP and design a simple form and select the below settings

3.  select the first option of Receive and Send

4. Enter the SP site url and follow the below sequence

After this just drag the fields to the designer; first field is the input parameter and other one is output.

The form is almost ready to be saved and deployed to SP. Recheck the settings of the form by going to Tools->Form Options. Check for “Security/Trust” for Automatic option and “Compatibility” for Design a form template to be opened in browser.

your SP site should have a IP list library or it can be created by SP during the publish wizard. Now just publish the IP form to the SP site and dont do anything on the 2nd last page of the wizard. It will look like this

Its so easy to create and deployInfopath to SP. Hope it is of some help

Create Workflows using SharePoint Designer 2007

SharePoint designer helps us to create workflows and attach the workflows to a content type like list, document, etc. In other words, SharePoint designer creates workflows and publishes the workflow on the SharePoint server site.

To understand it better, we will build a simple workflow of completed and incomplete tasks. We will create two lists, one is the incomplete tasks and the other the completed tasks. The workflow will flow something like this:

• User will create a task and enter the status of the task.
• If the task is incomplete, nothing will happen.
• Once the task is marked as complete, the task will be copied from incomplete task list to completed task list.
• The task will be deleted from the incomplete task list.

So let’s understand the important steps we will need to create the above workflow using SharePoint designer.

Create a team site using the SharePoint team site template.

Create two task lists, one is incomplete task list and the other completed task list.

To create task list, click on site action -> Create: Add a new library list -> create a task.

start spd

Open the site in your SharePoint designer using click on file -> open site.

Go to workflows by clicking on file -> new -> SharePoint content and click ok as shown in the below figure:

This is an important step. In this step, we define two important things. The first is this workflow will be attached to which list. Currently we have attached the workflow to incomplete tasks list. Second we need to define the events on which the workflow should be activated. For the current scenario, we have considered two events; one when the item is created and the second when the item is updated.

This is one more crucial step where we need to define on what condition the workflow will execute and what action should take place if the condition is true. So when a task status is completed, two actions will take place. First the task will be copied from the incomplete task list to the completed task list. Second the task is deleted from the incomplete task list.

Once you click finish, you can see the workflow created in the SharePoint designer. This workflow is also published to the SharePoint server.

You can see if the workflow is associated with the incomplete task list. Go to incomplete tasks -> Settings -> List settings -> Workflow settings. You can see that the workflow is attached to the incomplete task list.

Ok, now it’s time to see the workflow in action. So go to incomplete task list and create a task with status completed.

Once you click ok, you see the task for some seconds in the incomplete tasks list and then the task is copied to the completed task list and deleted from the incomplete task list.

so using SPD its not hard to create good workflows for sharepoint; also SPD can be used to integrate workflows developed with .net and which are well tested. I will try to cover that as well in coming days.

Sharepoint 2007 Web Services

The SharePoint environment includes built-in Web services that can be used to work with areas of the SharePoint object model remotely. Each Web application Web service is installed in the _vti_bin directory, which maps to the following file system location:

%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\ISAPI

Most of these web services can be found at http://localhost/_vti_bin [common services] and http://localhost:12345/_vti_bin [admin services]

Name	Description
Alerts	Provides methods for working with alerts for list items in a SharePoint site.
Area Web service	Deprecated Web service. Provides an area interface for remote clients.
Authentication Web service	Provides ability for Web services to operate in conjunction with forms authentication.
BDC Fields ResolverWeb service	BDC Fields Resolver Web service for client applications. Reserved for internal use only.
BDC Web service	Business Data Catalog metadata Web service. Reserved for internal use only.
CMS Content Area Toolbox InfoWeb service	Designed for use by the Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer client to use.
Copy Web service	Provides methods for copying items between locations in the SharePoint environment.
List Data Retrieval Web service	Provides a method for performing queries against lists in Windows SharePoint Services.
Document WorkspaceWeb service	Provides methods for managing Document Workspace sites and the data they contain.
Excel Services Web service	Provides methods to call Excel Services remotely or to work as a callback for Web Parts.
Forms Web service	Provides methods for returning forms used in the user interface when working with the contents of a list.
Forms Services proxy Web service	Provides methods for Forms Services to proxy requests to remote data sources from Web-based forms.
Forms Services Web service	Provides methods to call Forms Services remotely or to work as a callback for Web-based forms.
Imaging Web service	Provides methods that enable you to create and manage picture libraries.
Lists Web service	Provides methods for working with lists and list data.
Meetings Web service	Provides methods that enable you to create and manage Meeting Workspace sites.
Official File Web service	Provides methods for sending files to a records repository.
People Web service	Provides methods for working with security groups.
Permissions Web service	Provides methods for working with the permissions for a site or list.
Published Links Web service	Office system client applications and other applications can obtain the list of published links on the server that are targeted to the current user.
Publishing Service Web service	Provides methods to remotely work with the publishing service.
Search Web service	Allows access to Enterprise Search results from client applications and Web applications outside of the context of a SharePoint site.
SharePoint Directory Management Web service	Provides methods for remotely managing distribution groups.
Sites Web service	Provides methods for returning information about the site templates for a site collection.
Slide Library Web service	Provides methods for slide library callbacks or remote publishing of slides.
Search Crawl Web service	Provides methods for remote Office SharePoint Server 2007 server farms to crawl a local farm.
Search Web service	Provides methods for remotely performing searches within a Windows SharePoint Services deployment.
Users and Groups Web service	Provides methods for working with users, site groups, and cross-site groups.
User Profile ChangeWeb service	Provides methods to query the user profiles change log remotely.
User Profile Web service	Provides a user profile interface for remote clients.
Versions Web service	Provides methods for working with file versions.
Views Web service	Provides methods for working with views of lists.
Web Part Pages Web service	Provides the methods to send information to and retrieve information from Web services.
Webs Web service	Provides methods for working with sites and subsites.
Workflow Web service	Provides methods to work with workflows.

Here is a snapshot of these services when accessed from visual studio

moss web services

Default Databases Created in Sharepoint 2007

There are few DBs that are created by setup when you install moss and i thought to share little bit of information to improve understanding of their purpose.

The first is SP Config DB It contains the top level schema of everything in the farm.  It contains a list of the global settings and configuration of the farm.  When you’re on the operations tab, you are making changes in the config database.  It understands what services are running where, so it can essentially determine servers by role and determine where the packages should be deployed.  The config db knows all of the server names of the servers in your farm, databases, and it knows the web applications by name.  Even down to the site collection, it keeps track of what site collections are in what databases.  What about subsites or subwebs?  No entry.  That’s another reason that site collections are the atomic unit.  They are ultimately listed in the config db which gives them portability. Without this database there is no Sharepoint.

SP Config DB

Then here SP Content DB this is the content database for the first user based web site in Sharepoint. Before the users can actually use Sharepoint a “Web Application”, Site Collection and Site must be built. This database stores all the information generated within this web application. The AllDocs, AllDocStreams, and AllDocVersions in combination contain information about all the files stored and uploaded in any list.  You can get additional meta data and content type information in other tables including context information like webs and sites.  But the BLOBs are in that ALLDocstreams table.

SP Content DB

Other DBs that are being used by moss are:

Sharepoint_AdminContent_GUID – sharepoint uses its own technology to render the web based admin console for Sharepoint. Therefore it needs it’s own content database to stored the configuration settings for the web parts used. The actual data configured using this console is stored in the config database for the farm. The name for this database is system generated and cannot be controlled during the installation process and therefore it ends with a GUID.

SharedServices_DB – during the configuration process a SPP is defined to configure all the Shared Services used by Sharepoint. All the Configuration settings for these services are stored in this database. The name of the database can be controlled during the creation process and should be descriptive of the purpose.

SharedServicesContent – just like the admin console the SSP also needs a web site to allow you to configure the shared services and these also use web parts and lists. Therefore the SSP also needs its own content database to store these settings.

SharedServices_Search_DB – this database is used by the Enterprise search service to store metadata about the information crawled including security information. This is typically used for information stored external from Sharepoint.

WSS_Search – this database is used by the WSS core components to store metadata about content stored inside the Sharepoint web application content databases. This is created during the installation process.

CAML.NET IntelliSense for SharePoint

CAML is being used a lot by sharepoint in order to provide lot of functionality and microsoft has done a good work here by providing an intellisense to make coding easier.

Check out more information here

CSS Reference Chat for MOSS 2007

Using SP designer is a good way to design a sharepoint site and if you have lot of information about CSS then you are lucky as you can make your site very rich with excellent UI.

I found very useful article by heather solomon’s and this link is a must see

See your gtalk friends in Sharepoint

I had one of my client’s fellow talking to me about the msn messenger feature enabled in almost most of the office products.

Suddenly i thought of doing the same with putting a gtalk section in my sharepoint site for testing and the result was super pleasing. I didnt know its so easy to plug in the control in any of the webpage. here is a line of code that you can keep in your page either in a simple HTML or a script; im providing script part.

<script src=”http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/googletalk.xml&amp;
synd=open&amp;w=320&amp;h=451&amp;title=My+gtalk&amp;
lang=en&amp;country=US&amp;border=%23ffffff%7C0px%2C1px+
solid+%23993333%7C0px%2C1px+solid+%23bb5555%7C0px%2C1px+
solid+%23DD7777%7C0px%2C2px+solid+%23EE8888&amp;output=js”>
</script>

the snapshot will look a bit like below

For more details you can visit here

How to customize “My Sites” in sharepoint

I was very much stuck and spend long time to figure out to find a way of customizing MySite section in sharepoint and i came across a informative article in google search http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/03/22/customizing-moss-2007-my-sites-within-the-enterprise.aspx

Change machine name after installing Sharepoint

I have tried only on a standalone machine. Follow the steps to sort out the issue

1. Change alternate access mappings in Central Administration
   1. Central Administration > Operations > Alternate access Mappings
      
   2. Edit each mapping so that it reflects your new server name
      1. Ensure port numbers are the same
         
2. Use stsadm renameserver operation

   1. stsadm -o renameserver -newservername  -oldservername  

3. Rename Server
   1. My Computer > Properties > Computer Name (tab) > Change (button)
   2. Type in new name of server
   3. Reboot server

“An unexpected error has occurred” in Sharepoint – Find more details

Are you getting frustrated with “An unexpected error has occurred” in sharepoint 2007? I found some useful tips. You can get more error messages from MOSS especially when they are not written to the application log. Do follow the steps below to get more:

1. Go into the web.config of the specific sharepoint web and set custom errors to off. Search for customErrors tag

mode=”Off”

2. Turn on tracing and the callstack by setting both to true. Search for SafeMode

CallStack=”true” DirectFileDependencies=”10″ TotalFileDependencies=”50″ AllowPageLevelTrace=”true”>

Though event viewer also stores vital informaiton but above tricks are handy when a log in not written to EV