Data view web part – rich HTML text problems/output caching

While working in Data View web part, I have placed user name column into my data view web part, but by default, it displayed some rich text HTML into page, in this case, we need to disable output caching for web part, so for this, we need to put disable-output-escaping="yes" tag into XSL.

 

e.g. <xsl:value-of select="@fieldname" “disable-output-escaping="yes">

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner/archive/2008/09/20/using-disable-output-escaping-in-data-view.aspx how to disable output caching in data view web part.

Problem with "doctype" column name into SharePoint List

I was faced problem with column name “doctype”, I was not able to create “doctype” column with any of the data type into SharePoint List, and I was getting “Unknown error” into my page when I tried to create column. I tried to find the solution on the internet for some time, but I didn’t get good information, I believe that “doctype” column name is reserved for internal purpose, so we can’t use same name like ID, title column name.

 

Luckily I was able to create “doctype” as single line of text data type, now the actual problem started, I was not able to delete “doctype” column from SharePoint list, definitely we can write custom code and delete same column from code. But I have found easy way to delete “doctype” column from going to tool called “SharePoint Manager 2007” and I have selected my site-> list -> “doctype” column and delete from that tool. You can find more information regarding SharePoint manager 2007 from my blog, here is link http://sanketinfo.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/sharepoint-manager-2007-%e2%80%93-administration-tool/

 

Now if we have requirements to create “doctype” into list, then we can create same column name by changing character case. “doctype” column name is case-sensitive, like we can create column with named “DocType”

Locking down SharePoint Designer (SPD)

One day, I was getting “This web site has been configured to disallow editing with SharePoint Designer. Contact your web site administrator for more information” error while opening my SharePoint site from SharePoint Designer (SPD), after that I have found that one of my admin people change into site definition file onet.xml to restrict us from opening SharePoint designer.

 

Actually we have faced lots of problem while considering SharePoint site access, because when we were giving designer or full control rights to any users for SharePoint site, they can do customization from SharePoint Designer (SPD) tool also, but as per our requirements, only admin people can do customization from SPD, user who has designer or full control rights into SharePoint site, we would like to control them from using SPD tool.

 

I spend good amount of time for finding out the solution, but till now I didn’t find any exact and perfect solution which will best suites and fits for my requirements, because in SharePoint site, all permission are dependent on each other, so if I remove access for ‘Add and Customize Pages permission” level then “Manage Web Site” permission will be also remove from Site Permission section.

  

We can control and lock down SPD In below level.

 

1. Site level, it’s prevent user from opening all site created from specific site definition


2. Web Application level for all users


3. Web Application level per users or groups


4. Site collection level


5. Site collection level from SPD(Contributor settings)

 

We can find many good information regarding how to lock down SPD, but guys believe me that below link giving me very good useful information and main thing, it combine and describes all possible way into one article only.

 

I’ll update my post; if I find any proper solution to locking down SPD for particular set of users with full permission access into SharePoint site from GUI.

 

Reference Link:

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner/archive/2008/11/25/locking-down-sharepoint-designer.aspx Link contains very useful information describing user security for locking down SharePoint Designer.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940958/en-us : how to change onet.xml file for disallowing users from opening SharePoint Designer

SharePoint Auditing

SharePoint out of the box auditing features is giving us very good functionalities for keeping track of opening or downloading documents, deleting or restoring items, editing users and permissions and many more, by default its turn off on top site collection level. 

Configuring Settings for Auditing

The following screenshot shows that how we can configure audit settings from main top level site collection-> site settings-> configure audit settings. 

 

 

 

 

Viewing Reports for Auditing

 
The following screenshot shows the various auditing reports available to administrators, who can view them through top-level site settings.   

 
When we clicked on any of the above reports, it will generate XML excel document which we can save to local disk or open for viewing purpose. 

 

Limitation for audit reports:

1. the generated XML excel document report don’t have user friendly data, like in “Event Data” column, it will display user id, group id instead of friendly user name and group name, it showing site collection GUID instead of Site Collection name and many more.

2. For viewing of auditing reports, user needs site collection administrator’s rights and user can see reports from going to top level site collection. 

 

3. If we have large server farm with plenty of SharePoint sites under one site collection level, then at some point, we can have performance issue due to tracking all users’ requests for audit purpose. 

We can write custom code into visual studio and generate audit log reports as per our requirements.

I have also searched on the internet for tool and web part to display and capture audit trail reports from SharePoint.

Here is link for useful AvePoint tool for SharePoint auditing

http://www.sharepointreviews.com/component/content/article/69-sharepoint-auditing/210-DocAve-Auditor-for-SharePoint-by-AvePoint.html 

Below are some good useful links which talks about how to configure auditing, viewing reports and how to write custom code for generating user friendly reports.
 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spauditentry.aspx SPAuditEntry Class which will use for writing custom event data into audit report.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397403.aspx Item Level Auditing in SharePoint 

http://www.developer.com/net/net/article.php/3755726  Source code for custom audit log reports 
 

 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101000051033.aspx how to view audit log reports

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc794261.aspx custom auditing 

Working with SharePoint meeting workspace site

From last 3 weeks, I have been working in SharePoint meeting workspace site, so thought to share with you some of the experience and what’s actual inside into meeting workspace site.

 Our main purpose was to create calendar event into SharePoint and store meetings documents and agenda for respective meeting into central location repository, so anybody can go into meeting workspace with proper permissions rights and browse through the documents uploaded and approved by meeting organizer, meeting workspace is working in same manner like outlook calendar, we can create recurring event, single day event and add attendees, agenda for the meeting and upload documents.

In traditional outlook meeting, organizer has to send documents, agenda to attendees by e-mail, so they were no central repository for all work items and documents.

 

We had met our requirements by out of the box functionality provided by SharePoint Meeting workspace site template. We can also do custom coding into meeting workspace as per our needs.

 

Below are some useful links which I had followed while starting working on meeting workspace. It’s very beginner’s level information.

 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP030921661033.aspx Overview about meeting workspace site

 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA100656201033.aspx Creating meeting workspace site

 

http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/sharepoint_blank/archive/2008/10/31/create-a-sharepoint-meeting-workspace.aspx How to create and start with meeting workspace site

 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA012304711033.aspx#2 Create, Link and Update meeting workspace site.

 

http://communityclips.officelabs.com/video.aspx?videoid=601655a8-2111-4406-821d-690f2fce6b35 creates recurring meeting workspace and connects to Outlook

 

I had also faced some of the challenges while working into meeting workspace

1. we can’t link to an existing meeting workspace that contains recurring events, like when we create any new calendar event into SharePoint, we can specify that current event will be recurring or not, after that we can create new meeting workspace subsite for storing all documents, agenda items and attendees, we have the option to link current site with existing meeting workspace site in which there was no recurring event, but we cant link to existing recurring meeting workspace site. So conclusion of the story, we need to create separate meeting recurring workspace site if we want our recurring dates and agenda different from existing one.

 

2. Meeting workspace site has some limitation with office 2003, we can also create new meeting workspace site from outlook calendar by creating new calendar event, select invites, here we have two options, either we can link to existing meeting workspace or create new workspace site, but in both the case, the meeting organizer needs to have full control to the Meeting Workspace from SharePoint site, with the full control rights, they can achieve the functionality from outlook 2003.