Logic Flow Development Journal

SharePoint grouping by week

2011-06-27T15:22:00.012+10:00

Overview
In SharePoint 2007, to achieve grouping list items by week, a week start or week end date is required. Calculated columns can be used to work out the start day of the week and end day of the week.

Week starting Monday

=[Created]-WEEKDAY([Created],2)+1

Week starting Sunday

=[Created]-WEEKDAY([Created])+1

Week ending Saturday

=[Created]+7-WEEKDAY([Created])

Week ending Sunday

=[Created]+7-WEEKDAY([Created],2)

Week ending Monday

=[Created]-WEEKDAY([Created],2)+1+IF(WEEKDAY([Created],2)=1,0,7)

Screen shot:

List view issue when grouping by date
SharePoint 2007 has many glitches, grouping dates on the list view is one them. If you want to create a weekly list view using the week start or week end column that you created in the previoius section, you will likely see this error:

To work around this there are two options:

Option 1 - Expanded by default:

Edit your list view, under the Group By section, select Expanded for "By default, show grouping:".

This is not ideal since, everything is expanded which pretty much defeated the purpose of grouping.

To further work around this, you can add a jQuery to collapse the groups. The downside is losing the SharePoint's ability to remember the last expand and collapse groups.

Refer to a post by Spyral Out for more information and suggests of other alternatives.

The jQuery

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function collapseGroups() {
    $("img[src='/_layouts/images/minus.gif']:visible").parent().click();
}

_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push("collapseGroups");
</script>

Option 2 - Group by Text field
The other option is to change the week starting or ending calculated columns to a text field. However, the downside is that the date needs to be formatted as "yyyy/MM/dd" in order for sorting to work. For example:

=TEXT([Created]-WEEKDAY([Created],2)+1,"yyyy/MM/dd")

Conculsion
Both options have their pros and cons, it will be depend on what works for your users.

Initialise a class from string variable in C#

2011-06-21T12:11:00.000+10:00

Ever wonder if it is possible initialise a class from a string in C#? Although it is not as simple as in PHP but it's possible:

PHP

<?php
    $classname = "test";

    $oTest = new $classname();

    class test{ ... }
?>

C#
The class

namespace CSharpApp
{
    public class Test
    {
        public void Run() { ... }
    }
}

The code

string oName = "CSharpApp.Test";
// To create an instance
Type typeObj = Type.GetType(oName);
object instanceObj = Activator.CreateInstance(typeObj);
// To call a method from the class
typeObj.InvokeMember("Run",
    BindingFlags.InvokeMethod  BindingFlags.Instance  BindingFlags.Public,
    null, instMerchant, null);

A very good explaination and examples, such as calling different types of methods in the class, can be found here:
http://www.csharp-examples.net/reflection-examples/

SSIS: Handling failure in Send Mail Task within a FOREACH loop container

2011-06-14T17:35:00.000+10:00

An issue had come up recently that the customer reports that sent three times a day was not delivered. After some investigation, I have realised one of the email address in the database was wrong hence causing the process failed half way through. Hence half of the clients missed out on the report.

Surely, it was a user typo, however, the process should be smart enough to report the error and carry on with the rest of the clients having good email addresses. Therefore, two improvements are put forward to be implemented in the SSIS process:

Report the error by email
Continue sending emails to other unaffected clients

After some research on Google, I have found two links that were very useful to help me solve this problem.

Report the error by email
This is in fact very simple:

Select the Send Mail Task, then click the Event Handler tab;
Select the OnError event, then click the link in the middle of the screen to create the event;
Add a Send Mail Task to the OnError event to send email notification when an error occur.
That's all, do the next step if you do not want the error to interrupt the looping.

Web reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5433132/handling-failure-of-the-send-mail-task-in-ssis

Continue sending emails to other unaffected clients

While the first step was very simple, the second step is even simpler:

To Prevent the error from going further up the chain, open up the System Variables (i.e. SSIS menu > Variables, then select Show System Variables) from within the OnError event handler of the Send Mail Task;
Find and change the Propogate property’s value to False;
That's all you need to do, do the same steps to all the tasks within the FOREACH loop container to prevent an interruption to the loop.

Web reference: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/rushabh_mehta/archive/2008/04/24/gracefully-handing-task-error-in-ssis-package.aspx

Call a function from string variable in PERL, PHP and C#

2011-06-09T15:44:00.000+10:00

PERL

my $function_name = "hello";
&$function_name(10);
function hello() {
  my $param = shift;
  print "hello $param\n";
}

PHP

$function_name = "hello";
$function_name();
function hello($param) {
  echo "hello $param\n";
}

class Program
{
  static void Main(string[] args)
  {
    Type type = typeof(MyReflectionClass);
    MethodInfo method = type.GetMethod("Hello");
    MyReflectionClass c = new MyReflectionClass();
    method.Invoke(c, null);
  }
}

public class MyReflectionClass
{
  public void Hello(int num)
  {
    Console.WriteLine("hello {0}", num.ToString());
  }
}

Develop a Windows Service in C#

2011-06-09T15:34:00.000+10:00

Have you ever wanted to utilise the Windows service to run background tasks on your Windows server? Use the following starter guides to help you kick start your Windows Service projects.

For Visual Studio 2005. A guide posted by The Reddest to creating a simple Windows Service in C# will help get you started.
http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/creating-a-simple-windows-service-in-csharp

For Visual Studio 2008. The MSDN has a good walkthrough guide here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zt39148a(v=vs.80).aspx

SharePoint KPI list - Click on link returns error

2010-10-13T10:12:00.000+11:00

The Problem

When click on a certain link from the KPI dashboard list (like above), an error "Incorrect function. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070001)" was returned.

The Solution
After some research I have found a helpful post which gives me an answer. Basically, to fix the issue, a Details Link is needed to be specified. Edit that KPI list item, a collapsed section "Details Link" can be located near the bottom of the edit screen. Specify details page to go to when the KPI list item link is being clicked.

Observation
I have also noticed that this issue seem to be affecting the KPI list item that is linking to a SharePoint list. The details link does not need to be specified for KPI list item that is linked to an Excel spreadsheet or manually entered.

How to find all the column name from a database?

2010-08-11T14:20:00.000+10:00

This helpful query will give you the list of tables:

SELECT t.name AS table_name,
  SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id) AS schema_name,
  c.name AS column_name
FROM sys.tables AS t
INNER JOIN sys.columns c ON t.OBJECT_ID = c.OBJECT_ID
ORDER BY schema_name, table_name;

Web Reference
Ramani Sandeep's Blog: Query to Find Column Name From All Tables

How many tables in your database have column name like "OrderId"?

2010-08-11T14:07:00.000+10:00

This helpful query will give you the list of tables:

SELECT t.name AS table_name,
  SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id) AS schema_name,
  c.name AS column_name
FROM sys.tables AS t
INNER JOIN sys.columns c ON t.OBJECT_ID = c.OBJECT_ID
WHERE c.name LIKE '%OrderId%'
ORDER BY schema_name, table_name;

Web Reference
Ramani Sandeep's Blog: Query to Find Column Name From All Tables

How to hide Site Actions and View All Site Content

2010-04-29T20:08:00.000+10:00

Overview
Many of you would probably be in the situation when you realise the "Site Actions" and "View All Site Contents" appears to any users. No matter how you move the users around, they can still see them. Further to my previous post, the below is the detailed steps to help you in modifying the master pages.

Assumptions
I assume you already know where to find the master page, and to open it using SharePoint designer. Otherwise, read this before going any further.

SPSecurityTrimmedControl
This SharePoint control controls when a component is being display. Wrap this tag around the components that are to be show or hide depending on user permission. Its property PermissionsString is where permission is being specified. A summary of the permission values:
List Permissions

ManageLists
CancelCheckout
AddListItems
EditListItems
DeleteListItems
ViewListItems
ApproveItems
OpenItems
ViewVersions
DeleteVersions
CreateAlerts
ViewFormPages

Site Permissions

ManagePermissions
ViewUsageData
ManageSubwebs
ManageWeb
AddAndCustomizePages
ApplyThemeAndBorder
ApplyStyleSheets
CreateGroups
BrowseDirectories
CreateSSCSite
ViewPages
EnumeratePermissions
BrowseUserInfo
ManageAlerts
UseRemoteAPIs
UseClientIntegration
Open
EditMyUserInfo

Personal Permissions

ManagePersonalViews
AddDelPrivateWebParts
UpdatePersonalWebParts

For multiple permissions, separate the permissions with a comma (,). For example:

<...PermissionsString="ManagedSubwebs,ManageLists"...>

For more details, go here.

Hiding Site Actions button

After opened the default master page, search for the tag SharePoint:SiteActions.
If not already exists, insert the line before the SharePoint:SiteActions tag:
<Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl runat="server" PermissionsString="ManageSubwebs">
Insert the closing tag SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl after the closing tag of SharePoint:SiteActions
Change the permission string using the available permissions listed above.

Hide View All Site Content link

After opened the default master page, search for "~site/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx". Normally the SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl tag is already exists before the line.
If not already exists, insert the line before the DIV:
<Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl runat="server" PermissionsString="ManageSubwebs">
<div class="ms-quicklaunchheader"><SharePoint:SPLinkButton... NavigateUrl="~site/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx" ...>
Insert the closing tag SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl after the corresponding closing DIV tag.
Change the permission string using the available permissions listed above.

Acknowledgments
This article is being inspired by the following posts:

Enabling Network Level Authentication on Windows XP Service Pack 3 for access to Server 2008 via Remote Desktop

2010-03-19T11:58:00.000+11:00

When connecting to a Windows 2008 Server using remote desktop from a Windows XP client running service pack 2 or earlier, you get the following error message:

The remote computer requires Network Level Authentication, which your computer does not support.

To enable NLA in XP machines; first install XP SP3, then edit the registry settings on the XP client machine to allow NLA.

Configure Network Level Authentication

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
In the details pane, right-click Security Packages, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type tspkg. Leave any data that is specific to other SSPs, and then click OK.
In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders
In the details pane, right-click SecurityProviders, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type credssp.dll. Leave any data that is specific to other SSPs, and then click OK.
Exit Registry Editor.
Restart the computer.

Credits
This solution is originated from Sound Enterprises here.

SQL 2005: Truncating Log Files and Recovering Space

2010-01-22T12:15:00.000+11:00

In the SharePoint environment, it does happen from time to time that you will receive an error page highlighted with the message "HRESULT: 0x80040E14". It is, in most cases, caused by the log file in one of the SharePoint databases being full. To resolve this problem, we need identify the error from the SharePoint log and truncate the log file of the affecting database. Here I compiled some quick steps to truncate log file in SQL 2005.

1. Check SharePoint log
The log is normally under the 12 hives path within the LOGS folder. You should find something like this in your log:

Unexpected query execution failure, error code 9002. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below. "The transaction log for database 'WSS_Content' is full.

In this case the database that is casuing issue is "WSS_Content".

2. Check the database file size

USE [database name];
EXEC sp_helpfile;

It will return a table with information of the database file (MDF) and the log file (LDF). In our example, [database name] is WSS_Content.

3. Truncate the log

USE [database name];
BACKUP LOG [database name] WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY;
DBCC SHRINKFILE ([log file name], 1);

Note: [log file name] is from the sp_helpfile result under the "name" column of the log file row.

4. Check file size again
After this do step 1 again to see the differences. The log file size should be reduced to the minimum (e.g. 1024).

The Google Chrome Developer Tools

2009-11-20T16:48:00.000+11:00

Getting started

Debugging JavaScript

Profiling and optimizing

Inspecting elements and resources

More about the tools: http://www.chromium.org/devtools/

Google Wave: invite wanted [Now I am giving out]

2009-11-13T16:10:00.000+11:00

[Update]: I am in Google Wave now, and I have 5 invites. If you want an invite, please post here with a reason to use Google Wave.

Importing DB2 (AS400) data to SQL Server using SSIS

2009-11-09T15:53:00.001+11:00

Problem
While setting up the SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) to import data from a DB2(AS400) database to SQL server, I have received such error (Figure 1):

Warning at {[GUID]} [OLE DB Source[[Source ID]]: Cannot retrieve the column code page info from the OLE DB provider. If the component supports the "DefaultCodePage" property, the code page from that property will be used. Change the value of the property if the current string code page values are incorrect. If the component does not support the property, the code page from the component's locale ID will be used.

(Figure 1)

Solution
After some research, the common answer is to set the "AlwaysUseDefaultCodePage" option to true. However, I have no idea where it can be set until I found the following posts:
http://www.ureader.com/msg/1251386.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa705760(BTS.10).aspx

The Steps

In the Data Flow Task Design surface, add a new OLE DB Source or OLE DB Destination for use with the Microsoft OLE DB Provider.
Right-click the OLE DB source or destination object, and then click Show Advanced Editor…(Figure 2).
On the Advanced Editor screen, click the Component Properties page.
Set AlwaysUseDefaultCodePage to True (Figure 3).
Click OK.

(Figure 2)

(Figure 3)

Refreshing data connection in Excel using VBScript

2009-11-06T15:13:00.000+11:00

I have to present some statistical information on SharePoint using Excel Web Access web part. After a whole week of data consolidation from several different external sources, I have realized that the data connections does not get refreshed when SharePoint loads the web part. All the refreshing options that can be set in Excel (Excel 2007 in my case) does not help but giving more errors.
After hours of Google researching, many suggested to follow the steps set out in this article:
Plan external data connections for Excel Services

Surely it's probably the proper way to do it, but I just don't have the time to go through the million steps. Since I am more of a developer than a site administrator, I have decided to write a script to refresh the data connections in the Excel workbook instead. The script will be run on a daily basis which works for me in this case.

Here is the VBScript that I have created:

' VB Script Document
option explicit

refreshPivotTable("[file path]\[excel file name]")

Sub refreshPivotTable(strExcel)
' Load Excel object
Dim objExcel
Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
objExcel.Visible = False
objExcel.Application.DisplayAlerts = False
objExcel.Workbooks.Open strExcel

' Refresh PivotTables
Dim pt
Dim i
Dim nShCount

nShCount = objExcel.ActiveWorkbook.Sheets.Count
For i = 1 To nShCount
 For Each pt In objExcel.ActiveWorkbook.Sheets(i).PivotTables
   pt.RefreshTable()
 Next
Next

' Close Excel object
objExcel.ActiveWorkbook.Save
objExcel.Quit
Set objExcel = Nothing

Schedule It
You can now schedule to run this using the Windows task scheduler. Run it as "cscript vbExcelScrip.vbs"

Data Source File
One thing to note that you might have to unlink the physical data source file with your Excel. A data source file is created by Excel (normally saved on your My Document > My Data Sources) when you set up a data connection. However, the connection information is in fact saved in your Excel, the connection file is used as a backup and reusable by other workbooks.
Depending on what user you are using to run the scheduled task, it might not have access to the data connection file on your My Document folder. To unlink the data connection file from your Excel workbook:

go to Data > Connections
Click the "Properties..." button
Under the "Definition" tab
Uncheck "Always use connection file"

Hopefully this issue is addressed in SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. :)

Best Free Credit Card Icons For eCommerce Sites

2009-09-27T16:35:00.000+10:00

1. FineIcons
A set of originally designed credit card set.

2. Professional Icons

3. Free Credit Card Icons For Online-Shops
A list of some credit card icon collections

"An unexpected error has occurred." error in WSS3.0

2009-09-02T16:07:00.001+10:00

After a couple of weeks of development of a custom list form, I finally delivered it to my manager for review. Everything looks great and promising, until she hit the "OK" button to submit the form. An unexpected screen had appeared with the message "An unexpected error has occurred.". I feel that I have just committed the biggest sin as a developer, i.e. lack of testing before delivery.
While cursing in my mind about how poor the error message was, I quickly jumped onto the code to try resolve the issue. All seems in perfectly good order. So plan B, is to Google it. Fortunately, I was able to find this post by Vincent Rothwell to help me get a better error message from SharePoint. (Thanks Vincent!)
This time I have a stack of funny error message displayed on screen, which still doesn't help. After more googling, I have concluded that one or more internal field names were incorrect in the form. It is quite possible as I have deleted and re-created a couple of the fields towards the end of my development. It turned out the field names has a different case before and after its recreation:

Previously:

After re-creating the "Given Name(s)" field:

Such a small error, it took me a couple of hours to research and fix. :(

In case, anyone has come across the same issue, this might be a good starting point to your debugging exercise. Let's hope the error messages will improve in SharePoint 2010... (XX fingers crossed XX)

Confliction between Lightbox2 and jQuery

2009-09-02T11:46:00.000+10:00

I have used the typical Lightbox 2 and jQuery form plugin on the product detail page for our shopping cart application. Lightbox 2 was implemented first and it worked beautifully. However, it failed to work once the jQuery form was implemented. After some googling, it turned out jQuery conflicts with Lightbox2's prototype.js.

The work around is to place jQuery.noConflict() before the $(document).ready function in your jQuery script. Then replace all "$" with "jQuery" where the "$" is used for a jQuery functions.

Before:

$(document).ready(function(){
 $(window).load(
   function() {
     var foo = $('#content-wrapper').height();
...etc.

After:

    jQuery.noConflict();
   jQuery(document).ready(function(){
     jQuery(window).load(
       function() {
      var foo = jQuery('#content-wrapper').height();
   ...etc.

Thanks to Phil's post in Objective Development Forum.

Free twitter widgets for your web site

2009-08-29T13:10:00.001+10:00

Twitter Stamp
Highly customisable with different size and style. The most important is that it's free and worked.

Widge Box
Nice design and customisable background colour, auto-scrolling twittes. HTML code available in javascript, flash or MySpace specifically. Get the Pro version to remove the ad button.

Twitt-Twoo
Great twitter widgets for your WordPress site. This is more programming involved to install, but highly customisable for your needs.

Some useful free software tools

2009-08-20T11:22:00.001+10:00

Paint .Net
A free alternative to PhotoShop. It has a lot of photo editing tools and features which makes it better alterative to the Windows' paint.
Royal TS
This tools should not be unfamiliar to you if you are a system administrator or developer. This nice software here allows you to connect to other Windows machines using RDP* (Remote Desktop Protocol).
Convert PDF to Word
You are new to the job, and being asked to update some policies for your department. All you can find is the PDF file, who knows where the original Word document was stored. Instead of buying a PDF editor to edit the PDF and eventually save it in Word. Try this online tool which can convert the PDF back to Word. You might lose some fonts and style formatting, but they are very easy to fix. However, you may consider the confidentiality of your document before using this tool since you have to upload it to their server.
SyncToy
SyncToy 2.1 is a free application that synchronizes files and folders between locations. Typical uses include sharing files, such as photos, with other computers and creating backup copies of files and folders.

A great list of tools by Scott Henselman can be found here.

Some free useful SharePoint and SPD add-on's

2009-08-19T17:24:00.000+10:00

SharePoint (WSS 3.0)
1. Mullivan's scheduled reminder& alerts
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/SPScheduedReminders.aspx

2. Zip and download list items
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/SharepointZippedListItem.aspx

3. Cross-Site Lookup Column Add-on
http://tonybierman.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-custom-cross-site-lookup-column.html

4. Tip of the day
http://www.amrein.com/apps/page.asp?Q=5739

5. Smart tools
http://www.codeplex.com/smarttools

SharePoint Designer
1. Useful SharePoint Designer workflow activities
http://www.codeplex.com/SPDActivities

How to: Hide the Site Actions Menu in SharePoint

2009-08-19T17:14:00.001+10:00

Customizing Site Action menu permission can be achieved by wrapping the SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl WebControl around the PublishingSiteAction:SiteActionMenu control in your master page.

Detailed reference:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/SecurityTrim_SharePoint.aspx

SharePoint XSLT data view : issues rendering special characters (e.g. &, >, ") and line breaks

2009-08-12T11:14:00.002+10:00

I have had problem with my custom display form, where displaying the content of a multiple line text box field does not render the special characters (such as &, >, ") and line breaks properly. After Googling for a couple of hours, there were no solution to my problem. Many suggested using "disable-output-escaping" to fix the special character issue, and some suggested using select="ddwrt:AutoNewLine(string(@Description))" to fix the line breaks issue. They cannot co-exist in the "xsl:value-of" tag because the AutoNewLine function will overwrite the special characters with their HTML encoding (see here).

Finally, I have worked out a solution to resolve both issues. Adding the following template (function) to your display form ASPX and calling it when display a multiple line text field. It replaces the new line character (\n or 
) with a <br>.

Add this function to your DispForm.aspx file:

<xsl:template name="formatMultiLineText">
<xsl:param name="text" select="."/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="contains($text, '
')">
<xsl:value-of select="substring-before($text, '
')" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
<br/>
<xsl:call-template name="formatMultiLineText">
<xsl:with-param name="text" select="substring-after($text,'
')"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="$text" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

Where your multiple line text is displaying, replace this:

<xsl:value-of select="@Description">

with this:

<xsl:call-template name="formatMultiLineText">
<xsl:with-param name="text" select="@Description">
</xsl:call-template>

Although it might be a bit of work to replace all the multi-line text fields with the template call, it will finally give you some peace of mind. I'd be happy to know if you have any better ideas to overcome all these hassles. :)

SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQL Server Using Bulk Insert – Load Comma Delimited File Into SQL Server

2009-08-11T16:25:00.002+10:00

Good information here.

SP People Picker Error: "The control is not available because you do not have the correct permissions."

2009-08-05T17:34:00.002+10:00

When setting one of the "People or Group" field to choose from a SharePoint Group, the above message appeared instead of the expected people picker field. However, it works fine when logged in with an site collection admin account.

After some research on the web, I found the issue was originated from the user group setting. Go to your user group, select Settings -> Group Settings. Then under Group Settings -> Who can view the membership of the group?, select Everyone (see below). Go back to your list form and you should see the people picker instead of the error message.

How Do I: Use the SPDiag Tool to Analyze my SharePoint Farm?

2009-07-31T16:47:00.002+10:00

Click to watch video

22 minutes, 38 seconds
The SharePoint Diagnostic (SPDiag) tool offers both static and trend analysis and reporting as well as real-time details to assist in analysis, planning, and problem avoidance and resolution. In this video Hilton Giesenow takes us through downloading, installing and configuring the tool, and shows how to use some of its features.

Highlighting the left menu of the current SharePoint page

2009-07-27T18:33:00.002+10:00

I have discovered that it is in fact quite simple and effective:

function highlightCurrentMenu() {
 var As = document.getElementsByTagName("A");

 for (var i=0; i<As.length; i++) {
  if (As[i].className == "zz2_QuickLaunchMenu_1 ms-navitem zz2_QuickLaunchMenu_5") {
   if (As[i].href == document.location) {
    As[i].style.fontWeight = "bold";
    As[i].parentNode.style.backgroundColor = "#dddddd";
    break;
   }
  }
 }
}

Hiding the view selection in a SharePoint list

2009-07-27T17:52:00.007+10:00

I have to hide the List View selection box on the top right hand corner in one of the SharePoint lists that I created. It is to avoid users changing any pre-defined settings and seeing other people's views.

For example, in a leave form list, you should only see your own leaves but not your managers view which contains other people's leaves.

To do that, apply the following Javascript onto your list view:

function hideViewMenu() {
 var TDs = document.getElementsByTagName("TD");
 for (var i=0; i<TDs.length; i++) {
  if (TDs[i].className == "ms-listheaderlabel") {
   var tableNode = TDs[i].parentNode;
   tableNode.style.display = 'none';
   break;
  }
 }
}

Using jQuery

$(function() {
 $("td[class='ms-listheaderlabel']").parent().hide();
});

Cannot open page in SharePoint Designer. SOAP error.

2009-07-24T16:12:00.002+10:00

Cannot open page in sharepoint designer. SOAP error.
If you find this post, you are one of the many webpart victims. While playing with a executive dash board, my boss had managed to destroy a page that he had been working on for weeks. Resetting that page to Site Definition did not do the job. Restoring to previous version did not work either.

When opening from SharePoint Designer, he got this error:

soap:ServerServer was unable to process request. ---> An unexpected error occurred while opening this page. For assistance, contact your site administrator.

After search the web, I have found a post by Brute Force SharePoint:
http://bruteforcesharepoint.blogspot.com/2009/03/cannot-open-page-in-sharepoint-designer.html

Fixing the problem
To fix the problem you have to delete the webparts from the page one by one until you can open the page again. The rule of thumb is to delete in the order of the most recently added first.
From your browser, go the problem page, append "?contents=1" to the URL.
For example:

http://domain/site/ReportLibrary/problempage.aspx?contents=1

It will give you a list of all web part on the page, you may start deleting until your page can be opened again.

Have fun again, but this time be careful! :)

Portable Web Development Tools

2009-07-21T18:28:00.002+10:00

A very handy list of applications to be carry around for web development:

Problem with tracking contact using CRM Outlook client

2009-07-02T12:35:00.002+10:00

The error
After clicking the "Track in CRM" button to synchronize a contact to CRM from Outlook, the following error came up:

...cannot link this item to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Synchronization with this record or activity type has been turned off.

How to fix it

Select the "CRM" menu
Select "Options..."
Select the "Synchronization" tab
Make sure the "Contacts" check box is ticked

Set people picker default value

2009-07-02T12:00:00.002+10:00

A few reference to set default people picker value on SharePoint forms:

Set People Picker Default Value using Javascript

Get people picker value using Javascript

2009-07-02T11:44:00.002+10:00

Usage: The following javascript will return the current name value of a specific people picker on a SharePoint form page
Parameter: People picker number, which is the order of the people picker on the page.
Returns: Name of the person or group, not the internal domain name.


function getPickerInputElement(pickerNo) {
 var result = "";
 var j = 0;
 var divs = document.getElementsByTagName("DIV");

 for (var i=0; i <> 0) {
   if (divs[i].id.indexOf("UserField_upLevelDiv") > 0) {
     j++;
     if (j == pickerNo) {
       result = divs[i];
       break;
     }
   }
 }
 return result;
}

// Example: calling the function, where 1 indicates the first people picker on the page
var objPeoplePicker = getPickerInputElement(1);

// Example: getting people picker value
var employeeName = objPeoplePicker.innerText;

// Example: putting a new value to the people picker field
objPeoplePicker.innerText = "Peter Parker";

Query SQL server from command line

2009-07-02T09:41:00.002+10:00

Ever need to query SQL database from command line to export the result to a CSV file? I have used "sqlcmd" to do the job. The following is an example for that:

sqlcmd -S [server name] -d [database name] -i [SQL file name] -o [CSV file name] -s"," -w 300

The command explains

There are a lot of options in sqlcmd, enter "sqlcmd -?" from the command line to see the full list of options;
[server name] is the name of the server where the database is located;
[database name] is the database which you want to query;
[SQL file name] is a plain text file containing the SQL queries, normally ended with the extension ".sql", e.g. create table... select * from table...;
[CSV file name] is the output CSV file name, which normally has the extension ".csv";
-s",", is where you specify the delimiter, comma in this case, other characters can be used;
-w 300, is the fixed width of output record, 300 characters in this case;

SharePoint custom list form catchya's

2009-07-01T13:58:00.002+10:00

Some catchya's I have encountered while developing custom list forms using SharePoint Designer:

Javascript does not work

SharePoint designer added {generate-id()} automatically. Remove them all.
Assigning value to hidden drop down list does not work, check the values that you are assigning is a valid value to the drop down. Otherwise, the assignment will become an empty string and eventually the default value.