June 18, 2009

Performance Point – Unable to Install on Domain Controller – FIXED

Today I had tried to load PPS on my handy SharePoint VM and it promptly fell on it’s face. Whoops! The workaround is very easy and came to me by looking at the Performance Point Monitoring Server install MSI (PSCSrv.msi) using the incredibly helpful Orca MSI editor tool.

Browse to the PPS install media folder
Locate the file named "PSCSrv.msi”
Open a CMD prompt window to the path in #2
Type “PSCSrv.msi SKIPREQCHECK=1” to launch the install and bypass the check
You’ll still see the error message but can click “Next” to skip and complete a full normal install
Enjoy!

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 — Monitoring Server — Failed Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1 (non domain-controller) or Windows Longhorn (non domain-controller)

June 10, 2009

URL Source= for Thank You on Submit

Many times I’ve been asked to adjust the NewForm.aspx (add record) experience for users to display a custom message after submit. A “Thank You” page for a survey is a great example. Other times in request forms people want to show a confirmation or instructions page.

Thankfully the SharePoint product team made this easy for us developers.

Action Steps

Visit the list or library you’d like to tweak
Click on New item to get to /NewForm.aspx
Take a close look at the URL and notice the word “Source=”
We’ll come back to this in a minute
To create a “ThankYou.aspx” page I like to duplicate the “DispForm.aspx” by going into SharePoint Designer

Right click Copy on DispForm.aspx
Right click and Paste
Edit the file to remove the main web part
Rename the file to “ThankYou.aspx”

Edit the part after the equals sign (=) from #3 and replace with a URL you’d like to take people to after submit

Often the destination page for #5 above doesn’t yet exist. So you’ll want to open SharePoint Designer 2007 and create a new ASPX page to hold a “Thank You” message. For this I always place the ASPX file in the same /Forms/ folder as the list I’m working on.

Why? By placing a custom ASPX in the same /Forms/ folder it will be including in any List template (.STP) creation and is easier for future admin and dev staff to locate for troubleshooting.

June 10, 2009

Save C# Time with .OpenWeb()

One of my most common coding task is a simple command line EXE that takes a few parameters in, opens the object model, and applies some sort of changes. Yes, I know about PowerShell, but am very comfortable with Visual Studio and Intellisense today.

Action Steps

Start a new “Console Application” project type
Add an assembly reference for “Microsoft.SharePoint.dll” (12.0.4518.1016)
Type “SPSite s” and right click to add the “using” statement. Very nice shortcut, thank you Joel G!
Create a new SPSite object and use the full URL to the web for the constructor
Use the SPSite.OpenWeb() method to grab that one web object without the hassle of looping through children
This trick works no matter how far the SPWeb is nested down in the site collection