The blog post below describes the technical details about how Web Parts can be exported using a hidden tool in OOB SharePoint, though this requires manual assembling of a special url. If you are just interested in a solution for an easy Web Part Export function, just proceed directly to my new blog post where you can download my tool that you can add to your web browser.

Web Part Exporter

Unfortunately in SharePoint 2013 the custom error pages are not applied: link 1, link 2. Hopefully there will be a hotfix that solves it.

Comments from Wordpress.com

ryan - Mar 5, 2014

I agree, I have seen a few about. Thanks for the post

Jon - Mar 2, 2014

In my current project we are migrating a custom sharepoint solution from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013. One of the improvements is that we migrate custom field choices to Managed Metadata. Choice Fields were not intended to be so many. So now it is time to convert them to metadata terms. I have written a PowerShell script which copies all the choices from a field to a termset. The script uses Client Side Object Model (CSOM) to get the choice values and it uses Server Object Model to write data to the termset. [sourcecode language=“PowerShell”] <# .Synopsis Use MigrateChoices.ps1 to migrate choices from a field to managed metadata. The source can be a contenttype field from SharePoint 2010 or from SharePoint 2013. .Description This script uses client object model to get the list items from the old environment. Then it uses the Server Object Model to create new terms and termsets (if needed) in the new environment. This script doesn’t override anything. The reason why we use it, is that importing feature isnt easy It creates a new, instead of adding new terms to old ones. It is very hard to create an csv file for that purpose. .Example MigrateChoices.ps1 -Source http://sp2010.contoso.com -Target https://sp2013.contoso.com .Notes Name: MigrateChoices.ps1 Author: Anatoly Mironov Last Edit: 2013-09-04 Keywords: CSOM, Field, FieldChoice, Metadata, Termset .Links http://chuvash.eu .Inputs The script takes Source parameter, it is url for the root web in the Source Site Collection The script takes Target parameter, it is url for the root web in the Target Site Collection .Outputs None #Requires -Version 2.0 #> [CmdletBinding()] Param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][System.String]$Source = $(Read-Host -prompt “Source site Url”), [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][System.String]$Target = $(Read-Host -prompt “Target site Url”), [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)][System.String]$TermGroupName = “My group”, [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)][System.String]$TermGroupId, [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)][System.String]$TermSetName = “My termset”, [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)][System.String]$TermSetId, [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)][System.String]$FieldName = $(Read-Host -prompt “Field Choice Name”) ) if(-not(gsnp | ? { $_.Name -eq “Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell”})) { asnp Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell } # try to instantiate the target site, if it fails, then it does not run in the right environment $targetSite = get-spsite $Target # predefined termset guids: $guids = @{ “group” = if ($TermGroupId) {New-Object system.guid $TermGroupId } else { [system.guid]::NewGuid() } “termset” = if ($TermSetId) {New-Object system.guid $TermSetId } else { [system.guid]::NewGuid() } } function GetChoices() { $ctx = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($Source) $field = $ctx.Web.Fields.GetByInternalNameOrTitle($FieldName) $ctx.Load($field) $ctx.ExecuteQuery() return ([xml]$field.SchemaXml).Field.Choices.Choice } function New-Term { [CmdletBinding()] Param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.TermSetItem]$parent, [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][System.String]$name ) if (!$parent) { throw new-object System.ArgumentException $parent } if (!$name) { throw new-object System.ArgumentException $name } $term = $parent[$name] if (!$term) { $parent.CreateTerm($name, 1033) | out-null } } function CreateTerms() { $taxSession = Get-SPTaxonomySession -Site $targetSite $termStore = $taxSession.DefaultSiteCollectionTermStore $group = $termstore.Groups[$TermGroupName] if (!$group) { $group = $termStore.CreateGroup($TermGroupName, $guids.group) } $termSet = $group.TermSets[$TermsetName] if (!$termset) { $termset = $group.CreateTermSet($SecurityClassificationTermSetName, $guids.termset, 1033) } GetChoices | % { New-Term $termSet $_ } $termStore.CommitAll() $targetSite.Dispose() write-host -ForegroundColor Green “The term sets have been created” } CreateTerms [/sourcecode]  

Last Saturday I attended Leetspeak. Among many awesome speeches and presentations I discovered scriptcs. scriptcs lets you write C# code directly in the console, or execute scripts written with just your favourite editor. Please see more about it on the site. What I thought during Justin Rusbatch’s session at Leetspeak:

Can we use scriptcs in SharePoint?

Technically there is no limitations in SharePoint for scriptcs. Any .NET code can be registered, imported and invoked in a console or in a standalone script. Here is the simple code for instantiating a site collection and disposing it: [code language=“csharp”] #r Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.SharePoint; var site = new SPSite(“http://dev”); site.Url site.Dispose(); [/code] The code above does not do anything, it is just there to demonstrate how you can register the SharePoint assembly (“Microsoft.SharePoint”) and import it into the script: [code language=“csharp”] using Microsoft.SharePoint; [/code] The example shows even that you in scriptcs no longer need the necessary “boilerplate” (compared to a console application): namespace, Program, Main()… You can just directly write your code. The rest is the same as in a C# application. The code samples for scriptcs can be any code written in C# for SharePoint, code from custom console applications, from feature receivers, you name it. So my next question is:

Recently I needed to add an Alert Me link on Pages. Alert Me is a well known SharePoint functionality for notifying users about changes in list or list items. It is availabe in OOB SharePoint as a command in Ribbon if you go to a list view: When you click on this ribbon command, SharePoint opens a modal dialog and takes you to layouts page: SubNew.aspx. To open a modal dialog and load a page is not a rocket science. So a custom “Alert Me” link is doable. As the first step I copied the html markup from the ribbon and adjusted it a little bit. [sourcecode language=“html”] Alert Me [/sourcecode] Then the javascript code which gets the List ID and Page ID is very simple because this information is there in the magic _spPageContextInfo: [sourcecode language=“javascript”] var takana = window.takana || {}; takana.alertMe = function () { var url = String.format("{0}/{1}/SubNew.aspx?List={2}&ID={3}" , _spPageContextInfo.webAbsoluteUrl , _spPageContextInfo.layoutsUrl , encodeURI(_spPageContextInfo.pageListId) , _spPageContextInfo.pageItemId); OpenPopUpPage(url); } [/sourcecode] This code will open a modal dialog in exactly the same way as the ribbon command in OOB SharePoint and let you subscribe to changes on that page. In this code I use String.format which is available on SharePoint pages and _spPageContextInfo which has existed since SharePoint 2010 and has been extended with more useful information about the current context.

For a while ago I needed to copy all files from a document library within a SharePoint 2007 site to the hard drive. So I didn’t need to copy files from SharePoint to SharePoint so I couldn’t use the stsadm -o export command or Chris O’Brien’s nice SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard. I came across the SPIEFolder application which should work with SharePoint 2007 and 2010. It has a site on codeplex: spiefolder.codeplex.com, but neither the binary nor the source code can be downloaded from there. After some searching I found the binary in the author’s skydrive. The fact that the source code was not available seemed as an disanvantage because I could not know what code was run. Nevertheless I tried it out and it didn’t work:

Here is another article in my JSOM series. For one month ago I showed how to alter a column’s ShowInDisplayForm property with JSOM. This time I’ll show a code sample for changing a column’s (field’s) display name. If you want to alter the displayname with Server Object Model, grab the code in the sharepoint.stackexchange.com: Change Field’s DisplayName in a List. [sourcecode language=“javascript”]var ctx = SP.ClientContext.get_current(), //SP.ClientContext field = ctx.get_web() //SP.Web .get_lists() //SP.ListCollection .getByTitle(‘MyList’) //SP.List .get_fields() //SP.FieldCollection .getByInternalNameOrTitle(“Body”); //SP.Field ctx.load(field, “Title”); //load only Title ctx.executeQueryAsync(function() { field.set_title(“Beskrivning”); field.update(); ctx.executeQueryAsync(); });[/sourcecode]

Today I needed to “clean” a list, meaning to remove all list items. For some time ago I wrote a post about different ways of removing list items in bulk: Server Object Model, SPLinq and RPC.  This time I had only the web browser. So I tried the jsom way. By the way, the javascript documentation for jsom on msdn is getting really good. Don’t miss that: How to: Complete basic operations using JavaScript library code in SharePoint 2013. Now here comes theworking code I used to remove all items in my list:

If there are many list items you try retrieve with javascript object model,paging could be very useful. Today I came across a wonderful blog post series about javascript object model in SharePoint: The SharePoint javascript object model - Resources and Real World Examples posted by David Mann and published on Aptilon Blog. There is an example how to achieve paging with JSOM. The key is items.get_listItemCollectionPosition() and query.set_listItemCollectionPosition() I have refactored David’s example to avoid global variables and to put into a module. Here is it. If you have a Tasks list in your site with many items, just hit F12 to open the console and paste this and see the result:

Have you used SharePoint javascript Notifications (SP.UI.Notify)? Are you looking for something new and fresh? Well then check out the Toastr.js - a simple, beautiful, fully responsive and light-weight javascript lib for notifications, developed by John Papa and Hans Fjällemark and released under the MIT License. By the way, toastr was one of many things I discovered and learned on John Papa’s online course by pluralsight: Single Page Apps with HTML5, Web API, Knockout and jQuery. It is a really awesome course, where you learn how to create an amazing SPA. Well, how’s about SharePoint. While whatching the course videos about toastr, I thought: Can we use it in SharePoint? Yes we can! Just load the toastr css and js and start using it:

Today I encountered a weird issue, the classic Visual Web Part template was gone in Visual Studio 2012. When I created a Visual WebPart, a webpart was created with a generated .g.cs file, like the sandboxed visual webparts. I am not exactly sure why it happened. According to the MSDN guide Creating Web Parts for SharePoint, the structure of Visual Webparts should be the same as in Visual Studio 2010. It could have happened after I installed the power tools. However, if someone runs into the same issue, here is the solution: Copy this zip file from a computer with VS2010 installed:

For a while ago my colleague gave me a nice tip of getting the right absolute url regardless sharepoint zone in Alternate Access Mappings. I want to share it, because it is brilliant:

var url = SPUtility.AlternateServerUrlFromHttpRequestUrl(new Uri(value)).AbsoluteUri;

In SharePoint 2010 if CMSSiteManager.js library is loaded besides jQuery, then much of stuff stops working. The reason is that the dollar sign ($) is used in cmssitemanager.js as well which conflicts with jQuery. Mostly it appears on pages where you load jQuery and have an image library with thumbnails. To avoid this, just replace all $ with jQuery in your custom scripts. A more crazy situation is when avoiding $ isn’t enough. It is when you load jQuery to page head automatically on all pages. The Asset picker (AssetPortalBrowser.aspx) invokes $ itself and gets with jQuery in conflict without you write a single line of custom javascript code. You usually get the following error:

If you have used Issue tracking list template in SharePoint you must have marked that the comments are added and marked with author name and datetime. It is handy to have these micro “discussion boards” on items. The comment-formed communication can help to fine-tune task definitions. By the way, have you seen Trello? So the question is how we can create this column in other lists? Here is a little tutorial how to create “append-only comments”, as they are called:

Do an unsafe update in a unified manner « Sharepoint. Kunskap. Upptäckter på resan. - Sep 3, 2011

[…] Log class is my own class which I presented in my previous post. Like this:GillaBli först att gilla denna […]

Here is a simple log which has been inspired of Android Log. It logs to ULS which you can open with ULSViewer, SharePoint Log Viewer.

using System;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;

namespace Contoso.Intranet.Portal.Utilities
{
    public class Log
    {
        private static readonly string \_CATEGORYNAME = "CONTOSO";
        private static readonly SPDiagnosticsCategory \_ERROR\_CATEGORY = 
              new SPDiagnosticsCategory(\_CATEGORYNAME, TraceSeverity.Unexpected, EventSeverity.Error);
        private static readonly SPDiagnosticsCategory \_WARNING\_CATEGORY = 
              new SPDiagnosticsCategory(\_CATEGORYNAME, TraceSeverity.High, EventSeverity.Warning);
        private static readonly SPDiagnosticsCategory \_VERBOSE\_CATEGORY = 
              new SPDiagnosticsCategory(\_CATEGORYNAME, TraceSeverity.Verbose, EventSeverity.Verbose);
        private static readonly SPDiagnosticsCategory \_INFO\_CATEGORY = 
              new SPDiagnosticsCategory(\_CATEGORYNAME, TraceSeverity.Medium, EventSeverity.Information);

        private static void WriteTrace(SPDiagnosticsCategory category, string message, string trace)
        {
            SPDiagnosticsService.Local.WriteTrace(0, category, category.DefaultTraceSeverity, message, trace);
        }

        public static void Error(Exception ex)
        {
            WriteTrace(\_ERROR\_CATEGORY, ex.Message, ex.StackTrace);
        }

        public static void Warning(string message)
        {
            WriteTrace(\_WARNING\_CATEGORY, message, "");
        }

        public static void Verbose(string message)
        {
            WriteTrace(\_VERBOSE\_CATEGORY, message, "");
        }

        public static void Info(string message)
        {
            WriteTrace(\_INFO\_CATEGORY, message, "");
        }

    }
}

A possible improvement can be a custom Area. See an example of ThorstenHans on Github: CustomLogger.cs EDIT: I found an interesting article: How to log to the SharePoint ULS Logs: Clean Debugging and Error Logging broken down into steps written by Philip Stathis.

Ett ytterligare grym verktyg från codeplex-lägret: Sharepoint Manager.

Jag är fortfarande i mitt sökande efter den perfekta (för mig) utvecklingsmiljön för SharePoint 2010. Fram tills nu har jag arbetat med en virtuell (VMware) maskin som kollegor till mig har konfigurerat. Men jag vill ha kunskapen att göra det själv. Än så länge har jag bara stött på procedurer som är relativt långdragna, fram tills idag. Se på videon på sidan jag länkat nedan. Jag ska testa det och sen förhoppningsvis komma med resultat här. Mitt mål är att lätt komma igång med en maskin som körs som VHD eller native dualboot. Men jag börjar med en virtuell VMware maskin. Ett dygn senare: Igår lät jag skriptet köra (utan config ändringar) och efter många timmar är allt installerat och klart. Dock trailversioner. Men gör man det en natt efter 2 veckor eller när trailen är slut, då kan man börja på en ny maskin igen. Jag gillar skarpt detta skript! Ännu bättre blir det nog när man konfigurerar det att fixa en VHD. Kommer mer om det när det är testat! Länksamling Film från Channel 9 Ladda ner Scriptet här Skriptskaparnas bloggar http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cjohnson/archive/2010/10/28/announcing-sharepoint-easy-setup-for-developers.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pstubbs/archive/2010/10/27/sharepoint-2010-easy-setup-script.aspx