1. Using the built in content types to specify which columns you wish to be hidden.
2. Using jQuery and a content editor web part to hide the columns as desired.
3. Hide the columns programmatically using code.

I just wanted to make some comments on all three. The content type approach is a good one and relatively simple to implement. Once you’ve enabled content types for your list or library, click on the default content type, let’s say it’s Item, and choose the column you’d like to have hidden and simply set it’s column settings to Hidden. Here is an excellent reference for this technique: http://littletalk.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/hide-remove-title-column-from-sharepoint-list/.

Ok so the above works good, but what happens if you only want to introduce these hidden columns on your New and Edit forms but not your Disp form as an example. Or what if your scenario requires that they are hidden from all default New, Edit and Disp forms, but you have some custom SharePoint Designer disp forms that you’ve created that those fields need to be visible on. The content type approach will hide the column for all forms and so that won’t always work. We need something more granular.

So there is where the jQuery approach comes in handy. Some great resources for this:

• Paul Galvin has written some great articles on this topic over at EndUserSharePoint – http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2009/06/17/quick-and-easy-use-jquery-to-hide-a-text-field-on-a-sharepoint-form/ and http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2009/06/18/quick-and-easy-a-better-way-to-use-jquery-to-hide-a-text-field-on-a-sharepoint-form/

As per the comments by Nathan Ahlstrom in the second link noted above, the final fix for me was to use:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
    $('nobr:contains("Completion time")').closest('tr').hide();
    $('nobr:contains("Score")').closest('tr').hide();
});
</script>

Please note that I had to add quotes around the tr tag for this to work for me.

The final approach uses some custom code and the object model to hide columns for a given list. http://www.sharepointkings.com/2008/05/how-to-hide-column-of-sharepoint-list.html. Now I’m not entirely sure how this works with custom forms besides the New, Edit and Disp forms, and until I have time to try out, I won’t know the answer to that. It’s worth mentioning because it does give you some granularity in that you can specify hidden properties per form.

That’s all for now. Please send in your comments if you have them, would love to hear from you.

In case you weren’t following us at the conference late last year, this is your opportunity to get some of your questions answered through the live feeds. Sign up as a Live Blog Follower and the days of the conference you simply need to start submitting your questions. You can sign up using the following link: http://2010-02-10-sptechcon.eventbrite.com/. Also just before I head down there, I’ll be setting up the live feeds on my blog, so you can follow us here as well.

I think the social aspects of these conferences has changed quite a bit with the use of tools like twitter and live blogging and it makes that experience that much more enjoyable. I am eager to get down there and mingle with some of the SharePoint people out there. Hope to see some of you there!

Failed to load workflow.

Really frustrating error because it gives you absolutely nothing to go on. I do want to mention that I also tried building a brand new workflow and selecting one of these custom workflow activities and the behavior was odd. If i tried to add one as an ACTION inside my workflow designer, nothing would happen. No error, but the activity wasn’t added to the step either. It was as if my click/selection had no effect.

So I made the decision to completely remove and reinstall the custom activities. The codeplex solution comes nicely packaged using the SharePoint Installer, so all I had to do was run a remove and then a reinstall. Normally, a final step to getting this working according to the InstallGuide.txt is to:

Go to Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage Web Application Features and activate the feature for desired web applications (usually it’s Sharepoint – 80 or Sharepoint – 443).

The odd thing was that I found this step was already done for me and the solution was listed as already deployed. So back to SharePoint Designer I went, double clicked on the .xoml file, damn, same error! I found several blog posts indicating that I should clear the SharePoint Designer cache. So I closed down SD, deleted the folders starting with 12.x.x.x and loaded SD back up. I tried to open my xoml file, still no luck, same error.

At this point I was getting pretty confused. I manually did a check of the Assembly to make sure it contained the DP.SharePoint.Workflow dll, I double checked the Features folder to make sure it contained the DP.SharePoint.Workflow folder and I make sure the .ACTIONS file was contained within the Workflow folder and that the permissions on it were not wonky. I also verified the web.config contained the safe control entries for that dll. All looked good to me.

FINALLY, I decided to compare my web.config against the old server’s web.config to make sure that I wasn’t missing anything. I did a quick search on DP and found that the old web.config contained one more entry than my new web.config did:

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<authorizedType Assembly="DP.Sharepoint.Workflow, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0298457208daed83" Namespace="DP.Sharepoint.Workflow" TypeName="*" Authorized="True" />

So it would appear that I was missing this authorized type necessary for custom workflow activities. How or why this did not get added when I did my reinstall, I have no idea. But once that entry was added back, I was good to go again. My workflows open just fine without error.

I hope this helps someone else out there!

I found a ton of useful info on the jqGrid forums but it didn’t quite get me there.

The forum article in the above link suggests that you add the follwing CSS to your page:

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.ui-jqgrid tr.jqgrow td {
    white-space: normal !important;
}

The above worked great for FF, but in IE, it would wrap the content, but the cell height would not auto adjust and therefore you really couldn’t see the full content. So I made a couple more changes as per the code snippet below and this seemed to work for me.

So the height:auto forces the cell height to auto adjust based on the size of the wrapped content. I haven’t noticed any side effects of changing this. If anyone has I’d love to hear about it. The vertical-align:top ensures that the text positions at the top so that the cells with less content don’t disappear in the centre due to the larger cell blocks. And finally, I added a bit of padding so that my cells don’t look oddly aligned due to the vertical-align bit, but that’s optional. It’ll work without it.

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.ui-jqgrid tr.jqgrow td {
    white-space: normal !important;
    height:auto;
    vertical-align:text-top;
    padding-top:2px;
}

If anyone else has run into this issue or has had to make a similar change, add your contribution to the comments below.

Scenario:

I have a RadGrid called rgProjects configured with several GridBoundColumn fields and a single GridHyperLinkColumn field. The data binding for this grid is being done via an ajax call to a method in another page that returns some json that I then bind to the grid. I’m leveraging the OnRowDataBound client event of this grid to perform some custom row manipulation. I figured this would be a good place to set up my HyperLink.

Step 1 - Add the GridHyperLinkColumn to the grid

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<telerik:RadGrid ID="rgProjects" EnableViewState="false" runat="server"
            GridLines="None" AutoGenerateColumns="False" AllowSorting="true" Width="100%">
            <MasterTableView TableLayout="Fixed"> 
                <Columns>
                    <telerik:GridNumericColumn DataField="ID" HeaderText="ID" />
                    <telerik:GridNumericColumn DataField="Title" HeaderText="Title" Display="false" />
                    <telerik:GridHyperLinkColumn DataTextField="Project" DataNavigateUrlFields="Project"
                        UniqueName="Project" HeaderText="Project" ItemStyle-Font-Underline="true" />
                </Columns>
            </MasterTableView>
            <ClientSettings>
                <ClientEvents OnRowDataBound="rgProjects_OnRowDataBound" />
            </ClientSettings>
</telerik:RadGrid>

The JSON that’s being returned:

[{"ID":"1204","Title":"shereen's test project","Project":"http://server.local/_layouts/Demo/editform.aspx?ID=1204"}]

So the basic idea was, I wanted my hyperlink to have it’s value set to: “shereen’s test project” and I wanted the url to be set to: http://server.local/_layouts/Demo/editform.aspx?ID=1204.

Do not confuse TITLE with VALUE. By TITLE, I mean the actual TITLE attribute of the A tag that’s used for a tooltip and by VALUE I mean the innerHTML that’s set and is actually visible to the user as the hyperlink itself.

So it would read as follows:

shereen’s test project

This was not working for me initially because both the hyperlink’s value and url were being set as the url, which is not what I wanted:

http://server.local/_layouts/Demo/editform.aspx?ID=1204

In comes the OnRowDataBound event where I can override what’s happening above with what it is I actually want:

Step 2 - Leverage the OnRowDataBound client event to configure our HyperLink

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function rgProjects_OnRowDataBound(sender, args)
{    
    // manually set the hyperlink's title
    var item = args.get_item();
    var dataItem = args.get_dataItem();
    var link = item.get_cell("Project").getElementsByTagName("a")[0];    
    link.innerHTML = dataItem.Title;
    link.href = dataItem.Project;
    link.title = dataItem.Title;
}

So the key thing to note above is you have to set the innerHTML. Title is optional, but the important ones are href and innerHTML. Any problems let me know!

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<div id="thisismydiv1"></div>
<div id="thisismydiv2"></div>
<div id="thisismydiv3"></div>
<div id="thisismydiv4"></div>

To return an array of all divs that start with ‘thisismydiv’, you would use the following:

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var divList = $("div[id^='thisismydiv']");

The above translates to, find me all divs whose id starts with ‘thisismydiv’. You could now do something cool like add a class to all those divs:

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$("div[id^='thisismydiv']").addClass('myClass');

Cannot open log for source {0}. You may not have write access.

This is definitely permissions related. A quick bit of searching and I found some useful info:

The CustomSD registry value for the Application event log is found under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\Applicationregistry key.  It is a string value which uses Security Descriptor Definition Language (SDDL) to describe which accounts have access to which functions (e.g. read, write, clear) of the event log.  By default the application event log will allow any IIS 6 application pool identity write access (either as a service logon or, in the case of custom accounts in the IIS_WPG group, as a batch logon). (reference: http://forums.asp.net/t/1131903.aspx)

So the key in the above paragraph is that the app pool identity already has permission to write to the event log, so instead of mucking around with permissions, I made sure my function for writing to the eventlog is elevated as follows:

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public static void LogMessage(string message)
{
    SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
    {
        if (!EventLog.SourceExists("SharePoint Custom Solutions"))
        {
            EventLog.CreateEventSource("SharePoint Custom Solutions", "Application");
        }
 
        EventLog.WriteEntry("SharePoint Custom Solutions",
                                    message,
                                    EventLogEntryType.Error);
    });
}

Now after doing a bit of digging, I learned that this is actually functionality that is in the works for future releases of jQuery UI. Ticket 3924 is currently open and in development, which is a good sign. Further investigation landed me on this page: http://jsbin.com/uqage which is a fantastic example of how the Closable Tabs concept could work.

My final solution involved me tweaking the above to work as follows:

Setting Up the HTML

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<div id="mytabs"> 
   <ul>
      <li><a href="#tabs-home">My Projects Home</a></li>
   </ul>
   <div id="tabs-home">
      <h3>Welcome to My Projects Home</h3>
      <p><a href="#" onclick="addTab('myActiveProjects', 'My Active Projects', 'RadGrid1')">My Active Projects</a></p>
      <p><a href="#" onclick="addTab('mySalesActivities', 'My Sales Activities', 'RadGrid2')">My Sales Activities</a></p>
   </div>
</div>
<div id="tabs-myActiveProjects" style="display:none;">
<h3>My Active Projects</h3>
 
</div>
<div id="tabs-mySalesActivities" style="display:none;">
<h3>My Sales Activities</h3>
 
</div>

Wiring Up the Javascript

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$(document).ready(init);
 
function init() {
 
    // tabs init with a custom tab template and an "add" callback filling in the content
    var $tabs = $("#mytabs").tabs({
        tabTemplate: '<li><a href="#{href}">#{label}</a> <span class="ui-test"><img src="images/cross.png" /></span></li>'
    });
 
    // close icon: removing the tab on click
    // note: closable tabs gonna be an option in the future - see http://dev.jqueryui.com/ticket/3924
    $('#mytabs span.ui-test').live('click', function() {
        var index = $('li',$tabs).index($(this).parent());
        $('#mytabs span.ui-test').parent().remove();
        $("#mytabs").tabs('select', 0);
    });
}
 
function addTab(tabID, tabName, grid) 
{
    // double check to see if tab is already open
    if($("a[href^=#tabs-"+ tabID +"]").length > 0)
    {
        $("a[href^=#tabs-"+ tabID +"]").parent().show();
    } else {
        currentTabID = tabID;
 
        // this will add a tab via the standard method
        $("#mytabs").tabs("add","#tabs-" + tabID,tabName);
        $("#tabs-" + tabID).css("display","block");
    }
 
    $("#mytabs").tabs('select', tabID);
}

Finalizing the Styles

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<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js"></script>
<link type="text/css" href="styles/smoothness/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<style type="text/css">
    #mytabs { margin-top: 1em; }
    #mytabs li .ui-test { float: left; margin: 0.5em 0.4em 0 0; cursor: pointer; }
</style>

Please, please leave a comment if you have any difficulty with this and I’ll do my best to help!

1. I needed to create a page with some static links, that when clicked on would spawn a new tab.
2. The content area for each tab would contain a Close button that would remove the tab and hide the div contents. I didn’t want the div contents removed because I wanted users to be able to open the tabs again if they wanted to.

NOTE: I did attempt to dynamically generate the div contents by using a jQuery append statement on the content divs, but I ran into issues with this when placing a Telerik RadGrid onto the page and had to abandon that approach.

Building the above with the jQuery UI Tabs library took me part of the way there. In the end, my solution looks as follows:

Building the UI Tabs

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<div id="mytabs"> 
   <ul>
      <li><a href="#tabs-home">My Projects Home</a></li>
   </ul>
   <div id="tabs-home">
      <h3>Welcome to My Projects Home</h3>
      <p><a href="#" onclick="showTab('myActiveProjects', 'My Active Projects')">My Active Projects</a></p>
      <p><a href="#" onclick="showTab('mySalesActivities', 'My Sales Activities')">My Sales Activities</a></p>
   </div>
</div>
<div id="tabs-myActiveProjects" style="display:none;">
    <h3>My Active Projects</h3>
    <p><input type="button" name="killTab" value="Close" onclick="hideTab('myActiveProjects')" /></p>
</div>
<div id="tabs-mySalesActivities" style="display:none;">
    <h3>My Sales Activities</h3>
    <p><input type="button" name="killTab" value="Close" onclick="hideTab('mySalesActivities')" /></p>
</div>

Wiring Up The Javascript

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function init()
{
    $("#mytabs").tabs();
}
 
function showTab(tabID, tabName)
{
    currentTabID = tabID;
 
    // this will add a tab via the standard method
    $("#mytabs").tabs("add","#tabs-" + tabID, tabName);
    $("#tabs-" + tabID).css("display","block");
 
    $("#mytabs").tabs('select', tabID);
}
 
function hideTab(tabID) 
{
    $("#tabs-" + tabID).css("display","none");
    $("a[href^=#tabs-"+ tabID +"]").parent().remove();
    $("#mytabs").tabs('select', 0);
}
 
$(document).ready(init);

Don’t forget to include the jQuery UI JS file and the corresponding CSS. You’ll also need to include the jQuery JS file as well. If you have any troubles with this, drop me a note.

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<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js"></script>
<link type="text/css" href="styles/smoothness/jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.css" rel="stylesheet" />

My next step with the above is to relocate the Close button so that it is an ‘X’ image on the tab itself that when clicked on would close the tab. I’ll update once I figure that out! Good times!

General

1. No more hand coding web parts, Visual Studio 2010 now has a visual interface for developing web parts
2. SharePoint navigation is integrated into Visual Studio, so you don’t have to leave VS to browse the contents of your SharePoint site
3. You can now map folders in Visual Studio to SharePoint so when you deploy, for example, a image library, the files on the file system are transferred into SharePoint for you
4. One click deploy and debug, it’s no longer a ‘10′ click process
5. New Developer Dashboard that loads on the page so you can debug your solution and review performance factors — You have to run an stsadm command to enable the dashboard, otherwise you won’t see it
6. Line of Business systems are greatly improved and the connectivity is a lot easier to implement
7. Built in spell check for draft items
8. SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 will NOT work with SharePoint 2007
9. 1,000,000 items to a list or folder, the 2,000 item limit is dead
10. New Technologies: Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint
11. New Ribbon interface is context sensitive
12. Changes, such as page edits, preview live as you make them
13. NO MORE PAGE REFRESHES!!
14. Document Sets is a new concept that is being introduced
15. All Office desktop apps now have a web version. SharePoint item context menu has a new link called View In Browser that opens files in the web version of desktop app
16. 2010 is 64 bit only, it will not support anything else

New SharePoint Terminology

1. SharePoint Foundation – replacement for WSS 4.0
2. SharePoint Server
3. FAST SharePoint Search
4. SharePoint for Internet Sites, Standard Edition
5. SharePoint for Internet Sites, Enterprise Edition
6. SharePoint ‘12′ hive is now ‘14′ hive, but referred to as SharePoint Root

Great first day, looking forward to tomorrow! I spent an hour or so working with the hands on labs and I have to say this new version is pretty darn exciting!