Free SharePoint Tools for download

SharePoint Resource Center has maintained a list of freely available SharePoint tools. These tools are quite useful while working with SharePoint. You can have a look here.

“The form cannot be rendered. This may be due to a misconfiguration of the Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service.”, Error while publishing a page in SharePoint 2010.

        When I tried to submit a publishing page after editing to publish, I got this error, “The form cannot be rendered. This may be due to a misconfiguration of the Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service. For more information, contact your server administrator”.

This was because State Service was not configured in my SharePoint environment.

To configure State Service, I run the following PowerShell script.


Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell 
$serviceApp = New-SPStateServiceApplication -Name "State Service" New-SPStateServiceDatabase -Name "StateServiceDatabase" -ServiceApplication 
$serviceApp New-SPStateServiceApplicationProxy -Name "State Service" -ServiceApplication $serviceApp –DefaultProxyGroup


I added this script in a text file and saved it as script.ps1 on my C drive. Then I opened command prompt and ran this command.

C:\>Powershell C:\script.ps1

After running this script, my State Service was configured and I published my page successfully.

Error occurred in deployment step 'Recycle IIS Application Pool': Cannot connect to the SharePoint site. Error occurs while deploying SharePoint solution.

In Visual Studio 2010 while deploying SharePoint solutions, sometime we see this error

“Error occurred in deployment step 'Recycle IIS Application Pool': Cannot connect to the SharePoint site. If you moved this project to a new computer or if the URL of the SharePoint site has changed since you created the project, update the Site URL property of the project.”

This is because we forgot to mention the Site URL where we are going to deploy this solution. After specifying site URL, deployment went well.

Site URL will be your SharePoint site i.e. http://spdev:2000.

List of Content Types’ IDs in SharePoint 2010

This list provides an overview of Content Types in SharePoint 2010 with their IDs. Content Type ID is essential for maintaining inheritance of Content Types.

Content Type Name	ID
Administrative Task	0x010802
Announcement	0x0104
Approval Workflow Task (en-US)	0x01080100C9C9515DE4E24001905074F980F93160003A15057E2AF34B67B32E14B94EB70409
Article Page	0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF3900242457EFB8B24247815D688C526CD44D
Audio	0x0101009148F5A04DDD49CBA7127AADA5FB792B006973ACD696DC4858A76371B2FB2F439A
Basic Page	0x010109
Circulation	0x01000F389E14C9CE4CE486270B9D4713A5D6
Collect Feedback Workflow Task (en-US)	0x01080100C9C9515DE4E24001905074F980F93160000EEA96BE7C83464C9211129CD27F0409
Collect Signatures Workflow Task (en-US)	0x01080100C9C9515DE4E24001905074F980F93160002E9DB43AC527439AB853AE4FC8360409
Comment	0x0111
Contact	0x0106
Discussion	0x012002
Document	0x0101
Document Collection Folder	0x0120D5
DomainGroup	0x010C
Dublin Core Columns	0x01010B
East Asia Contact	0x0116
Enterprise Wiki Page	0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF39004C1F8B46085B4D22B1CDC3DE08CFFB9C
Event	0x0102
Folder	0x0120
Form	0x010101
Health Analyzer Report	0x0100F95DB3A97E8046B58C6A54FB31F2BD46
Health Analyzer Rule Definition	0x01003A8AA7A4F53046158C5ABD98036A01D5
Holiday	0x01009BE2AB5291BF4C1A986910BD278E4F18
Image	0x0101009148F5A04DDD49CBA7127AADA5FB792B00AADE34325A8B49CDA8BB4DB53328F214
Issue	0x0103
Item	0x01
Link	0x0105
Link to a Document	0x01010A
List View Style	0x010100734778F2B7DF462491FC91844AE431CF
Master Page	0x010105
Message	0x0107
New Word	0x010018F21907ED4E401CB4F14422ABC65304
Office Data Connection File	0x010100629D00608F814DD6AC8A86903AEE72AA
Official Notice	0x01007CE30DD1206047728BAFD1C39A850120
Page	0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF39
Page Layout	0x01010007FF3E057FA8AB4AA42FCB67B453FFC100E214EEE741181F4E9F7ACC43278EE811
Page Output Cache	0x010087D89D279834C94E98E5E1B4A913C67E
Person	0x010A
Phone Call Memo	0x0100807FBAC5EB8A4653B8D24775195B5463
Picture	0x010102
Post	0x0110
Project Page	0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF39004C1F8B46085B4D22B1CDC3DE08CFFB9C 0055EF50AAFF2E4BADA437E4BAE09A30F8
Published Link	0x01004613D6562E4C41A7B9DADDAC1689E00D
Publishing Approval Workflow Task (en-US)	0x01080100C9C9515DE4E24001905074F980F9316000A245BAB39C6543159300E33084BA0409
Publishing Master Page	0x0101000F1C8B9E0EB4BE489F09807B2C53288F0054AD6EF48B9F7B45A142F8173F171BD1
Redirect Page	0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF3900FD0E870BA06948879DBD5F9813CD8799
Report Builder Model	0x010100D8704AF8ED734F4088724751E0F2727D
Report Builder Report	0x010100C3676CDFA2F24E1D949A8BF2B06F6B8B
Report Data Source	0x0101007DFDDF56F8A9492DAA9366B83A95B3A0
Reservations	0x0102004F51EFDEA49C49668EF9C6744C8CF87D
Resource	0x01004C9F4486FBF54864A7B0A33D02AD19B1
Resource Group	0x0100CA13F2F8D61541B180952DFB25E3E8E4
Reusable HTML	0x01002CF74A4DAE39480396EEA7A4BA2BE5FB
Reusable Text	0x01004D5A79BAFA4A4576B79C56FF3D0D662D
Rich Media Asset	0x0101009148F5A04DDD49CBA7127AADA5FB792B
RootOfList	0x012001
Rule	0x0100DC2417D125A4489CA59DCC70E3F152B2
Schedule	0x0102007DBDC1392EAF4EBBBF99E41D8922B264
Schedule and Reservations	0x01020072BB2A38F0DB49C3A96CF4FA85529956
SharePoint Server Workflow Task	0x01080100C9C9515DE4E24001905074F980F93160
SharePointGroup	0x010B
Signatures Workflow Task Deprecated	0x01080100C9C9515DE4E24001905074F980F9316001
Summary Task	0x012004
System	0x
System Master Page	0x0101000F1C8B9E0EB4BE489F09807B2C53288F
System Page	0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2
System Page Layout	0x01010007FF3E057FA8AB4AA42FCB67B453FFC1
Task	0x0108
Timecard	0x0100C30DDA8EDB2E434EA22D793D9EE42058
Universal Data Connection File	0x010100B4CBD48E029A4AD8B62CB0E41868F2B0
Unknown Document Type	0x010104
User Workflow Document	0x010107
Users	0x0100FBEEE6F0C500489B99CDA6BB16C398F7
Video	0x0101009148F5A04DDD49CBA7127AADA5FB792B00291D173ECE694D56B19D111489C4369D
Web Part Page	0x01010901
Welcome Page	0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF390064DEA0F50FC8C147B0B6EA0636C4A7D4
Page Layout Content Types	0x0100A2CA87FF01B442AD93F37CD7DD0943EB
Wiki Page	0x010108
Workflow History	0x0109
Workflow Task	0x010801

Check programmatically if List is already exists in SharePoint site

While programming with SharePoint Object Model, sometimes we are in situation where we need to check if a list is already exists in given scope especially or we should create a new list. We can check this by creating a list in a try block and if list already exists it will throw exception which will be handled in catch block. However we can check it by other couple of ways.

• Check if lists exists.

string listName = "Tasks"; SPSite site = (SPSite)properties.Feature.Parent; SPWeb webName = site.RootWeb; bool isListExixts = webName.Lists.TryGetList(listName); if (isListExixts == true)     // List Exists.

• Iterate through collection of lists and match for each list with specified list name. 

string listName = "Tasks"; SPSite site = (SPSite)properties.Feature.Parent; SPWeb webName = site.RootWeb; SPListCollection listCollection = webName.Lists; foreach (SPList tempList in listCollection) {    if (tempList.Title == listName)       return true; }

• Iterate through list of collection using this code.

string listName = "Tasks"; SPSite site = (SPSite)properties.Feature.Parent; SPWeb webName = site.RootWeb; if(webName.Lists.Cast<SPList>().Any(list => list.Title.Equals(listName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))) {    return true; }

In both ways, code looks into List collection and if Task list is already exists it returns true.

Create Web Application, Site Collection and Sub Sites through PowerShell in SharePoint 2010

        This is time to manage SharePoint Server Farms using PowerShell and to say goodbye to STSADM. SharePoint Administrators are learning PowerShell and are writing scripts for their environments. Here is a script for Creating Web Application, Site Collection and multiple sub sites in one go.

1. Create a .ps1 file and add reference for PowerShell and SharePoint Assemblies.

Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(“Microsoft.SharePoint”)

2. Set variables and create Web Application.

#Create Web Application 
Write-Output " "
Write-Output "Creating Web Application for Intranet Portal."
$AppName = "Intranet Portall"
$AppPool = "IntranetPortalApplicationPool"
$UserAccount = "winsmarts\sp_admin"
$Port = 80
$DBServer = "SPDEV\SQL_SERVER"
$DBName = "IntranetPortalDatabase_80"
New-SPWebApplication -Name $AppName -Port $Port  -ApplicationPool $AppPool
-ApplicationPoolAccount (Get-SPManagedAccount $UserAccount) -databaseserver $DBServer -databasename $DBName 
Write-Output " "
Write-Output "Web Application Created Successfully."

3. Create Site Collection.

Write-Output " "
Write-Output "Creating Top Site Collection"
# Set variables  
$SiteCollectionName = "Test Portal" 
$SiteCollectionURL = "http://SPDEV:80" 
$SiteCollectionTemplate = "STS#0" 
$SiteCollectionLanguage = 1033  
$SiteCollectionOwner = "winsmarts\Administrator" 
# Create a new Sharepoint Site Collection  
New-SPSite -URL $SiteCollectionURL -OwnerAlias $SiteCollectionOwner -Language $SiteCollectionLanguage
-Template $SiteCollectionTemplate -Name $SiteCollectionName 
Write-Output " "
Write-Output "Top Site Collection created successfully."

4. Create sub sites.

#Creating Sub Sites in top site collection.
Write-Output " "
Write-Output "Creating Sub Sites"
$SubSites = @("Central Services", "Knowledge Base", "Service Center", "IT", "HR", "Finance")
for($i=0 ; $i -lt $SubSites.count ; $i++)
{
clear-variable -name siteurl
$SiteUrl = $SiteCollectionURL += "/" 
$SiteUrl = $SiteUrl += $SubSites[$i]
Write-Output " "
#Write-Output "Creating Site for " += $SubSites[$i]
Write-Output " "
New-SPWeb $SiteUrl -Template $SiteCollectionTemplate -Name $SubSites[$i]  -UseParentTopNav
-Language $SiteCollectionLanguage
Write-Output " "
#Write-Output "Site Created for " += $SubSites[$i]
Write-Output " "
}

“There was a problem retrieving data for this field. Updating values in this field is disabled temporarily. You can still update values in other fields.”, Error while editing User Profile in SharePoint 2010.

When I tried to edit my User Profile in SharePoint 2010, I found some properties disabled with this error, “There was a problem retrieving data for this field. Updating values in this field is disabled temporarily. You can still update values in other fields." This is because Managed Metadata Service Application Proxy’s properties were not properly set.

To resolve this issue, I opened Managed Metadata Service Application Proxy’s properties.

And check first two option.

1. This service application is the default storage location for Keywords.

2. This service application is the default storage location for column specific term sets.

After clicking OK, when I again tried to edit my User Profile properties, everything was working fine.

Thanks to my friend Andreas B.Iversen for telling me this tip.

Create custom User Profile properties in SharePoint 2010 reading from XML file

We create custom User Profile properties quite often in SharePoint. User Profile properties are created easily in Central Administration web site however while developing large enterprise solutions, direct access to production servers are not usually available to developers. To achieve such goals, we usually develop console applications which runs during deployment script or develop features which execute code during feature activation. User Profile properties can be created in SharePoint development environment using Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles namespace. A simple XML file containing details of required custom properties can be used as input. Here is sample XML which I created for this example.

<Properties Server="http://flhsrv116" TermStore="Managed Metadata Service Application Proxy">
<Property>
<Name>Audience</Name>
<DisplayName>Audience</DisplayName>
<!-- Collection of Values for Type Node : (big integer | binary | boolean | date | date no year | date time | Email | float | unique identifier | HTML | integer | Person | string | string (Single Value) | string (Multi Value) | Time Zone | URL)  -->

<Type>string (Multi Value)</Type>
<!-- IsMultiValue : Possible Options true | false :  Note = Only true when Type = String (Multi Value) -->
<IsMultiValue>true</IsMultiValue>
<TermStoreGroup>DSG</TermStoreGroup>
<TermSet>Audiences</TermSet>
</Property>

<Property>
<Name>DateofJoining</Name>
<DisplayName>Date of Joining</DisplayName>
<!-- Collection of Values for Type Node : (big integer | binary | boolean | date | date no year | date time | Email | float | unique identifier | HTML | integer | Person | string | string (Single Value) | string (Multi Value) | Time Zone | URL)  -->

<Type>date</Type>
<!-- IsMultiValue : Possible Options true | false -->
<IsMultiValue>false</IsMultiValue>
<TermStoreGroup>null</TermStoreGroup>
<TermSet>null</TermSet>
</Property>
</Properties>

In this simple example, I am creating two properties. One is of date type and second is of term set type. This XML file has a root node with two attributes and two child nodes. Each child node represent a custom property. Property’s name, display name, type and other properties can be configured as mentioned above. At the moment, we have only one custom property of term set type in User Profile store.



To do this, create a console application in Visual Studio 2010.
Add references of System.Xml, Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles, Microsoft.SharePoint and Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy if term set type value is required to create.
Add this code in .cs file.

using System;

using Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy;
using System.Xml;
using System.Collections;

namespace UserProfilesOMApp
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string str = "UserProfileProperties.xml";

// Reading XML document.

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(str);

// Reading Parent node of document.
XmlNode xmlNode = doc.DocumentElement;
XmlNodeList propertiesxmlnodeList = doc.GetElementsByTagName("Properties");

// Reading Attributes for parent node.
XmlElement xmlElement = (XmlElement)propertiesxmlnodeList.Item(0);

string servername = xmlElement.GetAttribute("Server");
string termstore = xmlElement.GetAttribute("TermStore");

// Reading property node and its Child node lists.
XmlNodeList propertyxmlnodeList = doc.GetElementsByTagName("Property");
XmlNodeList namelist = doc.GetElementsByTagName("Name");
XmlNodeList displaynamelist = doc.GetElementsByTagName("DisplayName");
XmlNodeList typelist = doc.GetElementsByTagName("Type");
XmlNodeList ismultivaluelist = doc.GetElementsByTagName("IsMultiValue");
XmlNodeList termsetlist = doc.GetElementsByTagName("TermSet");
XmlNodeList termstoregrouplist = doc.GetElementsByTagName("TermStoreGroup");


string propertyname = null;
string displayname = null;
string type = null;
string ismultivalue = null;
string termstoregroup = null;
string termset = null;

using (SPSite site = new SPSite(servername))
{

for(int x = 0; x < propertyxmlnodeList.Count; x++)
{

propertyname = namelist.Item(x).InnerText.ToString();
displayname = displaynamelist.Item(x).InnerText.ToString();
type = typelist.Item(x).InnerText.ToString();
ismultivalue = ismultivaluelist.Item(x).InnerText.ToString();
termstoregroup = termstoregrouplist.Item(x).InnerText.ToString();
termset = termsetlist.Item(x).InnerText.ToString();

// Method call for creating a user profile property.
Program.createProfileProperties(site, termstore, propertyname, displayname, type, ismultivalue, termstoregroup, termset);               
}
}
}

static void createProfileProperties(SPSite site, string termstore, string propertyname, string displayname, string type, string ismultivalue, string termstoregroup, string termset)
{

SPServiceContext context = SPServiceContext.GetContext(site);
UserProfileConfigManager upcm = new UserProfileConfigManager(context);

try
{
ProfilePropertyManager ppm = upcm.ProfilePropertyManager;
Console.WriteLine("Creating Propoerty");
// Create core property.
CorePropertyManager cpm = ppm.GetCoreProperties();
CoreProperty coreproperty = cpm.GetPropertyByName(propertyname);

// Check if property already exists.
if (coreproperty != null)
{
Console.WriteLine("Property already exists......");
return;                    
}

CoreProperty cp = cpm.Create(false);
cp.Name = propertyname;
cp.DisplayName = displayname;
//Get Property Type from Enumeration.
PropertyDataTypeCollection pdtc = upcm.GetPropertyDataTypes();
PropertyDataType ptype = null;
IEnumerator enumType = pdtc.GetEnumerator();
while (enumType.MoveNext())
{
ptype = (PropertyDataType)enumType.Current;
if (ptype.Name.ToString().ToLower().Equals(type.ToString().ToLower())) break;
}

cp.Type = ptype.Name;

if(type.ToLower() == "string (Multi Value)".ToLower())
{
cp.IsMultivalued = Convert.ToBoolean(ismultivalue);
if (ismultivalue.ToLower() == "true".ToLower())
{
cp.Separator = MultiValueSeparator.Semicolon;
}

// Set the TermSet.
TaxonomySession taxonomySession = new TaxonomySession(site);
TermStore termStore = taxonomySession.TermStores[termstore];
Group group = termStore.Groups[termstoregroup];
TermSet termSet = group.TermSets[termset];

cp.TermSet = termSet;
}

cpm.Add(cp);

// Create profile type property.
ProfileTypePropertyManager ptpm = ppm.GetProfileTypeProperties(ProfileType.User);
ProfileTypeProperty ptp = ptpm.Create(cp);
ptp.IsVisibleOnViewer = true;
ptp.IsVisibleOnEditor = true;

ptpm.Add(ptp);

// Create profile subtype property.
ProfileSubtypeManager psm = ProfileSubtypeManager.Get(context);
ProfileSubtype ps = psm.GetProfileSubtype(ProfileSubtypeManager.GetDefaultProfileName(ProfileType.User));

ProfileSubtypePropertyManager pspm = ps.Properties;        

ProfileSubtypeProperty psp = pspm.Create(ptp);

psp.PrivacyPolicy = PrivacyPolicy.OptIn;
psp.DefaultPrivacy = Privacy.NotSet;


pspm.Add(psp);

Console.WriteLine("\nuser profile property "+ displayname + " created successfully.\n");
Console.ReadKey();
}
catch (DuplicateEntryException e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
Console.Read();
}
catch (System.Exception e2)
{
Console.WriteLine(e2.Message);
Console.Read();
}
}
}
}

After running this code, this output will come.



Now, in User Profile store, two custom properties has been added.


Download project solution as zip file.