Examples of solutions based on MOSS 2007

Here are examples of typical solutions that can be built using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007:

• Online news magazine

A publishing organization uses Office SharePoint Server 2007 to build their branded online magazine site. Article submissions come from inside and outside the organization to be reviewed and accepted by staff editors. This Internet site has a strong community presence because users can log on for personalized information, and it has an extensive search component.

The Internet site includes subsites for current news and editorials; blogs; and regular columns about politics, business, health, people, personal finance, and science and technology. The site also enables users to sign in to interact with each other and to comment on articles published on the site.

• Controlled distribution of financial data to clients and business partners

A bank deploys a solution based on Office SharePoint Server 2007 to take advantage of Excel Services. The solution enables bank managers to communicate efficiently with clients by providing controlled access to specified workbooks that can be rendered with view-only permissions in a Web browser. The workbooks are accessible in document libraries on a portal; this enables the bank to restrict the availability of financial data to clients who have authenticated access to the portal.

• Online permit application

A local government agency uses Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 to provide permit application and approval to contractors over the Internet. Contractors use the Web site to apply for permits using an online service. Data entered into the permit application Web form is submitted to a database in the government's Department of Building Inspections network.

After the application data is submitted, a new permit request (a multi-part Office InfoPath 2007 form) is automatically populated to a workspace. When the form is opened, the requesting contractor's company and permit application data is populated into the form's fields. If the request is approved, an electrical permit (also populated with the requestor's contact data and relevant information) is rendered in HTML and posted to the Department of Building Inspections permit site, where the contractor can view and print the permit for posting at the construction site.

• Departmental portal site

A product development department within a medium-sized company uses Office SharePoint Server 2007 to take advantage of its search, content aggregation, business application integration, collaboration, and personalization features. The department develops a portal site that becomes an essential part of the product development process, hosting their knowledge base, product specifications, an organization chart, individual My Sites for team members, and a home page that broadcasts schedule information, product success stories, and other important news. The installation grows from an isolated small server farm into a well-developed medium server farm implementation that uses a combination of intra-farm and inter-farm shared services within a larger deployment across the entire company.

• Equity research

A large investment bank uses Office SharePoint Server 2007 to develop a set of Web sites that facilitate quickly developing, reviewing, and publishing equities research notes, reports, and models in a variety of formats. Using the integrated Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform, the solution designers implement a portal site for authoring and reviewing research notes and models; an Internet site for presenting the content to customers; a staging site to test the Internet site; and a records repository site for retaining models and research notes to meet regulatory requirements. Using custom features, the set of sites (distributed over multiple server farms) supports the rapid and automated flow of content from site to site and from team member to team member as content moves through its stages toward publication.

• Records management

An appliance manufacturer's legal division implements a records management solution using the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Record Repository site template. Based on their file plan, the division implements and configures policies, content types, and document libraries to retain each type of record the division manages. The records managers adjust easily to the record repository site's familiar SharePoint interface while taking advantage of its built-in records management features. These features support properly storing incoming records, retaining each type of record for the legally mandated period, putting records on hold, and approving of their disposition. The records management programmable interface let teams in the organization integrate their document management and e-mail systems with the record repository site using the Web service APIs.

• Corporate Internet presence site

An international automobile manufacturer has headquarters in Germany; a major subsidiary in Michigan serving the North American market; and regional offices throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. The products are sold internationally, and distinct manufacturing operations serve each regional market. The company's Internet presence Web site is built, administered, and authored using Office SharePoint Server 2007. It is the focal point for the corporate marketing efforts, and it includes subsites for each product line along with areas for press releases, investment information, company information, and career opportunities.

Each corporate brand has its own marketing department with individuals responsible for writing that brand's content and updating it on the Web site. The corporate communication department controls the look and feel of the site to make sure the branding and messaging are consistent. The site includes site variations that tailor its content to different languages, cultures, markets, and geographic regions.

Using Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web sites, the writers for each brand author the site's content and route it for review and approval while managing the creation of multilingual content versions. Using scheduled workflows, the approved and localized content is copied to staging sites where it is tested and ultimately deployed to the public site.

References:

Plan Sites and Features, Part 1 from Microsoft

Implementing Single Sign On (SSO) in MOSS 2007

There are number of instances when we need to design an enterprise wide MOSS 2007 portal that would integrate some of the existing Line Of Business (LOB) applications. We also need to use SSO, because some of the existing applications are not necessarily AD-enabled.

To use SSO in MOSS 2007, you can create your own custom web part and connect to the SSO services through there.

Enabling SSO

To enable SSO, you need to start the Microsoft Single Sign-On Service in the Services-tool of Windows. You can also do this on the command-line with "net start ssosrv". Keep in mind the service needs to run under an account that has access to the SQL hosting your SSO database.

For demonstrational purposes you can use administrator, otherwise create a dedicated account.Next, go to MOSS Central Admin at http://localhost:port/, where port is whatever you specified when installing MOSS. Select Operations-tab, and navigate to Manage settings for single sign-on.
If you get this error:
Failed to connect to Microsoft Single Sign-on Service. To configure, please ensure the service is running.

It means your SSO service is not running. Go and doublecheck the settings on that. Then, select Manage server settings, and fill out the fields. Default values are normally ok for those fields that have been prepopulated. Click OK - the database and settings for your SSO service should now be created.

Configuring applications for SSO

Now that you have SSO running, you need to configure which applications are going to take advantage of it. Go to Manage settings for enterprise application definitions (http://localhost:port/_admin/sso/ManageApps.aspx) and click New Item. Enter a display name, application name and contact email address. The important thing here is to enter an application name that is easy to remember and describes the integrated application, such as "Asp3Tools" or "FinanceApp". Fill out rest of the fields as you see fit.

If you're wondering what the five fields under logon account information are for, you can use those to send a maximum of 5 custom fields to your LOB application upon user authentication. Normally you'd use 2, one for username and one for password. MOSS uses these field names and settings to render the authentication form dynamically for you, when logging into the the LOB application for the first time (via SSO).

Creating skeleton web part for SSO

Now that you've successfully configured SSO for MOSS, it's time to create your web part. I'll provide the basic RenderContents() -method for you that walks through the basic step when using SSO:

protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter output) {
string[] rgGetCredentialData = null;
try {
Credentials.GetCredentials(1, "AppName", ref rgGetCredentialData);
ISsoProvider provider = SsoProviderFactory.GetSsoProvider();
SsoCredentials creds = provider.GetCredentials("AppName");
creds.Evidence = new System.Security.SecureString[2];
try { // your implementation of accessing the LOB app }
catch (Exception e) { // catch exceptions}
}
catch (SingleSignonException ssoex)
{
if (SSOReturnCodes.SSO_E_CREDS_NOT_FOUND == ssoex.LastErrorCode)
{ string strSSOLogonFormUrl = SingleSignonLocator.GetCredentialEntryUrl("AppName");
output.Write("Click here to save your credentials for the Enterprise Application."); }}

You can do a HttpWebRequest to your application, parse the HttpWebResponse and render out your application. The important thing is to use the correct application name (AppName) and catch the SSO_E_CREDS_NOT_FOUND exception for first time users. MOSS will then create the initial authentication page for you, hiding possible other authentication pages you have in your LOB system.

Responsibilities of an Operating System

An Operating System has three main responsibilities:

1. Perform basic tasks, such as recognizing input from the keyboard, sending output to the display screen, keeping track of files and directories on the disk, and controlling peripheral devices such as disk drives and printers.
2. Ensure that different programs and users running at the same time do not interfere with each other.
3. Provide a software platform on top of which other programs (i.e., application software) can run.

The first two responsibilities address the need for managing the computer hardware and the application programs that use the hardware. The third responsibility focuses on providing an interface between application software and hardware so that application software can be efficiently developed. Since the operating system is already responsible for managing the hardware, it should provide a programming interface for application developers.

Computer Software

Computer software can be divided in to two main categories:

• Application Software
• System Software

Application Software

Application software consists of the programs for performing tasks particular to the machine's utilization. Examples of application software include spreadsheets, database systems, desktop publishing systems, program development software, and games.

Application software is generally what we think of when someone speaks of computer programs. This software is designed to solve a particular problem for users.

System Software

System software is more transparent and less noticed by the typical computer user. This software provides a general programming environment in which programmers can create specific applications to suit their needs. This environment provides new functions that are not available at the hardware level and performs tasks related to executing the application program.

System software acts as an interface between the hardware of the computer and the application software that users need to run on the computer.

WSS 3.0: Permission To Add Users to SharePoint Groups

General information

• The Group Owner of a SharePoint group has permission to add / remove users from a group.
• The Site Collection Administrator has permission to add / remove users from a group.
• Only one person (or group) can be assigned as the Group Owner.
• SharePoint Groups belong to the Site Collection.

Set an individual as the Group Owner

• Navigate to the Change Group Settings page. One way to do this is:

1. Browse to any site within the site collection.
2. On the Quick Launch Click People and Groups.
3. On the Quick Launch Click on the group you wish to modify.
4. Click Settings – Group Settings

• Change the Group Owner to the desired individual.

Set a group as the Group Owner

• Create a SharePoint Group for all individuals that will have the Group Owner permissions (such as MySite Group Owner).
• Add individuals to this group.
• Follow the steps for setting an individual, but enter the SharePoint group name. HINT: You can use the address lookup to help find (and insure correct spelling) the desired group.

MOSS 2007 - How To: Edit default.aspx for a Site Collection

Imagine that you don't have Frontpage or SharePoint Designer installed in an environment and you have to make changes to web pages that are stored in the content database. This is a very natural scenario in a production environment but we normally don't make changes directly in production. However if this scenario arises there is a really neat and quick way to do this by using Internet Explorer and Notepad (a very handy tool...reminds me of 10 years back my initial days Java coding using Textpad) . So, here goes simple steps to achieve this:

1. Open the site using web folder in Internet Explorer (File->Open...) and check "Open as Web Folder" checkbox.




2. Download the required on the local filesystem.



3. Make the required changes and upload it back to server.

Deciding Between Custom Site Template and Site Definition

An Overview of Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0

Introduction

I have been come across many people thinking that WinFx is not related to .NET Framework. The funniest answer I have gotten is that it is a fix related to Windows PC protection similar to WinFix. It is good decision from Microsoft for changing its name from .NET Framework 3.0. This article gives a clear explanation about the additional technologies/features that are included in .NET Framework 3.0, namely Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Card Space (WCS).

What Happens when we install Framework 3.0

Does it install new version of the Framework? No. It is just an upgraded Framework from 2.0 that comes along with WPF (Avalon), WCF (Indigo), WCS (InfoCard) and WF. It is a Framework that sits on the top of the 2.0 Framework along with Common Language Runtime (CLR) and BCL (Base Class Library). Framework 3.0 comes with CLR version 2.0. We are still using version 2.0 compilers for the Framework 3.0. So if we have Framework 2.0 installed in our system, it will install managed API's that are required for workflow, presentation, communication, etc. If Framework 2.0 is not installed, it will install Framework 2.0 and then install all other upgraded required components. The serious question that comes to mind is "why the version number is changed if we are still using 2.0 compliers." The reason for choosing the new version number is Avalon, Indigo, Workflow, and Info card are all major new pieces of platform technology.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

This is formerly known as the code named "Avalon," a graphical feature in Framework 3.0 that makes easy to build next generation web applications with the help of rich User Interface (UI), documents and media. This is used to display more advanced graphics that helps a developer to improve his/her designing skills using programming skills, which would be quite challenging. We developers can produce outstanding user interfaces using multimedia and document services in WPF. We can also make use of vector graphics, user interface, 2D and 3D drawing, fixed and adaptive documents, typography, raster graphics, animation, data binding, audio, video and develop graphic/animation through declarative programming. WPF allows developers as well as designers to collaborate and develop awesome visual user interfaces. Here are the two different developer environments that are used to make developer and designer work together.
1. Microsoft Visual Studio
2. Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer

The language that is used to develop application user interfaces in WPF is called XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language). XAML is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language). Separation of model and view is possible in XAML by placing design related information in FileName.xaml file and business logic is placed in FileName.xaml.cs file.

Core Components

The major components of WPF are:
1. Presentation Framework
2. Presentation Core
3. MILCore (Media Integration Layer)
4. DirectX

Presentation Framework and Presentation core are written in managed code. The DirectX engine is responsible for displaying. MILCore is written in unmanaged code in order to enable tight integration with DirectX. MILCore (MILCore.dll) also consists of a composition engine which is responsible for performance reasons.

Microsoft Silverlight

WPF comes with its subset Microsoft Silverlight formerly named as Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E) and is a subset of WPF which depends on XAML and JavaScript. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences for the Web and mobile applications. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. It is lightweight, just 1 MB download and pretty fast. We can play many videos simultaneously without stuttering or dropping frames. No doubt WPF is next-generation graphics API. More explanation on Silverlight is out of the scope of this article. For more details on Silverlight, visit http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

"Workflow" is a declarative way of implementing result oriented business process in software. WWF is a programming model that helps in defining, building, executing, debugging and managing work flow related applications that are in sync with business processes. It consists of a Microsoft NET Framework version 3.0 namespace, an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Visual Studio 2005.

We can build as many work flow styles as we need based on the requirement.

Graphical designer and debugger are provided to implement work flow related software. We can make use of imperative code along with declarative modeling. It enables us to build workflow software that is more flexible and transparent.

Core Components
WF core components include:
1. Base Activity Library: This provides functionality for control flow, conditions, event handling, state management and invoking web service. One can build his or her own custom domain specific activities using the base activity.

2. Runtime Engine: This is responsible for Workflow execution and state management.

3. Runtime Services: This provides hosting flexibility and communication.

4. Visual Designer: It is responsible for graphical and code-based construction.

Once a workflow model is compiled, it can be executed inside any windows process including console applications, WinForms applications, Windows Services, ASP.NET Web sites, and Web services. Extensible Object Modeling Language [XOML] based on XAML is the language that is used for declaring the structure of workflow, business logic for the workflow.

In order to create workflow, activities using WWF are:

1. VS 2005 (comes by installing Visual Studio 2005 add-ins to design and program workflow)

2. SharePoint designer that permits building workflows for Share Point 2007

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

WCF is formerly known as the code “Indigo” is the first Unified Programming Model (UPM) for Service Oriented Applications (SOA). It is the unification of the technologies used to deliver distributed systems such as Enterprise Services, Messaging, .NET remoting, ASMX and WSE that run on the Microsoft platform. In other words, Windows Communication Foundation is an advanced technology to provide web services/remoting functionality with better features and reduces the time to develop a distributed system. It makes development interoperable with Non-MS Platform and integrates with existing products. We can build amazing services that would add more weight using WCF. WCF uses SOAP messages for communication between two processes. WCF has a set of API's for creating systems that send messages between services and clients. The same API's are used to create applications that communicate with other applications on the same system or on a system that resides in another company.

Core components

Here is a list of core components in WCF.

1. End Point: A WCF service is exposed to the world as a collection of endpoints. It is the point where messages are sent or received. It consists of Address, Binding and Contract.

• Address: End point consists of location where message can be sent/received. This is equivalent to a service address in WSDL. An example of Address components are URI, Identity & Headers.
• Binding: This is a communication mechanism that describes how messages can be sent. This represents configuration. It is made up of various binding elements like Transport protocol, such as TCP, HTTP, MSMQ, named pipes, Encoding such as text, Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism such as MTOM, binary, and security like asymmetric, symmetric and transport.
• Contract: It is a definition for a set of messages that can be sent or received (or both) at the address that describes what message can be sent. It describes the WCF contracts and their operations like One way, request/reply, duplex, and queuing.

2. Channel: A channel is a concrete implementation of a binding element. The channel is the implementation associated with that configuration.

3. Client: A program that exchanges messages with one or more endpoints using channels.

4. Service: A service is a construct that exposes one or more endpoints, with each endpoint exposing one or more service operations.

5. Behavior: A behavior is a component that controls various run-time aspects of a service, an endpoint, a particular operation, or a client.

Facts:

• WCF has rich communication capabilities.
• WCF is 25%—50% faster than ASP.NET Web Services and approximately 25% faster than .NET Remoting.
• It is secured, Confidential in keeping messages.
• Using WCF message transfer is reliable.

SharePoint Development Improves in Visual Studio 2010

The focus of the tooling is to automate tedious tasks, enhance the debugging experience, and provide a GUI surface for visually exploring deployment and feature packaging. These tools will replace the much-derided SharePoint Designer.

VS 2010 Tools for SP Quick info:

Building and Debugging
Visual Studio will be able to building and debug SharePoint projects. "F5 Just Works!"

Server Explorer Integration
SharePoint Connections will be an option in the VS Server Explorer. Standard Sharepoint artifacts will be viewable: ContentTypes, Features, Templates, Lists, Sites, Workflows, Workspaces. Direct manipulation of some artifact attributes will be supported through VS property grid integration.

Windows SharePoint Services Project (WSP) Import
This will automate the manual task of creating Windows SharePoint Services solution package files. Previously, to create a solution package file, a developer had to use the Makecab.exe console application that is included in the Microsoft Cabinet Software Development Kit (SDK). Makecab.exe requires specifying the Diamond Directive File (.ddf) that contains a list of all the files to include in the package. Much of this will be automated.

Visual Web Part Designer
A new WSYWIG designer will exist for authoring Web Parts. The designer will also load a user control as a web part for SharePoint. This seems to be a more tightly integrated version of the widely used SmartPart, which is a Web Part that allows hosting of ASP.NET User Controls in SharePoint.

Event Receiver Wizard
Adding Event Receivers and connecting them to Sources can be done visually through a wizard.

Workflow Integration
A new ASPX Workflow Initiation form for Workflow Project will be added. Workflow initiation forms will have a visual designer.

Packaging Editor
A new Packaging Explorer will exist that supports editing Packaging and structuring the SharePoint Features and WSP file.

Native Image Generator (Ngen.exe)

The Native Image Generator utility (Ngen.exe) allows you to run the JIT compiler on your assembly's MSIL and generate native machine code which is cached to disk. After the image is created .NET runtime will use the image to run the code rather than from the hard disk. Running Ngen.exe on an assembly potentially allows the assembly to load and execute faster, because it restores code and data structures from the native image cache rather than generating them dynamically.

The key points about Native Image Generator are:

• Native images load faster than MSIL because JIT compilation and type-safety verification is eliminated.

• If you are sharing code between process Ngen.exe improves the performance significantly. As Native image generated Windows PE file so a single DLL file can be shared across applications. By contrast JIT produced code are private to an assembly and can not be shared.

• Native images enable code sharing between processes.

• Native images require more storage space and more time to generate.

• Startup time performance improves lot. We can get considerable gains when applications share component assemblies because after the first application has been started the shared components are already loaded for subsequent applications. If assemblies in an application must be loaded from the hard disk, does not benefit as much from native images because the hard disk access time shadows everything.

• Assemblies in GAC do not benefit from Native image generator as the loader performs extra validation on the strong named assemblies thus shadowing the benefits of Native Image Generator.

• If any of the assemblies change then Native image should also be updated.

• You should have administrative privilege for running Ngen.exe.

• While this can fasten your application startup times as the code is statically compiled but it can be somewhat slower than the code generated dynamically by the JIT compiler. So you need to compare how the whole application performance with Ngen.exe and with out it.