Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Sharepoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 Service Application Design Best Practices


Through SharePoint 2010, there is an improvement of the services infrastructure that was previously introduced in an earlier version. This infrastructure also hosts services for the SharePoint Foundation 2010. The configuration of services offered is very flexible. This allows the individual services to be configured independent of each other. It also makes it possible for 3rd party companies to be able to add services to that platform. The configuration of services aren’t exclusive to SharePoint Server. The services aren’t restricted to Shared Services Providers.
When service applications are deployed from a farm there are a couple of different methods that can be used.
They include the use of Windows PowerShell, adding services one at a time through the Manage Service Applications page, and choosing services for running the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.
The infrastructure of the services has been updated so that there is more control over the types of services that have been deployed. There is also control over the types of service applications that have been shared. Only the service applications that are necessary for a farm can be deployed. The various web applications can be configured so that they only use certain service applications. This is better than them using all of the various services that have been deployed. Service applications can be shared across various web applications that are within the same farm. All of the service applications that are included in a default group will remain unless you change them. There are settings for service applications that can be created. You can add or remove service applications in that default group any time you want to.
The creation of web applications allow you to select the default group you want or to create one that is customized. If you want to customize your service applications you can do by selecting those that you want to be part of the web application. When custom groups are created in Central Administration, they can’t be used for all of your web applications. When you select custom to create a web application you will limit them to only that specific web application you happen to be using. Each of the service applications has a single Internet Information Services website. This is the default setting and you won’t be able to change it. However, you do have the option of customizing how it is configured for various application groups.
There are several characteristics of a farm that you need to be familiar with. Web applications will connect to the default group or a custom group of service applications. All of the service applications will be found within the same Internet Information Services website. Service applications are in a group as defaults or customized. However, not all of the service applications have to be placed into one of those groups. They can be used by a single web application if you wish.
It is possible for service applications to be deployed to different applications pools. This results in process isolation occurring. If you want to optimize how your farm performs then it is recommended that you deploy service applications to only one application pool. In order for that isolation to occur with a service application, you need to create a new application for the pool service application.
While creating a service application there is a connection for the service application that is being created at the same time. There is a connection that is a virtual entity for connecting to web applications. With Windows PowerShell these connections are known as proxies. A proxy will be at the end of the type description for a connection which is through the Manage Service Application in Central Administration. Some of these connections may include settings that you can modify. This includes the Managed Metadata service application, Term Store Administrators, and Default Language.
When you directly manage service applications in Central Administration you can manage and monitor them from a remote location. They can also be managed and scripted through Windows PowerShell. There are some service applications that are shared among many farms. Others though can only be shared in a singular fashion with a given farm server.
Computing intense service applications that operate within a central farm. This is done to minimize the overhead costs relating to administration. This is also to help keep everything operating efficiently, even as the requirements of the farm grow. If you use service applications to support sharing across farms, they should be controlled by a central farm. Then they can be consumed from that core location. For each of the web applications that will be configured, use service applications from different farms.

Monday, 11 July 2011

SHAREPOINT 2010 Question


1) What are Web Applications in SharePoint?
An IIS Web site created and used by SharePoint 2010. Saying an IIS virtual server is also an acceptable answer.
2) What is an application pool?
A group of one or more URLs that are served by a particular worker process or set of worker processes.
3) Why are application pools important?
They provide a way for multiple sites to run on the same server but still have their own worker processes and identity.
4) What are zones?
Different logical paths (URLs meaning) of gaining access to the same SharePoint Web application.
5) What are Web Application Policies?
Enables security policy for users at the Web application level, rather than at the site collection or site level. Importantly, they override all other security settings.
6) What is a site collection?
 A site collection contains a top-level website and can contain one or more sub-sites web sites that have the same owner and share administration settings.
7) What are content databases?
A content database can hold all the content for one or more site collections.
8) What is a site?
 A site in SharePoint contains Web pages and related assets such as lists, all hosted within a site collection.
9) What are My Sites?
Specialized SharePoint sites personalized and targeted for each user.
10) What is the difference between Classic mode authentication and Claims-based authentication?
As the name implies, classic authentication supports NT authentication types like Kerberos, NTLM, Basic, Digest, and anonymous. Claims based authentication uses claims identities against a against a trusted identity provider.
11) When would you use claims, and when would you use classic?
Classic is more commonly seen in upgraded 2007 environments whereas claims are the recommended path for new deployments.
12) Describe the potential components for both a single server, and multiple servers, potentially several tiered farms:
A single-server SharePoint Server 2010 environment leverages a built-in SQL Server 2008 Express database. The problems with this environment is scalability, not being able to install the with built-in database on a domain controller, the database cannot be larger than 4 GB, and you cannot use User Profile Synchronization in a single server with built-in database installation.
An example of a multiple tier farm would be a three-tier topology, considered one of the more efficient physical and logical layouts to supports scaling out or scaling up and provides better distribution of services across the member servers of the farm. This is considered a good architecture since one can add Web servers to the Web tier, add app servers to the application tier, and add database servers to the database tier.
SharePoint Backup and Restore Questions
13) What are some of the tools that can be used when backing up a SharePoint 2010 environment?
  • SharePoint farm backup and recovery
  • SQL Server
  • System Center Data Protection Manager
14) What Microsoft tool can be used for incremental backups?
System Center Data Protection Manager
Managed Metadata Questions
15) What is Managed Metadata?
Managed metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that you can define, and then use as attributes for items.
16) What are Terms and Term Sets?
A term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with an item.  A term set is a collection of related terms.
17) How do Terms And Term Sets relate to Managed Metadata?
Managed metadata is a way of referring to the fact that terms and term sets can be created and managed independently from the columns themselves.
18) Are there different types of Term Sets?
There are Local Term Sets and Global Term Sets, one created within the context of a site collection and the other created outside the context of a site collection, respectively.
19) How are terms created and used?
There are several ways; however the most common is to use the Term Store Management Tool.
20) How is Managed Metadata, and the related Term technology used?
Through the UI, the most common use is through the managed metadata list column which allows you to specify the term set to use. It also related to searching and enhancing the user search experience.
Sandbox Solutions Questions
21) What is a sandboxed solution?
Components that are deployed to run within the sandboxed process rather than running in the production Internet Information Services (IIS) worker process.
22) What are some examples of things that might run within the SharePoint sandbox?
Any of the following are acceptable answers:
 Web Parts
Event receivers
Feature receivers
Custom Microsoft SharePoint Designer workflow activities
Microsoft InfoPath business logic
others….
23) Why are sandboxed solutions used?
Primarily because they promote high layers of isolation. By default they run within a rights-restricted, isolated process based around Code Access Security (CAS). Isolation is possible to increase with activities like running the sandboxing service on only specific SharePoint 2010 servers.
SharePoint Search Questions
24) What is a content source in relation to SharePoint search? What’s the minimum amount of content sources?
A content source is a set of options that you can use to specify what type of content is crawled, what URLs to crawl, and how deep and when to crawl. You must create at least one content source before a crawl can occur.
25) What is a search scope?
A search scope defines a subset of information in the search index. Users can select a search scope when performing a search.
26) What is a federated location with SharePoint search?
Federated locations provide information that exists outside of your internal network to your end-users.
27) How does managed metadata affect search?
Enhances the end-user search experience by mapping crawled properties to managed properties. Managed properties show up in search results and help users perform more successful queries.
28)  What is query logging in SharePoint 2010?
Collects information about user search queries and search results that users select on their computers to improve the relevancy of search results and to improve query suggestions.
29) What authentication type does the SharePoint crawler use?
The crawl component requires access to content using NTLM authentication.
Services Architecture Questions
30) Please describe what a Service Application is in SharePoint 2010.
Service applications in SharePoint 2010 are a set of services that can possibly be shared across Web applications. Some of these services may or may not be shared across the SharePoint 2010 farm. The reason these applications are shared is the overall reduction of resources required to supply the functionality these services cultivate.
31) Please provide an example of one of these service applications.
Any of the below are acceptable answers:
Access Services
Business Data Connectivity service
Excel Services Application
Managed Metadata service
PerformancePoint Service Application
Search service
Secure Store Service
State service
Usage and Health Data Collection service
User Profile service
Visio Graphics Service
Web Analytics service
Word Automation Services
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service
32) What are Service Application Groups used for?
Just provides a logical grouping of services that are scoped to a particular Web Application.
33) How are Service Applications deployed in terms of IIS (Internet Information Services)?
They are provisioned as a single Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site.
34) Explain how connections are managed with Service Applications.
A virtual entity is used that is referred to as a proxy, due to label in PowerShell.
35) What are some common examples of SharePoint 2010 services architectures, and what are the advantages of each design?
The three most popular designs are single farms with either a single service application group or multiple service application groups, or Enterprise services farms.
Single farms with a single service application group are generally the most common, and have the advantages of easy deployment, simple service application allocation, effective resource utilization and cohesive management.
Single farms with multiple service application groups is less common, and have the advantage of potential individual management of service applications as well as allowing data isolation, and while being more complex to deploy and maintain allows targeting of sites to particular service applications.
Enterprise Service Farms is pretty uncommon as it is a complete farm dedicated to Service Applications but promotes autonomous management and high levels of data isolation.
36) Are there any other type of relevant service architectures?
Depending on the environment requirements, a specialized farm can also be used in order to deploy specific services tailored to the organizational requirements which can aid in scaling out and conservation of resources.
37) What is the User Profile service?
Allows configuring and managing User profile properties, Audiences, Profile synchronization settings, organization browsing and management settings, and My Site settings.
38) What are User Profiles?
Aggregates properties from diverse identity content sources together to create unified and consistent profiles across an organization, used throughout the SharePoint environment.
39) What is Excel Services?
Allows sharing, securing, managing, and using Excel 2010 workbooks in a SharePoint Server Web site or document library. Excel Services consists of the Excel Calculation Services (ECS), Microsoft Excel Web Access (EWA), and Excel Web Services (EWS) components.
40) What is PerformancePoint Services?
Allows users to monitor and analyze a business by building dashboards, scorecards, and key performance indicators (KPIs).
41) What is Visio Services?
Allows users to share and view Microsoft Visio Web drawings. The service also enables data-connected Microsoft Visio 2010 Web drawings to be refreshed and updated from various data sources.
42) What is Access Services?
Allows users to edit, update, and create linked Microsoft Access 2010 databases that can be viewed and manipulated by using an internet browser, the Access client, or a linked HTML page.
43) What is the Secure Store Service (SSS)?
A secure database for storing credentials that are associated with application IDs
44) What is Content Deployment?
Content deployment enables you to copy content from a source site collection to a destination site collection.
Backup / DR Questions
45) Describe how redundancy can be built into a SharePoint environment. Please be specific in regards to any auxiliary components.
Multiple front-end web servers (WFE’s) can be deployed and correlated through Windows NLB or anything approach. Application servers can be deployed into the farm for a variety of purposes, depending on organizational requirements. Databases can be clustered or mirrored, again depending on requirements and environment.
46) From a basic standpoint, what is the difference between SQL clustering and mirroring?
Clustering provides a failover scenario whereby one or more nodes can be swapped as active depending on whether a node goes down. In mirroring, transactions are sent directly from a principal database and server to a mirror database to establish essentially a replica of the database.
Governance Questions
47) What Is Governance in terms of SharePoint 2010?
Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that guide, direct, and control how an organization’s business divisions and IT teams cooperate to achieve business goals.
48) What are some useful, OOB features of SharePoint that aid with governance of an environment?
Any of the below are acceptable answers. There are some others but these are the major ones that I generally look for from a candidate:
Site templates – consistent branding, site structure, and layout can be enforce a set of customizations that are applied to a site definition.
Quotas – limits to the amount of storage a site collection can use.
Locks - prevent users from either adding content to a site collection or using the site collection.
Web application permissions and policies – comprehensive security settings that apply to all users and groups for all site collections within a Web application.
Self-service site creation - enables users to create their own site collections, thus must be incorporated into a governance scheme.
Monitoring Questions
49) Describe the monitoring features that are baked into SharePoint 2010.
Diagnostic logging captures data about the state of the system, whereas health and usage data collection uses specific timer jobs to perform monitoring tasks, collecting information about:
  • Performance Counter Fata
  • Event Log Data
  • Timer Service Data
  • Metrics For Site Collections and Sites
  • Search Usage Data
General Workflow Questions
50) What is a declarative workflow? Can non-authenticated users participate in workflows?
Workflows created by using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, the default setting enables deployment of declarative workflows. Yes, however you do not give non-authorized users access to the site. The e-mail message and attachments sent from notifications might contain sensitive information.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) What are the two base classes a WebPart you are going to use within SharePoint 2007 can inherit from?
There are two base classes that a WebPart which is going to be consumed by SharePoint can inherit from, either the SharePoint WebPart Base class or the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class. When inheriting from the SharePoint WebPart Base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart. When inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart. It is considered good practice to use the ASP.NET WebPart base class since the old base class is meant for backwards compatibility with previous version of SharePoint, however there are four exception when it is better to leverage functionality from the SharePoint WebPart base class:
Cross page connections
Connections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zone
Client-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)
Data caching infrastructure
2) What are the differences between the two base classes and what are the inherit benefits of using one over another?
The difference is the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart base class is meant for backward compatibility with previous versions of SharePoint. The benefit of using the SharePoint WebPart base class is it supported:
Cross page connections
Connections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zone
Client-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)
Data caching infrastructure
ASP.NET 2.0 WebParts are generally considered better to use because SharePoint is built upon the ASP.NET 2.0 web architecture. Inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 base class offers you features that inherit to ASP.NET 2.0, such as embedding resources as opposed to use ClassResources for deployment of said types.
3) What is the GAC?
The GAC stands for the global assembly cache. It is the machine wide code cache which will give custom binaries place into the full trust code group for SharePoint. Certain SharePoint assets, such as Feature Receivers need full trust to run correctly, and therefore are put into the GAC. You should always try to avoid deployment to the GAC as much as possible since it will possibly allow development code to do more than it was intended to do.
4) What is strong naming (signing) a WebPart assembly file mean?
Signing an assembly with a strong name (a.k.a strong naming) uses a cryptographic key pair that gives a unique identity to a component that is being built. This identity can then be referred throughout the rest of the environment. In order to install assemblies into the GAC, they must be strongly named. After signing, the binary will have a public key token identifier which can be use to register the component in various other places on the server.
5) What are safe controls, and what type of information, is placed in that element in a SharePoint web.config file?
When you deploy a WebPart to SharePoint, you must first make it as a safe control to use within SharePoint in the web.config file. Entries made in the safe controls element of SharePoint are encountered by the SharePointHandler object and will be loaded in the SharePoint environment properly, those not will not be loaded and will throw an error.
In the generic safe control entry (this is general, there could be more), there is generally the Assembly name, the namespace, the public key token numeric, the typename, and the safe declaration (whether it is safe or not). There are other optional elements.
6) What is the CreateChildControls() method? How can you use it to do something simple like displaying a Label control?
The CreateChildControls method in WebParts is used to notify the WebPart that there are children controls that should be output for rendering. Basically, it will add any child ASP.NET controls that are called instantiating each control with its relevant properties set, wire any relevant event handlers to the control, etc. Then the add method of the control class will add the control to the controls collection. In the relevant WebPart render method, the EnsureChildControls method can be called (or set to false if no child controls should be called) to ensure that the CreateChildControls method is run. When using CreateChildControls it implies that your WebPart contains a composition of child controls.
In order to create something like a label control in Create, you would create a new label control using the new keyword, set the various properties of the control like Visible=True and ForeColor = Color.Red, and then use Controls.Add(myLabelControl) to add the control to the controls collection. Then you can declare EnsureChildControls in the Render method of the WebPart.
7) What does the RenderContents method do in an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?
The render contents method will render the WebPart content to the writer, usually an HtmlTextWriter since WebParts will output to an HTML stream. RenderContents is used to tell how the controls that are going to be displayed in the WebPart should be rendered on the page.
*** Side Question: I got asked what the difference between CreateChildControls and the RenderContents method. The CreateChildControls method is used to add controls to the WebPart, and the RenderContents method is used to tell the page framework how to render the control into HTML to display on a page.
8) What is the WebPartManager sealed class? What is its purpose?
The WebPartManager sealed class is responsible for managing everything occurring on a WebPart page, such as the WebParts (controls), events, and misc. functionality that will occur in WebPartZones. For example, the WebPartManager is responsible for the functionality that is provided when you are working with moving a WebPart from WebPartZone to WebPartZone. It is known as the “the central class of the Web Part Control Set.”
*** Side Question: I got asked how many WebPartManager controls should be on a page. In order to have WebParts on a page there has to be just one WebPartManager control to manage all the WebParts on the page.
9) What is a SPSite and SPWeb object, and what is the difference between each of the objects?
The SPSite object represents a collection of sites (site collection [a top level sites and all its subsites]). The SPWeb object represents an instance SharePoint Web, and SPWeb object contains things like the actual content. A SPSite object contains the various subsites and the information regarding them.
10) How would you go about getting a reference to a site?
C#:
  1. oSPSite = new  SPSite("http:/server");

  3. oSPWeb = oSPSite.OpenWeb();
11) What does a SPWebApplication object represent?
The SPWebApplication objects represents a SharePoint Web Application, which essentially is an IIS virtual server. Using the class you can instigate high level operations, such as getting all the features of an entire Web Application instance, or doing high level creation operations like creating new Web Applications through code.
12) Would you use SPWebApplication to get information like the SMTP address of the SharePoint site?
Yes, since this is a Web Application level setting. You would iterate through each SPWebApplication in the SPWebApplication collection, and then use the appropriate property calls (OutboundMailServiceInstance) in order to return settings regarding the mail service such as the SMTP address.
Side Question: I got asked if there are other ways to send emails from SharePoint. The answer is yes, there is. You can use the SendMail method from the SPutility class to send simple emails, however it is not as robust as using the System.Net.Mail functionality since it doesn’t allow things like setting priorities on the email.
13) How do you connect (reference) to a SharePoint list, and how do you insert a new List Item?
C#:
  1. using(SPSite mySite = new SPSite("yourserver"))
  2. {
  3. using(SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb())
  4. {
  5. SPList interviewList = myWeb.Lists["listtoinsert"];
  6. SPListItem newItem = interviewList.Items.Add();

  8. newItem["interview"] = "interview";
  9. newItem.Update();
  10. }
  11. }
14) How would you loop using SPList through all SharePont List items, assuming you know the name (in a string value) of the list you want to iterate through, and already have all the site code written?
C#:
  1. SPList interviewList = myWeb.Lists["listtoiterate"];
  2. foreach (SPListItem interview  in interviewList)
  3. {
  4. // Do Something
  5. }
15) How do you return SharePoint List items using SharePoint web services?
In order to retrieve list items from a SharePoint list through Web Services, you should use the lists.asmx web service by establishing a web reference in Visual Studio. The lists.asmx exposes the GetListItems method, which will allow the return of the full content of the list in an XML node. It will take parameters like the GUID of the name of the list you are querying against, the GUID of the view you are going to query, etc.
Side Question: I got asked how I built queries with the lists.asmx web service. In order to build queries with this service, one of the parameters that the GetListItems method exposes is the option to build a CAML query. There are other ways to do this as well, but that was how I answered it.
16) When retrieving List items using SharePoint Web Services, how do you specify explicit credentials to be passed to access the list items?
In order to specify explicit credentials with a Web Service, you generally instantiate the web service, and then using the credentials properties of the Web Service object you use the System.Net.NetworkCredential class to specify the username, password, and domain that you wish to pass when making the web service call and operations.
*** Side Question: I got asked when you should state the credentials in code. You must state the credentials you are going to pass to the web service before you call any of the methods of the web service, otherwise the call will fail.
17) What is CAML, and why would you use it?
CAML stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language. CAML is an XML based language which provides data constructs that build up the SharePoint fields, view, and is used for table definition during site provisioning. CAML is responsible for rending data and the resulting HTML that is output to the user in SharePoint. CAML can be used for a variety of circumstances, overall is used to query, build and customize SharePoint based sites. A general use would be building a CAML query in a SharePoint WebPart in order to retrieve values from a SharePoint list.
18) What is impersonation, and when would you use impersonation?
Impersonation can basically provide the functionality of executing something in the context of a different identity, for example assigning an account to users with anonymous access. You would use impersonation in order to access resources on behalf of the user with a different account, that normally, that wouldn’t be able to access or execute something.
19) What is the IDesignTimeHtmlProvider interface, and when can you use it in WebParts?
The IDesignTimeHtmlProvider interface uses the function GetDesignTimeHtml() which can contain your relevant render methods. It was helpful to use in 2003 since it allowed your WebPart to have a preview while a page was edited in FrontPage with the Webpart on it, because the GetDesignTimeHtml() method contains the HTML for the designer to render.
20) What are WebPart properties, and what are some of the attributes you see when declaring WebPart properties in code?
WebPart properties are just like ASP.NET control properties, they are used to interact with and specify attributes that should be applied to a WebPart by a user. Some of the attributes you see with ASP.NET 2.0 properties are WebDescription, WebDisplayName, Category, Personalizable, and WebBrowsable. Although most of these properties come from the System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts class, ones like Category come out of System.ComponentModel namespace.
21) Why are properties important in WebPart development, and how have you exploited them in past development projects? What must each custom property have?
Properties are important because WebParts allow levels of personalization for each user. WebPart properties make it possible for a user to interact, adjust, and increase overall experience value with the programmatic assets that you develop without having the need to use an external editor or right any code. A very simple example of exploiting a property would be something like allowing the user to change the text on the WebPart design interface so that they can display whatever string of text they desire.
Each custom property that you have must have the appropriate get and set accessor methods.
22) What are ClassResources? How do you reference and deploy resources with an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?
ClassResources are used when inheriting from the SharePoint.WebPart.WebPartPages.WebPart base class, and are defined in the SharePoint solution file as things that should be stored in the wpresources directory on the server. It is a helpful directory to use in order to deploy custom images. In ASP.NET 2.0, typically things such as images are referenced by embedding them as resources within an assembly. The good part about ClassResources is they can help to eliminate recompiles to change small interface adjustments or alterations to external JavaScript files.
23) What is a SharePoint Solution File? How does it differ from WebPart .cab files in legacy development? What does it contain?
A SharePoint solution file is essentially a .cabinet file with all a developers ustom componets suffixed with a .wsp extension that aids in deployment. The big difference with SharePoint solution files is is that a solution:
allows deployment to all WFE’s in a farm
is highly manageable from the interface allowing deployment, retraction, and versioning
Can package all types of assets like site definitions, feature definitions (and associated components), Webparts, etc.
Can provide Code Access Security provisioning to avoid GAC deployments
Just to name a few things…
24) What is a .ddf file and what does it have to do with SharePoint Solution creation?
A .ddf file is a data directive file and is used when building the SharePoint solution bundle specifying the source files and their destination locations. The important thing for someone to understand is that the .ddf file will be passed as a parameter to the MAKECAB utility to orchestrate construction of the SharePoint solution fiel.
25) What file does a SharePoint solution package use to orchestrate (describe) its packaged contents?
The solution Manifest.XML file.
26) What deployment mechanism can you use to instigate Code Access Security attributes for your WebParts?
SharePoint solution files can add in order to handle code access security deployment issues. This is done in the element in the SharePoint solution manifest.XML, which makes it easier to get assemblies the appropriate permissions in order to operate in the bin directory of the web application.
27) What is a SharePoint Feature? What files are used to define a feature?
A SharePoint Feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances, such as at the farm, site collection, web, etc. Features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature is installing, uninstalling, activated, or deactivated. They are helpful because they allow ease of upgrades and versioning.
The two files that are used to define a feature are the feature.xml and manifest file. The feature XML file defines the actual feature and will make SharePoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.
Side Question: I got asked how the introduction of features has changed the concept of site definitions. SharePoint features are important when understanding the architecture of site definitions, since the ONET.XML file has been vastly truncated since it has several feature stapled on it.
28) What types of SharePoint assets can be deployed with a SharePoint feature?
Features can do a lot. For example, you could deploy
Simple site customizations
Custom site navigation
WebParts
pages
list types
list instances
event handlers
workflows
custom actions
just to name a few….
29) What are event receivers?
Event receivers are classes that inherit from the SpItemEventReciever or SPListEventReciever base class (both of which derive out of the abstract base class SPEventRecieverBase), and provide the option of responding to events as they occur within SharePoint, such as adding an item or deleting an item.
30) When would you use an event receiver?
Since event receivers respond to events, you could use a receiver for something as simple as canceling an action, such as deleting a document library by using the Cancel property. This would essentially prevent users from deleting any documents if you wanted to maintain retention of stored data.
31) What base class do event receivers inherit from?
Event receivers either inherit from the SPListEventReciever base class or the SPItemEventReciever base class, both which derive from the abstract base class SPEventReceiverBase.
32) If I wanted to not allow people to delete documents from a document library, how would I go about it?
You would on the ItemDeleting event set: properties.Cancel= true.
33) What is the difference between an asynchronous and synchronous event receivers?
An asynchronous event occurs after an action has taken place, and a synchronous event occurs before an action has take place. For example, an asynchronous event is ItemAdded, and its sister synchronous event is ItemAdding.
34) How could you append a string to the title of a site when it is provisioned?
In the OnActivated event:
C#:
  1. SPWeb site = siteCollection.RootWeb;
  2. site.Title += "interview";
  3. site.Update();
35) Can an event receiver be deployed through a SharePoint feature?
Yes.
36) What is a content type?
A content type is an information blueprint basically that can be re-used throughout a SharePoint environment for defining things like metadata and associated behaviors. It is basically an extension of a SharePoint list, however makes it portable for use throughout an instance regardless of where the instantiation occurs, ergo has location independence. Multiple content types can exist in one document library assuming that the appropriate document library settings are enabled. The content type will contain things like the metadata, listform pages, workflows, templates (if a document content type), and associated custom written functionality.
37) Can a content type have receivers associated with it?
Yes, a content type can have an event receiver associated with it, either inheriting from the SPListEventReciever base class for list level events, or inheriting from the SPItemEventReciever base class. Whenever the content type is instantiated, it will be subject to the event receivers that are associated with it.
38) What two files are typically (this is kept generally) included when developing a content type, and what is the purpose of each?
There is generally the main content type file that holds things like the content type ID, name, group, description, and version. There is also the ContentType.Fields file which contains the fields to include in the content type that has the ID, Type, Name, DisplayName, StaticName, Hidden, Required, and Sealed elements. They are related by the FieldRefs element in the main content type file.
39) What is an ancestral type and what does it have to do with content types?
An ancestral type is the base type that the content type is deriving from, such as Document (0x0101). The ancestral type will define the metadata fields that are included with the custom content type.
40) Can a list definition be derived from a custom content type?
Yes, a list definition can derive from a content type which can be seen in the schema.XML of the list definition in the element.
41) When creating a list definition, how can you create an instance of the list?
You can create a new instance of a list by creating an instance.XML file.
42) What is a Field Control?
Field controls are simple ASP.NET 2.0 server controls that provide the basic field functionality of SharePoint. They provide basic general functionality such as displaying or editing list data as it appears on SharePoint list pages.
43) What base class do custom Field Controls inherit from?
This varies. Generally, custom field controls inherit from the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseFieldControl namespace, but you can inherit from the default field controls.
44) What is a SharePoint site definition? What is ghosted (uncustomized) and unghosted (customized)?
SharePoint site definitions are the core set of functionality from which SharePoint site are built from, building from the SiteTemplates directory in the SharePoint 12 hive. Site definitions allow several sites to inherit from a core set of files on the file system, although appear to have unique pages, thereby increasing performance and allowing changes that happen to a site propagate to all sites that inherit from a site definition. Ghosted means that when SharePoint creates a new site it will reference the files in the related site definition upon site provisioning. Unghosted means that the site has been edited with an external editor, and therefore the customizations are instead stored in the database, breaking the inheritance of those files from the file system.
45) How does one deploy new SharePoint site definitions so that they are made aware to the SharePoint system?
The best way to deploy site definitions in the SharePoint 2007 framework is to use a SharePoint solution file, so that the new site definition is automatically populated to all WFE’s in the SharePoint farm.
Posted by at No comments:

Hiding the ribbon in SharePoint

Working on a couple of public-facing 2010 sites hiding the ribbon has become an issue in each of them (I’ve noticed several public-facing 2010 sites that don’t hide the ribbon, but that’s not an option if you want a clean brand). Searching for the solutions turned up a couple of solutions, but neither solution in itself turned out to be the best option.
Searching I found this Technet forum post. In that solution it is a complete CSS solution using a control detecting anonymous and logged-in users. This solution works just fine, but I wasn’t happy with simply hiding the ribbon. If I didn’t need the ribbon why waste all that load time and HTTP requests to load it only to hide it?
This led me to look for another solution, and I found another one that used security trimmed controls to not load the ribbon if not logged in. This was great! I was excited until I logged out to test, and I then realized the vertical scrollbar was hidden. The reason for this is because SharePoint 2010 hides the vertical scrollbar and adds in a custom scrollbar to stick the ribbon to the top. When you hide the ribbon the scrollbar doesn’t show because SharePoint uses overflow: hidden; in CSS for the body so it can handle the scrollbar.

The Hybrid Approach

This led to take both of them to construct the best solution. I used the security trimmed control to hide the ribbon, and then I used the control from the forum post and modified the CSS to handle the scrollbar. Here are the steps combining both of the solutions and including my addition.
1. Add the following before the start of the ribbon.
<Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl runat="server" Permissions="AddDelPrivateWebParts">
The ribbon starts with the following HTML.
<div id="s4-ribbonrow">
2. Then close the security trimmed control at the end of the ribbon. It should look like the following.
<Triggers>
 <asp:PostBackTrigger ControlID="WebPartAdder" />
 </Triggers>
 </asp:UpdatePanel>
 </div>
</div>
</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>
3. Add the following outside of the security trimmed control (I put it before, but it doesn’t matter). You’ll notice now the body is set to scroll on overflow, and since it’s on the page it will trump the SharePoint style due to the cascade.
<asp:LoginView id="LoginView" runat="server">
 <AnonymousTemplate>
 <style type="text/css">
 body { overflow-y: scroll !important; overflow-x: hidden; }
 body #s4-workspace { overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: auto !important; }
 </style>
 <!--[if lte IE 7]>
 <style type="text/css">
 html { overflow: auto !important; overflow-x: hidden; }
 body { overflow: auto !important; }
 </style>
 <![endif]-->
 </AnonymousTemplate>
</asp:LoginView>
Note: This supports IE 6 kind of. It will give a vertical scrollbar, but another one is also added. If I’m forced to find another solution I’ll post it, but I’m sick of IE 6.
This also fixes scrolling on iOS devices as well which don’t take kindly to the way SharePoint 2010 does scrolling by default. Hiding the ribbon alleviates the problem and returns one-finger scrolling.
UPDATE: I realized while implementing this for a client that the permissions level to keep the ribbon from loading was too high. I have since changed the permission level from ManageLists to AddDelPrivateWebParts (a role on the OTB contribute group, because why would you have read only users authenticate?). If you use a custom role be sure to match the lowest authenticated user to a role in this list on MSDN.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)