SharePointRoot

A week or so ago, I took a trip to Brisbane to present a session at the SharePoint Saturday event. 

There was a great turn-out on the day – with close to 80 in attendance.

I’d flown up on Friday (the day before), and spent the day in the OBS office – thanks to the local team for making me feel so welcome & part of the group – viva OBS !

A bunch of the presenters headed out on the Friday night beforehand – to the Bavarian Bier Cafe (looking over the Brisbane River) for an awesome feed of pork knuckles, sausages, mash and wiener schnitzels – and of course, some big biers – about 20 or more on tap…!

The Saturday began early – with breakfast, and registrations – and first sessions at 8.30am.

My session was at 11.30 – just before lunch – with the title of “Adding Bells & Whistles to the SharePoint ribbon”.

The presentation covered the following :

• What is the ribbon – the different elements & items – tabs, contextual tabs, groups & controls
• Elements on the master page, and how to move them around – eg. Site Actions on the right
• How to add items to the ribbon – starting with a quick Hello World example
• More advanced ribbon manipulation – adding tabs, adding controls – and the ‘enable’ JavaScript
• Adding different types of controls – buttons, text box, spinners, dropdowns, etc
• Adding notifications and status messages for user interaction
• Real world example, for Project Server timesheets (how we use it within OBS)

Lots of demo’s – and then “how I did it” – via ELEMENTS.XML files and JavaScript, from within Visual Studio 2010 + SharePoint 2010 ‘features’.

I’d had 5-6 pre-baked demo’s – and one of them was a DUD – and failed on me during the session !   Luckily, this was the least important of the demo’s – about how to ‘remove’ controls – but all the other ones worked nicely.

If you want to check out some of these demo’s, I’ve loaded a ZIP file onto my SkyDrive – containing the Visual Studio solution – as well as the PowerPoint presentation (PPTX).

Some great sessions on the day – covering XSLT, TFS and lots of infra’y sessions about Search, Databases – as well as a very cool “ShareTube” project, with a ‘mock-up’ video site fully integrated into SharePoint.

The day ended with a Q&A panel – some good discussion about Office 365, and what changes it might bring – to infra & developer roles – as well as lots of vNext speculating.

We all adjourned to a little bar next door for a quick #SharePint session, before I had to jump in a taxi and off to the airport, to head back to Melbourne.    *phew*

Thanks to everyone that came along, and all the sponsors – and speakers who had come from near & far – Brian Farnhill from Canberra, Alex Bacchin & Adam Cogan from Sydney – as well as myself & Shyam Narayan from Melbourne – as well as some local presenters, from companies like OBS & Myriad.

Always a great community of people – great to see/hear what people have been doing.

The next SharePoint Saturday is in Adelaide on June 18th – and then Sydney on August 6th.   Melbourne is a little while after that (October).

Thanks again Brisbane – you rocked ! 

Last night was the MOSSIG user group’s MAY meeting – which we named our “Cloud Party”.

We turned up the heat for this month’s meeting, with double the normal presentations – and an XBox-360 console giveaway – as well as beer, Subway sandwiches, cookies & soft drinks.   We had close to 100 people in attendance – triple the usual count for MOSSIG.

The session covered the following :

• What is Office 365 – Outlook, SharePoint, Lync – and Office client (Office 2010)
• Some demos of configuring, customising and extending
• Split presentation ‘track’ – with technical & business streams
• 3rd party demo’s and overviews from Nintex, AvePoint and BA Insight
• Question & Answer panel – folk from OBS, Paradyne & C2C – check out the PhotoSynth panorama pic
• 4 hours of MOSSIG (!!) – started at 4.30pm – and we didn’t finish up until just on 8.30pm

Technical break-out

Within the technical track, Ben Walters (Microsoft) showed what was involved in understanding the multi-tenancy aspects of Office-365 – great analogy of a shared apartment building – with someone else (Microsoft) providing the electricity, plumbing and so forth – and each tenant (Office 365 customer) only has to look after their own apartment – so to speak.  Furthermore, you CAN’T muck with someone else’s apartment, to continue the analogy.

Ben also showed how to configure Office 365, with a quick flick around the admin screens.

The follow-on from this was *MY* presentation, showing how much you can do with SharePoint 365 – using SharePoint Designer. 

You can do almost ANYTHING you can do on-premise – with Check-In, Check-Out, manage lists, Master Pages, Page Layouts and so forth.

Further to this, I showed how you can create a workflow using Visio-2010 – export it, and load into SharePoint Designer for the ‘instrumentation’ (actions) – and then publish to SharePoint 365.

I also showed a quick Excel Chart WebPart, which you could use to do some nice dashboard’y pages (mini-BI).

Elaine van Bergen (OBS) then showed how you can go further, by developing custom coded solutions within the “Sandboxed Solutions” framework.  

Using Visual Studio, she created & deployed a Visual WebPart to SharePoint, as well as some good tips & tricks for developing with sandboxed solutions.

Another approach she showed was related to the “Client Object Model” – and how you can do a lot of code for manipulating webs, lists, items & so forth – using JavaScript – and/or Silverlight.

P.S.  I did a session on the Client Object Model in October 2010 – at the Melbourne SharePoint Saturday event. 

Click here to see more about it – and download the slides + prezzo.

A good ‘take away’ for the technical track is that developers & technical folk are NOT as hamstrung as you might think – there’s a LOT you can do, you just need to be aware of what you can/can’t do.

Ben Walters had a great phrase – that developers need to “think inside the box” – relating to the apartment analogy above – and the whole sandboxed solutions approach. 

And the fact that SharePoint Designer lets you do a whole bunch of stuff – srsly !

I’ve uploaded the slides for our technical track presentation – it’s ~7 MB – due to screenshots/pics.   There are some great links & references – especially the Office 365 Developer Training Kit – brilliant content, especially for a ‘beta’ product – go get it now !

Thanks to all that attended the MOSSIG cloud party – it was a great night of information & discussion – hope to see you all there next month !

In this previous post, I detailed how to ‘customise’ the OOTB SharePoint Search Box control – by including delegate properties.   This works for MOST scenarios – but sometimes, you need more control (no pun intended).

For other scenarios – or if you can’t get it working/sand-boxed/etc – you can simply REPLACE the Delegate – with the actual SearchBoxEx control – within the Master Page.

To do this – you need to do the following :

• Open the Master Page (eg. v4.master) – in SharePoint Designer – or Visual Studio
• Add the following to the top of the page – to allow you to reference the Search Control :

<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePointWebControls" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

Then, you can replace the delegate control :

• Do a search (CTRL-F) for “SmallSearchInputBox”
• Replace the following :

<SharePoint:DelegateControl ID="DelegateControl3" runat="server" ControlId="SmallSearchInputBox" Version="4"/>

• With this markup :

<SharePointWebControls:SearchBoxEx ID="SmallSearchBox" runat="server" ShowAdvancedSearch="false" QueryPromptString="Enter Search Term…" DropDownMode="HideDD_NoScope" SearchResultPageURL="/_layouts/osssearchresults.aspx" ScopeDisplayGroupName="" FrameType="None" DisplaySubmittedSearch="false" />

Once you have this in place, you can change any specific property for “SearchBoxEx” :

• Eg. QueryPromptString = Enter Search Term

See MSDN for a list of properties you can change/update – for the SearchBoxEx control.

Lastly – make sure you save/check-in the updated Master Page.

It should look identical – but you can now change the properties within the Master Page itself.

Good luck – this approach certainly worked for me !

Within SharePoint 2010, there is a ‘context menu’ that is shown when you click on a specific file – eg. DOCX.

This is actually known as the “Edit Control Block” or ECB.   Yep – another acronym for the kitbag.

To add functionality to the SharePoint 2010 ECB, we have to create a new SharePoint feature, with some XML within an ELEMENTS.XML file.

Here’s the steps to follow :

• Open Visual Studio 2010
• Click on “Empty SharePoint Project”
• Name the project : NewContextMenuButton
• Choose to ‘deploy as a farm solution’ when prompted

Within the new project, we need to add a new ‘elements’ file – and subsequent feature, etc.

• Right-click on the project, and choose Add > New Item
• Choose ‘Empty Element’
• Enter the name as : NewContextMenuButton
• Click CTRL+A (select all) and then Delete.
• Paste in the following XML

<Elements xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/”>
  <CustomAction Id=”SPR.CustomButton”
                RegistrationType=”FileType”
                RegistrationId=”docx”
                Location=”EditControlBlock”
                ImageUrl=”/_layouts/IMAGES/DOCLINK.GIF”
                Sequence=”600″
                Title=”Custom Button”
                Description=”Click this button to see something magical occur…” >
    <UrlAction Url=”javascript: alert(‘Hello World !’)” />
  </CustomAction>
</Elements>

You can now simply right-click – and choose DEPLOY – that’s it…!     The feature & package name will be the default values – but they can be changed if needed.

Also – the IMAGE being used was just something that I found in the ‘layouts’ area of SharePointRoot.

Here’s the new Context Menu item – sorry, new addition to the Edit Control Block :

This will create a new entry for “DOCX” files – based on the “RegistrationType”.

You can also register for a specific Content Type, or ProgId – more information is available :

• CustomAction Element
• If wanting to register to specific list ‘types’ : SharePoint: RegistrationId List Template Type IDs

Next : How to call code – ie. do something useful !

UPDATE : Great post from Matt Thornton – who has extended this example beyond the ‘Hello World’ – with some Custom Code (C#)

Normally shown on the home page for a site, there is a “search box” – that a user can enter a keyword and hit enter.  

There is a ‘prompt text’ that shows, and is cleared when the user clicks on the box.

How do you CHANGE the text being shown !?

Master Page

Within the Master Page – there is a control that is defined as a “DelegateControl” :

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderSearchArea" runat="server">
    <SharePoint:DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="SmallSearchInputBox" Version="4" />
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

There are actually no properties that you can set – when viewing in SharePoint Designer – I tried !

DelegateControls

The problem is that the control is ‘abstracted’ rather than being hard-coded into the master page.   You can thus override the control fairly easily – once you know how of course.

This control is actually a SharePoint feature – called OSearchBasicFeature (and there is an OSearchEnhancedFeature).

If you look into the 14 hive, you’ll find the specific details for the control/s.

• {SharePointRoot}\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\OSearchBasicFeature
• {SharePointRoot}\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\OSearchEnhancedFeature

There is a file entitled “SearchArea.xml” which contains the details you need :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
    <Control
        Id="SmallSearchInputBox"
        Sequence="50"
        ControlClass="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.SearchBoxEx" ControlAssembly="Microsoft.Office.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c">
    <Property Name="GoImageUrl">/_layouts/images/gosearch15.png</Property>
    <Property Name="GoImageUrlRTL">/_layouts/images/gosearchrtl15.png</Property>
    <Property Name="GoImageActiveUrl">/_layouts/images/gosearchhover15.png</Property>
    <Property Name="GoImageActiveUrlRTL">/_layouts/images/gosearchrtlhover15.png</Property>
    <Property Name="DropDownMode">ShowDD</Property>
        <Property Name="SearchResultPageURL">/_layouts/osssearchresults.aspx</Property>
    <Property Name="ScopeDisplayGroupName"></Property>
    <Property Name="FrameType">None</Property>
    </Control>   
</Elements>
Create your own (to override)

In order to override these attributes – you need to create a SharePoint feature – with the specific elements you need.

• Open Visual Studio 2010
• Create a new “Empty SharePoint project” – call it ChangeSearchTitle (for example)
• Right-click – and select “Add New Item”
• Choose the “Empty Element” item – call it ChangeSearchTitle

This will be the framework of your ‘feature’ – just need to paste in the details from the “SearchArea.xml”

• Within the ELEMENTS.XML file, paste the contents (as above)
• Add a Property after the “FrameType” :

<Property Name="QueryPromptString">DO A SEARCH !!</Property>

Deploy + Test

That’s ALL you need to do – seriously !

• Deploy the project from Visual Studio – you might like to change the Feature name – and/or Package.
• Go to your SharePoint site – and activate the feature – if not already

And – it looks like this…>

Or – for a closer look :

Here’s the exact ELEMENTS.XML I’ve used for this example :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <Control  Id="SmallSearchInputBox"
            Sequence="25"
            ControlClass="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.SearchBoxEx"
            ControlAssembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c">
    <Property Name="QueryPromptString">DO A SEARCH !!</Property>
    <Property Name="DropDownMode">HideDD_NoScope</Property>
    <Property Name="SearchResultPageURL">/_layouts/osssearchresults.aspx</Property>
    <Property Name="ScopeDisplayGroupName"></Property>
    <Property Name="FrameType">None</Property>

  </Control>
</Elements>

See here for a list of the “properties” you can include in the ELEMENTS.XML :

• SearchBoxEx Members

NB   If you get any of the properties wrong, the search box simply doesn’t show – I had the DropDownMode as “HideDD” – instead of one of these options.

See more here – relates to MOSS 2007 though (12 hive) – thanks guys !!

• Modifying the SharePoint Search control
• Changing the SmallSearchInputBox delegate control

Interesting post on the official SharePoint team blog, regarding the new CodePlex project aligning with the MONO project folk – ie. C# for Linux.

When I was in Seattle, I happened to be on a bus next to Miguel Icaza – who was there as a C# MVP because of his work with MONO.  I was mentioning SharePoint – and he was asking a lot about the product, and seemed interested in how it works.

Anyway – will be great to try out the CodePlex project – still very early “beta” and such – but great work from the open source community – along with the SharePoint community.

Not sure if this might lead the way for the NEXT version of SharePoint – we’ll wait and see I guess.

SharePoint Team Blog : CodePlex project – SharePoint now targetting Mono (Unix)

When configuring a new SharePoint 2010 search page (results.aspx), there are a number of webparts that you can use – the newest (& best !) is the left-hand Refinement panel.

This will group results according to common groupings such as Document Type, Date, and any managed meta data values.

I’ve been having some random errors with the page – some search terms – and/or clicking on “show duplicates” – would cause an error – and the correlation GUID :

When poking into SharePoint logs, it appears that there is an error happening with the “TaxonomyFilterGenerator” – which is used by the Refinement panel :

Internal server error exception: System.Xml.XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line 1, position 12.     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityName()     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityReference()     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read()     at System.Xml.XmlLoader.ParsePartialContent(XmlNode parentNode, String innerxmltext, XmlNodeType nt)     at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadInnerXmlElement(XmlElement node, String innerxmltext)     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator.CreateFilterResultElement(XmlDocument filterXml, String filterId, String displayName, FilterCategory filterCategory, String mappedProperties, SortedList`2 filterValueList, String associateTermSets) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator.CreateMetadataColumnFilters(XmlDocument filterXml, List`1 filterValue, Int32 maxFilterCats, FilterCategory fc, Boolean includeAutoFilters)     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator.GetRefinement(Dictionary`2 refinedData, XmlDocument filterXml, Int32 maxFilterCats)     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.RefinementManager.MergeFiltersFromGenerators()     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.RefinementManager.GetRefinementXml()     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.RefinementWebPart.GetXPathNavigator(String viewPath) System.Xml.XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line 1, position 12.     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e) at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityName()     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityReference()     at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read()     at System.Xml.XmlLoader.ParsePartialContent(XmlNode parentNode, String innerxmltext, XmlNodeType nt)     at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadInnerXmlElement(XmlElement node, String innerxmltext)     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator.CreateFilterResultElement(XmlDocument filterXml, String filterId, String displayName, FilterCategory filterCategory, String mappedProperties, SortedList`2 filterValueList, String associateTermSets)     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator.CreateMetadataColumnFilters(XmlDocument filterXml, List`1 filterValue, Int32 maxFilterCats, FilterCategory fc, Boolean includeAutoFilters)     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator.GetRefinement(Dictionary`2 refinedData, XmlDocument filterXml, Int32 maxFilterCats)     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.RefinementManager.MergeFiltersFromGenerators()     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.RefinementManager.GetRefinementXml()     at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.RefinementWebPart.GetXPathNavigator(String viewPath)    57c714fc-de8e-45a7-ad84-bfc7686acb99

===================================================================

There are actually SIX FilterCategories included in the Refinement Panel WebPart :

• Result Type – The file extension of the item   
• Site – Which site this document is from  
• Author – Use this filter to restrict results authored by a specific author 
• Modified Date – When the item was last updated 
• Managed Metadata Columns – Managed metadata of the documents   
• Tags – All managed metadata of the documents and social tags 

It’s these last two that are causing the issue (in this circumstance). 

The first few use the following component :

Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator

With the last two using :

Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator

It turns out – after some suspicions related to “XML Parsing” – that the problem is actually due to a column name in a document metadata column containing the & character, the < character, or the > character.

Thankfully, Microsoft has a KB article for this – and the December 2010 CU will fix it :

The search results page throws an exception when a name in a document metadata column contains "&", "<", or ">" characters in SharePoint Server 2010

If you’re NOT able to apply this fix – or need to ‘get around’ the problem in the mean time – you can do the following – I had to do this to get moving again :

• Navigate to results.aspx
• NB. make sure you DON’T have a search term – or query string (?k=FRED)
• Edit Page
• Edit the Web Part for ‘Refinement Panel’
• Click the […] box for the Filter Category Definition

• Remove the last two entries as mentioned above

• ie. the Category tags – for the “Managed MetaData Columns” – and “Tags”
• NB.  IMPORTANT – make sure you ‘untick’ the box for “Use Default Configuration”

Then – just need to click OK, and Save / Check-In the page.

This will remove (ignore) the problem – until you’re able to apply the Cumulative Update – unfortunately, won’t be any refiners for the Managed MetaData columns.

Alternatively – you can re-name your columns – to NOT have the XML’ish values in the name – don’t use &, < or >.

Hope that helps – and your SharePoint Search is ‘happy’ again.

Within SharePoint Designer (SPD), the new SharePoint 2010 way to do a DataViewWebPart (DVWP) is with an XsltListView (XLV) WebPart.

This is a very powerful UI control, in which you can edit columns, and do pagination, sorting, move columns, etc – but – I couldn’t find a way to turn OFF the checkboxes for a list view – which allow for multi-selection in a list.

** Shown here to the left – and the top.

Within the SharePoint UI, this is a setting within the ‘View’ settings – listed under ‘Tabular View’ :

But – within SharePoint Designer, I couldn’t find the equivalent setting anywhere – please let me know if you found it (!)   

Instead, you need to add a tag to the XML for the XLV.

To drop the checkbox’es to the left of each row, add the following to the XML markup within SharePoint Designer :

TabularView="FALSE"

This needs to be included in the “VIEW” tag – as shown below :

 <View Name="{014283C5-3BA2-45D2-9C74-0B5AA2583CD1}" TabularView="FALSE"  MobileView="TRUE" Type="HTML" Hidden="TRUE" DisplayName="All Documents" Url="/CorpTech/SitePages/dddddd.aspx" Level="1" BaseViewID="1" ContentTypeID="0x" ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/dlicon.png">
      <Query/>
      <ViewFields>
       <FieldRef Name="LinkFilenameNoMenu"/>
       <FieldRef Name="Document_x0020_Descriptor"/> …..ETC….

Hope that helps – give it a try…

NB.  Don’t add it to the base XsltListViewWebPart – it won’t work – but won’t error either.   You’ll see a little red squiggly line, mentioning that it’s not valid XHTML for this tag (schema).   Add to the “View” tag instead.

When using Nintex Workflow, one of the great functional aspects is the ability to call out to a web service – where you can do pretty much whatever you like. 

I’ve done this a bunch of times – call to a web method with some C# code – which can then format results, or read/write to another system or do whatever the workflow requires.

The configuration of the “call” to the web service constructs a SOAP packet under the covers, and then executes it.  This means that the data values have also have to align with the “XML” schema/definition.

I’ve been having some troubles with calling to a specific web service – and this turned out to be due to the SOAP packet – or more specifically, the data being passed to the web service.

Consider the following example….   (explanation – and answer – to follow)

Web Service method

This code writes a message to the EventLog within the local SharePoint server – not really the best example – as this will only write to the Event Log for the server that the WF is running on – ie. if multiple servers (WFE’s, load balanced, etc) – but it serves as an example of the web service functionality.

public class Logger : System.Web.Services.WebService
{

    [WebMethod]
    public void WriteToEventLog(string workflowName, string messageText)
    {
        string log = "Application";

        if (!EventLog.SourceExists(workflowName))
        {
            EventLog.CreateEventSource(workflowName, log);
        }

        EventLog.WriteEntry(workflowName, messageText, EventLogEntryType.Error);

    }
}

SharePoint Site + List

As part of the fictitious ‘Wonky Bikes’ corporation, there is a new SharePoint list for the ‘company register’. 

This allows people to add a list item with the details for a company – and then the above web service is called from the workflow.  

(as stated – this is not a great example, but it serves the purpose to explain the solution and application architecture, etc).

• List Name : Company Register
• Columns : Title, Contact Person, Company Address

Nintex Workflow

This WF will call to this Web Service – and log that a new list item (company) has been added.

• Add an action : Call web service
• Enter the web service ‘address’
• Enter the user name & password – NB. should use Workflow Constants for these…(!)
• Hard code the value for the ‘”Workflow” parameter
• Use the value from the list item “Title”
  • Insert reference > List Item Properties > Title

The workflow action should look something like this :

Just need to do the following – and then we can try it out :

• Check the workflow settings – to start on new item
• Click Save
• Set the name of the workflow : Company Register Logger
• Click Publish

Try it out !

Just need to go to the SharePoint list – and click “Add New Item”.

Enter the details – and click Save

Here’s an example :

Check if it’s working

If we jump across to the Event Log, we can see that the “Barry’s Bikes” entry was added to the Event Log.  The Workflow “name” is listed as the Source – and then the text – as per the Company Register ‘Title’ field – neat, eh ?!

Try with a different value

Let’s add another list item to the Company Register – this time, for “Large & Small Bikes”.

Error Occurred

Uh-oh – looks like this has caused an error – but why ?!   

It’s the same list – and the same workflow.

Here’s the text of the error :

Failed to process response. Error returned from server: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request.

As mentioned earlier, the data being passed to the web service needs to confirm to the SOAP packet definition – and the data value for Title (Large & Small Bikes) – breaks this…!

Resolution

We can’t avoid having characters like & in the field value (text) – or symbols like > and <.

Thankfully – Nintex have found a way to ensure that this doesn’t occur.

• Jump back into the Workflow definition – Edit Nintex Workflow
• Edit the settings for the call to the web service (click Configure)
• Ensure you TICK the box for ‘Encode inserted tokens’
• It’s not on by default, and too often, I leave it “un-ticked”

• Save the action
• Save the Workflow
• Re-publish the workflow

Play it again, Sam !

Let’s try a workflow on the same list item that had error’ed previously (for “Large & Small Bikes”).

And – it worked this time !

So – after a rather lengthy post – the message is simple :

• If you have XML-breaking values (text) – when calling a web service – make sure you “tick the box”….

Within SharePoint 2007, the configuration of search – content sources, scopes, crawl rules, etc – was within the SSP (Shared Services Provider).   This had become fairly familiar territory after a LOT of implementation and configuration/s.

With regard to Search Scopes, I’d gotten used to clicking the “Start update now” link – following changes to content + re-crawl of a content source.

Within SharePoint 2010, the story for search has changed a lot – with the move to the new Service Application model – although much of the under lying aspects are still the same.

I’ve been configuring some new search elements – content sources, and scopes – but couldn’t seem to find my favourite “Start update now” link.

In case you hadn’t seen it – this is still on the Search Administration ‘home page’ – but bundled into the section with ALL search details.

With 2007 – the scopes were included in a ‘section’ on the Search Admin home page (as shown above) – but not with SP-2010.   That confused me for a while – I couldn’t find it…!   

Turns out, I wasn’t actually looking properly.   (My wife could attest to that also – LOL !)

Hope that helps – if you’re looking for the “Start update now” link (for Scopes) – it’s right there – look, see !!