The Myth of SharePoint Single Sign On

New blog post at Joe SharePoint: The Myth of SharePoint Single Sign On

WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 Retrospect

New Blog Post at Joe SharePoint: WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 Retrospect.

Blog Moving

I've moved the blog to my new platform at Humboldt Technology Group, New blog is at http://joesharepoint.humboldttechgroup.com

Twitter Workflow as SharePoint Middleware

First off, let me address the fact that this post is about Twitter. Well, it's about Twitter AND SharePoint if you want to get picky. But ok, it's about Twitter, the one that's always in the news and is very trendy right now. I think it's great; I've learned a ton about SharePoint since I've started following some great SharePoint experts that I found out on WeFollow.Com.

What problems can Twitter solve with SharePoint? For one, it provides a platform to share out data that might be behind a corporate intranet, or existing within a secured SharePoint site. Every list in SharePoint has a corresponding RSS feed, but they are next to useless because of protected content issues. We can use Twitter as middleware to push out information about our content as it happens. In a sense it is doing what email notifications on a list are, but if there is a #1 complaint I hear from people is that they are absolutely swamped with email.... do they really need another email from a SharePoint site? On top of that...it is from an automated source that means they don't need to respond and are less than likely to read it. This illustrates the concept of having users pull the data instead of having it pushed on them. Furthermore, this is superior to the RSS feeds in SharePoint because you could have multiple workflows on multiple document libraries pushing out data to the same Twitter account; almost a site-wide RSS feed.

So now you're saying, "So you expect everyone in the company to sign up for a twitter account?" No. Twitter has a RSS feed for each public facing account. This could be pulled in by a widget on your non-SP intranet, it could be pulled in by an RSS Reader Webpart, it could be rendered using XSLT. If you have employees who do have twitter accounts, then they could 'Follow' that account as well, or have the workflow post directly to their own account if they wished.

On to the workflow, the "CheepFlow", as I call it. I know, awesome name. When adding the workflow to a list, you are presented an association form where you enter: The Twitter account name, the account password, a Bit.Ly username, and a Bit.Ly api key. This is to shorten the urls that come out of sharepoint, which can get pretty long. Provided you check the 'Start this workflow when a new item is created', when a new document is uploaded, the workflow will "Tweet" an update with the name of the document, the name of the document library, and the shortened url to access it. I set up an account for the sake of this project, you can see it here. The links won't work because they all go to "localhost" :)

I created a project at CodePlex to host the code at http://cheepflow.codeplex.com, please check there for any updates! Credit goes to the team over at Yedda for the C# Twitter Wrapper. If you have any comments or questions I would love to hear them!

STSADM Shortcut

I think everyone should be able to recite the 12 Hive Path like the pledge of allegiance, but navigating through the file system in explorer or the command shell can be tedious. Use this batch file to open up a command window already in the /12/bin directory. Change the path if your target directory is different! If you don't trust batch files from ol' Uncle (SharePoint) Joe, then save the following line in notepad, and change the extension to .bat

cmd.exe /k cd "C:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin"

SharePoint Form Login Nothing Happens

Using FBA (Forms-Based Authentication) can be very intimidating, because there are so many interlocking parts, especially if you are using FBA in an extended web application. One problem I have run up against time and time again is after you have everything configured BY THE BOOK, you attempt that first login, hit the 'Sign In' button and nothing happens. The page refreshes, but the username and password fields are empty. Even if you enter the password wrong or a username that doesn't exist, nothing happens! This has to do with the cookies SharePoint is attempting to store. Try your site in Firefox, you should be able to successfully log in.

If this is the case, then you need to add your site to the list of 'Trusted Sites' in your browser. Don't forget to close out your browser before you try to access the site again.

Site Update

Giving the site a much-needed facelift; please pardon the current state of design quality.

WSS 3.0 Licensing in One Sentence

I gave my first conference presentation this week at the Brainstorm 10.0 event in Wisconsin Dells; one of the hooks of the presentation was that if you have Windows Server 2003 (or 2008) running somewhere in your network, then you already own SharePoint.

Sure, it's WSS 3.0 and not MOSS 2007, but if you are not a big shop then it can be tough to justify a purchase like Office SharePoint Server. But it's not really free, is it? What about CALs, and Internet Connector licenses? This part always confused me, to be honest. Turns out I was making it WAY more complicated than it needed to be, so here it is:

WSS 3.0 usage is directly bound to the licensing of the server it is on.

What this means is that if you have a server that is already hosting internet-facing websites, then you can host WSS 3.0 on that server and have your SharePoint sites internet-facing as well. If you have a server that is internal to your network then your SharePoint access is restricted to the number of CALs that you already have for that server.

SharePoint Certifications & Microsoft E-Learning

Just passed my 70-541 and 70-542, now I'm fully MCTS'ed on SharePoint Application Development. While I am sworn to secrecy on what is on those exams, I can tell you how I studied. I read:

• Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: The Complete Reference
• Microsoft E-learning Collection 6071.

SharePoint Unleashed is great up until the chapters on webservices, which get a little monotonous. The MOSS: Complete Reference book on the other hand is excellent for an overall knowledge of configuring SharePoint, which is partially mirrored in the Object Model; if you haven't spent a lot of time getting your hands dirty with SharePoint I would suggest this book as the next best thing. It also contains some basic code samples that help round out what is gleaned from the Unleashed book.

I had a lot of trouble purchasing the courses, so a tip for registration with E-Learning that might help, especially if you have your Live ID integrated into every Microsoft Site on the Internet. You might get an error message repeatedly while trying to purchase a course on the E-Learning site; the particular error I experienced occurred the step following acceptance of the TOS, a very descriptive "an error has occurred" kind of error. I thought it was an outage but a day later I was still getting the same error. To side-step this issue, sign up for a new Live ID with an email that you've NEVER used with Microsoft before. I think the registration process tries to pull up information off of your Live ID from several sources and ends up choking on it. Aside from that, the E-Learning courses are great for preparing for the exams. Really. This is probably the best experience I've had with Microsoft, plus I can use the courses as reference materials for another year-and-a-half, and there is some really good material on there.