TFS 2010 Web Services

If you’ve reached my blog by googling for the last hour searching for information on web service documentation for Team Foundation Server 2010 (as I just finished doing), I’ve got some bad news for you… Here’s a link to an MSDN forum posting titled ‘Getting work items via TFS web services’. In essence, it explains that: 1) there are TFS web services and 2) they’re impossibly hard to use, so don’t bother (the exact advice is use the client object model).

I can’t recall a time I’ve been more disappointed with a Microsoft development tool (ok, I’m probably wildly blinded by the present tense) and surprised by the irony of a tool dedicated to enabling developers to be more productive, providing such an obtuse approach to integration.

Thanks Microsoft.

Windows 7 SharePoint 2010 Install

Good news for SharePoint developers of the world: SharePoint 2010 can be installed directly on a Windows 7 OS. There are still plenty of compelling reasons for utilizing a VM and you have to have meet the hardware requirements, but you have to love having the option. I’m going for it and installing on the my development workstation.

Here’s a link to the Microsoft guidance on setting up a SharePoint 2010 development environment.

SharePoint Calculate Days Hours & Minutes Between Dates

 

A request today sent me Googling for a calculated column formula to display the days/hours/minutes between the created date and modified date of a list item. I found nothing so here’s what I came up with:

 

=IF(DAYS360(Created,Modified)>0,IF(((HOUR(Modified)*60)+MINUTE(Modified)>((HOUR(Created)*60)+MINUTE(Created))),DAYS360(Created,Modified),DAYS360(Created,Modified)-1),0)&" Days,"&HOUR(Modified-Created)&" Hours,"&MINUTE(Modified-Created)&" Minutes"

 

The resulting columns look like this:

 

Since the engine used for calculated columns is the same as Excel, I always start in Excel when I’m writing complex column calculations. I then find and replace the cells in the formula with the SharePoint column names and paste the formula to SharePoint.

Hope this helps if you’re looking to do the same…

SharePoint 2010 REST Service Not Working

 

If you attempt to access List data in SharePoint 2010 using the REST service and receive the error below, you may be missing the ADO.NET Data Services Update (I was )…

Click here to download for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Click here to download for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

Could not load type ‘System.Data.Services.Providers.IDataServiceUpdateProvider’ from assembly ‘System.Data.Services, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089′.

Retrieve SharePoint Files from the Database

 

A test server here in SharePoint land went down a couple of days ago and a panic attack from one of the other managers this morning sent me in search of a tool to retrieve files via the database form a SharePoint 2007 Library…

After several false starts, I found an EXCELLENT tool from Pascal Gill called the SharePoint Database Exporter

GREAT work Pascal!

SharePoint Event ID 5785 Error

 

Getting a 5785 Error? Don’t know what to do? You’ve come to the right place…

The error is a result of adding an unmanaged application to a virtual directory under a SharePoint website… While there’s nothing inherently evil about this approach, one of the side effects is the application inherits SharePoint’s web.config settings unless explicitly stated otherwise in the application’s web.config. Since you probably haven’t written your own publishing string handler module, the application doesn’t know what to do and throws the error at the bottom of the post.

Don’t really care? Just want it to go away? Fair enough. Add the following to the <httpModules> section of your application’s web.config:

<remove name=”PublishingHttpModule” />

That’s all there is to it. Tell your boss you’ve added 8 hours of value and take the rest of the day off.

 

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    Office SharePoint Server
Event Category:    Publishing Cache
Event ID:    5785
Date:        12/4/2009
Time:        2:24:17 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    NASTESTMOSS
Description:
Unable to connect publishing custom string handler for output caching.  IIS Instance Id is ’937364833′, Url is ‘http://yoursharepointserver/yourunmannagedapp/some.css’.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Why Didn’t I Take Russian in High School?

 

I wish all software advertising was this bizarre:

Cannot Administer Security for DCOM IIS WAMREG admin Service

 

If you run into an Event ID: 10016 with the description below, Wictor Wilen has an excellent post on resolving the issue.

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1}
and APPID
{61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1}
to the user NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

SharePoint Server 2010 Beta Install

 

BIG Congrats to the SharePoint team; the SharePoint Server 2010 Beta install is as polished a beta product I’ve ever used. With a minor issue documented below, the install worked on the first attempt and is the most straightforward server installation I have ever performed(It should be noted that we were performing a new install in a single server environment).

Here’s how it went for me:

Launching the Installer

After launching the installer, a pretty straightforward Install screen. Note: the links under ‘Prepare’ are stubs… No useful information…

Selecting ‘Install software prerequisites’ launches the Prerequisites wizard. No options here, just push ‘Next’:

 

Pretty straightforward and not a single visit to MSDN to download a service pack .

The SharePoint Install

The installer starts off with product key entry and what I have to believe is a tongue-in-cheek note that the key is ‘usually located on a piece of paper…’.

Next is the EULA – Accept it.

And then choose the installation type. The demo environment we are creating is a single server deployment. Look for a future post on installation in a server farm.

 

The installer ends with the option to run the configuration wizard. Verrrry Niccccee:

 

SharePoint Configuration Wizard

Another straightforward exercise. After the wizard starts, click Next:

Select ‘Yes’ to the warning message and away you go:

My Exception

The only difficulty I experience was a failure during creation of sample data on the first run of the configuration wizard:

A quick look in the log and I found this error:

An exception of type Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Unrecognized attribute ‘allowInsecureTransport’. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive. (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\Profile\client.config line 56)
Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileException: Unrecognized attribute ‘allowInsecureTransport’. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive. (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\Profile\client.config line 56) —> System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: Unrecognized attribute ‘allowInsecureTransport’. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive. (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\Profile\client.config line 56)

After a little google-ing and no luck, I made the executive decision to remove the offending attribute: allowInsecureTransport (I simply deleted the attribute instead of flipping to false). Searching the rest of the client.config, I found and removed another instance at line 96:

[11/18/2009 UPDATE: Jie Li from Microsoft has additional information about the issue in item #4 of his post here].

Save the client.config file and rerun the Configuration Wizard:

 

Success! Selecting Finish takes you to the home page:

 

And the SharePoint 2010 era begins .

SharePoint 2010 Beta Now Available on MSDN

For all the geeks out there anxiously awaiting its arrival, SharePoint 2010 Beta is now available on MSDN.

You must be an MSDN subscriber to access the download site.

PS – Office 2010 Beta and SharePoint 2010 Beta are also now available.