John Liu .NET

This is a very short blog, but it appears that the GlobalNavigationNodes member on the PublishingWeb class has moved in SharePoint 2010.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.publishing.publishingweb.globalnavigationnodes(office.12).aspx

In SharePoint 2007, this was under Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb.GlobalNavigationNodes

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.publishing.navigation.portalnavigation.globalnavigationnodes.aspx

In SP2010, this has moved under Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb.Navigation.PortalNavigation.GlobalNavigationNodes

This particular property is used to read a publishing site's navigation settings - I've used this to export site navigation as XML to accompany a site export.  Since site exports doesn't seem to include any customized site navigation information.  (It still doesn't in SP2010).

Out of the box - SharePoint provides quite a few different Workflow Actions, but strangely missing was a Workflow action that can loop through and update all items within a list.

Figure: Update List Item (but only works with one item)

Further to my shock was that someone out there (cough Codeplex) hasn't written one yet. So last night I sat down and start to code.  There will be another article about coding and packaging a SharePoint Workflow Activity, but right now, I need to shove my baby out the door.

UPDATE LIST ITEMS v1.0 INSTALLATION

Everything in one WSP file: grab it here

The package includes 3 objects:

• WorkflowActivity.dll - goes in the GAC
• WorkflowActivity.ACTIONS - goes into <SharePointRoot>\TEMPLATE\1033\Workflow\WorkflowActivity.ACTIONS
• <authorizedType> entry needed in Web.Config - I've included a Web Application feature that will do this

To activate the web application feature

UPDATE LIST ITEMS v1.0 USERS GUIDE

In SharePoint Designer, select the "Update All List Items" action from the menu

Or just do the inline typing

There is only 1 dialog for this action - I cheated and reuse the dialog from Update Item Workflow Action

Unfortunately, because I cheated and use Microsoft's dialog - it won't let us finish without specifying a List Item - hence I use the sentence "Update all items in this list (ignore list item)" - sorry - hope that was clear.

OK and trigger the workflow

SUMMARY NOTES

1. In SharePoint, a workflow can not trigger itself. So even though I have the workflow set against this list - it is only run on the last item.
2. And because this is version 1 (v1.0) there's some really complex looking code for setting "People or Group" values. So I'm not sure if this works 100% in my implementation.
3. Obviously, if your list is extremely large you are on your own :-)
4. One other scenario this opens up is the facility to have a site workflow "trigger" a second workflow set on a particular list (remember - workflow can't trigger itself).

This would be an on-going effort as I gather more details.  But at the moment I’m publishing what I have.

Different capabilities

Still to do:

1. add legend
2. add references / sources
3. link to specific details for some points
Let me know what you guys think:

Been pouring through all the new goodies in SharePoint 2010 like a kid opening his first Christmas present -
So much fun, so little time.

A few people have made the comment that SharePoint 2010 Public Beta runs pretty slowly for demo’s – here’re a few suggestions I’ve noticed that helps for me:

1. You need more than 2GB of RAM for SharePoint on your demo machine. 
2. Ideally, a generous amount of hard drive space

My setup has worked pretty well for me:

1. Host is Win7 x64
2. Created a VHD (virtual hard drive) with about 50GB allocated space. 
3. Installed Windows 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008, SharePoint 2010 public beta, Office Web Apps, and Office 2010 client apps.
4. Configure the VHD as a bootable device (new in Win7)
5. On start of laptop, I get to choose to boot into Windows 2008 / SharePoint 2010 directly, which allocates all the laptop’s resources to the VM
6. Oh – grab the ATI display drivers for DELL (see my previous post) to make sure Windows 2008 R2 can display via an external projector – ahead of the presentation.  (I nearly had a panic attack but got it all sorted before I had to go on stage).

The best part is when we move on from the public beta, I’ll just copy a new VHD over the same directory under Win7, then it’s all set.

Testing InfoPath, I try to do the simplest thing – publishing an InfoPath form to a SharePoint as a template, and allowing it to create a new library based on this template - I got this error:

The following computer running windows SharePoint Services does not contain the required InfoPath form template:
http://vm-spdev-xxxx/
A generic form template will be used instead

Warning: This is very bad

You should not continue – because if you do…

1. InfoPath will create a new Document Library instead of a Forms Library and deploy the InfoPath file as a template in this document library. 
2. It will appear as if everything’s working – you can do New –> InfoPath Form (as a document), fill it out and save it back to the list.
3. And when you want to update the template it will complain that the default document isn’t based on a Form template.
   
   InfoPath failed to publish because the default content type in the document library is not based on the Form content type
4. You got confused – you went to check the Library and sure enough it says the default content type is a Document
5. You add a Form content type, and switch it over as the default content type… only to discover SharePoint now publishes two different sets of columns in this list – one set for Forms, another set for Documents.
6. And it doesn’t appear as if the second publish worked…  I think this may be a different problem – because if I view as web page I see the new updated template

Instead, back out right now – delete that list in SharePoint and start over…  By the way… where’s – hmm where’s my Forms Library?

Went to site settings and activated:

• Site Collection Features –> Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features
• Site Features –> Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Site features

No good, still no forms library.

More stumbling around, finally figured it out – I need to activate:

• Site Features –> Team Collaboration Lists

Personally I didn’t think this was obvious – but I did know Forms Library is part of WSS…  so may be it made some sense.

Now go back to InfoPath again and try to publish.