March 2007 - Posts
It's an often DBA task to rebuild indexes for a database as part of a maintenance plan, but watch out! MOSS search DB's don't like it!
This post explains it all: http://blogs.vertigo.com/personal/michael/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=4
And some official word from the Knowledge Base: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930887/en-us
I've read somewhere that SQL SP2 fix this (can't recall where), can someone confirm this?
SharePoint's new fine grained permission model is really great, but I was a little disappointed to find out that you can't add permissions to an item without breaking its inheritance.
In NTFS security it is possible to do exactly that, as long as the change doesn't interrupt the original permissions. For example you can change someone's permissions from 'Modify' to 'Full Control' or add new user to the ACL, without breaking inheritance. This is possible Because the change doesn’t conflict with the old ACL.
Anyway it doesn’t work that way in SharePoint, so be aware of that.
Here is a little tip - How to redirect users to a certain page after they have filled out a browser enabled form with InfoPath Forms Services (IPFS):
You should look for the "source" query string parameter in the form's URL, and change it to you certain page.
That's it! every click on the "Close" button on IPFS toolbar, every rule you have insert that closes the form (i.e. in the submit button), or every other closing of the form will navigate the user to the URL in the "source" parameter.
This way, you can hide the actual form library in MOSS, and give the user only a direct link to fill out the form. After filling out the form the user will be redirected back to the page without going through the form library.
UPDATE: v1.1 is out and supports IE. More details
If you havent heard of r.a.d editor for MOSS yet, you definitly sould. It's a free cross-browser alternative to the default content editor web part that add some really nice features.
It also has the capability to override the defualt content editor in sharepoint's forms (such as lists editing forms)
If you have heard of it, you'v probably tryed to install it, only to find out that it doesnt work! That is, it can be manually placed inside web part pages, but it doesn't automatically override the default editor in sharepoint forms.
It appears that Telerik's original agreement with Microsoft was to develop a cross-browser alternative to the default editor, and thats it. But obviously it provides richer behaviour and people wanted it to replace the default editor also in IE, So Microsoft has agreed to allow it's integration with IE.
So the next update of the r.a.d editor will allow integration in IE, and it is due next month.
Another thing worth to mention about the r.a.d editor is that that another version will be released in about 5 weeks that will present even reacher, full featured version of the current r.a.d editor for MOSS. That full version will require a valid license for r.a.d.editor.
UPDATE: Its now official, "Microsoft Announces New Package to Extend Microsoft Dynamics ERP Solutions to Microsoft Office Users." Thanks to Tom Rizzo for the heads up.
Integrating your CRM application into your portal can definitely add to productivity, efficiency, and it sure looks good.
MOSS uses BDC (Business Data Catalog) to integrate line of business application (CRM in our case), making it available through its search and web parts. (more info on BDC here)
The thing is, writing those long, complicated, exhausting and error-prone, XML definition files for BDC is not fun, to say the least. Especially when dealing with complex data base such as CRM's or when dealing with Guids as primary keys.
So here are tow things that will make your lives a lot more easy.
- Why write nasty XML when you have a nice IDE - BDC Meta manager is a very cool tool by Todd S. Baginski & Nick Swan that helps you author BDC metadata files with nice friendly GUI. The latest version, 1.2.0.1 (currently still in beta), also supports Guid as primary keys, such are in the CRM database.
- Why write anything when you've got it ready - BDS (Business Data Search) is part of the Microsoft Dynamics Snap program, it allows you to quickly search your Microsoft applications through Outlook client, and it uses BDC crawler. So, I figured there must be a BDC definition file for CRM hiding there somewhere. A quick search led me to this 7500 line long file that maps all of the major entities of an OOB CRM database. Joy:).
Here is a link to the file (right click, Save as).
- make sure to change the connection to your server name and database. (lines 27,29)
- for some reason the SQL commands uses the "or" operator instead of "and", which of course causes filtering not to work. so just change "or"s to "and"s when necessary.
- I haven't got a chance to review the entire file, but I have tired using the BDC WP on some entities and it worked fine. If you come up to some more suggestions other than the ones listed here please let me know. Anyway it's a good starting point.
