SharePoint Thoughts | By Mohamed Derhalli

Update items that use Managed Metada column when a term is updated

Posted on August 2, 2016March 31, 2018 by Mohamed Derhalli

If you worked with Managed Metadata columns in SharePoint, and tried to change the term’s value in the term store you will notice that the value of the new term is not reflected in your lists, this is a common problem with Managed Metadata, but not a problem at the same time.

The reason for this is, the terms used by the site collection are stored in a hidden list inside the site collection, it’s similar to the list used by variation to synchronize between source sites and target sites when using variation in SharePoint.

All what we have to do in this case is to call the method SyncHiddenList,

public static void SyncHiddenList(SPSite site)

As you see from the definition, we need to pass a parameter of our current site collection, and once it’s called, it will update all of your terms inside lists and libraries.

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Recycle IIS Application Pool’: Cannot connect to the SharePoint site

Posted on July 19, 2016March 31, 2018 by Mohamed Derhalli

One of the frustrating problems that you might face while developing SharePoint applications is some of the errors that you really don’t know how to troubleshoot, or where to start your investigation, one of the errors I had is the following:

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Recycle IIS Application Pool’: Cannot connect to the SharePoint site: << Site Collection URL >>. Make sure that this is a valid URL and the SharePoint site is running on the local computer. If you moved this project to a new computer or if the URL of the SharePoint site has changed since you created the project, update the Site URL property of the project.

For this error, my environment was 1 SharePoint development server connected to separate SQL server, I was assigned as the farm administrator, and the local administrator on the SharePoint server, but the problem is getting this error once you try to deploy using visual studio 2010, the solution here is that the user deploying using visual studio to have db_owner permission on the content database for the web application.

Get all documents from a Document Set Programmatically

Posted on May 10, 2016March 31, 2018 by Mohamed Derhalli

Here is a quick post on how to get all documents from a document set programmatically:

//First getting reference to the list:

SPList myList= web.Lists.TryGetList(“ListName”);

if(myList!=null){

string strquery = “<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name=’Title’/><Value Type=’Text’>” + “DocumentSetName” + “</Value></Eq></Where>”;
SPQuery strcamlquery = new SPQuery();
strcamlquery.Query = strquery;
//getting reference to the document set item inside the list
SPListItem docsetitem = myList.GetItems(camlquery)[0];

//Now to loop through items in the document set

SPQuery itemDocSetQuery = new SPQuery();
itemDocSetQuery.Folder = docsetitem.Folder;
SPListItemCollection items = myList.GetItems(itemDocSetQuery);

}

That was a quick post, but I am sure this will be helpful to someone out there.

Launch of spapptex.com

Posted on November 3, 2015December 5, 2015 by Mohamed Derhalli

Since the launch of Apptex Add-in for SharePoint, we’ve seen people who were excited to use it, and we received many comments and “reported bugs” in the initial release that we had to work on. Currently, we are in the process of launching a second release with more features “more templates” and bug fixes.

We appreciate the help of the community who were trying this add-in in their projects, and who got back to us with suggestions and compliments, and now.. we’re glad to announce the launch of SPApptex.com which will be the hub for all the modifications and new features we’ll have, plus more add-ins to come 😉

Remember, this add-in is free to use, and dedicated to the community, so feel free to download your copy and try it out.

HTTP Service Is Too Busy Error!

Posted on July 15, 2015June 21, 2016 by Mohamed Derhalli

An Error you may face is when you try to run a simple SharePoint Management Shell Command, it gives you an error saying :

The HTTP service located at http://localhost:(portNumber)/securitytokenserviceApplication/securitytoken.svc is too busy.

And no commands were working at all.

In this case check the Application Pool for the SecurityTokenServiceApplicationPool, you’ll notice it’s stopped, start it and try again.

Changing RSS Feed links Reference

Posted on June 30, 2015June 21, 2016 by Mohamed Derhalli

If you used RSS feeds with SharePoint, and want to make a button where it will display an RSS for specific pages library, you will notice that title in the RSS will open the properties page for the page, not the page itself, so how to change the option?

Go to your “Pages” library, and click library settings in the ribbon, click on RSS settings, you will see a category called “Document options”, change the “Link RSS items directly to their files?” to yes

After changing this option, you’ll see the expected results.

Happy SharePointing

Managed MetaData Service Application Error

Posted on May 20, 2015June 21, 2016 by Mohamed Derhalli

When you first install SharePoint and open Central Administration for the first time, you’ll be given two choices, either to run the configuration wizard and let SharePoint do the administrative tasks for you, or configure the farm yourself.

If you configure the farm yourself and decided to add the Managed Metadata Service, you would simply go to Application Management>> Manage Service Applications>> Click new and choose managed metadata service. The SharePoint will create the Service Application for you. So if you try to click on the Managed Metadata Service Application you will be presented with the following error:

The Managed Metadata Service or Connection is currently not available. The Application Pool or Managed Metadata Web Service may not have been started. Please Contact your Administrator.
To Solve this issue, go to Central Administration >> System Settings Tab>> Manage Services on server>> and notice the managed metadata web service, its not started by default. click start and go back to your service applications page and view your service application. Note you may need to wait fora minute so that the error will disappear and you can use the service application.

How to rename Add new item in lists.

Posted on April 30, 2015June 21, 2016 by Mohamed Derhalli

There is a requirement that is requested so much to change the Add new item label in SharePoint lists to something meaningful. The good about these labels is that they have an ID that you can play with using JavaScript. Each of SharePoint lists has ID that is different from a list to another.

For the custom list you have the ID= idHomePageNewItem, for document libraries it is = idHomePageNewDocument, you can know the exact ID using the IE developer tool or the Firebug in Firefox.

To change the label, use JavaScript, you get the ID of the anchor and change the innerText property. The code is like this:

document.getElementById(‘idHomePageNewItem’).innerText= “my new text”;

That’s it.

Configuration Failed – Failed to create sample data

Posted on April 26, 2015June 21, 2016 by Mohamed Derhalli

I was trying to install SP Foundation on my Hyper-V machine, and I faced this problem:

After searching and searching online, some people mentioned activating services and trying to run the configuration wizard again, others mentioned navigating to Microsoft Office Servers folder, which doesn’t exist anymore in the RTM release of SP Foundation, but the same principle works for the RTM. All you need to do is to navigate to the following path:

c:Program FilesWindows SharePoint Services15.0Data, and you’ll find an Analytics folder with a GUIC appended to it. All you need is to share this folder.

Hope this helps someone out there as it took a while for me to resolve.