Programs used
SSRS 2008 R2
Sharepoint 2007
So here's the issue my co-worker and I are facing. We have subscription for a report going to a Sharepoint library. We're currently using "Windows File Share" as the delivery method, as we have no other options available.
What we're finding is that the file is being pushed successfully, but it's not being "checked in" so that it's available to viewing by all people in the library.
Barring doing what's suggested here: SSRS in Sharepoint Integrated mode
Is there anyway to make this work? One idea that cropped up was putting the subscription to a share on the SSRS server, then pushing via a batch file.
Probably the easiest way, assuming you have access to customize your SharePoint system, would be to add an event receiver on the ItemAdded event of the document library. This will fire whenever a document is added to the library. Within the event receiver check that the item is being added by the account used by your Reporting Services system and check it in (because you don't want to automatically check in everyone's documents when they are added, just the reports).
Alternatively, you could do the same thing using a workflow.
Related
I have a business requirement to process files uploaded by regional businesses for import to another system. It's envisaged that users will use SharePoint 2007 (soon to be SharePoint 2013), the event will trigger an export to CSV and the process will then run against those files.
Is this possible in either SharePoint versions?
Would that be an app, or standalone service I would want to create and schedule?
Does anyone have a more elegant solution? Essentially the CSV export is feeding in to a program that allows a user to visually validate and press a button to push to the other system after tweaking.
With custom code, you could create an event receiver on the list where CSV file lives that will run some code whenever the CSV file is updated. Here's a starter:
http://elczara.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/sharepoint-2010-event-receiver/
Make it a farm solution (sandbox solutions can't write to the filesystem directly), and you'll probably want to look up RunWithElevatedPrivileges, since the user doing the uploading may not have permission to write to the file system.
Steve's suggestion of rethinking the end-to-end solution is a good one, although I'm not sure how you can trigger the other system to "do its business".
Yes, it is possible, both with the 2007 version and the 2013.
Depending on your deployment scenario, you can:
create a custom timer job that will execute your job.
Create a custom site Workflow, with a loop and a delay, that will do the job.
The 1st is easier to build and maintain, but has less perspectives if you need to apply custom process.
But if you can control the application that consumes the feed, why don't you consume SharePoint directly? From the 2010 version, you can very easily get data using the listdata.svc web service. With older versions, you can still get data using a simple web service.
I'm just learning how to develop an application for Sharepoint.
As far as I can see there are three types of integration into Sharepoint possible:
Sandboxed Solution (limited resource access but easy to install etc)
Farm Solution (installation only available from administrator)
Standard application (maybe .net MVC) with referencing the Sharepoint assembly to access the SPS functionality
Is that correct and complete or am I missing something?
There are quite a few ways to develop for SharePoint depending on your scope, requirements, etc. My knowledge is more in the SP2007 realm than 2010 and my answer reflects that.
JavaScript
Using Content Editor Web Parts you can customize the look of SharePoint, interact with List Data and do some interesting UI effects just using jQuery and the SPServices Plugin. These solutions don't require package and deployment.
Custom Content Type
These can be created through the SharePoint UI or defined through custom XML documents and deployed via WSP. Essentially these are just a collection of field definitions that are related in some logical way. Content types can be added to a list to have all the fields automatically available. In addition, they provide a convenient way of mixing and matching data in the same list (think of roll-ups or backing up list data) though I've never used them in this way.
Event Receiver
Event Receivers can be created to respond to specific events in SharePoint. If you attach an Event Receiver to a list, you can listen for and respond to events like an item or attachment being added, updated, deleted in both a synchronous (-ing) fashion - so you can implement validation and cancel the operation - or asynchronously (-ed) - to do some post-processing once SharePoint is done processing the item. Event Receivers are processed by the Front-End SharePoint server which handled the request which triggered the event. This is different than Timer Jobs and Workflows which are executed by any server in the farm that happens to be available.
Further, Event Receivers can be attached to lists based on their type (apply to all lists of this ID type) or they can be associated with a Content Type and become associated with a list that way (when the content type is added to the list, so too is the event receiver added).
Feature Receivers are a special kind of Event Receiver in that they respond to a Feature
being activated or deactivated to do some additional work. Many people refer to this extra work as Feature Stapling since it lets you perform additional tasks on-demand that couldn't otherwise be done using just XML documents.
Timer Job
A Timer Job is a piece of code that is run on a schedule. It's not executed in the W3WP process like Event Receivers are but rather via the TimerService. Because of this, certain features or values are missing from the SPRequest object. Developing Timer Jobs is more difficult and, in practice, more error prone, more difficult to debug, etc. than Event Receivers.
Workflow
Workflows can be created using SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio. The major difference between these are features available to you at design time. SharePoint Designer Workflows are easier to create and get going but tend to be buggy in SharePoint 2007. Further they are not easily packaged and deployed across environments but rather are associated directly to the list in which you created them (in 2007; in 2010 there is extended capability to allow packaging or even migration into Visual Studio for more complicated customization).
Using Visual Studio gives you more depth and capability but like Timer Jobs they are often difficult to "get right" and they are also processed by the Timer Service process.
Web Part
A custom Web Part is very similar to a regular ASP.NET web part with some extended capability within the SharePoint context. You have access to the SPRequest object and thus all the contextual information (current user, current list/web/site, etc.) to do your work. You can access external databases, make use of most ASP.NET controls, etc.
Custom ASPX Page
If a Web Part isn't sufficient for your needs or you want control over the full page, you can create SharePoint-enabled web pages. These are standard ASP.NET pages decorated with the proper SharePoint master page and deployed into a subdirectory of the hive LAYOUTS directory. With this you have similar access to the current request state as with a Web Part but you have more control over the entire page render.
Custom Web Application
If you have need for a standalone application, you can still take advantage of SharePoint's authentication and authorization tools without running directly in its context. To do this, create an IIS Web Application and set the Application Pool Identity to the same as SharePoint. Alternatively you could make a virtual directory within your SharePoint application pool but this is generally not recommended. You will still be constrained to using the .NET Framework 2.0 runtime if you want to use the SharePoint Object Model at all. This setup seems rarely used in the field since most of the time you can accomplish your needs by just using custom ASPX pages or web parts.
Regarding your specific questions:
Sandboxed solutions are just a special type of solution that restricts the namespaces your web part, etc. have access to. For instance your code can't reach out to access lists outside of its permission area. It can't send email on your behalf. You can increase your rights by using custom permission sets but this is an advanced topic. I just wanted to point out "sandboxed solution" isn't a type in and of itself, it just describes a restriction where previously none existed (SP 2007 GAC-deployed solutions).
Regarding your question regarding an MVC application using the SharePoint Object Model, like I mentioned you are still restricted to running in .NET 2.0 runtime.
EDIT: I forgot (at least) one more option!
List Service / Other ASMX Services
SharePoint has a number of web services you can consume to interact with Lists among other things. In this case, your application can be developed using any technology (or runtime!) you wish as long as it knows how to consume the ASMX services. The functionality available isn't as rich as using the Object Model directly (which is why I often forget to consider it) but it does allow your code to be more decoupled from the SharePoint environment itself. In 2010 there are a lot more options for Client Services to provide even greater functionality.
For developing a solution in visual studio you can go for Sandbox solution and farm solution. If you are having SharePoint 2013, then you will have another better option which is App Part development.
Since Sandbox solution is depricated from SharePoint 2013 onwards, i suggest you should not go with Sandbox solutions. Better to go with App Part development.
I have a silverlight application inserted in a SharePoint page. The SilverLight application runs on a different server thatn that of SharePoint. From an event in the SilverLight, I generate a document on the server side from SQL Server. I can generate the doc on the server hosting the silverlight application and also copy it to the SharePoint server. I wanted to know if I can include this file in a sharepoint document library automatically. I was thinking if like emailing to a list allows us to copy the file into the library, can we configure the reverse, means copying the file make it part of the list.
Update:
I wanted to avoid uploading. For me uploading is sending the file from one location to the target location. But what I am saying is, if I copy the file into the folder where SharePoint keeps the file physically for the particular list, can it be added to the list automatically?
I am not sure, how well I am being able to describe the point. Please elaborate if required or I can answer your queries.
SharePoint stores the files in a database, not a folder.
WebDAV access may be what you're looking for - it's a backbone of the the Explorer View feature that allows a user to access a document library as if you were accessing a file system through a Windows Explorer window.
You can configure "incoming e-mail" properties for the document library, and assign an e-mail address.
After that, when you e-mail a document as attached to e-mail to this e-mail address, then attachment will be saved to that library by sharepoint automatically.
We have a requirement to store documents in SharePoint Online as people copy files to a shared network directly.
Is there a way of automating this? I was thinking of a windows service which will poll the directories, find any changes like new subdirectories or new files, then upload them to a SharePoint Online document library.
You don't have to poll if you use a FileSystemWatcher inside your Windows service for real-time notifications.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.filesystemwatcher.aspx
However, if your requirement is 100% accuracy, you will need to build in some sort of tracking/checksum mechanism to make sure that every document was 1) detected and 2) successfully moved to SharePoint.
You may want to have your service check the delta every time it starts up, and then subsequently only respond to FileSystemWatcher events.
EDIT: Per Tony's question below, here are some additional thoughts on getting files to SharePoint.
First, try a simple test.
1) Copy the URL of a document library within the BPOS SharePoint site. Make sure you're on a machine that has the Office Online sign in app on it.
2) Open Notepad. Type some random text.
3) Click on File -> Save As.
4) Paste the URL.
5) Attempt to save the file.
This works great on "regular" SharePoint (done it many times). If this works with BPOS, it opens up several options.
File System Replication to a SharePoint Online or Office 365 document library is planned to be released with the "Cloud Connector for Office 365". With the current version database content is supported only, but bi-directional with V2.0
I'm in the process of moving a complete sharepoint install to a different server.
Can anyone tell me if it's possible to just move the existing Shared Services Provider rather than starting from scratch?
All the best
You really need to move the SSP in concert with everything else in the farm. The two things to move are 1. databases and 2. the file system.
A .doc file for moving all of the SharePoint databases has been published here. Microsoft will soon have an updated procedure for this published on TechNet, according to the To The SharePoint blog.
Then to cover off any file system changes, I would set up a clean install of SharePoint (if you didn't need to already by following the document mentioned above) and do a file comparison between your source and destination SharePoint application servers. I usually use WinMerge as its free but Beyond Compare is also good. Also check any custom solutions are deployed on your destination server.
By ensuring your databases are moved correctly and all of your files are in place you should be OK. Make sure you test every custom component on your destination server before erasing the source databases and files (even better, archive the source).
Yes, create a new SSP and move the applications.
How to on migration of applications here
For moving the SSP to a new farm
Or try the Microsoft SharePoint Administration ToolKit v2.0
For another view of this