Tag Archives: SharePoint Tutorial

SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: How to Configures Refining SharePoint Search and Searchable Columns

Adding search refiners and creating searchable columns with SharePoint On the web can be a small bit diverse then with SharePoint 2013 on premise. In this blog post I’ll clarify how to add search refiners and the best way to make custom columns searchable. You will find 5 significant components we ought to implement

Create a custom column
Add some content
Map a crawled property to a refinable managed property
Created the alias
Configure the refiners

Solution

Create your custom column, for example Product.
Create some content with the custom column.
Wait for the column to be added as a crawled property, this might take up to 24 hours.
Open the SharePoint admin center and click on Search.
Click on Manage Search Schema.

Depending on the type of column you will need to use different type of preset Managed Properties.

Managed property name	Data type for mapping
RefinableDate00 – RefinableDate19	Dates.
RefinableDecimal00 – RefinableDecimal09	Numbers with max three decimals.
RefinableDouble00 – RefinableDouble09	Numbers with more than three decimals.
RefinableInt00 – RefinableInt49	Whole numbers.
RefinableString00 – RefinableString99	Strings, Person or Group, Managed Metadata, Choice and Yes/No

Search the related type on Managed Property.
Click on Edit Map Property in het drop-down menu.
Add the Crawled property of the custom column, in our example it will be ows_Product.
Fill in the alias, this will make the column searchable.
Save the changes.
Close the SharePoint admin center and open the search center result page.
Set the page in edit modus and edit the Refinement web part.
Click on Choose refiners, and add the managed property, in this example RefinableString01
Change the display name to the custom columns name, otherwise the refiner will be shown as RefinableString01
Search for some content and enjoy the result!

Result

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SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: Deploying Managed Metadata Fields Declaratively

In this article, we will see how we are able to deploy Managed metadata fields in a declarative way in SharePoint

A managed metadata column lets you handle the data that people can enter into a column. Users select the terms or phrases that they enter within the column from a pre-defined set of managed terms.

The challenge comes if you desire to provision your custom managed metadata navigation field inside a declarative way, and adding this column to a content variety or a list instance without having losing all the strong functions that comes along making use of this field sort.

Out on the Box, if you added a managed column for your list SharePoint performs some actions behind the scene:

Creates a hidden note field attached to your column
Attached your list to two event receivers to update the taxonomy hidden list .
Fills in some properties related to the current web and taxonomy list id
Creates a taxonomy search managed property after a full crawl that could be used as a refiner or even as a category column if you are planning to use the Product Catalog model.

So you’ll find a lot of articles explaining how you can deploy Managed Metadata Fields declarative in SharePoint, but they are scattered, so I decided to aggregate all of the suggestions and tricks to cover this activity.

Taxonomy Field declarative XML, no tricks here
<Field ID=”{20A3C69E-FFFB-43F4-BBDF-2D22BAF0EB84}”
Type=”TaxonomyFieldType”
DisplayName=”$Resources:myResourceFile,EventType”
ShowField=”Term1033″
Required=”TRUE”
EnforceUniqueValues=”FALSE”
Group=”Custom”
StaticName=”CustomEventType”
Name=”CustomEventType”
Filterable=”TRUE”
Sortable=”TRUE” />
SharePoint creates a hidden note field to be field with chosen values even though filling the taxonomy field, right here comes the tricky element, although adding your custom field towards the list you must add this hidden field in addition to it, The Display name need to comply with the following convention ‘TaxonomyField_0′ and the static name should adhere to the following convention ‘TaxononmyFieldTaxHTField0′, without having following this conventions SharePoint search will not create the crawled property for your custom column ‘ows_taxId_CustomEventType’, and for certain will not generate the managed house
‘owstaxidKataraEventType’<Field ID=”{09F37A61-50FE-413E-941F-3BEE2A1B5BF8}”
Name=”CustomEventTypeTaxHTField0″
StaticName=”KataraEventTypeTaxHTField0″
SourceID=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3/fields”
Type=”Note”
DisplayName=”CustomEventType_0″
Group=”Katara”
Hidden=”TRUE” />
Soon after declaring the schema of each field you must get them connected together, and ought to attach the developed column to a specific Term Set and distinct Term to choose from as a source, this could possibly be achived by adding a function event receiver making use of the following code snippet.SPSite site = properties.Feature.Parent as SPSite;
Guid eventFieldId = new Guid(“{20A3C69E-FFFB-43F4-BBDF-2D22BAF0EB84}”);if (site.RootWeb.Fields.Contains(eventFieldId))
{
TaxonomySession session = new TaxonomySession(site);
if (session.TermStores.Count != 0)
{
var termStore = session.TermStores["Managed Metadata Serivce"];
var group = termStore.Groups["YOUR GROUP NAME"];
var termSet = group.TermSets["YOUR TERM SET NAME"];var eventTypeTerm = termSet.Terms["THE TERM NAME CONTAINING YOUR VALUE"];

TaxonomyField eventField = site.RootWeb.Fields[eventFieldId] as TaxonomyField;

//Attach the note field to the taxonomy field
eventField.TextField = new Guid(“{09F37A61-50FE-413E-941F-3BEE2A1B5BF8}”);

// Connect to MMS
eventField.SspId = termSet.TermStore.Id;
eventField.TermSetId = termSet.Id;
eventField.TargetTemplate = string.Empty;
eventField.AnchorId = eventTypeTerm.Id;
eventField.LookupWebId = site.RootWeb.ID;

if (eventField.TypeAsString == “TaxonomyFieldTypeMulti”)
ageGroupField.AllowMultipleValues = true;

eventField.Update();
}
}
Within this stage we’ve got our field provisioned and added to our site as a web site column, the next step is usually to add it to a content sort, the trick here is we should add two hidden fields ‘TaxCatchAll’ & ‘TaxCatchAllLabel’ fields,If it doesn’t, then you won’t get facets showing up correctly in faceted search. Note that not having the TaxCatchAll and TaxCatchAllLabel pair of columns in your list or library or content variety can cause that.
so our field references will probably be like the following
<FieldRef ID=”{20A3C69E-FFFB-43F4-BBDF-2D22BAF0EB84}” DisplayName=”$Resources:FILENAME_Columns,EventType;” Required=”TRUE” Name=”CustomEventType” Filterable=”TRUE” Sortable=”TRUE” />
<FieldRef ID=”{09F37A61-50FE-413E-941F-3BEE2A1B5BF8}” DisplayName=”CustomEventType_0″ Hidden=”TRUE” Name=”CustomEventTypeTaxHTField0″ />
<FieldRef ID=”{f3b0adf9-c1a2-4b02-920d-943fba4b3611}” DisplayName=”Taxonomy Catch All Column” Required=”FALSE” Hidden=”TRUE” Name=”TaxCatchAll” Sealed=”TRUE” Sortable=”FALSE” />
<FieldRef ID=”{8f6b6dd8-9357-4019-8172-966fcd502ed2}” DisplayName=”Taxonomy Catch All Column1″ Required=”FALSE” Hidden=”TRUE” Name=”TaxCatchAllLabel” ReadOnly=”TRUE” Sealed=”TRUE” Sortable=”FALSE” />
Now we come to the next trick, referencing these columns to a list template within the schema.xml file , the trick right here would be to declare the TaxHiddenList ‘TaxCatchAll’ & ‘TaxCatchAllLabel’ correctly to the the list schema, these fields are a lookup columns so they need the information list (source), following is the definetion, NOTE the List attribute.
<Field Type=”LookupMulti” DisplayName=”Taxonomy Catch All Column” StaticName=”TaxCatchAll” Name=”TaxCatchAll” ID=”{f3b0adf9-c1a2-4b02-920d-943fba4b3611}” ShowInViewForms=”FALSE” List=”Lists/TaxonomyHiddenList” Required=”FALSE” Hidden=”TRUE” CanToggleHidden=”TRUE” ShowField=”CatchAllData” SourceID=”{1e46f7fe-3764-40b5-abd1-1746c716214b}” Mult=”TRUE” Sortable=”FALSE” AllowDeletion=”TRUE” Sealed=”TRUE” Version=”2″ />
<Field Type=”LookupMulti” DisplayName=”Taxonomy Catch All Column1″ StaticName=”TaxCatchAllLabel” Name=”TaxCatchAllLabel” ID=”{8f6b6dd8-9357-4019-8172-966fcd502ed2}” ShowInViewForms=”FALSE” List=”Lists/TaxonomyHiddenList” Required=”FALSE” Hidden=”TRUE” CanToggleHidden=”TRUE” ShowField=”CatchAllDataLabel” FieldRef=”{F3B0ADF9-C1A2-4b02-920D-943FBA4B3611}” SourceID=”{1e46f7fe-3764-40b5-abd1-1746c716214b}” ReadOnly=”TRUE” Mult=”TRUE” Sortable=”FALSE” AllowDeletion=”TRUE” Sealed=”TRUE” Version=”2″ />
Finally, we require to attache the “TaxonomyItemSynchronousAddedEventReceiver” & “TaxonomyItemUpdatingEventReceiver” to update all the hidden fields.
<Receiver>
<Name>TaxonomyItemSynchronousAddedEventReceiver</Name>
<Type>ItemAdding</Type>
<Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
<Class>Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.TaxonomyItemEventReceiver</Class>
<SequenceNumber>10000</SequenceNumber>
</Receiver>
<Receiver>
<Name>TaxonomyItemUpdatingEventReceiver</Name>
<Type>ItemUpdating</Type>
<Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
<Class>Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.TaxonomyItemEventReceiver</Class>
<SequenceNumber>10000</SequenceNumber>
</Receiver>

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SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: SharePoint Workflow Options to Drive Workforce Productivity

These days several organizations still rely on obsolete practices to handle their day to day operations. These approaches have an adverse influence on the workforce productivity in terms of wasted man-hours required to carry out a simple activity. Using the rise in competitors and service industrialization, leading enterprises are looking for techniques to grow to be much more effective in optimizing time for production of goods or solutions that conform to quality norms. These enterprises strive to create automated workflows with state of the art automation technologies to achieve better output.

Even though process automation has been around for some time now, there are not many takers for it as organizations still favor to carry on using the legacy approaches for managing day to day operational activities to save a number of dollars.

How workflow automation assists?

Managing workflows call for effective collaboration amongst workflow participants. Take into account a easy example of an approval approach for updating a set of content material on a internet site, exactly where an employee’s content suggestions are reviewed 1st by his manager after which by the group head followed by the technical head. The employee, the manager, the head, the technical team are participants inside the content material approval workflow. They communicate by means of emails, telephone calls or by manually following up with each other. Besides, you can find a great deal of reminder events that consume plenty of time. This is a simple approach which demands effective coordination among departments and internal teams. To expedite the process one particular requirements to scale up the process and automate it to ensure that when every single workflow participant performs its job, the subsequent participant gets an automatic update quickly. A unified communication platform can go a lengthy way in easing the method. In this example, after the content material has been authorized by the manager, an alert will likely be sent for the head for the next round of review followed by the technical head’s overview. Similarly, there are a large number of processes that run across organizations and communicating by means of emails and phone calls become tedious and time consuming.

SharePoint workflows to help your company operations

SharePoint workflow solutions assist organizations by automating manual processes and aid workflow participants grow to be a lot more efficient and productive when functioning with documents, types and libraries in SharePoint. Making use of SharePoint, an employee can start a workflow on a document and simply achieve his task. SharePoint facilitates automated workflows across various operational scenarios. A few of these scenarios are collecting feedback, collecting digital signatures, document translations and group approval processes. These workflow solutions can assist organisations save man-hours and effectively utilize their resources.

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SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: Example for Simple CRM and SharePoint Integration

Throughout the Swedish SharePoint and Exchange Forum 2006 held just outdoors Stockholm on Rosenön this spring, I showed how to make a basic integration of MS CRM and MS SharePoint 2003.

Both technologies are very versatile and are easily integrated with other software, mainly on account of the helpful webservices which can be obtainable.

The integration I created was to automatically produce a workspace when a new account was developed. The following measures describe how this was produced attainable:

Create a site in SharePoint that will contain all subsites.
Create a new attribute in CRM, nvarchar 255 that will contain the SharePoint site URL.
Create an IFrame in CRM. Modify the onload JavaScript in CRM to set the src of the IFrame to the SharePoint site URL (if it is not null).
Create a dll that creates the SharePoint site and return the new sites URL and can be called on by a CRM workflow.
Modify the workflow.config to add the functionality to the workflow manager.
Create the workflow triggered by Create on account that creates the site and return the URL. Set the new SharePoint-site-url attribute to the return value of the function.

This integration is great, and it is also achievable to create a far more enhanced handling by using the PreCreate Callout instead of utilizing the workflow. However, the workflow-addon designed may be constructed to become quite generic and may hence be utilized for other purposes at the same time, (as an illustration making a SharePoint website for every Opportunity).

I’ll base the SharePoint-site-name around the accountname attribute that is not guaranteed to be special. Within this example I will not go through how to make a duplet checking plan, which need to also be produced, in the event the websites should be depending on accountname. The sitename could also be depending on the account GUID which is assured to be unique.

I will now go through each from the six points in much more detail:

Produce a SharePoint web site that may include all subsites
Just make use of the regular SharePoint interface, choose generate from the prime menu and then pick site, nearly at the bottom on the list, no distinct template is needed. Note the url to the newly developed website.
Generate a new attribute for the SharePoint web site url
In CRM, select settings, customizations, customize entitys, account, attributes, create. Create a new attribute called as an illustration “new_spsiteurl” as nvarchar and length 255 (255 must be sufficient for anyone :).
Generate an IFrame in CRM
Now pick types and views in CRM. Select type. You must now see the editable version on the account form. Click “New Tab” within the appropriate hand menu. Name the new tab “SP Site” or something acceptable. The tab must now be visible.

Choose the “SP Site” tab then pick “Create section” from the right hand menu. Get in touch with it anything good. Also choose to not show the name in the section.

In the new section, select “Add field”. Choose the newly created attribute, “new_spsiteurl”. Verify the checkbox for read-only. Click OK.

Now choose “Create IFrame” from the proper hand menu. Produce an IFrame within the section designed above. Check the checkbox in formatting that makes it fill the form. Get in touch with the IFrame one thing like “IFRAME_spframe”. Click ok to make.

Click the “Form Properties” inside the right hand menu in the bottom. Edit the onLoad script. Place within the following script:

If (crmForm.all.new_spsiteurl.DataValue != null)
{
crmForm.all.IFRAME_spframe.src = crmForm.all.new_spsiteurl.DataValue;
}

Close the dialogs. Click save and close on all forms. When you are back to the main CRM-window, select account in the entities list and click “publish”.

Produce the workflow addon dll

Open Visual Studio 2003 (it will operate with VS 2005 also, however, if you’d like to do this with callouts, you may have to comply with the instruction concerning callout improvement in VS 2005 that I have blogged about earlier, with reference to Arash weblog).

Develop a brand new standard C# project having a straightforward class-file. Name the project some thing like “WFAddons”. Rename the cs-file something like “WFAddons”, be sure that the code is coherent with the naming of the file to avoid any confusions.

Make sure you might have a reference to the SharePoint-dll.

With each of the code to create the SharePointsite, the file ought to appear some thing like this:

using System;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace WFAddons
{
public class WFAddons
{

public string CreateWorkSpace(string accountname)
{
SPSite siteCollection = new SPSite("http://localhost/sites/konton");
SPWebCollection subSites = siteCollection.AllWebs;

SPWeb mySite = subSites.Add(accountname);
mySite.Title = accountname;
mySite.Name = accountname;
mySite.Update();
return mySite.Url;
}
}
}

Inside the row: SPSite siteCollection = new SPSite(“http://localhost/websites/Micah”);
Modify the url to match the web site created in step 1.

Now set the output directory for the CRM-assembly folder. This is usually located right here:
c:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\Server\bin\assembly\ but is dependant around the CRM-installation.

Compile the project.

Modify workflow.config

Within the folder: c:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\Server\bin\assembly\, open the file workflow.config and before the finish tags

(
</methods>
</workflow.config>
)

add the following:

<method name="Create workspace"
assembly="WFAddons.dll"
typename="WFAddons.WFAddons"
methodname="CreateWorkSpace"
group="SharePoint functions">
<parameter name="accountname" datatype="string"/>
<result datatype="string"/>
</method>

Generate the workflow

Now, all you might have to do is generate the workflow that can run all this and tie every little thing with each other. Open the workflow manager, select account, and generate a brand new workflow that will be triggered on create. Within the editor, pick “Insert Action” and choose “Call assembly” choose the group name (exactly the same set in workflow.config above), and also the pick the strategy name. Inside the new dialog window, double-click the parameter (the name set in workflow.config) and pick dynamic worth and select the entity Account and decide on the attribute accountname. Inside the primary action dialog, a youcan now see this mapping. Enter an action name, like “create workspace”. Click “Save”.

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SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: Establishing Reporting Services 2012 With SharePoint 2013

This post will stroll by means of the steps required to setup SQL Server Reporting Solutions in Integrated mode with SharePoint 2013. As was the case with all the new Excel data model, you will need at least SQL Server 2012 SP1 to get this to work as I describe

Fundamentally, you will find no true differences with how this installs when in comparison with installing SSRS 2012 on a SharePoint 2010 farm in SharePoint mode, so if you have landed right here seeking 2010 information, it need to be valid, but the screens will appear somewhat different.

To begin with, it’s critical to know that SSRS will install as a SharePoint service application. This certainly signifies that it has to be installed on a machine that is certainly part of the the SharePoint farm. What this doesn’t mean is that you ought to install SharePoint in your SQL server and join it for the farm (please Don’t do that!). In a single SharePoint front end atmosphere it is a lot much better to add SSRS for your SharePoint server than it is to add SharePoint to your SQL server. Naturally, when you have a separate SharePoint application server, that is the most effective location for it.

To set up, receive the SQL Server 2012 SP1 (or higher) media and mount it on tyour SharePoint server. Run the installer, pick new install and adhere to the prompts. Sooner or later you may get to the feature section screen, and assuming that machine has no prior SQL on it’s going to appear one thing like the following when completed.

You will notice that everything chosen is below the Shared Functions section, which signifies that it’s not installed as component of a SQL instance. In reality, you’ll notice that we do not possess the data engine installed at all. The two Reporting Services possibilities shown would be the only items which can be truly needed for SSRS Integrated mode to work. As you’ll be able to see, I’ve also chosen SQL Server Information Tools (formerly BIDS) and Management Tools at the same time. I prefer to install these tools as a matter naturally on SharePoint servers, as they can come in handy for connectivity testing or rapid BI project creating.

Follow the remaining prompts till the installation is total.

Another point that you should note is that the order of operations is important here. In the event you install Reporting Solutions – SharePoint before installing SharePoint around the farm, the option to create a Reporting Services application is not going to seem. That’s since it won’t be registered with the farm as a service application. If this happens, you can run the following PowerShell to register the Service Application

Install-SPRSService
Install-SPRSServiceProxy

Once registered, the service application could be developed as beneath. In the event you set up Reporting Service – SharePoint after the server has been joined to the farm, then the above methods are taken care of for you automatically.

The next factor that you just have to do would be to provision the service application. From Central Administration, navigate to Handle Service applications. Then, in the new menu, Select SQL Server Reporting Services Service Application.

Fill out the resulting form as appropriate, and select OK. Make sure that you navigate to the bottom of the form and select the applications to activate SSRS on.

Once the service application and proxy have been created, click on it to access the management screen.

You will want to access every single of the sections and fill out the proper alternatives for your installation. The directions are pretty self-explanatory, so I will not go into them here. At a minimum, you should back up your encryption important in the crucial management section, Set your unattended execution account (the default account to utilize when no credentials are accessible), as well as your e mail server settings if you would like to be able to provide reports by way of e mail. If you’d like to enable self service subscriptions and alerts, fill out that section, and it contains guidelines for setting up the SQL agent service to support it.

One of the most important section is Technique Settings, which controls the bulk of how Reporting Solutions will run. Clicking on it accessed the service itself, and it’s the first spot that you will see an error for those who have configuration troubles. In early builds, I have noticed an error comparable for the following:

The requested service, ‘http://localhost:xxxxx/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/securitytoken.svc/actas’ could not be activated

(xxxxx is a neighborhood port which varies from farm to farm)

This indicated a problem with all the SecurityTokenService, which you’ll be able to see by accessing IIS. After carrying out a bit poking around, I tried to access the service directly inside a browser by way of its base url:

http://localhost:xxxxx/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/securitytoken.svc

I was then presented with an error indicating that the server was also low on memory. The answer? Allocate much more RAM. It was running with 4 GB and only SharePoint installed, nevertheless it did have the majority of the service applications activated. The lesson – if you want all of the services to function, give your server sufficient memory. Bumping it to 8 GB did it in my case.

In case you can access your method settings, then you should be very good to go. The following step would be to allow SSRS in you web site collections, and I strategy on carrying out a post on that within the really close to future. Stay tuned.

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SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: Event ID 6398 AppFabric Distributed Cache Error

Sharepoint 2013 Event ID 6398 AppFabric Distributed Cache Error

Before, I started seeing repeated errors with Event ID 6398 and description of:

The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.LMTRepopulationJob (ID 581fc80e-f7fb-4b3b-99cd-7affa208f57b) threw an exception. More information is included below. Unexpected exception in FeedCacheService.BulkLMTUpdate: Unable to create a DataCache. SPDistributedCache is probably down

This error occurs every 5 minutes as the User Profile Service – Feed Cache Repopulation Job ran and it also prevented anything from populating the My Sites Newsfeeds section. The Newsfeeds page would only return “We’re still collection the latest news. You may see more if you try again a little later.” I tried to follow a multitude of blog posts, forum posts and articles on repairing the AppFabric Distributed Cache Service and was unable to correct the error.

My next step was to try to get the AppFabric service back to the initial setup.

Remove the AppFabric setup from Add/Remove Programs.
More information on this process in this MSDN article and also follow the link from there to Clean up any remaining AppFabric settings either manually or using the Cleanup Tool they provide.
After rebooting, I downloaded the AppFabric 1.1 Installer from here.

However, do not install it manually, instead use the SharePoint 2013 setup disc to use the prerequisite installer to install and configure AppFabric using the following command:

prerequisiteinstaller.exe /appFabric:C:\pathto\WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe

Now you can continue on with the initial configuration of the AppFabric service. I ran the following command from the SharePoint 2013 PowerShell as Administrator

$instanceName ="SPDistributedCacheService Name=AppFabricCachingService"

$serviceInstance = Get-SPServiceInstance | ? {($_.service.tostring()) -eq $instanceName -and ($_.server.name) -eq $env:computername}

$serviceInstance.Provision()

Then run

Add-SPDistributedCacheServiceInstance

You should see the Distributed Cache service running in Manage Services on Server in Central Administration and also see the AppFabric Caching Service running in Services. If you don’t then try Remove-DistributedCacheServiceInstance and Add again. After completing this process, I was able to go back to MySites and see the Newsfeed as it should be and also no more errors in the Event Log.

NewsFeed Working

I would love to know why this occurred since I was not working on anything with the Caching service prior to the errors; however, I hope this helps someone else caught up in this problem.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: Integrating WordPress Website Into SharePoint 2013

Within this blog post, I’ll go over about how we will easily combine a WordPress blog with your SharePoint site with all the help of SharePoint 2013 work flow.

Using SharePoint 2013 REST API and creating SPD based simple Workflow, we are going to fetch most recent 2 or more submit in the blog site and add those within a SharePoint checklist. Continue reading →

SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: Plan the Deployment of Farm Solutions for SharePoint 2013

How To Plan the Deployment of Farm Solutions for SharePoint 2013 ?

While everyone is talking about Apps, there are still significant investments in Full Trust Solutions and I am sure that many OnPrem deployments will want to carry these forward when upgrading to SharePoint 2013. The new SharePoint 2013 upgrade model allows Sites to continue to run in 2010 mode after upgrading and each Site Collection explicitly has to be upgraded individually.

Not the way it worked in 2010 with Visual Upgrade, but this time there is actually both a 14 and 15 Root folder deployed and all the Features and Layout files from SharePoint 2010 are deployed as part of the 2013 installation.

For those of you new to SharePoint, the root folder is where SharePoint keeps most of its application files and the default location for this is “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\[SharePoint Internal Version]”, where the versions for the last releases have been 60 (6.0), 12, 14, and now 15. The location is also known as “The xx hive.”

This is great in an upgrade scenario, where you may want to do a platform upgrade first or only want to share the new features of 2013 with a few users while maintaining an unchanged experience for the rest of the organization. This also gives us the opportunity to have different functionality and features for sites running in 2010 and 2013 mode. However, this requires some extra thought in the development and deployment process that I will give an introduction to here. Because you can now have Sites running in both 2010 and 2013 mode, SharePoint 2013 introduces a new concept of a Compatibility Level. Right now it can only be 14 or 15, but you can imagine that there is room for growth. This Compatibility Level is available at Site Collection and Site (web) level and can be used in code constructs and PowerShell commands.

I will start by explaining how you use it while building and deploying wsp-files for SharePoint 2013 and then finish off with a few things to watch out for and some code tips.

Deployment Considerations

If you take your wsp-files from SharePoint 2010 and just deploy these with Add-SPSolution -> Install-SPSolution as you did in 2010, then SharePoint will assume it is a 2010 solution or a “14” mode solution. If the level is not specified in the PowerShell command, it determines the level based on the value of the SharePointProductVersion attribute in the Solution manifest file of the wsp-package. The value can currently be 15.0 or 14.0. If this attribute is missing, it will assume 14.0 (SharePoint 2010) and since this attribute did not exist in 2010, only very well informed people will have this included in existing packages.

For PowerShell cmdlets related to installing solutions and features, there is a new parameter called CompatibilityLevel. This can override the settings of the package itself and can assume the following values: 14, 15, New, Old, All and “14,15” (the latter currently also means All).

The parameter is available for Install-SPSolution, Uninstall-SPSolution, Install-SPFeature and Uninstall-SPFeature. There is no way to specify “All” versions in the package itself – only the intended target – and therefore these parameters need to be specified if you want to deploy to both targets.

It is important to note that Compatibility Level impacts only files deployed to the Templates folder in the 14/15 Root folder.

That is: Features, Layouts-files, Images, ControlTemplates, etc.

This means that files outside of this folder (e.g. a WCF Service deployed to the ISAPI folder) will be deployed to the 15/ISAPI no matter what level is set in the manifest or PowerShell. Files such as Assemblies in GAC/Bin and certain resource files will also be deployed to the same location regardless of the Compatibility Level.

It is possible to install the same solution in both 14 and 15 mode, but only if it is done in the same command – specifying Compatibility Level as either “All” or “14,15”. If it is first deployed with 14 and then with 15, it will throw an exception. It can be installed with the –Force parameter, but this is not recommended as it could hide other errors and lead to an unknown state for the system.

The following three diagrams illustrate where files go depending on parameters and attributes set (click on the individual images for a larger view). Thanks to the Ignite Team for creating these. I did some small changes from the originals to emphasize a few points.

When retracting the solutions, there is also an option to specify Compatibility Level. If you do not specify this, it will retract all – both 14 and 15 files if installed. When deployed to both levels, you can retract one, but the really important thing to understand here is that it will not only retract the files from the version folder, but also all version neutral files – such as Assemblies, ISAPI deployed files, etc. – leaving only the files from the Root folder you did not retract.

To plan for this, my suggestion would be the following during development/deployment:

If you want to only run sites in 2013 mode, then deploy the Solutions with CompatibilityLevel 15 or SharePointProductVersion 15.0.
If you want to run with both 2010 and 2013 mode, and want to share features and layout files, then deploy to both (All or “14,15”).
If you want to differentiate the files and features that are used in 2010 and 2013 mode, then the solutions should be split into two or three solutions:

One solution (“Xxx – SP2010”), which contains the files and features to be deployed to the 14 folder for 2010 mode. including code-behind (for things like feature activation and Application pages), but excluding shared assemblies and files.

One solution (“Xxx – SP2013”), which contains the files and features to be deployed to the 15 folder for 2013 mode, including code-behind (for things like feature activation and Application pages), but excluding shared assemblies and files.

One solution (“Xxx – Common”), which contains shared files (e.g. common assemblies or web services). This solution would also include all WebApplication scoped features such as bin-deployed assemblies and assemblies with SafeControl entries.

If you only want to have two solutions for various reasons, the Common solution can be joined with the SP2013 solution as this is likely to be the one you will keep the longest.

The assemblies being used as code-files for the artifacts in SP2010 and SP2013 need to have different names or at least different versions to differentiate them. Web Parts need to go in the Common package and should be shared across the versions, however the installed Web Part templates can be unique to the version mode.

Things to watch out for…

There are a few issues that are worth being aware of that may be fixed in future updates, but you’ll need to watch out for these currently. I’ve come across an issue where installing the same solution in both levels can go wrong. If you install it with level All and then uninstall it with level 14 two times, the deployment logic will think that it completely removed the solution, but the files in the 15/Templates folder will still be there.

To recover from this, you can install it with –Force in the orphan level and then uninstall it. Again, it is better to not get in this situation.

Another scenario that can get you in trouble is if you install a solution in one Compatibility Level (either through PowerShell Parameter or manifest file attribute) and then uninstall with the other level. It will then remove the common files but leave the specific 14 or 15 folder files and display the solution as fully retracted.

Unfortunately there is no public API to query which Compatibility Levels a package is deployed to. So you need to get it right the first time or as quickly as possible move to native 2013 mode and packages (this is where we all want to be anyway).

Code patterns

An additional tip is to look for hard coded paths in you custom code such as _layouts and _controltemplates. The SPUtility class has been updated with static methods to help you parse the current location based on the upgrade status of the Site. For example, SPUtility.ContextLayoutsFolder will give you the path to the correct layouts folder. See the reference article on SPUtility properties for more examples.

Round up

I hope this gave you an insight into some of the things you need to consider when deploying Farm Solutions for SharePoint 2013. There are lots of scenarios that are not covered here. If you find some, please share these or share your concerns and I will try to add it as comments or an additional post..

SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal.com :: Design Manager – Transform HTML to Master Page

The first thing that caught my eye once i logged on to SharePoint 2013 was the design Manager. I presently introduced it shortly. In the previous I’ve centered on studying to model SharePoint making use of CSS and of course the instrument that most of us employed to integrate our CSS or new Master Pages was SharePoint Designer.

SharePoint Designer is no longer the popular tool Continue reading →

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How To Plan the Deployment of Farm Solutions for SharePoint 2013 ?

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Things to watch out for…

Code patterns

Round up

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