’The document could not be opened for editing. A Microsoft SharePoint Foundation compatible application could not be found to edit the document.’

The error is misleading because like most people you do have an application like Microsoft Office installed that will be able to edit the document in question.

The Problem

Documents are associated with a particular application via the DOCICON.XML file.  More information on this file and how it works in Understanding DocIcon.xml files. In Internet Explorer the browser has the ActiveX control integrated that allows it to marshal the call to the associated application.

Firefox does not include this ActiveX control and reports, although not a very good error message, that there is no compatible applications.

Office 2010 to the rescue

As part of the installation of Office 2010 Microsoft have included a plug-in for Firefox that allows Firefox to work correctly in the form of the FFWinPlugin Plug-in. 

As with the rest of the SharePoint the user experience is almost identical regardless of the browser used.

Not a golden bullet

With SharePoint 2010 support for IE6 was removed, with good reason and to the delight of many UI designers. The problem is a lot of organisations take time to move there desktops, often locked into IE6 because of fixes added to applications to over come IE6 problems.

Getting SharePoint 2010 into these environments is a challenge and using Firefox is one of the olny real options available – short of a desktop refresh. These older desktops will also likely be running older versions of Office.

Unfortunately the Firefox plug-in is provided as part of Office 2010!  Leaving these users with a different experience.  Hopefully Microsoft will see that this Firefox Plug-in is really useful and release it as a standalone installation to make it available to those that can’t yet move to Office 2010 or IE8.

Minor Bug with Office 2010

There is a KB article which details an issue with the Plug-in  when the document library is set to Require Check Out.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979634

We have set up the correct email SMTP server in Central Administration and everyone is receiving their email alerts correctly.  When we add new users to the site it always fails to send the email reporting an error has occurred.

Investigation

The error in the SharePoint ULS logs shows that the SMTP server connection failed. 

Cannot connect to SMTP host your.smtp.server

Analysis

For any SMTP testing you rely on Telnet by running the command

telnet your.smtp.server 25

This is likely to fail as well with a similar error,  which immediately leads you to the conclusion that the there is a problem with the SMTP server. 

However there is a niggling doubt – if the SMTP server is not working how do the alert emails get sent?

Root Cause

After a bit of investigation the problem can be traced back to the Anti Virus software.  You will likely have checked the Firewall and ensured that it was not blocking and thought nothing of the Anti Virus as this isn’t really what it’s for.

However most Anti Virus software will have some form of Email Worm protection built in and this will be enabled.  In my example the server had McAfee Anti Virus installed and has a protection called:

“Prevent Mass Mail Worms form sending emails”

Editing the properties shows an include wild card (* << meaning everything) and a list of excluded applications.  In this list of applications you will find OWSTIMER.EXE.

OWSTIMER.EXE is the SharePoint Timer Service and is used to send all email alerts.

Fix

Add W3WP.EXE to the list of excluded applications and McAfee Anti Virus will then allow your emails from forms like the Add Users page to be sent as well.

W3WP.exe is the worker process used by IIS to run your SharePoint sites.

The problem was not related to how SharePoint was configured but down to the fact that SharePoint sends emails using a number of processes and each of these need to be allowed to use SMTP.

Part 2 – What a day!

Part 3 – Going forward

Retrospective

For any activity I find the best way to improve is to review the positives and the negatives and then action the most important parts. Over the years of doing this I have found that a couple of techniques work very well – especially for new teams or groups that don’t normally work together.

Allow a set amount of time,  for SPRetreat it was 30 minutes, and then ask the people present what were the positives and negatives about the event.  The floor is open to any comments from the activities, organisation, people, location, food, value of the event etc.  The idea is to capture everything, to have some discussion to clarifyand record the comments. 

Every comment is valuable feedback, but like all good agile techniques deal with the most important things first.  To get the most important things highlighted you ask the team to allocate their votes  (each person gets 4 votes they can place against any comment).  Allowing allocation of votes on the positive comments means you make sure these don’t change when you try to fix the negatives.

The feedback we got from the first event was

Actions

From the feedback the actions should be:

- Keep the event on Saturday and running for a full day

- Split the event and have more focused learning

- Keep people moving around at each session and keep them pairing

- Improve the communication about the event

- Provide more guidance and resources to help with setup

Going Forward

Based on the feedback above I will be working on the next SharePoint Retreat Events.  Expect SharePoint retreats to become more regular and to spread out to other locations.

I have already had some offers of help in setting up future events; if you feel you would like to get involved – perhaps host your own SharePoint Retreat or would like to become a sponsor – please contact me via 21apps.

Part 2 – What a day!

Part 3 – Going forward

The Problem

Cross sell component

============================

Requirements:

A client wants to be able to have a component on a page which can be used to drive traffic to other areas of their site.

The setting of the problem actually had a fairly big impact on the way the day went – we captured some some ideas in the feedback at the end of the day that I will cover in Part 3.

The sessions

Session 1 and 2

During the first two sessions there was a lot of discussion around the problem and ways to solve it, what the scope was and if this provided enough information.  Some teams took the opportunity to question the client (Ben Robb) and ask further details about the problem space.  It was very clear from the way the session went that the people in the room tender to deal with the bigger deployment issues and less on the coding. 

At the end of the first session the teams presented (at this stage just talked through) the solution they had come up with.  It was interesting to see that following this session, and with a move around of pairs each team started to approach the problem in a similar way.  Having gained a better understanding of the problem and seeing real value in one of the presented sessions it made them switch their design. 

Lunch

It was originally planned to do a couple of short presentations during Lunch however the weather was so nice we all walked ‘in single file’ to the a park near the office and enjoyed lunch. We only had a few strange looks as we all queued up to eat!

Session 3, 4 and 5

The original request was for the teams to delete the projects, configuration and settings and focus on the muscle memory in getting things setup. But after lunch people had started to get quite competitive and really wanted to try and do that little bit more and some decided to not delete… (they know who they are)

After each session the teams presented their solution,  it was really great to see how changing the teams around and sharing the knowledge really helped to give people a shared understanding. 

Some of the problems seemed harder than others… like adding web part properties

The final solutions really were very impressive and there have already been some great write ups

Martin Hatch

• RCWP Part 1 – Extending the Search Core Results Web Part
• RCWP Part 2 – Web Part with Ribbon Contextual-Tab
• RCWP Part 3 – Edit Web Part using a Ribbon modal dialog

Wes Hacket

• SPRetreat number one

Retrospective

After the session ended and the demos were done there was a little time to get feedback on the first SharePoint Retreat.  There was some great feedback and ideas on how to refine and make the event better which will be covered in Part 3 – Going Forward.

SharePint

The event ended with a SharePint at the local pub before people headed home.

Part 2 – What a day!

Part 3 – Going forward

Only a couple of months ago myself (@AndrewWoody) and James (@draken) were talking about ways we could help development practices in the SharePoint community. Being avid agile enthusiasts we take a close interest in other events and activities outside of the SharePoint world. One event really caught our attention, it focused on improving techniques, it had a simple format that could be tailored and was very much community focused.

In May we announced it, the worlds first SharePoint Retreat!

To make the event work, and to ensure we could always offer developers a place free of charge, SharePoint Retreat was a sponsored event.  More events are being planned and we are looking to get people onboard with SharePoint Retreats around the globe  (tweet me if you want to get involved as an organiser or sponsor).

The first event was held in London at the cScape offices with food an refreshment provided by 21apps becoming the joint sponsors for the event.

supported by myself and Ben Robb.

The Event

The event was sold out within a few weeks of announcement with a growing waiting list.  Being summer and with the hottest day of the year predicated for the Saturday of the event we had a couple of no show’s leaving us with 10 coders – which actually worked out as a very good number.

Starting at 9am in London when Transport for London decide that people don’t need tubes on a Saturday made some of the journeys in a little hectic.  Even so everyone was in, seated, eating croissants and drinking coffee by 9.30 ready to go.

Having set the problem everyone paired up ready to code…

Part 2. What a day!

The team did a number of Spike tests ¹ to see if it was possible to do unit testing of the JavaScript code.  Unfortunately nothing that was looked at really provided the confidence or ease of use needed to become a part of the development process.

I have flirted with automated UI testing for a long time,  looking at WinRunner, Segue, QA Runner and various other tools along the way.  I actually remember doing UI testing against a FoxPro application that used OCR technology to verify the text on the screen.  The problem has always been that the tests are brittle, any slight changes to the UI and they break and it becomes a case of diminishing returns.  However having failed to find a good solution to unit testing the UI code I decided to give the new Visual Studio 2010 tools a look.

My first impressions were very good,  I actually changed the session I was doing at the SUGUK event in Wolverhampton due to being so impressed by the tools.  This post is going to be one of a number I do covering lessons learned as the team develop our test suite using these tools for real on 21SCRUM.  

The first lesson and one that you need to do before you start any UI testing is start from a known place.

Start from a known place

I quickly discovered that getting good, repeatable and maintainable automated UI tests to work over time you really have to make sure you always start at the same place.  This means no additional browser windows open,  no test web parts added to your pages, no left over’s from the last test or development.   

One of the reasons I love Unit Testing is the isolation for any real environment or the need to go through a lot of setup and tear down steps.

In order to do this properly and repeatedly you need to have a script that will refresh your test location.

The script used for 21SCRUM is simple and does the following:

• - Deletes the test site collection
• - Create the test site collection based on required site template
• - Uploads the 21SCRUM sandboxed solution to the Solution Gallery
• - Activate the 21SCRUM solution

These steps ensure that when the tests are run they always start from a clean site collection.   The script has been extended to provided sub sites and additional site collections but the changes are incremental and added as the tests demand.

Powershell

Like all good developers Powershell is the scripting language of choice.  Actually kicked off with a good old fashioned .bat file <<  interested to know if there are any alternatives to this?

The batch file RefreshSite.Bat  (powershell.exe is in my standard path)

powershell -File RefreshSite.ps1

The powershell script does the work

//Load the SharePoint Commandlets

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell

//Delete the site collection – don’t prompt the user to confirm

Remove-SPSite -Identity “http://aberdovey.com” -Confirm:$false

//Create a new site collection based on the Team Site Template

Get-SPWebTemplate | Where{ $_.Title -eq “Team Site” } | ForEach-Object{ New-SPSite http://aberdovey.com –OwnerAlias DOMAIN\USER -Name “Aberdovey” -Template $_ }

//Add the solution to the solution Gallery – it must have the full path name and not a relative path

Add-SPUserSolution -LiteralPath C:\<full path to the location of the WSP>\21Scrum.Solution.wsp -Site http://aberdovey.com -Confirm:$false

// Activate the solution – and yes Microsoft have done it again with the naming!  Install means Activate

Install-SPUserSolution -Identity 21Scrum.Solution -Site http://aberdovey.com -Confirm:$false

This simple command allows the refreshing of the environment to be run quickly and ensures the tests always start from a known place.

¹ Spike Tests – short time-boxed pieces of work looking to prove an approach or providing additional knowledge to make estimates more accurate.

Not wanting to make life easy for myself, AndrewWoody, I have decided not to redo a SPEvo session and put on a brand new session looking at Automated SharePoint UI Testing with Visual Studio 2010.

The second session will be led by Nick Harewood, who is User Interface Lead at Synetrix. He will be presenting an overview of Silverlight UI development, demonstrating the latest/coolest features in Silverlight and showing some practical examples of Silverlight interfaces for SharePoint.

Refreshments including pizza, beers and soft drinks will be provided. Optional Sharepint will also follow on after the main event!
Location:
Technology Centre
Wolverhampton Science Park
Wolverhampton
WV10 9TG

Agenda:
6.30pm – Session 1
7:30pm – Food & Drinks
8:15pm – Session 2
9:00pm – Off to SharePint….

Sign up at SUGUK

Hope to see you there and lets make the west midlands a great place for SUGUK events.

We are proud to announce the world’s first SharePoint Retreat!

The first event is taking place in London on Saturday 10th July. Don’t delay places are filling up fast with a limit of 16 people.

 

The aim of SharePoint Retreat is to help developers practice the fundamentals of software development, but like all things in the SharePoint community we intend to keep this SharePoint focused, so developers practice the fundamentals of SharePoint development

What is SharePoint Retreat?

The idea is not our own, more information can be found about the original Code Retreat at http://www.coderetreat.com/ – we have just given it a SharePoint flavour. 

It has a simple objective:  provide a day-long event that is focused on practicing the fundamentals of SharePoint development.

Why SharePoint Retreat?

We want to bring SharePoint development to the fore, to make developers want to work with SharePoint and to show that doing SharePoint development does not mean you have forego any plans to become a software craftsman.

How does it work?

A group of SharePoint developers – That means you! - gather at the Retreat with laptop in hand ready to code.

• Problem:  TBC – the problem will be SharePoint related and can vary between Retreats
• Retreat lasts from 9am until 5pm followed by SharePint
• Each coding session will last 1 hour
• Each session coders will pair program

Some rules!

• code is deleted after each session,  its about learning the techniques and not getting code samples
• Encourage techniques like TDD where appropriate
• programming pairs are swapped at each session

on the day

• 9:00 – 9:30 Intro to the day
• 9:30 – 10:30 session 1
• 10:30 – 10:45 retrospective
• 10:45 – 11 :45 session 2
• 11:45 – 12:00 retrospective
• 12:00 – 1:00 Lunch – with brown bag presentations
• 1:00 – 2:00 session 3
• 2:00 – 2:15 retrospective
• 2:15 – 3:15 session 4
• 3:15 – 3: 30 retrospective
• 3:30 – 4:30 session 5
• 4:30 – 5:00 wrap up
• 5:00 – late ShareFood and SharePint

in the sessions

session 1 and 2

The area of SharePoint may be unfamiliar to some people, others may have done something like it before.  The aim of the first two sessions are to allow people to understand how they are going to approach the problem and what the final solution could look like.  Some pairs may try and implement it, others will spike out ideas and try to solve specific challenges.

At the retrospectives each pair will have a few minutes to discuss what they did and any problems they could not solve.

Lunch

During lunch the coders get to sit back and relax whilst the facilitator demonstrate techniques or ideas in a couple of short brown bag sessions.

session 3, 4 and 5

continue with the problem and looking to refine some of the scenarios and techniques.  The aim is to learn and practice techniques that will improve the knowledge and experience of the coders.  If you don’t complete the problem it’s not an issue – if you complete the problem then look for new challenges or refine the techniques.

After the event

Any gathering of SharePoint people and you are likely to find a SharePint – the facilitator will find a suitable venue for people to unwind, drink beer and SharePint – hopefully more SharePoint people will be in the area so that they can brag about the new found talents.

What Next?

If you can be in London on Saturday 10th July 2010, you’re a SharePoint developer and you fancy spending a day with other like-minded people honing you development skills.   Sign up.

This first event is limited to 16 coders – so be quick.  

If you fail to make the first 16, put your name down on the waiting list.   We do ask that people who have signed up but for whatever reason can’t make it please make the space available to others.

How Much?  – Its Free

Best of all this is a community activity,  we are funding this event through sponsorship in order that we can provide the places to coders F.O.C

The sponsors for this inaugural event are

providing the venue and internet access – and Ben Robb

providing the food – and Andrew Woodward

Have you heard about the new Services Architecture in SharePoint 2010?

Did you attend Andrew Connells session at SPC09 and came away wondering why 1+1 was so complex?

Do you want to go to a dev session but by Wednesday lunchtime think a 400 deep dive is going to be too much?

Either way I have a great session lined up that will focus on the core parts of building a service application and discussion around when you should/shouldn’t approach it.  

DD114 – Building Service Application

Wednesday 21st April

11:45 am to 12:45 am

Developer Track

SharePoint 2010 has undergone a number of major improvements in the way the core services are architected. In this session we will explore some of these changes looking at the services provided with SharePoint, understand the reasons for the changes to the architecture and also the complexity that this can introduce. We will take a deep dive into the core framework and classes that enable developers to create custom service applications; Provide you with an understanding of how to create a new service application but most importantly when service applications are the right or wrong design choice. You should leave the session with an understanding of how the core service applications are designed, how to approach creating of your own services and also the knowledge to evaluate your own requirements and make informed decisions about when to and when not to create a service application

This time I am joining forces with the SharePoint Cowboy, Eric Shupps, to show you some of what you should know,  but also we have some exciting demo’s that you won’t want to miss.

If you understand Unit Testing,  want to learn more or just interested to see us battle it out on stage you have to attend:

DD107 – Unit Testing SharePoint

Tuesday 20th April

10:00 am to 11:00 am

Deep Dive 400 Track

Defining a successful unit testing strategy is a key component in the SharePoint software development lifecycle. In this session we will explore the various options for insuring adequate code coverage for custom SharePoint solutions, examine several different methods and tools for creating and executing unit tests, and discover tips and tricks for working with various test frameworks. There will also be a lively discussion regarding the value of implementing methodologies such as Test Driven Development and numerous real-world examples of the benefits unit testing can provide within custom SharePoint solutions