If you are creating a Silverlight application that makes calls to a web service – either WCF or standard ASP.NET based then you will more than likely need an xml ‘policy’ file that allows cross domain access.

In my case I was calling one of the SharePoint inbuilt web services – lists.asmx from my silverlight application. When I tried to debug the application I received the following error –

An error occurred while trying to make a request to URI ‘http://localhost/sites/mysite/_vti_bin/lists.asmx’. This could be due to attempting to access a service in a cross-domain way without a proper cross-domain policy in place.

To fix this problem you need to create an xml file called ‘clientaccesspolicy.xml’ with the following content –

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<access-policy>
    <cross-domain-access>
        <policy>
            <allow-from http-request-headers="*">
                <domain uri="*" />
            </allow-from>
            <grant-to>
                <resource path="/" include-subpaths="true"/>
            </grant-to>
        </policy>
    </cross-domain-access>
</access-policy>

This xml file should be placed in the IIS virtual directory where your web service is located. In my case the SharePoint site collection that contained the web service was inside the IIS default website so I put the xml file in ‘C:\Inetpub\wwwroot’.

Once you have created this xml file make sure you do an IISRESET. Your silverlight application should now be calling the web service correctly and not throwing the above exception.

Hope this helps

We all now know that SharePoint 2010 is resource intensive, especially intensive with its ram usage.

I originally installed full blown SharePoint 2010 on my laptop (which has 4gb of ram) only to see most of that ram being used up and none left for visual studio to run.

I would recommend anyone who wants to install it on their workstation that only has 4gb of ram to install SharePoint Foundation instead which needs much less ram and will be fine for simple SharePoint 2010 dev or just playing around.

After I had installed it on my workstation I went on a search of some powershell scripts that I could use to stop SharePoint’s services when its not in use and start them up when needed.

It turns out Emmanuel Bergerat had created some and posted them on his blog, see here –

http://blogs.msdn.com/emberger/archive/2009/11/16/stop-and-go-with-sharepoint-2010-on-your-workstation.aspx

Thanks Emmanuel!

I have modified these scripts to work with SharePoint Foundation instead of full SharePoint Server 2010.

You can find the scripts on my SkyDrive – link at the bottom of the post.

To get them to work you will need to open them and edit the line –

‘MSSQL$SHAREPOINT’,"SQLWriter",’SQLAgent$SHAREPOINT’ | ForEach-Object

You need to change the name of the SQL Service (in my case MSSQL$SHAREPOINT) to the name matching yours. This name will depend on what your SQL instance is called, if you install SharePoint ‘standalone’ then it will most likely be the same as mine.

Run the scripts in the following order –

1. ‘Manual.ps1’ – Sets services to manual startup (Only need to run this once)

2. ‘Start.ps1’ – Starts SQL & SharePoint Foundation services

3. ‘Stop.ps1’ – Stops SQL & SharePoint Foundation services

Hope this helps!

Link: SharePoint Foundation Powershell Scripts

I’ve seen quite a few people create one of these recently so I thought I would generate one for my blog and see how it comes out. Here the Wordle is in all its glory -

Since getting my hands on the Beta 2 version of SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint foundation I’ve read countless guides and blog posts about how to install it on Windows 7.

The problem is finding one that gives you the correct install procedure and this often means trawling through the comments to see if it is a reliable source. Because of this I’ve decided to post my own tutorial of the steps I used to create a reliable and fully functional SharePoint 2010 environment on a single machine (client OS).

Keep in mind that this blog post only walks through installing SharePoint 2010 in ‘Standalone’ mode (aka default configuration). This does not give you as much flexibility nor does it replicate a server farm environment. But this does work well for small dev work or to simply play around with SharePoint 2010.

*RAM Requirements: Be aware that if you are planning to install SharePoint Server 2010 you will need a lot of RAM. The recommended minimum from Microsoft is 6GB. SharePoint 2010 will install on a machine with 4GB of RAM but this will not be enough for a development environment.*

1. Install the Pre-Requisites for your operating system listed in the following MSDN guide -

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx

2. Install the ‘WCF Hotfix’ (KB976462) for Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 which is available here –

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806

3. Extract the SharePoint installation (.exe) that you downloaded, you can do this by typing at the command line the following –

c:\SharePoint\SharePoint2010.exe /extract:c:\Temp

4. Next we need to edit an xml file and add an attribute that will allow you to install SharePoint on a workstation OS. If you try and run the setup without performing this step then it will display an error message that the OS is not supported.

Open the ‘config.xml file located at ‘c:\Temp\files\Setup\config.xml’ (where Temp is the folder that contains your extracted files from above).

Add the following line inside the <configuration> tag:

<Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/>

Save and close the file.

5. Run the SharePoint 2010 setup (setup.exe).

6. When asked what type of installation you wish to perform select ‘Standalone’. This will install an instance of SQL Express and the default configuration. This will allow you to use local windows accounts.

7. Once the wizard has completed it will prompt you to run the ‘SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard’ (aka Psconfig). Do Not run the wizard and exit.

8. Install SQL Server 2008 cumulative update package 2 –

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970315

9. When the above update has finished installing, execute the ‘SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard’. Ignore the warning telling you that installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 or Vista is unsupported. You also need to click ‘OK’ to the message explaining that IIS will be reset as part of the installation.

The wizard will now configure SharePoint 2010 so you can sit back and relax! (Hopefully this step goes smoothly and you don’t see any errors).

10. When the wizard is complete, click ‘Finish’. An IE window should now popup and display a SharePoint page asking you to select the template you would like for your first SharePoint 2010 site collection.

11. Success – the installation is now complete and you have a full working copy of SharePoint 2010 Beta!

**Updated 23/11/2009

Jeremy Thake (@jthake) advised me that this service is required for the ‘User Profiles Synchronization Service’ in SP2010 and that if you disable it then this won’t work. Decide whether you are going to need this feature before you disable this. I am not sure why it slows down the OS so much when booting up.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I recently installed the betas of SharePoint Foundation 2010  on top of Windows 7 and full SharePoint Server 2010 on to Server 2008 R2. One problem I found is that after you have rebooted the machine a couple of times it becomes very slow to startup.

At first I thought it was just because I was running SP2010 on a machine with only 4gb of ram and that was just the nature of the beast. When I opened Task Manager though it told a different story – the service ‘FIMSyncronizationService (Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service)’ was still trying to start and slowing the whole machine down. Once this service was stopped the machine continued booting into windows.

The service never seemed to start properly and I am assuming this is only needed if you want to use the full Forefront product with SharePoint.

I have now disabled this service using ‘Services.msc’ and SharePoint 2010 is still working fine. I would recommend anyone with the same issue who is not using Forefront to stop and disable this service from loading.

Hope this helps

To those who don’t already know, the beta of SharePoint 2010 is now available to MSDN/Technet subscribers

Here is the direct link to MSDN –

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/securedownloads/default.aspx?PV=42%3a393%3aEXE%3aen%3ax64

You can download both Office SharePoint Server 2010 (Full product) and SharePoint Foundation Server (Used to be WSS).

Have fun downloading!

I got the chance this morning to have a look at the newly released Bing Maps Silverlight SDK. The bing maps SDK allows you to add a map to your silverlight application and enhance it by adding pushpins, images, videos, shapes and scalable elements etc.

I’m impressed at how easy it is to get a bing map displaying in your silverlight application and start customising it.

I decided to create this getting started guide to help you create a simple silverlight application displaying a bing map.

When you have completed the guide below you should have a map similar to the one below.

1. Download and install the Bing Maps Silverlight Control SDK from here –

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=beb29d27-6f0c-494f-b028-1e0e3187e830

2. Create a new ‘Silverlight Application’ project in Visual Studio 2008/2010 whichever you prefer. When the box pops up to asking whether or not you want VS to host the silverlight app in a new web site – make sure its ticked.

3. Add a reference to the dll’s

Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.dll 

Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.Common.dll

you can find these dll’s in a subfolder of the installation directory called ‘Libraries’.

4. Create an account at the ‘Bing Maps Account Center’ and create a new application key (you will need this key to be able to use the bing map control) –

https://www.bingmapsportal.com/

4. Open the MainPage.xaml file of your project (not the web project) and a new xml namespace:

xmlns:m="clr namespace:Microsoft.Maps.MapControl;assembly=Microsoft.Maps.MapControl"

5. Next add the following code inside the Grid control (make sure you paste your bing maps application key into the CredentialsProvider property –

<m:Map
           Height="300"
           Width="350"
           x:Name="testMap"
           CredentialsProvider="Your application key goes here"
           Background="White"
           Mode="Road"
           Center="19.642588,50.273438"
           ZoomLevel="0">
           <m:Pushpin Location="52.97421339369046,-1.246250867843628"/>
           <m:Pushpin Location="-27.469442,153.030136"/>
           </m:Map>

6. Refresh the designer in visual studio by clicking the link and then build your project.

7. Hey Presto! – you should now be seeing a bing map just like the one above showing the locations of the ID offices.

Recently I have been focusing on creating some Silverlight charts using the ‘Silverlight Toolkit’ from Codeplex (see the link in the instructions below).

Once I had created my first chart I wondered how to get it to display in SharePoint. It seems there are a number of options for displaying a Silverlight application (xap) in a SharePoint web part.

I found lots of blog posts that described separate bits of configuring I needed to do to get Silverlight working happily in SharePoint. I’ve decided to create a getting started list of what you need to do to get Silverlight installed and how to display your xap file with the built in ‘Content Editor Web Part’. I have linked to other blog posts where necessary.

Configuration

1. Download and install the Silverlight 3 runtime from silverlight.net -

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/

2. Download and install the Silverlight 3 SDK and tools for Visual Studio from the silverlight site - 

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/

3. <Optional> Download and install the Silverlight Toolkit (If you want to use some of these cool and free Silverlight controls) -

http://silverlight.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=30514

4. If you are running Windows Server 2008 you can skip this step as the MIME types should have been automatically added to IIS7 for you. For server 2003 users you will need to add the Silverlight MIME types to IIS6, follow the instructions here -

http://blogs.technet.com/jorke/archive/2007/09/11/silverlight-mime-types-in-iis6.aspx

5. This step involves configuring the web.config files for the SharePoint sites that you wish to run your Silverlight applications in. Follow the instructions on this blog post -

http://blogs.msdn.com/steve_fox/archive/2009/03/11/amending-the-web-config-file-to-support-silverlight-development-on-sharepoint.aspx

6. Ensure that the assembly System.Web.Silverlight is in the global assembly cache. If not then you can find it at the following location -

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v3.0\Libraries\Server

7. Configuration complete! – now read on to the deployment section

Deployment

To get your silverlight xap displaying on a SharePoint page follow the steps below. In terms of where to store your .xap file there are a number of places for you to choose. Some people recommend storing it in a folder called ‘ClientBin’ in the IIS virtual directory of the SharePoint web application but I was not able to get this working. I opted for the simplest method which was to store the file in a document library.

1. Upload your Silverlight xap file to a document library

2. Switch to edit mode for your SharePoint page and add a Content Editor Web Part

3. Insert the following HTML code - 

<!–<div width=”600px” height=”100px” id=”silverlightControlHost”>
<object data=”data:application/x-silverlight”, type=”application/x-silverlight-2″ width=”450″ height=”450″>
<param name=”source” value=”http://yoursite/sites/charting/XAPs/SimpleSilverlightChart.xap”/>
<param name=”onerror” value=”onSilverlightError” />
<param name=”background” value=”white” />
<a href=”http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=108182″ style=”text-decoration: none;”>
<img src=”http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkID=108101″ alt=”Get Microsoft Silverlight” style=”border-style: none”/>
</a>
</object>
<iframe style=’visibility:hidden;height:0;width:0;border:0px’></iframe>
</div> –>

Remember to remove the comments from the above code and replace the param value=”” with the url to your document library and xap file.

4. Click apply and save the changes to your content editor web part

5. If all went well you should be seeing your Silverlight application displaying correctly!

Note: You may need to play around with the width and height of both the <div> and <object> tags to size them correctly for your Silverlight application.

Good Luck!

If you haven’t heard of them ‘Accelerators’ are a new feature in IE8 which are designed to make your browsing tasks quicker and easier.

Accelerators allow you to perform an action by simply highlighting text on a webpage or just right clicking on a page and selecting your chosen accelerator.

Below are my top 5 IE8 accelerators:

1. ‘Google Reader Accelerator’

Simply right click on the RSS feed page and click the accelerator to subscribe to it with your Google reader account.

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/bookmarks/Subscribe_with_Google_Reader/

2. ‘WordPress Accelerator’

Select any text on a webpage and select the accelerator to start a new blog post containing the selected text.

http://www.wordpress.com

(Login to your dashboard and you should find it available for download)

3. ‘Twitter Accelerator’

Select some text on a page and select the twitter accelerator to send the text as a tweet from your twitter account.

http://openbrolly.com/2008/08/31/ie8-accelerator-for-twitter/

4. ‘Google Maps Accelerator’

Select any bit of text (Postcode, Address etc) and select the google maps accelerator to open the location in google maps.

http://ie.microsoft.com/activities/en-en/Default.aspx

5. ‘Google Mail Accelerator’

Select some text and select the google mail accelerator to create a new email message containing the selected text.

http://ie.microsoft.com/activities/en-en/Default.aspx

Hope you find these accelerators helpful and as useful as I do!

I ran into this error today when attempting to show a web part on a SharePoint site that utilises the .NET 3.5 Chart Controls from MS (See link at the bottom of the post).

When the page opened it bombed out with the above error, some research found the following question on stackoverflow –

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/302820/net-3-5-chart-controls-exception-error-executing-child-request-for-chartimg-axd

To fix this error you need to add the following entry into the <HttpHandlers> section of the web.config file:

<add path="ChartImg.axd" verb="GET,HEAD,POST" type="System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.ChartHttpHandler, System.Web.DataVisualization, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" validate="false" />

When I refreshed the page, I received another error – this time it was:

Invalid temp directory in chart handler configuration

If you too get this error then you need to make sure you have the following line in the <appSettings> section of the web.config:

<add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=file;timeout=20;dir=c:\TempImageFiles\;" />

Also make sure that the above directory ‘TempImageFiles’ exists on the C: drive or you can change this to any other directory that you like.

Hope this helps!

Download link for MS Chart Controls:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=130F7986-BF49-4FE5-9CA8-910AE6EA442C&displaylang=en