Opening InfoPath form in SharePoint ‘Requested registry access is not allowed’

This is another gotcha that I’ve run into today – when I went to publish an InfoPath form to my SharePoint site I spotted an error in the design checker ‘Invalid Form Template’. I ignored the error and carried on but when I tried to create a new form based on the template in the document library, I received the following error –

Requested registry access is not allowed. at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowSecurityException(ExceptionResource resource) at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.OpenSubKey(String name, Boolean writable) at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.OpenSubKey(String name) at Microsoft.Win32.Registry.GetValue(String keyName, String valueName, Object defaultValue) at Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.Runtime.FormServer.<>c__DisplayClass1.b__0

I did some research and came accross this blog post from Joel Oleson (@joeloleson) which helped me fix the problem –

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2008/01/02/evaluation-version-expired-but-not-really.aspx

The steps I took to fix the error were slightly different from Joel’s (see below) but his blog post helped to point out the registry keys on which the access was failing.

The application pool account for my SharePoint web application was running as ‘Network Service’, I did try and add this account to the ‘Distributed Com Users’ group but this did not fix the problem.

Initially I changed the application pool account for the web application to a domain account and this fixed the problem, then I changed it back to Network Service and gave that built in account read permission on the registry key –

‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\Office Server\12.0’

and that also worked! So there are two options in case anyone runs into the same problem.

Hope this helps 🙂

Getting started with Silverlight 3 and SharePoint

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! 🙂

SharePoint 2010 official blog post by Jeff Teper

Just spotted this on twitter, this blog post by Jeff Teper –

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/10/19/sharepoint-2010.aspx

is a must read for SharePoint 2010. It discloses a lot of the new features present in the new product with a few screenshots too.

I hope you all enjoyed the keynotes, I wasn’t able to go to SPC09 but the streaming of the keynotes worked well.

Enjoy 🙂