Monthly Archives: May 2011

How to force Expiration/Retention policy to execute on SharePoint 2010

The Expiration/Retention policy (part of Information Management Policy) is executed by a couple of timer jobs. In 2007 these jobs are under the PolicyConfigService at the Farm level, and you can modify the schedule of these jobs to run very … Continue reading

Posted in Information Management Policy, SharePoint 2010, Timer Job | 4 Comments

AutoSPInstaller keeps installing SharePoint binary after restart

AutoSPInstaller (http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com/) is a neat tool for unattended SharePoint install and configuration. I ran into an issue where AutoSPInstaller just seems to get stuck in a loop. After SP is installed, it prompted me to restart the server and re-run … Continue reading

Posted in AutoSPInstaller, SharePoint 2010 | Leave a comment

Pass-through XSL for debugging

When debugging certain webparts (e.g. CQWP), you often want to see the raw XML before the XSL is applied. The XSLs below (developed by a colleague) will spit out the original XML.   This one below renders the XML as a table, with … Continue reading

Posted in WebPart, XSL | 1 Comment

Complex formatting for BCS TypeDescriptor with complex type

I was playing around with specifying ComplexFormatting and FormatString for my BCS model entities. Here are the lessons learnt: The ComplexFormatting property must be specified at the parent TypeDescriptor containing the complex type, not at the complex type TypeDescriptor itself. … Continue reading

Posted in BCS, SharePoint 2010 | Leave a comment

Tip for deploying workflow template with InfoPath task form

Maybe because I’m a newbie, but I ran into a lot of problem trying to deploy a workflow template with an InfoPath task form. The trick is in your feature receiver and your feature properties (in the XML definition). The best … Continue reading

Posted in SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, Workflow | Leave a comment

SharePoint Evil #4: Document Information Panel always defaults to first content type in the library

A SharePoint Evil is an issue/error that is so ambiguous and misleading that Google will shows 50 hits, with 10 different suggested solutions, and none of them work for your particular case. (So the described below may not work for you … Continue reading

Posted in Document Information Panel, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Evils | 7 Comments

SharePoint Evil #3: Can’t view BCS External List: Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator.

A SharePoint Evil is an issue/error that is so ambiguous and misleading that Google will shows 50 hits, with 10 different suggested solutions, and none of them work for your particular case. (So the described below may not work for you … Continue reading

Posted in BCS, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Evils | 1 Comment