Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools

The Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools is a set of templates and extensions that provides additional functionality to SharePoint developers who use the SharePoint developer tools in Visual Studio 2010. Below is the list of features included in the current release of the power tools.

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/8e602a8c-6714-4549-9e95-f3700344b0d9/

How to create send to connection with PowerShell?

Send to connection is used in many seniors, so being able to deploy them through PowerShell is a must and it is in this way you do it:

First the XML configuration file, SendTos tag can be added multiple times if you have several applications. Under the SendTos tag is SendTo which is the connection itself. A send to consist of an Action, which can Copy, Move, or Link. Explanation which is the description for sending the link. Official filename is the name or title of sending the link. OfficialFileUrl is the URL of the site as the document to be sent, N.B. Remember that the content organizer feature must be enabled on the site. ShowOnSendToMenu is whether it should be shown in the document context menu.

<SendTos WebApplicationUrl="http://win-l2sfc3oetnn/">
  <SendTo>
    <Action>Move</Action>
    <Explanation>Move the document to 'a' site collection</Explanation>
    <OfficialFileName>Move to 'a'</OfficialFileName>
    <OfficialFileUrl>/docid/a/_vti_bin/officialfile.asmx</OfficialFileUrl>
    <ShowOnSendToMenu>false</ShowOnSendToMenu>
  </SendTo>
</SendTos>

The second part, is the PowerShell, where I loops thought the to sends tags and grab the web application. Then I test whether the connection already exists, if not I create it by adding a Microsoft.SharePoint.SPOfficialFileHost to OfficialFileHosts collection located on the web application.

[xml]$SendTos = gc $pwd\sendto.xml
 
$SendTos.SendTos | % {
	$webapp = Get-SPWebApplication $_.WebApplicationUrl.TrimEnd("/")
 
	$_.SendTo | % {
		$SendTo = $_
 
		$officialFileHostTemp = $webapp.OfficialFileHosts | ? { 
			$_.OfficialFileName -eq $SendTo.OfficialFileName 
		}
 
		if($officialFileHostTemp -eq $null)
		{
			[Microsoft.SharePoint.SPOfficialFileHost] $officialFileHost = New-Object "Microsoft.SharePoint.SPOfficialFileHost"
			$officialFileHost.Action = [Enum]::Parse([Microsoft.SharePoint.SPOfficialFileAction], $SendTo.Action)
			$officialFileHost.Explanation = $SendTo.Explanation
			$officialFileHost.OfficialFileName = $SendTo.OfficialFileName
			$officialFileHost.OfficialFileUrl = $url+$SendTo.OfficialFileUrl
			$officialFileHost.ShowOnSendToMenu = [bool]::Parse($SendTo.ShowOnSendToMenu)
			$webapp.OfficialFileHosts.Add($officialFileHost)
			$webapp.Update()
		}
		$officialFileHostTemp = $null
	}
}

Change the PowerShell UI Culture

At one of my projects I’m using the new and greater multi language options in SharePoint 2010 and with ASP.Net resources it is really easy to create site in different languages. When I create a site e.g. in Danish the content type display name is translated into Danish, as expected, but when I start my SharePoint managed shell it is running in English context and if I have some PowerShell code which is dependent on language resources, then it will ask in English, but when my site is created in Danish, it may give some weird errors. The solution to this is to set PowerShell CurrentUICulture to be as the site you work with like this.

#Ensure the PowerShell process is running the same culture as SPWeb is created with
$web = Get-SPWeb "http://win-l2sfc3oetnn"
[int]$lcid = $web.Language
$culture = new-object "System.Globalization.CultureInfo" $lcid
[System.Threading.Thread]::CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = $culture

Ribbon Toggle button demo

I have a customer who need a toggle button in the Ribbon. Make a normal button in the Ribbon is straightforward and there is a lot of good articles out there. But there is not so many articles on the toggle button, Chris O'Brien and Wictor Wilen have some post, see the link, but not on handling server site code that call business logic to test which state the toggle button is in. My demo code is built around how to put a toggle button in a document library and test if it is on or off base on some server site business logic.

My demo code: http://cid-18d25562ce576dcc.office.live.com/self.aspx/Offentlig/SharePoint%20files/Ribbon.Demo.zip

Links:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff458393.aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff407303.aspx
• http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2010/02/ribbon-customizations-dropdown-controls.html
• http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4FE7915791E01D5C
• http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2010/02/ribbon-customizations-dropdown-controls.html
• http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/SharePoint-2010-Ribbon-Controls-Part-7-The-ToggleButton-control.aspx

How to add an application server role to your SharePoint farm

To add an application sever with an application server role to your SharePoint farm run this PowerShell commands:

Connect-SPConfigurationDatabase -DatabaseServer "MySqlServer" -DatabaseName "MySharePointFarmName_SharePoint_Config" -Passphrase "myPassPhrase"
Install-SPHelpCollection -All
Initialize-SPResourceSecurity
Install-SPService
Install-SPFeature -AllExistingFeatures
Install-SPApplicationContent

For more infomation on this read this technet article “Add a Web or application server to the farm (SharePoint Server 2010)” - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261752.aspx