Category: .NET

SharePoint 2013 – Team Site Guide(11 min read)

A SharePoint deployment typically has different types of sites, with different levels of governance. The central published site usually has tight governance over structure and information, whereas group and team sites have less restrictions and more flexibility.

SPGovernanceLevels

This guidance is around team sites, where although the site collection must initially be set up by a SharePoint administrator, at least some team members have administration permissions to the site and can manage the site schema and structure. Continue reading SharePoint 2013 – Team Site Guide(11 min read)

Apps and other SharePoint client-side development(6 min read)

An expanded client-side development model, which includes Apps as well as techniques such as remote provisioning, was released with SharePoint 2013. SharePoint Online does not support server-side development, apart from limited sandbox solutions, so client-side development must be used, whereas for stand alone SharePoint both the new client-side model as well as the original server-side model are available.

I have used several of the different alternatives for client-side development, and thought I would provide my overview of when each is suitable and my current preferred approaches.
Continue reading Apps and other SharePoint client-side development(6 min read)

A sensible guide to branding SharePoint 2013(9 min read)

This post details my thoughts on where to start with branding for SharePoint 2013. In particular, I think Themes (.spcolor, .spfont) are now usable, and recommend to start there, linking to a couple of resources. But first, I talk about what not to do.

What not to do

It might seem like a good idea to get a graphic design company to develop a whiz-bang look for your intranet, then turn around and ask a web development company to turn it into a SharePoint branding. Often this starts out with an HTML reset or HTML boilerplate.

The core SharePoint stylesheets have over 10,000 lines of CSS -- unless you want to rewrite all of that, you do not want to be doing a CSS reset. You never know when BI dashboard widget XYZ is going to need to display a green/red traffic light based on some CSS buried deep within the core files.

Don't do it.

Continue reading A sensible guide to branding SharePoint 2013(9 min read)

Visual Studio Online – Component architecture(2 min read)

Following on from my colleague Mitch Denny's Federated Identity in Visual Studio Online, I have expanded his work on the directory architecture and partner integration for Visual Studio Online, and expanded to include the other architectural components of a VSO environment such as build servers, deployment targets, and cloud-based load testing.

Visual Studio Online - Component Architecture

Continue reading Visual Studio Online – Component architecture(2 min read)

Ways to load jQuery in SharePoint (2010/2013)(8 min read)

There are many different approachs to using jQuery with SharePoint. Here is a summary of several different methods I have used, including how to get it to play nicely with NuGet.

There are three main decisions to make:

  1. Decide where to put the jQuery files
  2. Add the jQuery (and other) library to the project
  3. Referencing the scripts

Continue reading Ways to load jQuery in SharePoint (2010/2013)(8 min read)

WSRP ‘support’ in SharePoint 2013(4 min read)

Web Service for Remote Portlets (WSRP) is a standard for aggregating content within a host system, allowing the content to come from an external system, yet styling to be provided by the host.

SharePoint has 'support' for WSRP since SharePoint 2007, via the WSRP Viewer web part (Enterprise), however while it may technically meet the standard it is all but useless for anything except the most basic of requirements (as at the current version, SharePoint 2013).

Continue reading WSRP ‘support’ in SharePoint 2013(4 min read)

Comparison of logging frameworks(1 min read)

I added a comparison of the major logging/tracing frameworks for .NET to the CodePlex site for Essential.Diagnostics, to demonstrate how System.Diagnostics stacks up against log4net, NLog and the Enterprise Library.

I also added a performance comparison (the source code is in the CodePlex project if you want to verify the results).

Look at the results for yourself, but I think System.Diagnostics does okay -- and the extensions in Essential.Diagnostics (plus others such as Ukadc.Diagnostics and UdpPocketTrace) fill out the gaps compared to log4net and NLog. Similarly on the performance side, all have very little overhead (NLog is a winner on overhead, but does relatively worse on actually writing the messages to a log file).

What about the Enterprise Library Logging Application Block? Well, I just don't think it does well compared to the others. Sure it was a lot better than .NET 1.0 System.Diagnostics, but a lot of that was added in .NET 2.0 System.Diagnostics (such as multiple sources). In some cases it is worse than what is currently available in the standard framework -- e.g. no delayed formatting. This shows up in the performance figures which indicate several magnitudes greater overhead than any of the other frameworks!

I'm obviously biased, but I really think that the best solution is to stick with the standard, out-of-the-box, System.Diagnostics, extended where necessary to fill any gaps (Essential.Diagnostics, etc, for additional listeners, filters & formatting).

P.S. Also check out my guidance on Logging Levels.

SharePoint 2010 logging levels(3 min read)

According to MSDN "in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 the preferred method of writing to the Trace Logs is to use the SPDiagnosticsServiceBase class" (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512746.aspx).

MSDN also provides some guidance on the trace and event log severity levels to use (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff604025.aspx), however the WriteEvent() and WriteTrace() methods use slightly different enums; the diagnostics logging configuration in Central Administration is slightly different again, and then you have a third set of values accessed by the PowerShell command Get-SPLogEvent.

The table below shows the mapping of levels from these different sources.

Despite the complicated mapping, in general I think things go in the right direction with events writing to the event log and trace log at the same time, and having a high trace level. The distinction between event logging and trace information is also good, with independently set thresholds.

EventSeverity EventLogEntryType TraceSeverity ULSTraceLevel ULSLogFileProcessor
.TraceLevel
None = 0 None = 0 0 (None) Unassigned = 0
ErrorServiceUnavailable = 10 Error 1 Critical = 1 (or ErrorCritical)
ErrorSecurityBreach = 20
ErrorCritical = 30
Error = 40
Exception = 4
Assert = 6
Warning = 50 Warning 8 Warning = 8
FailureAudit = 60
Unexpected = 10 Unexpected = 10 Unexpected = 10
Monitorable = 15 Monitorable = 15 Monitorable = 15
SuccessAudit = 70 Information 18 Information = 18
Information = 80
Success = 90
Verbose = 100
High = 20 High = 20 High = 20
Medium = 50 Medium = 50 Medium = 50
Verbose = 100 Verbose = 100 Verbose = 100
VerboseEx = 200 VerboseEx = 200 VerboseEx = 200

Continue reading SharePoint 2010 logging levels(3 min read)

SharePoint 2010 design considerations(3 min read)

SharePoint 2010 introduces the ribbon bar as a central place for all the editing controls, that in earlier versions could be scattered across the page.

When designing custom master pages for SP 2010 you may want to visually integrate the ribbon bar into the design, as is done in the out-of-the box v4.master (wiki & workspaces) and nightandday.master (publishing portal) pages.

To do this, I have documented the size of the different elements, so they can be included in the design.
Continue reading SharePoint 2010 design considerations(3 min read)

Essential.Diagnostics library added to CodePlex(1 min read)

Essential.Diagnostics is a library of additional trace listeners and other bits for the .NET Framework System.Diagnostics trace logging.

It doesn’t change the way you write log statements (you still use TraceSource), but fits into the built-in extension points to add functionality (mostly additional trace listeners and filters).

From the project description:

“Essential.Diagnostics contains additional trace listeners, filters and utility classes for the .NET Framework System.Diagnostics trace logging. Included are colored console (that allows custom formats), SQL database (including a tool to create tables) and in-memory trace listeners, simple property and expression filters, activity and logical operation scopes, and configuration file monitoring.”

The intention is to round-out System.Diagnostics with additional capabilities so that it can be compared to alternative 3rd party logging systems (NLog, log4net, Common.Logging, and even Enterprise Library).

Note that the library is intentionally much lighter than Enterprise Library; rather than an overhaul of the logging mechanism itself the library is mainly meant to provide additional trace listeners.

I put the source code up a few days ago, but only recently finished the packaging scripts for the downloads.

With the recent release of NuPack NuGet, I have also spent an additional bit of time and set it up as a NuGet package.