WebPart Notes

Here are some notes from building a SharePoint web part.

• It seems when you deploy a feature containing web parts, you still have to add it to the web part gallery for each site.
• If you want to reference controls in the CONTROLTEMPLATES directory, you can use the virtual path ~/_controltemplates.
• If your controls have a code behind that is strong named, you must fully qualify the Inherits attribute of the @Control directive.
• To remove broken webparts from a page, add the query string ?contents=1 to the URL. (Via http://sharepointinsight.blogspot.com/2008/06/remove-bad-or-broken-web-parts-from.html)
• To disable friendly error messages (and see the yellow screen of death)
• set the CallStack attribute of the SafeMode node to true
• set CustomErrors mode attribute to Off
• set debug attribute of the Compilation node to true

SharePoint Workflow Notes

Here are some notes from my experience building a SharePoint state machine workflow.

• All fields delcared on the workflow object must be serializable type or marked nonSerializedAny activities before the workflow activated event will not have access to workflow properties
• Remember to remove dll's from the GAC when building, GAC'ed versions will supersede local versions
• Emailing from SharePoint requires the network service account to have local activation permission for "IIS WAMREG Admin Service" (a dcom service): http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/2007/10/25/dcom-fun-with-sharepoint/
• There is a bug in the delay activity, here are some patches: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/07/15/announcing-availability-of-infrastructure-updates.aspx, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953630/
• SetSate is not like a return, the rest of the activities in that phase will still execute
• You cannot have more than one list template in a feature
• Set workflow logging level use this command:
  • stsadm -o setlogginglevel -category "Workflow Infrastructure" -tracelevel verbose
• To get and set timer settings use this command:
  • stsadm -o getproperty -pn job-workflow -url http://localhost/
  • stsadm -o setproperty -pn job-workflow -pv "Every 1 minutes between 0 and 59" -url http://localhost/
• To allow unsigned powershell scripts to run use this command:
• Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

Workflow Versioning

• There is no concept of versioning for Visual Studio created SharePoint workflows
• Instead, include the version in the feature path, name, description and workflow name and description
• Change the assembly version, and the version in each of the other places
• Deploy as a new feature
• Make sure the old workflow is marked "No new instances" after you associate the new version (this should be automatic)
• Based on this, it seems like workflows should be in their own features to allow for simpler versioning
• Delay activities were not working correctly
• Worked with MS Premier support for weeks to try and resolve this
• Resetting the SharePoint timer service made the delay activity work correctly
• When they are initialized in the designer, setting the value to something else in the initialize event does not work
• If you bind the timeout property to a dependency field then it can be set in the initialize timeout handler, much like SendEmailActivity properties