How do you add a list ID to a form?

Add a calculated field column with formula "=ID".

Building LOB Applications with Silverlight 3

I had a blast at the TechFest 2009 event held at BCIT in Burnaby, BC on Saturday November 21, 2009. We had about 250 attendees out of 500 registrations. The initial feedback I got from attendees was very positive. My only disappointment is that I lost the camera used to take pictures of the event. It is more to do with the value of the pictures rather than the camera itself. Oh well, shit happens.

I gave a talk at TechFest 2009 on the topic of "Building LOB Applications with Silverlight 3". You can download the powerpoint and demo code from this link:

http://penguin.bcit.ca/medhat/techfest2009/SilverlightLobApps.zip

Vancouver TechFest 2009

All user group and technology community leaders in Vancouver are working closely together in organizing Techfest-2009. Mark November 21, 2009 on your calendar; it's a Saturday and as usual the sessions will appeal to both Developers and IT Professionals. More details are at http://codecamp.ca/.

The event will be held at three lecture theatres at the BCIT campus in Burnaby, BC. We are oganizing a nerds dinner at the Professor Mugs pub, also at BCIT, a night before the event on Friday November 20, 2009 from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM. Attendees to the dinner are expected to pay for their own food and drink. Come to the dinner and mingle with your community leaders, fellow nerds, John Bristowe of Microsoft, and speakers.

Registration is now open! Register at: http://vantechfest.eventbrite.com/. This event is filling fast so don't wait.

Get ready for an exciting line up of industry professionals providing you with free training; and be sure to bring your laptops, FREE WiFi will be available for all attendees.

Don't bother to bring lunch, its FREE as well, courtesy of Microsoft!

Although Rob Chartier is spear-heading this event, I am very proud that all user groups leaders in Vancover are actively involved in things like:

- securing the BCIT venue
- securing sponsorship
- finding speakers
- spreading the word
- developing an event website

I should also thanks John Bristowe of Microsoft for being actively involved in planning with us this event and offering valuable ideas. He also organizes a weekly conference call where we all update one another on the status of things pertaining to TechFest 2009. It is shaping up to be a super festival of technology.

Tweaking IIS & web.config connection timeout setting

Microsoft Internet Information Services

If IIS is timing out when you upload large files, you can change "Connection Timeout" property to ensure that larger files can be uploaded successfully.

1. Go to Start –> All Programs -> Administrative Tools –> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
2. Right-click the virtual server you want to configure, and then choose Properties.
3. Click the Web Site tab.
4. In the Connections section, in the Connection timeout box, type the number of seconds you want IIS to wait before timing out.
5. Click OK to save settings.

Web.config

There are other settings that you can change in the web.config file that also affect connection timeout.

Update maxRequestLength and executionTimeout attributes belonging to the httpRuntime tag.

executionTimeout = <Time in Seconds>

maxRequestLength = <File size in KB> (by default for ASP.NET applications, its set to 4096 (4MB), but because SharePoint supports 50MB so its set to 51200)

Example:

<!-- 102400 = 100MB -->
<httpRuntime executionTimeout="999999" maxRequestLength="102400" />

Extending session timeout for SharePoint 2007 instance using forms-based autentication.

Change the timeout attribute belonging to the forms tag in the web.config file:

<forms loginUrl="Login.aspx" timeout="300"/>

This will force a timeout in 5 minutes of inactivity.

This setting equally applies to any ASP.NET application that uses forms-based authentication.

Using blogger for my blog

On Sunday September 20, 2009 I moved all my blog postings from my own SharePoint 2007 server located at http://cisa.ca/ to blogger.com. I have nothing against SharePoint 2007 as it served me quite well. I decided to move my blog because I started seriously falling behind on backups of the blog site and felt that sooner or later I may lose everything. I found blogger.com to be easy to use. More importantly, I do not need to worry about backups as I trust google will take care of that.

How do I disable User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Server 2008?

Control Panel => User Accounts


Click "Turn User Account Control on or off"

Uncheck "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer"

Click on "OK" button

How to unsubscribe (or remove) yourself from a SharePoint 2007 alert?

In SharePoint one can subscribe to any document libraray or list to be sent alerts when changes occur such us additions, deletions, and updates. This is done by choosing "Actions" => "Alert Me".


If one wishes not to receive alerts anymore, it is not that apparent how to do it. Well, you would need to go to "Site Actions" => "Site Settings" => "User Alerts". Choose the user in question and subsequently delete him/her from the appropriate list or document library alert.

Presentation to VanSPUG on Enhancing SharePoint with Silverlight 2.0

VanSPUG (Vancouver SharePoint User Group) is less than one year old. I can proudly say that I was a catalyst in the establishment of this young user group when I helped Peter McFarlane organize the launch event on September 17, 2008 at my BCIT workplace. Since then I have attended most of their meetings. Therefore, it was certainly an honor for me to be a speaker for the first time.


I had a blast when I presented at VanSPUG yesterday evening on the topic of "Enhance SharePoint with Silverlight 2.0". The event started just after 6:30 PM and ended promptly at 8:15 PM becuase we had to vacate the meeting room. Sherman was my host who did a good job introducing me at the start. The event was attended by about 30 people and was held at the Microsoft offices at 1111 West Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver. I would have liked to have questions from those who attended. Actually, I cannot recall even a single question. Oh well ...

For those who are interested in the resources clck here to download my powerpoint presentation + examples.

Enabling Entity Framework (ADO.NET Entity Data Model) in a SharePoint 2007 web.config file

The Entity Framework is considered to be the modern day successor to "LINQ to SQL". If you wish to use this technology in a SharePoint 2007 web part you will need to tweak your web.config file to accomodate the new assemblies that are associated with the Entity Framework. Here are the changes that you need to apply to your web.config file:


1) Add the following tags to the <compilation><assemblies> section:

<add assembly="System.Data.Entity, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />

<add assembly="System.Data.Entity.Design, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />

<add assembly="System.Web.Entity, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089" />

2) Add the following tags to the <compilation> section just under the closing </assemblies> tag:

<buildProviders>

<add extension=".edmx" type="System.Data.Entity.Design.AspNet.EntityDesignerBuildProvider" />

</buildProviders>

How can you get the thumbnail for an image in your SharePoint picture library?

This is much easier than I had imagined. At first I thought I need to do some programming with the SharePoint Object Model APIs. It turned out to be nothing of the sort.


Let us assume that you have a photograph located in your picture library named "pictures" at this URL:

http://www.spserver.com/spsite/pictures/joe_smith.jpg

The thumbnail for the above picture is located at:

http://www.spserver.com/spsite/pictures/_t/joe_smith_jpg.jpg

As you can see, here's what I did:

1) tag a directory "_t" to the the URL just before the filename.

2) tag "_jpg" to the filename just before the extention. This would have been "_gif" if you are dealing with a GIF file.

Voila, if you point your browser to this tweaked URL you will get your thumbnail.

You will get a larger image if you use _w instead of _t.

Painless eh. . .

How to use JavaScript to close an IE7 browser window without seeing the confirmation dialog?

<a href="javascript: window.open('','_parent','');window.close();">Close this window!</a><br />