I’ve always been a lazy programmer and if you can believe it, I see this as a good thing. I never want to write anything more than once. (I’ve written an assembler-based keyboard handler for DOS. Do I need to do it again? As much fun as it was: no.) I also believe that the…
Lookup columns in SharePoint can be very useful as a way to standardize input values. One of the drawbacks of Lookup columns is that they violate the Rules of Data Normalization (see my previous post entitled “SharePoint Is Not a Database”). Specifically, by storing the text value of the lookup rather than the ID, we…
With Windows Vista and IE7, Microsoft introduced the Windows Common Feed List. This is a great facility that lets you share your RSS feeds between IE and Outlook (and any other Windows application that you want to use to access it). While I really like the capability, I’ve been frustrated that my feeds list is…
This is a simple enough task with a little JavaScript. Inserting the script below into your master page will output the date and time in the simplest way possible when the page is rendered: If your language is American English, you will see the following: Fri Oct 24 18:19:06 EDT 2008. Of course, if you’d…
This is something that I’ve told people more times than they really want to hear. Sure, SharePoint sits on top of SQL Server, which is an excellent database, but SharePoint itself is not a database! So is this a dire “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” message? Absolutely not. With planning and forethought, you…
This one might fall into the "Duh, Marc" category, but when I get stuck, I figure maybe someone else out there might get stuck, too. (And it makes me feel better to think that way.) I was trying to get Skype set up on my Dell Latitude D820 laptop this morning (which is running Vista),…
By default, workflow history will "disappear" after 60 days. Microsoft has built this into MOSS intentionally to ensure good performance. By deleting old workflow history, it’s more likely (but hardly guaranteed) that the Workflow History list (/Lists/Workflow History by default) will stay below the magic 2000 items per list limit. (See the "Working with Large…
At one of my clients, I’m using a pretty simple SharePoint Designer workflow to manage their Purchase Order approval process. About half the time, the workflow runs fine. The other half, the workflow instance gets stuck with the status ‘Failed on Start (retrying)’. If I terminate the “stuck” instance and fire it off again manually,…
I’ve had several clients ask about this, and my answer to date has been “It’s a known ‘feature’ or bug.” I just ran across this Microsoft KB article that shows you how to fix this issue by loading the 953749 hotfix: SYMPTOMS You use Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to add a Custom List Form…
Here’s a nice tip to help clean up the spam that you tend to get in the comments of your Live Space, thanks to Matt Farrington-Smith in the UK (http://windowslive.uk.msn.com/rss/article.aspx?cp-documentid=9257705). Instead of navigating to your default Spaces homepage we’re going to visit the ‘Mobile’ version. If your Spaces default page is http://yourspacesname.spaces.live.com then your mobile…