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SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: 3 Ways to Deploy InfoPath Templates to SharePoint

clock April 28, 2010 10:51 by author Richard

This topic explains brief explanation about SharePoint 2010. If you want better understanding of SharePoint 2010, we recommend you to try ASPHostCentral and you can start from our lowest Standard Plan @4.99/month to host your SharePoint 2010 site.

The amount of steps you have to take to deploy InfoPath form templates to SharePoint depends largely on how you design and plan to use your InfoPath form templates in SharePoint.

This article outlines the options you have where deploying InfoPath form templates to SharePoint are concerned and tells you when it is best to use which deployment method.

You can deploy InfoPath form templates in one of the following 3 ways to SharePoint:

1. To a SharePoint Form Library.
2. As a SharePoint content type.
3. As an administrator-approved form template.

1. Deploy an InfoPath form Template to a SharePoint form library

The simplest and quickest way to deploy an InfoPath form template is to a SharePoint form library.

You can deploy an InfoPath form template in one of two ways to a SharePoint form library:

1. Create a SharePoint form library from within InfoPath when publishing the form template to SharePoint.

2. Pre-create a SharePoint form library in SharePoint and then update the InfoPath form template of an existing SharePoint form library from within InfoPath.

When to use?
Deploy an InfoPath form template directly to a SharePoint form library when you don’t care about reusing the InfoPath form template across several sites or in several SharePoint form libraries.

2. Deploy an InfoPath form Template as a SharePoint content type

SharePoint content types provide several benefits one of which is having the ability to reuse a single content type across several sites and document libraries.

Where InfoPath and SharePoint are concerned, deploying an InfoPath form template as a content type provides the following benefits:

- Being able to deploy an InfoPath form template once and then reuse this template in more than one SharePoint Form Library.
- Being able to define several InfoPath form templates on a single SharePoint Form Library.

When to use?
Deploy an InfoPath form template as a SharePoint content type if you would like to reuse the InfoPath form template across several sites and/or in several SharePoint form libraries.

3. Deploy a template as an admin-approved InfoPath form template

You are forced to deploy an InfoPath browser-compatible form template as an administrator-approved template, whenever you write .NET managed code (C# or Visual Basic) in the form template using either VSTA or Visual Studio, and want to browser-enable the form template when you deploy it to SharePoint.

Administrator-approved deployment of InfoPath form templates to SharePoint is by far the most involved (i.e., it requires the most steps) method of deploying InfoPath form templates to SharePoint, so it is recommended that you consider your InfoPath form template design carefully if you want to avoid this deployment method.

Note: If an InfoPath form template is not browser-compatible, you can only deploy it directly to a SharePoint form library or as a content type.

When to use?
If you have an InfoPath browser-compatible form template that contains code and want to deploy it to SharePoint and browser-enable it.

Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com

What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:

- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!

Happy hosting!

 



SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: New Features in SharePoint 2010

clock April 27, 2010 06:43 by author Richard

This topic explains brief explanation about SharePoint 2010. If you want better understanding of SharePoint 2010, we recommend you to try ASPHostCentral and you can start from our lowest Standard Plan @4.99/month to host your SharePoint 2010 site.

Microsoft is releasing a slew of new technologies in 2010, and one of the most important of them is SharePoint 2010. Previously known by the code name SharePoint 14, SharePoint 2010 marks a significant upgrade to the SharePoint product. Here are ten of the most important things about the SharePoint 2010 release, which is expected to be available in the first half of 2010.

1. New SharePoint editions

In an effort to better unify the SharePoint lineup, Microsoft will make some big changes to the SharePoint editions with the 2010 release. Windows SharePoint Server (WSS) is gone, and so is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). The free WSS has been replaced by the new SharePoint Foundation 2010. MOSS is replaced by SharePoint Server 2010, which will be available in either the Standard or Enterprise edition as well as in editions for strictly internal sites and for Internet or extranet sites.

2. New hardware requirements

Like the majority of new Microsoft servers, SharePoint 2010 will ship only as a 64-bit product. If you're deploying SharePoint on new hardware, this situation shouldn't be a problem, but it's definitely a consideration if you're planning to upgrade an existing SharePoint server.

3. New software requirements

In addition to new hardware requirements, SharePoint 2010 will require an x64 edition of either Windows Server 2008 or Server 2008 R2. It also requires a 64-bit version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2005.

4. SharePoint Best Practices Analyzer

With the SharePoint 2010 release, SharePoint Best Practices Analyzer will be incorporated as part of the base SharePoint product. This tool provides Microsoft's guidance for SharePoint implementation and troubleshooting. A Problems and Solutions page in the analyzer helps you solve common implementation problems.

5. FAST Search

The new SharePoint release will incorporate the FAST Search technology that Microsoft acquired from the Norway-based Fast Search & Transfer company. The FAST technology provides a superset of the original SharePoint search capabilities. As its name implies, FAST Search is designed for high-end scalability. It supports a number of enhanced capabilities, including a content-processing pipeline, metadata extraction, visual search, and advanced linguistics.

6. Usage reporting and logging

SharePoint 2010 includes a new database designed to support usage reporting and logging. The usage database is extensible, allowing third-party vendors to create custom reports based on the information it contains.

7. Visio Services

Visio Services in SharePoint 2010 lets users share and collaborate on Visio diagrams. A built-in viewer lets SharePoint users view Visio files in their browser without having Visio installed on their system. Visio Services also retrieves and renders any external data used in the Visio diagrams.

8. Enhanced collaboration features

SharePoint 2010 supports tagging content as well as providing enhanced blog authoring capabilities. There's a new group authentication feature that's based on distribution list or organization and a new rich text editor for creating wikis. In addition, calendars from Microsoft Exchange Server can be merged with SharePoint calendars.

9. New browser support

SharePoint 2010 supports an extended set of browsers. It's designed to support XHTML 1.0–compliant browsers and will support Internet Explorer (IE) 8.0 and IE 7.0, Firefox, and Safari. Notably, IE 6.0 isn't supported. So far, there's been no official mention of Google Chrome or Opera.

10. Enhanced SharePoint Designer

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 sports a new UI, improved workflow, and improved integration between designers. Although there were doubts about the Office 2007 ribbon-style interface when it was first released, Microsoft has been steadily putting the ribbon UI in many of its products, including SharePoint 2010. The new designer also has a tabbed interface and provides breadcrumb navigation.

Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com

What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:

- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!

Happy hosting!

 



SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: ASP to MOSS

clock April 24, 2010 07:23 by author Richard

This topic explains brief explanation about SharePoint 2010. If you want better understanding of SharePoint 2010, we recommend you to try ASPHostCentral.com and you can start from our lowest Standard Plan @4.99/month to host your SharePoint 2010 site.

Introduction


We are already have a number of ASP .Net Web
Applications consisting web forms, user controls, business layer, and data access layer, Many times a need arises to add this web application to a SharePoint site.

This article discusses different/various ways of integrating aspx pages of a web application to a SharePoint site.

The main advantages of this approach are:

- Business users and end users need not go to a separate web application URL(All those pages can be seen within the SharePoint site itself.
- Once the integration is done, the SharePoint site’s security and access rules i.e. Authentication and Authorization (is) are in place without any additional work.

If you finished reading and liked this article, you may consider to choose ASPHostCentral to host your Sharepoint 2010 site. You can start from our lowest Standard Plan @4.99/month. Let’s try it!!

Solutions

1. Custom Built Web Parts

A good use of web parts would be where you want to build a widget/mini-application that could be put on many/different web part pages across sites.

With this option you need to build your UI using the Web Part framework, where your logic can be within other .Net assemblies or in a web service, just like in any other .Net application.

Pros:
- Built using ASP.Net Web Part framework
- Deployed via “Web Part install package” or the “new Feature/Solution Deployment” mechanism
- SharePoint application provides hosting framework for putting these Web Parts on Web Part pages
- Communications framework for talking with/to other Web Parts
- Designed to be highly re-usable across many sites with minimal effort

Cons:
- No drag and drop UI functionality for laying out your UI i.e. no design time surface
- A framework that developers must learn to work within.
- Developing many web parts is not feasible and also raises performance issues.

2. User Controls and the SmartPart

In this method the developer can develop/create a user control and drop it in the smart part. This method is similar to creating web parts but here the developer has the privilege of drag-drop functionality This approach has the limitations of custom built web parts

The application UI can be built using ASP.Net user controls or by converting the aspx and aspx.cs pages to user controls, and then use SmartPart to deliver these User Controls via a web part

The Son of SmartPart is a Web Part that is able to "host" an ASP.Net 2.0 User Control.

Pros:
- Simple development experience.
- You get a design surface to build you UI
- Deployment is reasonably straight forward
- Can use Web Part connection framework if desired

Cons:
- Deployment not managed via Solution deployment mechanism Out of the Box (you could build a solution to deploy the Son of Smart Part)
- Slightly different deployment of User Control files and assemblies (a .bat file can be used for easy deployment) during development.

3. _Layouts Folder Approach:

Using _layouts based application is the best approach when you want to extend every site with some functionality such as additional administrative pages.

A _layouts application is when you develop an ASP.Net Web Application and deploy it to the location c:\program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\template\layout. This is a special directory that gets "virtualized" in each SharePoint site i.e. in each SharePoint site you will have a /_layouts path from the root of the web.

E.g. http://servername//sites/sitename/_layouts.
This means that you can make your application available under each SharePoint site e.g. http://servername/sites/sitename/_layouts/MyApp/SomePage.aspx

In fact this is how all the SharePoint administration pages are delivered in each site.

Pros:
- Great way to make your functionality available in every site
- Context sensitive access to the SharePoint object model. Great for doing work on the site that the user happens to be working in at the time.

Cons:

- Master Page integration is possible, but you need to make changes to each aspx page.
- Deployment not managed via Solution deployment mechanism.
- The pages can be accessed from any site existing on that server farm.
- The pages don’t inherit the security and access rules from SharePoint.

4. ASPX pages added to SharePoint Site

This option allows you to add your ASP.Net application pages into your SharePoint Site.  It also provides for compiling all the code behind of your pages into a DLL. In a nutshell this option allows you to build your ASP.Net application outside of SharePoint, build it, test it & then add it to SharePoint.
 

Here is how to do it:

1. Install the Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects extension.  This gives you the 'old style' web    projects in Visual Studio, so you can compile down to a single DLL

2. START -> File -> New Project -> ASP.NET Web Application - Name it "ASPtoSP"

3. Add reference to Microsoft. SharePoint

4. In the Solution Explorer create a folder “~masterurl” and add master page “default.Master” inside it

5. Replace code behind for the master with:

using System;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace ASPtoSp._masterurl

{

          public partial class_default : System.Web.UI.MasterPage

          {

          protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

         {

         }

         }

}

6. In the designer, rename ContentPlaceHolder's ID to "PlaceHolderMain"

7. Delete Default.aspx, and add new page – “SamplePage.aspx”

After adding all your files right click on the project in solution explorer and choose convert to web application project. This will create partial class for all your aspx pages i.e. designer.cs.

8. Replace source content with the following:

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~masterurl/default.master" CodeBehind="SamplePage.aspx" Inherits="ASPtoSP.SamplePage" Title="Untitled Page" %>

<asp:Content ID="Content5" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderMain" runat="server">

Testing Page...

<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label>

</asp:Content>

NOTE:
we have to change the Inherits attribute to add the assembly name. For example, if the namespace is 'SampleSiteNamespace' and the assembly name that the page uses for code-behind is SampleWebSiteAssembly, then we set Inherits="SampleSiteNamespace.SampleWebSiteAssembly", and this assembly must be in the bin of the SharePoint site

Give the namespace as ASPtoSP to both aspx.cs and designer.cs file.

9. Project properties -> Build -> Output path:

Point it to \BIN folder of our SharePoint Web application.

E.g. C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\moss.litwareinc.com80\bin

You can also manually copy your projects DLL into the \BIN folder each time.

10. Compile your project.

11. Open the web.config file for the SharePoint Web Application

E.g. C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\moss.litwareinc.com80\web.config

12. Add the following line to the SafeControls section (change to suit your assembly and namespace


<SafeControl Assembly=”ASPtoSP” Namespace=”ASPtoSP” TypeName=”*”/>

13. Change the

<trust level=”WSS_Minimal” originUrl=”” /> line to <trust level=”WSS_Medium” originUrl=””/>

Add the following line under the <PageParserPath> section:

<PageParserPath VirtualPath=”/*” CompilationMode=”Always” AllowServerSideScript=”true” IncludeSubFolders=”True” />

Change MaxControls Value from 200 to 800

For viewing the errors set

debug=”on”
callStack=”True”
customErrors mode=”off”

14. Open your site in SharePoint Designer and drag and drop your SamplePage.aspx page into a folder in your site.

Or you can also deploy these pages to one of the SharePoint web application as a feature.


For this you need to write one feature.xml and module.xml and install using stsadm utility.

15. Browse to your page E.g.

http://moss.litwareinc.com/TestApp/TestPages.aspx

16. You should now have your aspx page running in SharePoint.


One great thing about this option is that you could build your applicaiton outside of SharePoint with any old MasterPage, then deploy to SharePoint and swap out the masterpage string for the correct one.  Thus being able to develop and debug outside of SharePoint and then deploy and test inside SharePoint. 

A note on debugging:  If you want to debug your code once it is running inside SharePoint then all you need to do is attach the Visual Studio debugger to the correct w3wp.exe process (Debug -> Attach to process), set your break points and then hit your page in a browser.


Pros:
-
Simple development experience. Develop outside SharePoint first if desired.
- You get a design surface to build you UI.

-
Deployment reasonably straight forward, can be deployed as a feature packaged in a solution package.

Cons:
-
Slightly different deployment of User Control files and assemblies ( a .bat file can be used for easy deployment) during development.

5. Using Page Viewer Web Part:

We can use Page viewer Web part available out of box with SharePoint.
In this approach, the asp. Net application runs independent of SharePoint , so we can’t get current logged in user for SharePoint

The only way to get currently logged in user in web part and pass it as query string to asp.net page, parse this query string in aspx pages.

The out of box Web parts doesn’t allow us to pass logged in query string, for this you need to create a wrapper for page viewer web part.

Pros:
- Easier development
- Web part can be deployed as a solution package
- No need to make any change in existing ASP.Net application

Cons:
- The pages don’t inherit the security and access rules from SharePoint.
- ASP.Net application runs independent of SharePoint, needs to be hosted on a web server.

Conclusion

The best approach to be used depends upon your requirements. In our experience the best way is to add aspx pages to sharepoint uasing asp.net web application. In this way it can be easily deployed and removed as and when required.

Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com

What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:

- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!

Happy hosting!