The SharePoint Megathread: Making life miserable since Great Plains

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware / Software Crap > The SharePoint Megathread: Making life miserable since Great Plains

ghostinmyshell: Sep 17, 2004; I am very particular about biscuits, I'll have you know.

"Oh wow you made that search portal really fast and the COO loves it! The sample site you made is great as well. He's allowed us to purchase Standard and we need the entire organization done in about three weeks."

This is what I get for being too good at guessing how things work. I hope my replacement will forgive me since I only have three weeks to learn everything there is and get it up and running. Goodbye everyone.

# ? Jun 24, 2012 22:06

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# ? May 21, 2013 12:18

FormatAmerica: Jun 3, 2005

ghostinmyshell posted:

"Oh wow you made that search portal really fast and the COO loves it! The sample site you made is great as well. He's allowed us to purchase Standard and we need the entire organization done in about three weeks."

This is what I get for being too good at guessing how things work. I hope my replacement will forgive me since I only have three weeks to learn everything there is and get it up and running. Goodbye everyone.

And another ungovernable SharePoint implementation is born.

My recommendation: separate team sites, project sites, functional sites, and resource sites so you don't end up with a goddamn nightmare scenario of permissions inheritance & content ownership.

Team sites are for resources internal to that team, which might have a top-level department/divisional site; project sites are cross-functional & have a hard end-date after which the project is over/site is archived/deleted; functional sites are cross-functional and where people go to DO stuff (e.g. expense reports, sales tracking, w/e); resource sites are where people go to FIND information (e.g. financial reports).

This approach will keep everything nicely siloed so you can hand-off ongoing administration to the business owners without worrying about them loving up too terribly much. Downside is if you deploy multiple site collections you'll need to use Active Directory security groups as a basis for permissions as permission groups (and navigation

) are not shared across site collections.

# ? Jun 25, 2012 02:53

Tab8715: May 20, 2006

FormatAmerica posted:

And another ungovernable SharePoint implementation is born.
Team sites are for resources internal to that team, which might have a top-level department/divisional site; project sites are cross-functional & have a hard end-date after which the project is over/site is archived/deleted; functional sites are cross-functional and where people go to DO stuff (e.g. expense reports, sales tracking, w/e); resource sites are where people go to FIND information (e.g. financial reports).

That is genius, where would I find more info like this to study?

# ? Jun 25, 2012 06:39

Physical: Sep 26, 2007; by T. Finninho

Wow, there is a sharepoint thread here. Holy crap, I thought that it was too awful for goons to be suckered into using. And the name of the title is so fitting.

I'm looking for Sharepoint Designer alternatives. I'm hoping to god that some generous soul has a scoureforge or github project that has a sharepoint editor that doesn't take 3 minutes to refresh the design view whenever I update the code and has CODE FOLDING OH GOD WHY ISN'T IT IN THERE? Frontpage is better than this, why didn't they just upgrade frontpage? Eclipse is an awesome editor that gets used by a bunch of things, and there is a flavor of it made by Adobe for Flash. Why didn't MS do something like that.

I'm going back to read the OP but I just wanted to pop in and say that.

# ? Jun 25, 2012 14:04

cptInsane0: Apr 10, 2007; ...and a clown with no head

Tab8715 posted:

That is genius, where would I find more info like this to study?

I am pretty sure that is Microsoft's best practice anyway. They want you to use separate site collections for everything, so you don't lose all your stuff if something goes tits up.

Read the SharePoint section of the MSDN forums. I pieced together most of my knowledge from that, and also some certification courses the army has to which my friend gave me access.

There are also a few books. When I won the community contributor award, Microsoft gave me access to their library, but there were only like 5 good SharePoint ones.

# ? Jun 25, 2012 14:15

cptInsane0: Apr 10, 2007; ...and a clown with no head

Physical posted:

Wow, there is a sharepoint thread here. Holy crap, I thought that it was too awful for goons to be suckered into using. And the name of the title is so fitting.

I'm looking for Sharepoint Designer alternatives. I'm hoping to god that some generous soul has a scoureforge or github project that has a sharepoint editor that doesn't take 3 minutes to refresh the design view whenever I update the code and has CODE FOLDING OH GOD WHY ISN'T IT IN THERE? Frontpage is better than this, why didn't they just upgrade frontpage? Eclipse is an awesome editor that gets used by a bunch of things, and there is a flavor of it made by Adobe for Flash. Why didn't MS do something like that.

I'm going back to read the OP but I just wanted to pop in and say that.

As far as I know, you are stuck with sharepoint designer for the most part. There have been times when I have gone into the actual files in the sharepoint directory on the server and just used notepad++, but it is rare.

# ? Jun 25, 2012 14:17

CubanRefugee: Jul 1, 2003; El Jefe
Reppin' the Row since '26.

So I'm completely at a loss and maybe one of you fine folks can help me out here.

I have two lists, one for keeping track of daily tape backup work, and one for a weekly physical tape count.

List A has date, data center, and tape check in.
List B has date, data center, and physical tape count.

I'm trying to figure out a workflow that when A is modified with a check in number, that it creates a new item in B, adding todays date, the data center listed in the item in B, and subtracts the check in number from the prior days physical tape count, listing the new value.

That way, it's keeping a running total of the physical tape count in B, as we use up tapes.

I can't figure out how to get a proper workflow to do this for me.

Fake edit: If it's easier, I can combine both lists, and just have one master list with date, data center, tape check in, and physical count.

# ? Jun 25, 2012 22:17

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

You can use a SharePoint Designer workflow to do that.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/s...A010100591.aspx

Urit fucked around with this message at Jun 26, 2012 around 01:08

# ? Jun 26, 2012 01:04

CubanRefugee: Jul 1, 2003; El Jefe
Reppin' the Row since '26.

Urit posted:

You can use a SharePoint Designer workflow to do that.

CubanRefugee posted:

I'm trying to figure out a workflow...
I can't figure out how to get a proper workflow to do this for me.

Guess I should have mentioned that I'm using SPD 2010.

# ? Jun 26, 2012 01:49

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

So, the quick steps of what you'd have to do are:
Add -1 Days to Today (Add Time to Date action) and output to a variable.
Update an item in B, look up where you have something that uniquely identifies the item. You may need to make a Calculated Column in B that basically concatenates the date and data center ID to look up against, then concatenate the Date Variable and the Datacenter ID of Current Item, set the Tapes Remaining field to Look Up Item in B Where UIDColumn is UID, column Tapes Remaining, minus 1. (There's a lot of repetition here in the lookups)
Create a new item in B with Today's date as the date/time field and the Tapes remaining as Tapes Remaining field to Look Up Item in B Where UIDColumn is UID, column Tapes Remaining.

I don't know how you "add" more tapes back to the library.

Edit: Why am I hanging out in this thread, I do this crap all day.

Urit fucked around with this message at Jun 26, 2012 around 03:36

# ? Jun 26, 2012 03:28

cptInsane0: Apr 10, 2007; ...and a clown with no head

Urit posted:

Edit: Why am I hanging out in this thread, I do this crap all day.

Because we are all super cool and have a shared abusive relationship with SharePoint. It's like a support group.

# ? Jun 26, 2012 12:05

wyoak: Feb 14, 2005; wutdawhooie?

has anyone implemented powerpivot for sharepoint? I'm confused about the licensing - it requires SQL enterprise, but it'll be on a different server than our SQL backend, so do we need another SQL license for the powerpivot application server, or does the SQL license cover that even though it's different hardware?

# ? Jun 26, 2012 16:19

Stugazi: Mar 1, 2004; Who me, Bitter?

What are your thoughts on Sharepoint design customization? Marketing/Training is pushing hard for a custom corporate branded Sharepoint site and is ignoring our warnings on the costs involved.

$50k plus has been tossed around for cost.

# ? Jun 28, 2012 00:14

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

JollyRancher posted:

What are your thoughts on Sharepoint design customization? Marketing/Training is pushing hard for a custom corporate branded Sharepoint site and is ignoring our warnings on the costs involved.

$50k plus has been tossed around for cost.

That's lowballing, too. To get a good professional design you're looking at around $1-2 mil USD if you want one that actually works and is not a lovely photoshop job that regresses 80% of sharepoint's existing out of the box functionality.

# ? Jun 28, 2012 00:58

hirvox: Sep 8, 2009

Urit posted:

That's lowballing, too. To get a good professional design you're looking at around $1-2 mil USD if you want one that actually works and is not a lovely photoshop job that regresses 80% of sharepoint's existing out of the box functionality.

Or tries to customize something that Microsoft really, really wants to be left alone. There are parts that you either need to (partially) re-implement or render your farm into an unsupported state if you want to make any modifications to them. Microsoft's been pushing customers to accept the default look-and-feel for internal sites and only slightly tweak it with themes.

# ? Jun 28, 2012 04:21

Tab8715: May 20, 2006

What are the best or competing products to SharePoint?

I'm thinking IBM FileNet, DropBox, Box.net, Huddle but these aren't really directly competing either.

# ? Jun 28, 2012 09:28

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

Alfresco and other collaborative CMSes, generally.

# ? Jun 28, 2012 14:51

Physical: Sep 26, 2007; by T. Finninho

Is there a way to get Document Library lists into a SSRS report?

# ? Jun 28, 2012 15:06

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

Physical posted:

Is there a way to get Document Library lists into a SSRS report?

Just use the SharePoint Web Services.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...=sql.90%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...ebsvclists.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles...harePoint-lists
http://pramodaachi.blog.com/2011/05...008-r2-reports/

Urit fucked around with this message at Jun 29, 2012 around 01:48

# ? Jun 29, 2012 01:44

Physical: Sep 26, 2007; by T. Finninho

Urit posted:

Just use the SharePoint Web Services.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...=sql.90%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...ebsvclists.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles...harePoint-lists
http://pramodaachi.blog.com/2011/05...008-r2-reports/

Oh uh, no. No programming for this one. But thanks anyway! I used a workflow to copy the information I want to a regular list.

# ? Jun 29, 2012 12:24

unruly: May 12, 2002; YES!!!

I tell you what: Being a web developer for non-SharePoint sites, and suddenly being asked to customize how SharePoint looks (however minor) is a huge clusterfuck of vomit. Classes are completely unintelligible, JavaScript events hooked right in the HTML, style attributes being used for pretty much everything.

The most damning thing I've seen so far is that the calendar views don't actually have any elements inside the table that makes up the grid. No, they're ABSOLUTELY PLACED BLOCKS, rendered elsewhere.

What a nightmare.

# ? Jun 29, 2012 17:54

Nam Taf: Jun 25, 2005; I am Fat Man, hear me roar!

Speaking of calendars, if I want to invite specific attendees from an exchange address book, am I supposed to only use meeting workspaces? There doesn't seem to be any 'attendees' field and the 'location' field is just a string textbox, so doesn't allow for any linking back to exchange resources.

I want to send out a meeting invitation from the Sharepoint calendar to a sharepoint permissions group and also allocate a meeting room resource. Why is this so difficult?

# ? Jun 30, 2012 06:42

FormatAmerica: Jun 3, 2005

unruly posted:

I tell you what: Being a web developer for non-SharePoint sites, and suddenly being asked to customize how SharePoint looks (however minor) is a huge clusterfuck of vomit. Classes are completely unintelligible, JavaScript events hooked right in the HTML, style attributes being used for pretty much everything.

The most damning thing I've seen so far is that the calendar views don't actually have any elements inside the table that makes up the grid. No, they're ABSOLUTELY PLACED BLOCKS, rendered elsewhere.

What a nightmare.

This will probably help:

http://sharepointexperience.com/css...um=urlshortener

# ? Jun 30, 2012 14:54

unruly: May 12, 2002; YES!!!

FormatAmerica posted:

This will probably help:

http://sharepointexperience.com/css...um=urlshortener

It does. Somewhat.

The problem is that when building websites, I usually try to include some extra-descriptive class markings for things like categories or tags that allow me to apply additional styles to elements. It doesn't appear that this is the case for SharePoint, which I can kind of understand due to the context.

I run into further stumbling blocks trying to include some JS in the page to parse and apply classes to calendar items. It seems to be run before the calendar items are fully created, which is odd because the JS is located at the bottom-most part of the page.

To be perfectly honest, I've kind of given up doing anything fancy in SharePoint. Now I just apply the Microsoft-sanctioned stuff (font tags and all...) with SharePoint Designer and letting that be the extent of it.

# ? Jul 3, 2012 13:12

Physical: Sep 26, 2007; by T. Finninho

I'm trying to create a new form for a list in Sharepoint Designer and I am getting "Could not save the list changes to the server."

I have full permissions to the site and the list.

# ? Jul 3, 2012 13:48

Sonic H: Dec 8, 2004; Me love you long time

Over the last few months, one of my Directors has taken upon himself to implement a Sharepoint server for potential use within our Company. His basis for this is "because Microsoft". We are a small Consultancy (literally 9 people) and none of us are SysAdmins of any kind, let alone have the capacity to maintain such an application. The server he's put it on is a small HP Proliant System with (I think) 2GB RAM and a fairly modest CPU.

I'm the Quality Manager of the company and have set up an SVN server (which works fine) matched with a ticket system called BugTracker, again, which works fine and everyone is happy with the setup. It's quick and easy for folk to use and, more importantly, simple for me to manage.

Since he's one of the Directors, there's little I can do to change his mind other than present reasoned arguments to him and the other 2 Directors about why Sharepoint is a monumentally bad idea in a company as small as this. My own experience of Sharepoint is in my former company (much bigger) and it was poo poo. Slow, unresponsive, cumbersome, etc.

What I'm asking here I guess is, based on your own experiences of managing/running/using/swearing at a Sharepoint implementation, are you able to provide me with a list of why using Sharepoint is a bad idea (especially given our Company size) please?

Or, if you think it's a good idea. Based on what I've read here and in other places, I suspect the positives will be few and far between.

(on a related note, he wants to use Sharepoint as a Version Control System along side our SVN solution for "documents" and use SVN for code as "that's what it was designed for"

Foregoing the arguments about why this is a bad idea in itself (more than one VC system is as good as none at all), the earlier posts in the thread do suggest that using it as a ticket/Repo system is just asking for pain?)

Sonic H fucked around with this message at Jul 6, 2012 around 08:12

# ? Jul 6, 2012 07:44

Sonic H: Dec 8, 2004; Me love you long time

Edit: Quote is not edit :|

# ? Jul 6, 2012 08:11

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

SharePoint is like literally any other piece of software. If you set it up poorly, it will perform poorly.

That said, I would argue that SharePoint is a great collaboration and CMS platform for a company of any size, as well as a useful search platform. It is, however, very generalized and cannot provide specific functionality that more specialized software can provide - for example, SVN can provide differences (I think? I use VSTS) and link code changes to bugs, but SharePoint can't without a massive amount of custom workflowing/weird lists. I hate hate hate the "make everything a SharePoint List!" approach, simply because it becomes unwieldly and unsustainable, as well as slow as hell. Use specific software where possible. The basis of your argument should be that the specific software will provide functionality out of the box above and beyond what can be done in SharePoint, since SharePoint will require massive dev effort to implement even simple additional features.

Also, he's setting himself up for failure with that server spec.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...y/cc262485.aspx

Technet is great here, since it has huge planning checklists and everything - use them. If you do, you get a good system. If you slapdash everything together, it's going to suck.

Urit fucked around with this message at Jul 6, 2012 around 16:31

# ? Jul 6, 2012 16:29

Physical: Sep 26, 2007; by T. Finninho

Why won't my jquery code work on a list pop-up edit form?! javascript DOM code doesn't work either (I use document.getElementById).

Cross posting from the JQuery thread

Gazpacho posted:

A few details would be nice. IE version, jQuery code excerpt, HTML source excerpt, what your debugging shows. Things like that.

Yea I figured as much but its such a standard bit of code that it should work. It's gotta be a sharepoint problem. It works great in Chrome and not in IE sharepoint. So I was hoping someone knew of some sort of incompatibility. But here is the info you asked for.

Debugging shows nothing because IE debugger is slow as balls and impossible to use (I did check it however and there are no errors or warnings). Sharepoint Designer 2010, IE9 32-bit. And Like I said, works perfectly in chrome. I then decided to use old school DOM getElementById and even that doesn't work.

The html is a standard select with some options.

code:

<select title="Responsible Role">
   <option>Opt1</option>
   <option>Opt2</option>
   <option>Opt3</option>
</select>

code:

function RemoveNonMatchingOptionsFromSelect(fieldName, value){
	$('select[title="Responsible Role"] option').each(function () {
		alert($(this).html()); //this alert never even fires in IE
		
		if($(this).text().toLowerCase().indexOf(value.toLowerCase()) < 0 && $(this).text().toLowerCase().indexOf("none") < 0)
		{
			//alert($(this).text() + ' ' + $(this).val());
			$(this).remove();
		}
	});
}
  $(document).ready(function() { 
	RemoveNonMatchingOptionsFromSelect("Responsible Role", readCookie("ItemName"));		
});

This is suppose to run on a page that has a pop-up form where the element doesn't exist until the user clicks the add new item button. The field has a title tag of "Responsible Role" but using the sharepoint assigned id doesn't work either. I think it is because the popup window shows up later, but the document.ready fires when the new form comes up anyway so it knows to call the function on the popup render. However, I can use jquery to select items that get rendered on the first pass. I can at least select them and hide them.

Wierd thing is, I swear this worked a week ago. And I don't know or think anything changed in-between then and now.

Sulla-Marius 88 posted:

This has nothing to do with jquery but yesterday at work we noticed that IE 64-bit doesnt work well with sharepoint, toolbars etc go missing. Try using 32-bit and see if that makes a difference. It won't necessarily help your usability but it might help tracking down a fix.

I realized that a while ago and so I've been using 32-bit.

# ? Jul 6, 2012 17:39

ghostinmyshell: Sep 17, 2004; I am very particular about biscuits, I'll have you know.

As expected my sharepoint deployment is still in the planning and deployment phase. Nothing purchased yet, because "holy poo poo that's expensive!" So it may completely die off.

I've been looking at the Sharepoint 2013 and really impressed with how well it's documented compared to 2010. I hope it comes out before I have to buy 2010.

# ? Jul 18, 2012 02:28

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

I'm guessing SP2013 is coming in November, because that's when the MS SharePoint conference is and they like to RTM with conferences. This is complete speculation though. Also, SharePoint Foundation is free, though I assume you need features for your product that are part of the actual server product.

# ? Jul 18, 2012 17:02

Physical: Sep 26, 2007; by T. Finninho

The problem I mentioned earlier had nothing to do with jquery and everything to do with IE. Apparently IE and sharepoint render DropDowns that have 20+ options in a very esoteric way! Oh my god it is so stupid. http://sympmarc.com/2010/05/19/two-...orms-dropdowns/

# ? Jul 18, 2012 19:17

beefnoodle: Aug 7, 2004; I'll have the soup.

wyoak posted:

has anyone implemented powerpivot for sharepoint? I'm confused about the licensing - it requires SQL enterprise, but it'll be on a different server than our SQL backend, so do we need another SQL license for the powerpivot application server, or does the SQL license cover that even though it's different hardware?

License on each server. Anywhere there's a SQL Server component installed requires a license.

# ? Jul 20, 2012 14:41

~Coxy: Dec 9, 2003; R.I.P. Inter-OS Sass - b.2000AD d.2003AD

I'm trying to debug a problem with a web part that hosts a ASMX web method.
Items in sharepoint use this service to send the item information to another app.

The web part is "WebService".
The web method is SendItemWebService.asmx.
The URL that gets embedded into the sharepoint page is http://blah/_layouts/WebService/Sen...Service.asmx/js

On the production machine, everything is fine thank god.
On the dev server, the URL is 403.
Every setting I can find in IIS seems to be the same.

Any ideas? Thanks guys.

# ? Jul 23, 2012 02:51

Tab8715: May 20, 2006

Urit posted:

I'm guessing SP2013 is coming in November, because that's when the MS SharePoint conference is and they like to RTM with conferences. This is complete speculation though. Also, SharePoint Foundation is free, though I assume you need features for your product that are part of the actual server product.

The entire conference site is in Metro, so I'd suspect so.

http://www.mssharepointconference.com/

# ? Jul 23, 2012 06:15

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

~Coxy posted:

I'm trying to debug a problem with a web part that hosts a ASMX web method.
Items in sharepoint use this service to send the item information to another app.

The web part is "WebService".
The web method is SendItemWebService.asmx.
The URL that gets embedded into the sharepoint page is http://blah/_layouts/WebService/Sen...Service.asmx/js

On the production machine, everything is fine thank god.
On the dev server, the URL is 403.
Every setting I can find in IIS seems to be the same.

Any ideas? Thanks guys.

Is anonymous access enabled for the prod server but not dev? What's the rights of the user on Dev? Anything in Fiddler traces if you try to hit the web service through powershell with new-webserviceproxy and/or through IE? 403, especially for Layouts, generally means that a SharePoint permission is missing, not an IIS permission.

# ? Jul 23, 2012 18:51

BaconBeast: Aug 18, 2006; I'll take the hundy pounder and fries, thanks.

I'm sorry if this is a really basic question, but I'm trying to find a good way to do this, and I'm new at SharePoint.

We have in SharePoint 2010 Foundation a list of all contacts that all users can see. Our management wants to add in a column for addresses that only the management group can see.

Ideally I'd have a view that shows the address column that only management can see but you can't seem to do permissions on a view so my solution is to have a workflow that copies the public columns into a private list (so the users can change their own phone numbers and email addresses etc) that runs say once a day and the manager can work with the physical addresses.

Is this even possible? How would any of you tackle this?

# ? Jul 26, 2012 01:32

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

Can't do column-level permissions or view-level permissions with out of the box SharePoint, period.

I would not suggest workflows since it creates data-sync nightmares.

If you don't want to do anything except use basic functionality or spend any money, I'd say create a linked list setup linked by contact email address or something, and pull data from the other list, then restrict permissions on that list. Create a Lookup column pointing at the unique ID of the user, then Include Additional Columns. Create a second column called Address. Restrict the permission of the list with these 2 columns. Now you can create a new item in the Address list, select a Contact from the contact list, and enter the Address. The only caveats are 1. the Contact lookup column MUST be absolutely unique per contact and 2. the Address for the contact won't automatically exist - that is, the contact won't show in the Address list with a blank address. This also means that technically you could probably enter more than 1 address for the same contact.

Urit fucked around with this message at Jul 26, 2012 around 06:00

# ? Jul 26, 2012 05:57

hirvox: Sep 8, 2009

BaconBeast posted:

Is this even possible? How would any of you tackle this?

Like Urit said, no. Even the out-of-the-box columns like the survey filler's name just fake it by changing how the field is displayed for non-administrators. The data itself is still accessible by anyone.

The proper Sharepoint way for letting people manage their own information with selective visibility is Sharepoint Server's User Profile Service.

# ? Jul 26, 2012 07:25

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# ? May 21, 2013 12:18

Urit: Oct 22, 2010

hirvox posted:

The proper Sharepoint way for letting people manage their own information with selective visibility is Sharepoint Server's User Profile Service.

Which doesn't exist in Foundation, which BaconBeast said they were using.

# ? Jul 26, 2012 13:49

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware / Software Crap > The SharePoint Megathread: Making life miserable since Great Plains