Author: Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

Infopath form – drop down field not updating with new values

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

This one had me stumped for days. Infopath form with drop down field populated by internal values in the drop-down.

I needed to add one option, which I did and uploaded the form. I could see the version number updating on the form (I display that as a field) but the drop-down wouldn’t change!

Turns out I had a read-only and updatable versions of the form. The read-only version is displayed after the form has been submitted. I was editing the read-only version not the editable one that gets filled in. Doh!…

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Setting AssociatedMembersGroup using Client Object Model

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

I had some code that set the AssociatedMembersGroup in SharePoint using the Client Object Model. For whatever reason (possibly a CU recently installed), the code below no longer works:

ClientContext lClientContext = new ClientContext(vSiteURL);
lClientContext.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(Utils.APP_USERNAME, Utils.APP_PASSWORD, Utils.APP_DOMAIN);
Web lWeb = lClientContext.Web;

lClientContext.Load(lWeb, website => website.AssociatedMemberGroup, website => website.SiteGroups);
lClientContext.ExecuteQuery();

foreach (Group lGroup in lWeb.SiteGroups)
{
if (lGroup.Title == vGroupName)
{
lWeb.AssociatedMemberGroup = lGroup;
lWeb.Update();
lClientContext.ExecuteQuery();
break;
}
}

I had to change to doing this inside my create group method:

 ClientContext lClientContext = new ClientContext(vSiteURL);
lClientContext.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(Utils.APP_USERNAME, Utils.APP_PASSWORD, Utils.APP_DOMAIN);
Web lWeb = lClientContext.Web;

GroupCreationInformation lGroupDef = new GroupCreationInformation();
lGroupDef.Title
…
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Controlling the parallel port using Ubuntu, Mono and C#

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

I have an old PC that I use to control my christmas lights. They are driven by an electronic box that I build that plugs into the parallel port which then drives 8 outputs to switch them on or off.

I had written a C++ program that I was previously running on an old Dos box, but the machine this year. I opted to use a slightly newer spare machine and to run Ubuntu on it. I was keen to use Mono to learn a bit about it (as I program in C#.Net on Windows for a living).

Unfortunately there’s no libraries in C# for accessing parallel ports (at least not that I could find).…

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SSIS Text File Data Source Quote Delimiter

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

I have an SSIS package that imports data from various comma-delimited text files that use quotes as the text delimiter.

The package works fine on my local machine, however when I deploy it to the server, the quote delimiter is ignored and all my data contains the quotes around the text. Worse, integer fields fail to convert as to SSIS it looks like the field is a string (“1”) rather than an integer (1).

Turns out that because the filenames of the text files are specified at runtime (they come from a variable in the database), the text delimiter field in the text file connection is also ignored.…

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Setting timezone for appointment using EWS

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

I had an issue with creating appointments in Exchange using EWS. The appointment would create fine, the time would be correct, but the Time Zone set would be Monrovia, Rekiyavik (UMT).

After much searching on the internet, I finally found this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc500306.aspx from which I used the helper method and the following code in my method that calls the EWS appointment creation code (sorry it’s VB but it is old code):

Dim lLocalTimeZone As New TimeZoneType() 
lLocalTimeZone.BaseOffset = TimeSpanToXSDuration(TimeZone.CurrentTimeZone.GetUtcOffset(vStartTime))
If vStartTime.IsDaylightSavingTime Then 
    lLocalTimeZone.TimeZoneName = TimeZone.CurrentTimeZone.DaylightName 
Else 
    lLocalTimeZone.TimeZoneName = TimeZone.CurrentTimeZone.StandardName 
End If
appointment.MeetingTimeZone = lLocalTimeZone

Now both the time and the time zone are correctly set.…

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Lock request timeout period exceeded

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

Our SharePoint database server ran out of disk space. In addition to causing the obvious problems, we were also seeing this message in the SharePoint front end server logs:

Failure trying to synch web application ddbd3051-0aa4-4db5-8197-e450a718dede, ContentDB 7393dd21-a0fe-42f6-8d6b-b87c8ce31496 Exception message was System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Lock request time out period exceeded.

Turns out that the cache was out of sync, which was resolved by following this kb article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939308…

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SharePoint 2010 ribbon buttons not working.

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

Had one user of our SharePoint intranet unable to access the Edit Page (or indeed any other Ribbon toolbar buttons). The button was there and available but clicking it had no effect.

Turns out there is an issue with DivX Plus Web Player HTML5 add-on for IE because it interferes with JSON call-backs – which I gather the Ribbon bar is using.

Disabled the Add-on and ribbon menus are working again.…

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Infopath 2010 getuserprofilebyname and field values changing when loading existing form.

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

In InfoPath 2007, I created several forms that load the user’s contact details into fields using the getuserprofilebyname service.

When we upgraded to SharePoint 2010 the forms still worked, but the user details were being changed every time the form loaded.

Turns out that the “Refresh value when formula is recalculated” setting does something different in 2010 compared with 2007.

Turning the setting on in 2010 causes the formula to recalculate every time the form opens and then overwrite whatever was already saved. So I have had to go to every form and uncheck the value on that field to get them all to work.…

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SharePoint 2010–“Upload Multiple Pictures” doesn’t load Picture Manager

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

After upgrading from SP2007 to SP2010, my “Upload Multiple Pictures’ option didn’t work on any picture libraries. It would just redirect me to the “If you have not finished uploading the pictures, switch to the picture editor and finish uploading. When you have finished, close the picture editor, and click the link below.” page but not launch Picture Manager.

The fix – run Picture Manager manually from the start menu, then go Help –> Detect and Repair. Once the repair is finished it worked fine.…

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‘SnippetElement’ is null or not an object error.

Posted on by Iain 'Cutty' Carlin

I upgraded an InfoPath 2007 form to 2010. Users were getting a javascript error when submitting the form. The error was “’SnippetElement’ is null or not an object.”.

I did a few things to try and resolve the error. Recreated all my data connectors, re-published the form several times, all to no avail.

Finally, I ran the javascript debugger in IE and found that the error related to a problem with some code in core.js. There was a function that was trying to get the ‘SnippetElement’ from the submit button on the form.

I’m not sure what that means, but I checked the submit action for the form and found that “Show the Submit button in both the Ribbon and the Info tab in the InfoPath Filler.”…

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