The new support for LINQ in SharePoint 2010 makes it much easier to read and write data to/from SharePoint lists. The way it works is that you run a utility SPMETAL.EXE to generate the entity model that is used as the context for the queries. Quite helpful but it only includes the fields (the data types in SharePoint like “single line of text”) that are out-of-the-box in SharePoint Foundation 2010 (SPF2010).

Other fields added by SharePoint Server 2010 (SPS2010), field types added by 3rd parties or custom field types you might create won’t show up in the entity model generated by SPMETAL.EXE. This can be challenging to work with some of the more common field types such as those included by SharePoint Server 2010.

This can be a but frustrating as the LINQ model you generated isn’t a match for your list when you are working with something like the Managed Metadata column. Thankfully there is a very easy way you can extend a SPMETAL.EXE generated entity model. 

Consider the following: I’ve created a custom contact list and added a metadata field named Location Tag to it using a Feature receiver the calls the following method:

Next, I generated the entity model by running SPMETAL.EXE against the list. At this point it does not include my custom field Location Tag. Next create a partial class that matches the name of the entity generated by SPMETAL.EXE. In my case this is ContactListWithAutomaticTagsContact and have it inherit from the same type as the entity model does (Contact).

To include the field in the entity the next step is to have the ContactListWithAutomaticTagsContact class implement the ICustomMapping interface. This includes three methods that map the data to the field & vice versa as well as resolve any conflicts:

With this you’ll now have full access to your custom field type, in this case the TaxonomyField, within LINQ queries:

I really wanted to hold a press conference on primetime ESPN for this, but unfortunately the LeBronocalypse blew their budget so a blog post will have to suffice… :)

We at Critical Path Training are thrilled to announce the addition of two fantastic and well known SharePoint MVPs to our list of SharePoint instructors!

Matt McDermott is a SharePoint MVP who’s presented at numerous major conferences such as SharePoint Connections, TechEd and the SharePoint Conference.

Maurice Prather is also a SharePoint MVP as well as one of the few certified & brilliant SharePoint Masters (MCM) in the world. Maurice’s has presented at numerous conferences such as the SharePoint Best Practices Conference and SharePoint Connections among others. In his former life he worked on the SharePoint product team at Microsoft during the development of SharePoint 2007.

Both Matt and Maurice are independent consultants just like our other instructors so if you’re looking for someone to assist you with a deployment or a custom SharePoint project, like the rest of our instructors, they are highly qualified candidates who we highly recommend. Matt and Maurice will be teaching our SharePoint 2007 and 2010 development and administrator courses.

On behalf of myself and my partner Ted Pattison, welcome Matt and Maurice! We’re honored to have you join the CPT family!

Recently the Patterns & Practices (P&P) group at Microsoft announced their completion and public availability of the SharePoint 2010 Guidance (SPG). The SPG provides technical details on key areas of SharePoint 2010 app development and contains a written guide (as a compiled CHM help file), reference implementations with source code and fully documented in the CHM as well as a library of reusable code. As they describe it:

Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010 contains guidance documentation, detailed examples, and a reusable class library. These resources are designed to help solution developers and architects make the right decisions and follow proven practices when designing and developing applications for Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010. The guidance focuses on the building blocks that every developer needs to understand to become an effective SharePoint developer or architect. The guide is provided as a Help (.chm) file and has four core areas: application foundations, execution models, data models, and client models. Eight reference implementations illustrate the core concepts covered in the guide. The reusable class library provides code to help developers build more manageable, flexible, and testable applications. Source code is provided for all reference implementations and for the reusable library. The reference implementations have automated setup scripts to configure the applications.

» P&P SharePoint 2010 Guidance Download Page

The SPG is filled with a lot of cool stuff. One bit of reusable code is the SharePoint Logger. This makes it much easier to write to the Windows Event Log as well as the SharePoint Unified Logging Service (ULS) logs. You’ll also find details on unit testing your application.

Another piece of the SPG provides guidance when doing different various data access techniques / tasks in SharePoint 2010. From working with data in lists to the different data access techniques to working with data that’s external to SharePoint, there is quite a bit of guidance on things you should be considering when working with data in SharePoint. This is just a tip of what you’ll find… you’ll also find models and guidance on building client applications as well.

While all this guidance is helpful, what I always find missing is a sample app to pick through. That’s where the SPG steps in. What you’ll find are these things called reference implementations (RI’s). Each RI addresses a different commonly experienced challenge from external lists, workflows, working with the sandbox and also working with full-trust proxies within the sandbox. Not only will you find executable code, but you’ll also find documentation that walks through each RI explaining it piece by piece.

Simply put, the SharePoint 2010 Guidance is a must read and a tool that should be in every SharePoint developer’s toolbox.

» P&P SPG: Developing Applications for SharePoint 2010

Ever created a Web Part using the new Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Development Tools for a SharePoint 2010 site? Say you accept the default name, WebPart1. It creates the SharePoint Project Item (SPI) in the Visual Studio project and adds all the necessary files you need like the code file, element manifest and Web Part definition. But then you decide you want to rename the darn thing… so you right-click the SPI in the project and rename it to something like MyWebPart. Making sure everything is cool, you verify the name of the Web Part class was updated, the Web Part definition & the element manifest is cool.

But when you deploy it and try to add it to a page, you get the dreaded “this control isn’t registered as safe” error. So what gives? Savvy SharePoint developers know this usually means they should go check the web.config and see if their Web Part is listed correctly, which they find it isn’t.

Why?

The SharePoint Development Tools have a special place where it lists the safe control entries it ads. If you pick the SPI in the Visual Studio project and then open the Properties tool window (hit [F4] if it isn’t there), you’ll see a collection of Safe Control entries. Make sure it’s correct there and you’ll be good to go.

MSDN recently posted the first chapter as an excerpt from a book that my Critical Path Training colleagues Ted Pattison, Scot Hiller & I have been working on: Inside SharePoint Server 2010. This book is the successor to Inside Windows SharePoint Services 3 and Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It will be available later this fall, but for now you can see the first chapter on MSDN! More chapters will appear on MSDN soon!

» MSDN: Inside SharePoint Server 2010
» Amazon: Inside SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft recently posted about the new VS 2010 SharePoint Power Tools project. Right now the contents are pretty slim, but the two things that are in there are freaking awesome. Both relate to the new Sandbox Solutions.

The two things the VS 2010 SharePoint Power Tools give you are the ability to include visual Web Parts in your sandbox solutions (which you can’t do without these tools) and also some compile time checking when building your sandbox solutions. This second one is the coolest one to me.

When you are building sandbox solutions, you are compiling against the fully trusted & full SharePoint API. However when you are running on the server, your code is running against the subset of the full API using the special SharePoint sandboxed proxy API. This blocks you from doing calls to SPSecurity and the like. While this doesn’t seem like a big deal when writing new components, it can be when you are copying code in or grabbing something from CodePlex. When you build everything looks good, but at runtime you hit issues.

Before these tools in order to verify you aren’t doing anything illegal and to get compile time issues, you had to manually remove the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll reference from your project and point to the subset API assembly, compile, fix and then set the reference back. The power tools now do this for you! Nice work!

PS – both of these were in the CKS:DEV project, but I think they will be more widely used in a Power Tool set.

» Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools

Microsoft has an internal conference available to Microsoft field employees to get a deep drill down on their various products & technologies called TechReady. TechReady 11 (TR11) is coming up in July and I’ve been honored to get a shot at presenting two sessions… something I’m pretty pumped up about! Here they are for you MSFT field folks:

OSP313 – Developing & Extending SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Content Management
Microsoft made considerable investments in the Enterprise Content Management capabilities in SharePoint 2010. While SharePoint 2010 includes many OOTB features, Microsoft has provided many extensibility points for developers to create robust and custom solutions for ECM scenarios. This session you will demonstrate how to create document sets declaratively to promote reuse across multiple SharePoint environments. In addition you will see how to introduce custom business logic into the creation of document IDs and interacting with managed metadata programmatically.

OSP315 – Developing Custom SharePoint 2010 Service Applications
SharePoint's new service infrastructure is much more flexible and scalable than previous versions. One of the important improvement is the ability for developers to extend the platform by creating their own custom service applications. In this session attendees will learn when and when not to create custom service applications and what's involved with creating custom services. At the end of the session, you'll know when it make sense to create a custom service and even walk away with a working sample service application!

Unfortunately I’ll only be able to be there for one day due to prior commitments that week, but looking forward to July 26th and my sessions!

» Wikipedia: TechReady

The SharePoint Technology Conference (aka SPTechCon) is heading back to Boston this coming October. I absolutely love Boston and I’m looking forward to presenting a few sessions at this show:

Interacting with SharePoint off the Server: Introducing the Client Object Model
This session demonstrates the client-object model, new to SharePoint 2010. This addition makes it much easier for developers to create custom solutions that leverage data stored in SharePoint from off the SharePoint server with a familiar API and without traditional Web Services. Topics covered include the .NET and Silverlight managed client-object models, as well as the ECMAScript object model.

Creating Rich Business Applications with the Managed ClientOM
SharePoint 2010 introduces a new way to work with SharePoint data when you have an application that does not run on the server: the Client Object Model (ClientOM). In this session, you'll see how to create rich desktop applications with WPF and the .NET ClientOM. In addition, see how to create robust business applications deployed as sandbox solutions using the Silverlight ClientOM.

Make sure you register early… should be a great show!

» SharePoint Technology Conference – October 20-22, 2010 in Boston, MA

Finally hitting a bit of a stride with the SharePoint Saturday events and after a year of missing all of them, I’ll be presenting at two of them this year. Looking forward to it!

First up is Tampa on June 26th… just under two weeks away. Should be a blast! Here’s my session:

Silverlight for the SharePoint Developer
While it was possible to build Silverlight applications in SharePoint 2007, Microsoft has made it much easier in SharePoint 2010. Many SharePoint developers previously avoided Silverlight for various reasons. This session will help those developers get up to speed on what’s involved in becoming a Silverlight developer, the tools used in building Silverlight applications, introduce some popular Silverlight development patterns such as MVVM, show you how to use the SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model to interact with SharePoint 2010 sites and the various deployment options for your Silverlight applications.

» SharePoint Saturday – Tampa, FL (June 26, 2010) & on Twitter (#SPSTampa)

Next up is Denver on August 7th. The week prior I’ll be teaching our (Critical Path Training) SharePoint 2010 developer course (BTW, register soon to get a 15% early bird discount!) in Redmond, Washington on the Microsoft campus. After class I’m flying down to Denver on Friday night to present the following session on Saturday:

Incorporating Managed Metadata in Custom Solutions in SharePoint 2010
Microsoft injected strong support for metadata, taxonomies and folksonomies in SharePoint 2010 with the addition of the Managed Metadata service application and Managed Metadata field type. While there is plenty of support for metadata across the platform out-of-the-box, Microsoft has included a very robust API in this latest release of SharePoint 2010 to create custom solutions. In this session we'll explore how we can create custom metadata based solutions for use in SharePoint 2010.

» SharePoint Saturday – Denver, CO (August 7, 2010) & on Twitter (#SPSDenver)

A few months back I blogged about a free utility available for download on the Critical Path Training site called the SharePoint Site Collection Keep Alive Utility. What is it? I quote from that post:

I’ve created a utility that at scheduled intervals will issue an HTTP/HTTPS request to a specified site collection’s homepage, key galleries and key admin pages. This way while presenting, demoing or teaching, you can ensure that the most common pages in your sites are being warmed up and kept alive so when you go to do your demo it’s nice and quick.

Today I’ve updated the utility to v1.1. I’ve noticed it wasn’t working under some conditions and it was hard to troubleshoot what the problem was. The issue is now fixed and it’s now working all the time.

I also added some custom logging so you’ll see the status and errors in the ULS and event log:

I’ve also updated the installer so when you run the installer batch file, it will retract and remove any previously deployed versions of the solution and redeploy it. No worries about losing you settings… they are persisted in the farm’s configuration database. The new version of the utility uses the same settings.

You can download the utility from the Critical Path Training Members Only section (look in the Code Samples section). You’ll need to be logged into our site to download it, but membership is free!

» Download AC’s SharePoint 2010 Site Collection Keep Alive Job Utility