I happened to attend the SharePoint Search Workshop(on Sep 13, 2007) conducted by Mondosoft here in Seattle,WA. It is a kind of a marketing event, but handful of technical information was also covered. They let us play around with the tool in the pre-configured environment. I am very impressed with the product and it is an awesome extension to the MOSS 2007 OOB Search.

I honestly feel, although the MOSS Search very powerful, there is very little that is exposed via the UI(as pointed out by Robert Bogue, I totally agree with him). And I think, Ontolica from Mondosoft bridges the gap within OOB MOSS Search, to a great extent. It is a neat extension to the MOSS Search.

And, if any one of you is looking forward to attend the workshop, you can find the schedule here at http://www.ontolica.com/services/workshops.aspx . Note that this is free event and seats get filled up very quickly.

FYI. Mondosoft is giving wildcard search for MOSS for FREE.  Also, Mondosoft has chosen couple of SharePoint MVPs to deliver their workshops; Bob Mixon and Robert Bogue. They are great presenters!!

For more information:

http://bobmixon.com/BLOG/archive/2007/09/24/Ontolica-Search-Workshop-in-Boston.aspx

http://sharepointsearch.com/cs/blogs/notorioustech/archive/2007/09/20/ontolica-sharepoint-workshop-day.aspx

http://thorprojects.com/blog/archive/2007/08/14/686.aspx

Happy SharePointing!

Thanks
Guru

A requirement for one of the pages in an externally faced MOSS 2007(turned on for anonymous access) site was to submit feedback and update a list item with the user submitted it.

If anonymous access was not turned on, to accomplish this task is like a piece of cake! But unfortunately, workflow seems to run under the context of the currently logged in user. Apparently this will be fixed SP1.

I set out to write custom code to send email and update the list item(using SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges).

But, interestingly, I got an error when I try to update a list item(SPListItem.Update()) in the following code:

        SPWeb web = null;
        SPSite site = null;
        SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
        {
            try
            {
                site = new SPSite(this.ListSiteUrl);
                web = site.OpenWeb();
                SPList list = web.Lists[new Guid(this.ListGuid)];
                string internalName = list.Fields[this.ColumnName].InternalName;
                SPListItem listItem = list.GetItemById(this.ListItemID);  //the first item
                string countValue = listItem[internalName].ToString();
                listItem[internalName] = "asdf"; //modified purposely
                listItem.Update();
                web.Dispose();
                site.Dispose();
            }
            catch (Exception ex1)
            {
                lblError.Visible = true;
                lblError.Text = "An error occurred :" + ex1.Message;
            }
        });

When I googled for this error, I found the following article really very helpful. SharePoint community, rocks!

http://howtocode.blogspot.com/2007/06/moss-splistitemupdate-throws-error.html

With the code in the above article as a reference, I changed the above code as the following and it worked like a charm.

SPWeb web = null;
        try
        {
            SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
            {
                using (SPSite site = new SPSite(this.CounterListSiteUrl))
                {
                    web = site.OpenWeb();
                }
            });
            SPList list = web.Lists[new Guid(this.CounterListGuid)];
            string internalName = list.Fields[this.CounterColumnName].InternalName;
            SPListItem listItem = list.GetItemById(this.CounterListItemID);  //the first item
            string countValue = listItem[internalName].ToString();
            listItem[internalName] = "asdf"; //modified purposely
            bool bUnsafeUpdates = web.AllowUnsafeUpdates;
            web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
            listItem.Update();
            web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = bUnsafeUpdates;
            web.Dispose();
        }
        catch (Exception ex1)
        {
            lblError.Visible = true;
            lblError.Text = "An error occurred :" + ex1.Message;
        }

Happy SharePointing!

When you host MySites in a separate web application, you may get the following error when you try to access My Site.

Your personal site cannot be created because Self-Service Site Creation is not enabled. Contact your site administrator for more information.

To solve this problem, make sure you have enabled Self-Service Site Creation for the Web Application where you have hosted MySites.

Here is how to do enable it:

1. Go to Central Administration --> Application Management.
2. Click on Self-Service site management, under the section Application Security.
3. Make sure to select the right web application. Click On and then click OK.

Now, when you click on the My Site link, your my site will be created and provisioned.

Happy SharePointing!

Thanks
Guru