SharePoint Module Hotfix 2
A new hotfix package is available for version 3.0 of the TMCore SharePoint Module. This package addresses a number of bugs and provides a couple of additional enhancements for site developers. The full change list can be found below.
Systems Affected
This bug will occur on any installation of the TMCore SharePoint Module 3.0 downloaded before 21st March 2008. If you downloaded your copy of the software from our site on or after this date, the hotfix is included in the package and you do not need to apply it again.
To determine if your system is affected, check the File Version property of the assembly NetworkedPlanet.SharePoint in the GAC (browse to C:\Windows\ASSEMBLY, locate the NetworkedPlanet.SharePoint assembly, right-click and choose Properties. The File Version can be found on the Version tab above Description and Copyright). This hotfix updates the File Version of the NetworkedPlanet.SharePoint assembly to 2.0.0.2 - if the file version shown is greater than or equal to 2.0.0.2, then you do not need to apply this hotfix.
Installation Instructions
- Download the Hotfix2 package.
- The package is provided in a compressed ZIP file. Unzip the package on a machine in the server farm. The package contains the following files:
- NPSharePoint.wsp. This is an updated copy of the SharePoint Solution package provided with the 3.0 release of the TMCore SharePoint Module.
- NPOfficeServer.wsp. This is an updated copy of the SharePoint Solution package provided with the 3.0 release of the TMCore SharePoint Module.
- Docs. This directory contains the updated Site Developers Guide documentation.
- Stylesheets. This directory contains the updated base stylesheets for site developers.
- NPCLEditor. This directory contains the updated NPCL Schema Editor extensions for the TMCore SharePoint Module
- Use stsadm to upgrade the NPSharePoint.wsp and NPOfficeServer.wsp solutions on the server. The exact command-line you use will depend on how you want to schedule the upgrade, but in any case it must include the -allowgacdeployment option. A sample command line would be:
stsadm -o upgradesolution -name NPSharePoint.wsp -filename NPSharePoint.wsp -local -allowgacdeployment
stsadm -o upgradesolution -name NPOfficeServer.wsp -filename NPOfficeServer.wsp -local -allowgacdeployment
- After applying the solution updates it may be necessary to restart IIS.
- To install the updates to the NPCL Schema Editor extensions, simply copy the contents of the NPCLEditor\Extensions directory to the local extensions directory on your development machine (typically
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\).
NetworkedPlanet\NPCLEditor\Extensions
- BUGFIX: TwoHopQueryWebPart is now properly security filtering both the
TargetTopic and the ViaTopic. - BUGFIX: Modified the sample TwoHopQueryWebPart stylesheets so that they
render in a meaningful way even if there is no CSS associated with their CSS
class. Each grouped list now renders as a <strong> tag wrapped around the
group header and a <ul> containing <li> tags for each member of the group -
BUGFIX: Fixed an error in the EnterpriseServices.SocialTagging module that
caused the creation of a new tag to take a long time to complete. Creating new
tags in the social tagging web parts should now be much faster. -
BUGFIX: Fixed the ItemAdded event handler to ensure proper completion when the
NPItemBase feature is not activated. -
BUGFIX: Topic names for topics that represent SharePoint list items are now
generated from the formatted representation of the SharePoint field configured
by the Topic Type Mapping. This change ensures that calculated fields are
rendered as just their formatted string value. -
BUGFIX: Fixed rendering of Source attributes in Related Topics Field links in
views to render a full URL rather than a web-relative URL. - ENHANCEMENTS: Enhancements made to the NPCL Schema Editor Extensions to ensure
more consistent editing of features that are already deployed to a server. The
enhancements should make it much easier to update a test deployment of features
generated using the NPCL Schema Editor extensions. - ENHANCEMENT: Modified the Associated Topic Field properties editor to allow
the name of the form used by a Topic Creator to be entered in a text field
rather than chosen from a drop-down list of forms. This enables the use of
forms other than those contained in the list (e.g. forms from _layouts)
for the creation of items.
This hotfix also rolls in the fixes previously provided in Hotfix1.
For Further Support
If you have any questions about this hotfix or require any further support, please contact us at support@networkedplanet.com.
Context is King!
I recently did an interview for Tassilo Pellegrini from the Semantic Web Company. We talked about Topic Maps and the upcoming conference in Oslo. You can see the full interview here.
TMCore SharePoint Module 3.0 Videos
Kal has been busy with the camera capturing a load of great video that shows how to use the NPCL Editor, the NPCL SharePoint Extensions and also how to configure topic selectors to use hierarchies and custom queries.
All the videos are 25 - 35 minutes long, so grab some coffee, sit back and enjoy...
Ontology based site design in SharePoint
We've talked previously, Topic Map website architectures about how topic maps can be used in terms of websites, we have also talked before about Ontology driven application design. I'm going to pick up a couple of threads and reflect on how defining an Ontology can be useful in the construction of a SharePoint 2007 site.
First, what do we mean by a SharePoint site design? We consider it to be the definition of content types, lists and sites within a site collection. This really comes down to the kinds of items you are going to have and the organising principles you are going, impose, er, provide for users to navigate the site. We aren't talking about the look and feel aspect of design.
Next, whats an Ontology? I'm going to use the definition that its, the types of things and the types of relationships between those things that exist in a particular domain according to some view point. So, no controlled vocabularies here, although they may be implied, no instance data, just the types of things. Kind of like a class diagram in UML, or a Logical Entity Relationship Model.
The power of the ontology is that it immediately frees you from the bounds of the technology. While SharePoint things (items, documents, sites and users) have some properties in common they are in fact all quite different beasts. They have different representations, different APIs, different event models and of course varying degrees of default functionality associated with them.This means when doing site design you are instantly forced to think about, and quickly choose, the king of SharePoint thing to use. I call this the technology committment. The technology committment always trumps the design aesthetic because if it can't be done, or costs to much to be done, it won't get done. Enter Ontology driven site design.
Ontology driven site design is a Zen like experience where the designers can concentrate on the true nature of the information management problem at hand. They can consider all the actors, artifacts, and concepts in a holistic fashion. They do not need to worry about the issues that people manifest themselves as accounts in Active Directory, or that products some from a third party web service feed, or that documents and tasks will use the base SharePoint types for these artifacts. Without these technical constraints they are free to define the types and more importantly, the relationships between these types in ways that directly help tackle the information management issues facing the different users of the system. Furthermore, its possible to ignore the strict hierarchy that is imposed by SharePoint and think about information access purely in terms of the logical model. This of course could contain multiple hierarchical structures and will almost certainly be graph like in nature.
One final little point is that the SharePoint tooling is lacking any overview capability of 'how it all fits together' using an ontology as the basis for the site provides clear documentation to all involved in the project. This artifact can be used in design meetings, data integration meetings and of course site implementation.
So if its all so Zen, so technology agnostic how useful is it beyond documentation? Well, of course you need some technology to make this happen, and this is SharePoint so of course you want to make use of all the SharePoin features. This is where Topic Maps comes in and specifically, the TMCore SharePoint Module. There are two key things Topic Maps integrated with SharePoint via our tools does for you. Firstly, using the NPCL Visual Studio plugin its possible to draw and visualise an ontology. Then, while still inside Visual Studio its possible to either connect the types in the ontology to existing SharePoint content types or to indicate that new types should be created. Finally, the plugin will allow you to generate a feature that contains all the Content type definitions, the ontology and the relationship between the two.
The second thing the Topic Maps integration provides is some basic plumbing inside SharePoint such that all SharePoint items can have a related Topic. Once we have flattened the shape of all things in SharePoint to be just topics and associations its possible to truly realise the Zen ontology while still utilising all the things that the different shaped SharePoint things give you.
Creating this highly connected, semantically organised graph of concepts is great but only if you can then utilise it for the benefit of users. This can be done in a number of ways but one of the most powerful is to develop queries over the logical ontology in order to provide multiple navigation paths to the same content, contextualised lists of topics, or documents based on the user and their situation, finally perhaps making use of the notion of faceted search to slice and dice through the information.
Ontology design needs to be a proper part of the design process. It should happen early on in the project in conjunction with use case and system integration iterations. It's key that these things happen at the same time, as the logical model the ontology provides is the tool for delivering the use cases and the target for mapping in information from other systems.
Ontology driven design for SharePoint has some basic practical advantages over developing the site through the administration interfaces or XML features. Furthermore, it empowers a much more natural and powerful way to think about, organise and exploit the content and concepts of a given domain or application.
To see all of this in action we have produced some cool vidoes of ontology design in the context of SharePoint site design. They can be found here.
SharePoint Module Topic Creator Hotfix
A bug was discovered in the recently released TMCore SharePoint Module 3.0 that affects the Topic Creator selectors. This hotfix addresses that issue.
Systems Affected
This bug will occur on any installation of the TMCore SharePoint Module 3.0 downloaded before 8th March 2008. If you downloaded your copy of the software from our site on or after this date, the hotfix is included in the package and you do not need to apply it again.
To determine if your system is affected, check the File Version property of the assembly NetworkedPlanet.SharePoint in the GAC (browse to C:\Windows\ASSEMBLY, locate the NetworkedPlanet.SharePoint assembly, right-click and choose Properties. The File Version can be found on the Version tab above Description and Copyright). This bug affects File Version 2.0.0.0 of this file.
Symptoms
The bug shows up when the user clicks on the a configured Topic Creator link from a related topics field. A dialog window appears, but no content is displayed in the window.
Fix Procedure
- Download the Hotfix1 package.
- The package is provided in a compressed ZIP file. Unzip the package on a machine in the server farm. The package contains a single file named NPSharePoint.wsp. This is an updated copy of the SharePoint Solution package provided with the 3.0 release of the TMCore SharePoint Module.
- Use stsadm to upgrade the NPSharePoint.wsp solution on the server. The exact command-line you use will depend on how you want to schedule the upgrade, but in any case it must include the -allowgacdeployment option. A sample command line would be:
stsadm -o upgradesolution -name NPSharePoint.wsp -filename NPSharePoint.wsp -local -allowgacdeployment - After applying this update it may be necessary to restart IIS.
If you have any questions about this hotfix or require any further support, please contact us at support@networkedplanet.com.
TMCore SharePoint Module 3.0 Release and Videos
You may have noticed earlier this week the announcement of the TMCore SharePoint Module version 3.0 on our main news blog and on the site front page. This new release really adds a lot of new useful features to the SharePoint Module, both for the end users and for the site developers. For a run-down of the headline changes in the SharePoint Module, check the release announcement here.
To accompany this new release we are also experimenting with some show-and-tell style videos. Almost like visiting the NetworkedPlanet booth at a show, but without the free giveaways and mandatory badge-scan. OK, not quite like that, maybe more like sitting next to Kal and Graham for half an hour at a time as they walk you through how to do cool things with the TMCore SharePoint Module.
The first three videos are already up on the site - these take you through:
- Using the NPCL Schema Editor for Visual Studio to create a topic map ontology
- Mapping the ontology to content types and field types from within the Visual Studio environment and then deploying that mapping, and the ontology to the SharePoint server as a SharePoint feature.
- Configuring advanced selectors including the hierarchy, query and new creator selectors.
You can access all of the videos from this page.
Still to come are a couple of videos on using the Related Topics Fields in a WYSIWYG web page editing environment and a run through of the navigation and search web parts that are provided with the TMCore SharePoint Module. These first movies focus on the design and implementation of a web publishing site, though alot of what is shown is applicable to any kind of SharePoint portal. However, our plan is to follow those up with a series looking at how the TMCore SharePoint Module can be used in an intranet environment.
Unfortunately due to other commitments there will probably be a pause of a week or so between these first three videos and the next batch, but when the next set are available we will post again to this blog, so be sure to bookmark us or better still add us to your RSS reader.
As this is a completely new thing for us to try out, we would really welcome any comments on the videos and suggestions as to what else you would like to see in them. Send any thoughts you have to us at contact@networkedplanet.com.
NetworkedPlanet Announce Release of SharePoint Module 3.0
03/03/2008, NetworkedPlanet are pleased to annouce the release of the much anticipated TMCore SharePoint Module 3.0.
This release sees a number of bug fixes and performance improvements, but more significantly it includes a large number of features that greatly improve the way information is organised, classified and located with Microsoft SharePoint solutions.
The new key features can be grouped into several different areas:
Ontology Design
Creating a well-designed ontology is the most important first step in designing a complete information architecture that can integrate SharePoint and non-SharePoint content into a cohesive and logical whole.
- Use the new NetworkedPlanet NPCL Editor plugin for Visual Studio to visually define an ontology for a complete SharePoint solution. Use the integration with SharePoint web services to create SharePoint content types and fields.
- The NPCL Editor plugin can also generate a SharePoint feature to allow the topic map ontology, any additional taxonomy and the SharePoint content types and field definitions to be reliably deployed in multiple server environments such as Development, QA, and Production.
Content Classification and Organisation
The new release makes it very easy to organise and classify content against taxonomies, controlled vocabularies and in terms of other SharePoint items regardless of which site or list they are in. The TMCore SharePoint Module 3.0 is designed to normalise the information space so that items can be more logically connected.
- New ways to find and select related topics; Hierarchy Selectors, Query Selectors, and Creators
- Hierarchy Selectors, allow users to choose related topics from tree structures defined in the topic map. These may be fixed taxonomy trees or user-generated trees that result from the creation of other item to item relationships.
- Query Selectors, allow developers to define specific, contextual queries that return a candidate list for the user to select from. Query Selectors allow almost any specific business logic about the most appropriate related topics for a given context to be defined.
- Creators provide a unique way to create a new SharePoint item (even one in another list or on another site) while editing an existing item. This feature removes the need for the user to constantly navigate from one list to another creating items before they can be hooked together.
- Simple tagging support. Optional support for ad-hoc "tagging" of content is now supported across all SharePoint list and content types. This feature allows users to get started easily tagging and organising content using their own terms and allows a community of users to collaborate on building a folksonomy for the classification of their content.
- Social Networking Features. A user's ad-hoc tags can be automatically shared with her colleagues and with other trusted users.
Searching and Navigating in SharePoint
Also new with version 3.0 of the TMCore SharePoint Module is the introduction of the Topic Map Index Service. This near-real time, in-memory index of Topic Map information means that complex information queries can be executed with a high throughput to deliver up-to-the-second information from across the portal.
The Topic Map Index Service is used to power a number of search and navigation web parts that make it possible to effectively find your way around a SharePoint portal.
- One Hop and Two Hop navigtaion controls can be used to show relevant contextual information about any SharePoint item.
- Advanced Faceted Search. Utilising a combination of hieararchy and topic type pickers this web part can be used to slice and dice through SharePoint content to allow users to find what they are really looking for.
- Advanced Faceted Search integrated with text search. The Advanced Faceted Search web parts can be used to slice and dice the results of a SharePoint portal text search.
For more information about this or any other NetworkedPlanet product please email contact@networkedplanet.com
