April 2008 - Posts

• When Datasheets go bad

  I had deployed WSS at a customer site, and they were really enjoying it, making particular use of the Datasheet view of lists, which they used as a sort of shared spreadsheet.  Then, suddenly, one day it stopped working everywhere, on every machine.  What would happen when you tried to view any list in Datasheet view is a quick redirect to Standard View, with a message at the bottom that said: "The list cannot be displayed in Datasheet for one or more of the following reasons: A datasheet component compatible with Windows SharePoint Services is not installed, your browser does not support Active X controls, or support for ActiveX controls is disabled  in http://<website>." I Googled and researched and experimented but did not find any answers to my problems.  Here are the salient details: The server hosting WSS is a domain controller, and no office components are installed on it. The workstations are all running Office 2003 Standard (Excel and Word, no MS Access) Shortly before this happened, I had attempted to create a GPO to add the WSS site to all users' Trusted Sites,so they wouldn't be nagged for a login.  I don't think it worked correctly.  I am mentioning this not becaause I now think it caused the problem, but because I chased it for so long as a possible culprit. This issue appears to have begun affecting all workstations at the same time. No error appears in any event log or WSS log. I opened a Microsoft case on it, and they isolated the problem to the client, and not the server (as I had assumed).  I had been leaning toward the server as the source of the problem; how else could it have affected all workstations at once?  But it turns out that the Datasheet view uses a library called STSLIST.DLL, which is actually a Microsoft Access component for SharePoint (and not Excel, as I had thought).  But you shouldn't need MS Access to be able to use STSLIST.  They had me try a bunch of different fixes, including: Repairing/reinstalling Office 2003. No joy. Installing/Re-applying Office 2003 SP2 (no joy) Downloading and registering a new version of STSLIST.DLL (11.0.8200.0), no joy. Installing or upgrading to Office 2007, any edition: SUCCESS. Yes, installing Office 2007 solved the problem on any workstation we put it on.  However, the customer balked at being forced to upgrade all her workstations, since Office 2007 is expensive.  WSS should not require Office 2007.  Remember Good, Better, Best?  There ought to be a way to make it work with Office 2003, like it was working originally.  Microsoft agreed.  But since we had a viable (albeit expensive) solution, and the fact that the lists could be edited in Standard View, the case was deprioritized to "pure research". Finally, the MS engineer got back to me and said he had seen this problem occurring at several other sites, and that it was now a known issue.  They have apparently come up with a fix for this, in the form of a public hotfix, which you can download here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;949670 The KB article does not mention my specific problem but the MS engineer said what was happening is that, when Office 2003 and 2007 components are installed side by side on the same workstation, the WSS libraries were pointing to the wrong Office libraries.  So this fix is supposed to take care of it. I have not had the time to test this out, but I thought I'd post it here anyway in case some of you were seeing the same issue elsewhere.  I'll know by the end of the week if this is the answer to my problems.   Posted Apr 14 2008, 07:27 AM by moffitar with 5 comment(s) Filed under: WSS 3.0, Office 2007, stslist.dll, datasheet, Office 2003

• Jonas Salk and InfoPath 2007

  Hi folks,  I'm lucky enough to work at a company that rewards innovation and independant thought.  For my annual performance evaluation, I was handed a six-page "self-evaluation" form.  It was actually a Word 2003 document intended to be printed out and thrown in a file cabinet, but that's so... twentieth century, don't you think?  I couldn't help myself.  I took the form and converted it to an InfoPath 2007 form and submitted it via email to my boss.  He was impressed.   Some of the improvements I made: Each question is its own "section", which can be added or removed from the form to create customized evaluations.  For example, I am a developer, but for non-developers, you could omit the "Adheres to company coding standards" section. I assigned a point-value to each response.  There are three possible "scores" per question: Below Satisfactory (1 point) Satisfactory (2 points) Above Satisfactory (3 points).  Depending on the response, I used conditional formatting to adjust the shading of each section based on the numeric value of each response: 1 = Light Pink 2 = White 3 = Light Green By default, this shading is not displayed when the form is printed, which results in a cleaner hard copy.  The evaluation form was split up into three groups: Company-Wide issues, Job-Specific Tasks, and Self-Improvement.  The first two sections are where the scoring is done.  Each of these sections tallies up their subtotals and compares it to the Low, Average, and High scores possible.  The last section adds up the aggregate score.  Managers can use these scores to determine how the employee's strengths and weaknesses balance out. I was going to try to implement a graph to give a visual representation of all this, but there is no built-in charting functionality in InfoPath.  I thought I might experiment by dropping in an Excel charting object, but I didn't have time to figure it out. I wanted to finish this within a day. The cool thing about InfoPath is that, when you post it to a SharePoint document library, your data fields can be "promoted" to appear in the list, and views can be created based on these values.  So now the managers can organize employees by their various scores and drill down into the details.   Anyway, each of the questions has a field for "comments", for which I used a rich-text field.  As a lark, for one question I put the answer below, more to test the formatting functionality than anything else.  Although wordy, I felt it answered the question, so I left it.    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------    Voluntary outside learning Definition of this benchmark:  Takes time outside of work to keep up on developments in the IT business.  Magazine subscriptions, reading, web sites etc are sources for this learning. Employee Performance Level: Above Satisfactory   Comment: Jonas Salk, who invented the cure for polio, once said "the greatest reward for a job well done is the opportunity to do more work."  It speaks volumes about the man, not to mention his work ethic.  When I was younger, I never really identified with that sentiment.  Work was simply something to be endured and gotten over with, so you could spend your energy on something fun.  It wasn't until I began working with computers that these words suddenly rang true to me. With computers, each problem becomes a riddle to be solved, but it is a problem that allows you to take it apart and analyze by pure deductive reasoning.  Computers reward insight and attention to detail; it makes those who excel in this field truly mystical and mysterious to the rest of the computing public. I suppose the key to finding satisfaction in your work is never feeling like you are "done".  Each morning I get up and actually look forward to the day.  I study and research and evaluate technology on my own time, not for the mundane pursuit of certification or accolade.  I study it to know it better.  Even now, after all these years of working in IT, I don't feel "done".  I feel frankly unqualified, behind the curve, inadequate… but people do seem to be happy with my work.   Very early in my career I had the mistaken notion that my employer and coworkers expected me to know everything.  When asked a question or handed a task, I felt I was supposed to already know the answer, simply by merit of being "the computer guy".  I was irrationally hard on myself, and this didn't serve me well because these raised expectations went unfulfilled and lost me a job. It was a painful lesson, but I lost my fear of saying "I don't know" when asked a question.  I learned to give my answers in percentages and estimates.  I use the word "might" a lot.  And I never stop studying.  Jonas Salk had it right.  Doing what you enjoy isn't work.  It is a labor of love.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a pretty good performance review.  They gave me a raise. Posted Apr 07 2008, 10:17 AM by moffitar with 2 comment(s) Filed under: InfoPath, lists, view, sharepoint