SharePoint 2007 Meeting Workspace sub sites workaround.

I recently noticed that when creating a SharePoint Multipage Meeting workspace there is no option to create further sub sites!

I appreciate this is due to navigation issues for end users however I recently had a request to facilitate where possible out of the box SharePoint functionality.

So the workaround is a little bit of a cheat but it works so basically take the layouts page on another site for creating a site/workspace link which is:

_layouts/newsweb.aspx

Copy this to the end of the meeting workspace and this will allow you to create a new sub site below your multipage meeting workspace:

E.g. http://sharepoint/site/_layouts/newsweb.aspx

Emailing SharePoint 2007 Email Enabled Lists from Distribution Groups Not Working - Workaround

Ok so here’s the scenario. I’ve setup incoming email on SharePoint with an excellent whitepaper provided by Steve Smith from Combined Knowledge.

So I have a SharePoint 2007 Farm with Exchange 2007 server and have successfully created incoming folders on SharePoint which successfully creates email contacts in an OU in AD so all good so far!

The list would happily accept emails from other email accounts if emailed directly however adding the newly created contact to a distribution group in Exchange and sending the mail via the Distribution Group would fail. I managed to come across this blog post and this solved the problem:

http://douglubey.com/ExchangeDistributionGroupDoesNotEmailSharepointEmailEnabledList.aspx 

Basically deleting the contact SharePoint created and create one in Exchange adding this to the distribution group works!

I’d be interested to hear from any Exchange admins as to what is different in the creation of a contact in Exchange and that created by SharePoint.

Access Denied Trying to Access SharePoint 2007 Shared Services Provider using SSP Service Account

I recently had an issue trying to attempt to access certain pages in the Shared Service Provider using the service account that runs the SSP!

Thanks to my colleague Ashkan for assisting me with this issue. Basically for some reason the account was not a member in areas it needed to be so I thought I’d write a blog to remind myself if this happens again and also help others struggling with this one.

Firstly I just want to make clear this issue is not due to the LSA registry setting described in a previous blog of mine here.

The SSP service account needs to be a member in the following locations:

1. Site collection admin for SSP Web App
2. SSP->Personalization service permissions (I checked all options)
3. Central Admin->Application Management-> Policy for Web Application (I chose Full Control)

This resolved the issue and I was then able to login!

I also posted my issue on TechNet forums and replied with this blog to close the loop.

SharePoint Person or Group Multiple Selections People Lookup Field Disappears from SharePoint Designer – Workaround

I was recently asked to create a workflow for up and coming events. The requirement was to send an email to all attendees 2 weeks before the meeting was due to start.

I’d previously attempted a similar task in a previous blog which I never managed to resolve but thought I'd give it another go.

This post doesn’t cover the workflow see here for the full blog post. This blog entry covers the multi people look up column and an issue I found when trying to use the column in SharePoint Designer and how this was resolved.

So firstly I created an attendees column for the calendar entry as shown below (noting that ‘Allow multiple selections’ is set to ‘No’)

This will allow for the value to be selected from SharePoint Designer. However as with most meetings I've attended they generally involve more than one person so there is need here for multiple persons to be entered in this column - this is where the problem comes in! If you change the value of ‘Allow multiple selections’ is set to ‘Yes’ you can no longer select this field in SharePoint Designer Workflow.

The way to workaround this is to create your workflow with the option set to ‘No’.

Test your workflow and make sure it achieves the results you set out to and believe me you will need to test it more than once before you get it right. Then once you have tested and emails are successfully sent to the recipient change the value to ‘Yes’ and you can now send email to multiple people using SharePoint Designer workflow.

SharePoint Designer Reminder Email Workflow

I was asked to design a workflow to extend the out of the box functionality to email meeting attendees 2 weeks before the meeting is due to start. Firstly create a SharePoint calendar list called ‘Events’.

The out of the box editable calendar columns are displayed below:

For the workflow you need to create two additional columns for the events list:

• Calculated field called Reminder (Date and Time)
• Person or Group called Attendees

The calculated column settings can be seen below basically offsetting the Start Time by 14 days (2 weeks) as [Start Date] – 14.

Then create the Person or Group column as shown below making sure that the ‘Allow multiple selections’ option is set to ‘No’:

If you create a new event now you will see an additional field for the Person or Group

Notice that the calculated field does not appear here as this is not an editable field and will automatically calculate in the background.

Next step is to open SharePoint Designer and create a new workflow (I’m assuming if your reading this post you have some level of understanding of SPD and will not be covering this step for step).

You will need 2 steps for the workflow. The first is to check date and pause the workflow if the date is not equal to Start Time – 14. The second step is once the Start Time does equal 14 days before event then send the email.

On the new workflow set the values as shown below:

Step 1 – Check Date

So the above basically checks if Reminder (14 days before event) is equal to today. If not then it pauses until the Reminder does equal today.

Step 2 – Send Email

In this step the action is again to check for the Reminder date equals today. Then send the email.

The email is where another blog post of mine discovered an issue and can be read here. The  workflow sends an email to the the current items Attendees. The subject is also the title of that specific meeting. I also added some text to the main body where you could customise the email further by adding lookup references specific to that event such as start time etc.

Once you’ve created the 2 steps click finish and navigate to the event list and enter a new event 2 weeks away and make sure you set it for 5 minutes ahead so you have time to save the event.

NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT CREATE THE TASKS AS A SYSTEM ACCOUNT OTHERWISE THE WORKFLOW WILL NOT WORK SEE KB ARTICLE: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947284

(This is not my actual diary!)

If you select the new entry created and select workflows you should see:

And if you click on ‘InProgress’ this will show you that the workflow is paused for 5 minutes and will then send the email:

That's it job done and expect to see an email in your inbox reminding you.

Hope that's of some use!