Saturday 18 November 2017

TDD, BDD, DSL...

TDD - Test Driven Development is usual associated with Unit Tests.  

  1. Write tests before creating any application code.
  2. Write code
  3. Run code with tests to verify it works
  4. Repeat to add more functionality to your code

BDD - Behaviour-driven Development is an Agile development process that encourages collaboration between team members.   BDD combines TDD with ideas from domain-driven design (DDD) and object-oriented analysis and design to deliver software.   Get you requirements into User Stories, and develop Acceptance Criteria (I like Gherkin).  This ensure the "The Three Amigos" product owner/business, analysts, testers and programmers are on the same page (note these roles in Agile are often all performed by 1 person).

Domain Specific Language (DSL) - Language used to help communicate a systems behavior or share information such as User Stories and Gherkin,  DSL is very similar to a General Purpose Language such as Use Cases.

Wednesday 1 November 2017

Using a CDN for Custom User Actions

Problem:  I need to inject JavaScript into a couple of hundred thousand site collections and subsites using a Custom User Action.  I want to use a CDN.  Governance will not let me add to the layouts folder on the WFE's.  Using a CDN for a CUA is causing the blank page.

Initial Hypothesis:  I don't want to deploy the same JS file hundreds of thousands of times into the local site collections.  As updating and storage are crazy.  I want a CDN like behaviour, and the closest I can get is to modify the hive directory on each SharePoint on-prem. farm that allows me to reference the JS.  I do have several farms and IT governance won't let me modify the WFE's.

Tobias Lekman has an excellent comprehensive overview of the CUA issue:
https://blog.lekman.com/2013/01/scriptlink-registration-in-sharepoint.html

Doing the usual testing, bizarrely I can use anonymous https://radimaging.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?docid=55529eccf4555d698555cb26108fb555&authkey=555-6M9555zF555g555 for my CUA JS file.
When I allow external access on my personal public O365 E3 tenant, I can use this URL, the CUA works perfectly.  My client does not have an Office 365 external public tenant I can use, so an Akamai (or another CDN)CDN and fake the validation.  It's either SP URL validated, or I need to load it differently if I want to use a CDN.  I used an Akamai CDN and added /_layouts/15/ into the URL using folders, and the CDN started working for my CUA. e.g. https://cdn.domain.com/sharepoint/_layouts/15/cuatest.js

Possible Resolution:
  1. Local Site Collection uploaded files
  2. CDN assuming the JS location has: 

Saturday 30 September 2017

Integrating Skype into a SPA in SharePoint

SPA are pretty common and recently on a project I had a request to show contacts with a SPA hosted on SharePoint.  Here is code that shall show Skype presence to the user.

Note: Works on IE, requires the user to be logged into Skype and have the Skype client.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=10" />
    <title> Presence with Skype </title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_layouts/15/1033/styles/Themable/corev15.css" />
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/init.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/1033/strings.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/15/core.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        var g_presenceEnabled = true;
    </script>
    <div>
        ​ <span class="ms-verticalAlignTop ms-noWrap ms-displayInlineBlock">
            <span class="ms-imnSpan">
                <a class="ms-imnlink ms-spimn-presenceLink" aria-hidden="true" onclick="IMNImageOnClick(event);return false;" href="#">
                    <span class="ms-spimn-presenceWrapper ms-imnImg ms-spimn-imgSize-10x10">
                        <img name="imnmark" class="ms-spimn-img ms-spimn-presence-online-10x10x32" id="imn_1,type=smtp" alt="Offline" src="/_layouts/15/images/spimn.png" sip="pb@radimaging.co.uk" showofflinepawn="1" />
                    </span>
                </a>
            </span>
            <span class="ms-noWrap ms-imnSpan">
                Paul beck
            </span>
        </span>
    </div>
</body>

</html>

Sunday 10 September 2017

Custom User Actions: Injecting JavaScript

Problem: Changing Master pages is not good for support and can cause your applications to break when updates are done.

Possible Resolution:  Inject JavaScript to perform custom logic and branding using Custom User Actions.  This allows you to inject JavaScript at the appropriate level and not change any OOTB pages or user controls.  Custom User actions can be applied at 3 levels in a Site collection namely at:
  1. Site Collection Level (always fired),
  2. SPWeb Level or at the
  3. List (Document library) level.
More Information:
Tool to try and add Custom User Action looks useful:
https://spusercustomactionmanageronline.codeplex.com/
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/pnp_articles/customize-your-sharepoint-site-ui-by-using-javascript

Sunday 13 August 2017

SQL 2016 thoughts - 5 reasons to consider it

A couple of good reasons to use SQL 2016:

  1. Temporal Tables - Use instead of Tomb tables/highlander tables.
  2. Row Level Security - specify access to a row for users and groups
  3. Always encrypted - encrypts data at rest on a column (don't confuse with column level encryption)
  4. Read data from queries in JSON object format - nice
  5. Performance - The jump to using SQL 2016 is massive.  I've even heard people recon double the performance on the same kit as SQL 2012.  Multiple Temp DB tables is a big part of this.  And ultimately the best reason.

Sunday 6 August 2017

Common KQL Search Helper


Overview: I am forever forgetting the intricacies of using search and this post is a short note for common searches I use.  Ensure the search is working against "Everything":

Find items under a specific url (Path)
path:https://www.radimaging.com/sites/*

To only see team site (webtemplate)
webtemplate:STS

To see Content Types e.g. task list items
spcontenttype:Task

Example used in a search box for using a wildcard on the title
ClientSector:Finance AND Title:*Paul*

You can use the query approach for any Managed property to refine your search.  Example:
http://radimaging.net/sites/healthcare/_api/search/query?querytext='ClientSector:Finance*'&startrow=2&rowlimit=500

ClientSector is a Managed Property (property bag) at the root site collection level of each site collection.
startrow is telling my query to skip the first 2 results
rowlimit is telling the search to return up to 500 results (max is 500, default is 50 if not specified).

Similar querying can be done using the search results page in the browser:
https://radimaging.net/Pages/results.aspx#k=ClientSector%3AFinance*#s=105
Client Sector MP search equivalant in the browser
s = startrow

It is a good idea to have a query tool (SharePoint Search Query Tool V2.7) to help build up queries and validate query logic.  I have built consoles to do this in CSOM in the past or used PowerShell with CSOM which is pretty good.
https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP-Tools/tree/master/Solutions/SharePoint.Search.QueryTool (PNP Tools GitHub)  as of 10 Dec 2018 version 2.8.2 is the latest version.

Examples:
querytext='SharePoi*'
querytext='ManagedPropertyCreated:Test*'&startrow=10&rowlimit=500&sortlist='created:descending'&clienttype='ContentSearchRegular'


Read More:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Query-SharePoint-2013-373ff97a
http://nikcharlebois.com/get-search-results-in-sharepoint-2013-using-powershell/