The Citrix Web Interface allows you to publish desktop applications as links on a web page.  If only one link is published, such as a “Windows 7 Desktop” link, then users will have to come into the web interface and manually click on the link to launch it.  It’s easy however, to update the code on the home page so that the published desktop automatically launches when the user opens the web interface.  This shortcut saves users a click and some time, and makes the process more streamlined, especially if there is only one published application.

To make this change, just log onto the Citrix server and open the following file:

C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\XenApp\site\default.aspx

That file is the home page of the Citrix web interface.  Add a script such as the following to the bottom of the page:

The Problem – Hidden Outlook Reminders

In Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010, reminder windows pop up in Outlook, but they do not steal the focus if you are working in another program.  For example, if you currently working in Word or Internet Explorer, you won’t see a reminder window if one pops up, since you’re not in Outlook.

In previous versions of Windows, this wasn’t as big of a deal because you would still see the reminder window in the task bar.  So even though you didn’t see the actual window, you would see the tab for it flashing on the taskbar.

In Windows 7 however, the default grouping of same-application windows, makes is much harder to see when a reminder window pops up. For example, the image below shows a second Outlook window, which is actually a reminder window.

As a result, Windows 7 users may find that they’re more likely to miss reminders and meetings.

The Solution – An Outlook Addin to Bring Reminders to Focus

Kraft Kennedy has created an Outlook addin which responds to the “reminder” event in Outlook, and uses Windows API functions to locate the reminder window and force it into the foreground.

With this addin installed, users would see the reminder window pop up in front of whatever application they are working in, and it will stay in the foreground until the reminder is dismissed or snoozed.

People who may have missed reminders before should now find that it is no longer an issue.

The image below shows a reminder in the foreground, over an Internet Explorer session.

We’re giving this addin away for free to anyone that is interested, but with no support.  If you’re interested in using it, please contact Michael Worth at  (212) 692-5610 or worth@kraftkennedy.com.

In SharePoint 2007, menus in some master pages opened behind page content and Flash animations.  However, there was an easy fix which was to just locate the css style for the dynamic menus, and change the “z-index” property to a high number.  This same fix does not work in 2010 however, and to make matters worse, the menus on the default master page in 2010 always open behind Flash videos.  (The built-in Silverlight web part in 2010 does not have this problem, but I suspect there are still many people who will have home pages with Flash content.)

Here’s an example of how the menus open by default, behind the Flash content.

After much digging around, I was able to find a way to correctly display the menus in front of Flash content.  You have to add the following parameters to your actual object html code for the Flash object, to make it transparent.

Add the following parameter to the OBJECT tag:

   <param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”>

Add the following parameter to the EMBED tag:

   wmode=”transparent”

After that the page menus should load correctly, as shown below.

When upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, you’ll need to upgrade your master pages (if they’re customized) to take advantage of the new features in 2010, such as the ribbon.  The first question is to decide if you want to keep the current master page and add all the new controls in, or to start with a new 2010 master page and customize that.  We decided to start with a new master page based on the 2010 master page, v4.master, and customize that.  Here’s some resources I found useful when creating the new custom master page for our site.

If you choose to keep the 2007 master page and add the new controls into it, this post lists all of the steps:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee539981(office.14).aspx

If you plan to start with a new 2010 master page, a starter minimal master page can be found here:

http://startermasterpages.codeplex.com/

I also found the following pages invaluable.  This blog post lists all of the base css classes in the SharePoint master page.

http://erikswenson.blogspot.com/2010/01/sharepoint-2010-base-css-classes.html

This blog lists the styles you’ll need to modify to change the look and feel of the menus:

http://blog.drisgill.com/2009/11/sp2010-branding-tip-7-using-simple.html

A common situation in organizations is to make calendars public, so that employees can see other employee’s availability, and collaborate better.  Users may also delegate rights to other users to view their messages, tasks, and contacts.  In these situations, people may rely on marking sensitive items private to hide them from other users.  In Outlook or OWA, other users will see a placeholder for the private items, but won’t be able to view any of the details.  However, you should keep in mind that this privacy is only a feature of the client application–Outlook or OWA–and is not inherent to Exchange.  Exchange itself does not support any kind of item-level security or privacy, and only has a field called “sensitivity” which is used by Outlook and OWA.  The client applications look at that field to determine whether to display the item.

This architecture is common to all versions of Outlook and Exchange, through 2010, and is not really a bug, so much as an architectural decision by Microsoft to keep item-level permissions in the client-tier.  The end result is that people should realize that just because they mark an appointment or other item private in Outlook, it doesn’t mean that no one else will be able to see it.  Items that are extrememly sensitive should probably not be stored in Exchange in the first place, or you should take off all delegate / view rights to your mailbox.  People who you give delegate rights to should also be people who you trust.

Developers should note that when writing custom applications with WebDAV, Exchange Web Services, or any other method, all items will be returned including private items.  The custom application should look at the sensitivity setting of each message before displaying it.  If the sensitivity is private, then the mesage should not be displayed.  We, at Kraft Kennedy, have run into this issue several times when creating custom applications with WebDAV that pull back appointments from the Exchange calendar.

Microsoft has details about allowing other users to manage your mail and calendar here: 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA100750811033.aspx?pid=CH100788801033

Note, the last paragraph of the article:

When designing the layout and branding for new SharePoint 2010 sites, some people may wish to hide the left-hand navigation and only use top navigation.  Hiding the left-hand navigation allows for more space for content and a possible cleaner looking interface.  In SharePoint’s Site Settings, you can turn off the quick launch and tree view, however that still leaves the navigation bar on the page with only a recycling bin.  In order to entirely remove the bar, you would need to either modify the master page or CSS linked to the master page.

In SharePoint 2010, this can be done pretty easily in the CSS file by modifying the following two styles.

#s4-leftpanel
{
 display:none;
}

That style controls the left navigation panel, and setting the display to none effectively hides the entire section.  Hiding this section is not enough though, since the body area uses a left margin to specify where to start the body section.  So you would also need to modify the following style, to tell the body area to start at 5 pixels from the left, or wherever you want to start the main area.

.s4-ca
{
 margin-left: 5px;
 background: transparent;
}

The single-server out of the box SharePoint 2010 installation uses SQL Express, which comes with a 4 GB limit.  This is in contrast to SharePoint 2007 which used the Windows Internal Database, a version of SQL Express with no size limit.  If you’re upgrading an existing environment or planning to import a bunch of files, you may easily hit this limit.

Once this limit is reached, you’ll see errors like the following, when trying to do anything in SharePoint.  I saw this error just trying to activate a feature.  You’ll also get errors when tying to check out files or import new files.

Could not allocate space for object ‘dbo.EventCache’.'EventCache_Id’ in database

Some solutions to work around this are to switch to SQL Server, which doesn’t have a file size limit, or to try to implement remote BLOB storage.  Getting the BLOBS out of SQL will significantly reduce the database size.  If the environment is just a test environment, you could also delete enough files out of the database or move files to a different database.

When you create new sites in SharePoint 2010, you may find that “Master Page” is missing from the site settings, and there’s no apparent easy way to change the master page, outside of SharePoint Designer.  This happens when the publishing features are not enabled, and is easy to fix by just enabling the right features.

Site Settings will look as follows:

All you have to do to fix is turn on the publishing features.  The “Master Page” setting is now dependant on the publishing infrastructure.  First, go into Site Collection Features and enable “SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure” at the site collection level.  Then go into Manage Site Features and enable “SharePoint Server Publishing” at the site level.

You’ll then get the master page and layout links as shown below:

Simultaneous editing for collaboration is one of the most hyped features in Office 2010, however it’s only supported over the web in the Excel 2010 web app.  For Word and PowerPoint simultaneous editing, you’ll need to have the full client versions of the Office 2010 products.  This will likely be a disappointment for people who were hoping to collaborate on documents from kiosks anywhere in the world.

Below are some screen shots of what you’ll see if you try to simultaneously edit a document in SharePoint 2010:

Word

Word will only let multiple people edit a document at the same time if you’re using the full client.  In the Word 2010 web app, the second person will get this error:

PowerPoint

PowerPoint will only let multiple people edit a presentation at the same time if you’re using the full client.  In the PowerPoint 2010 web app, the second person will get this error:

Excel

The Excel 2010 web app is the most advanced web application and allows multiple users to edit a spreadsheet at the same time.  Other users will see changes as they are made by someone.  If two users try to edit a cell at the same time, then the second edit will be the one that saves.

The Excel web app is shown in the screen shot below.

In the bottom-right, the web app tells you how many users are currently editing the spreadsheet.

Surprisingly, the Excel desktop client cannot participate in simultaneous editing.  This collaboration feature is only available from the web app.

OneNote

The OneNote web app does allow simultaneous editing, however edits should be limited to separate pages.  As long as users are working on separate pages, they will see updates that someone else made when clicking on the page.  When we tried to edit the same page between several users however, we were presented with “conflicting changes” errors as shown below, with the only option being to delete the page.

The simultaneous editing features in Office 2010 open up a lot of possibilities for collaboration, however it’s disappointing that only Excel can fully utilize it in the web application.  Our hope is that the next version of Office will fully support multi editing in both the web apps and the client versions.

When you click “New Item” in any SharePoint list or “Upload” in any document library, SharePoint sends you to a standard form for creating the new item.  Behind the scenes, SharePoint also passes in two parameters to let the form know where to post the item and where to go after the item is posted.  By leveraging these two parameters in the URL, you can make a link anywhere that posts data to any list and sends you someplace else when finished.  This has come in handy for us when creating intranet home pages, as we can create a list of links to post data to custom lists, which sends the person back to the home page afterwards.  Otherwise, the person would end up in the root of the list or library they submitted the item to.  So we were able to easily meet a requirement that the person be directed back to the home page after submitting the item.

A SharePoint new item link is structured as follows:

https://intranet.doman.com/site/Lists/listname/NewForm.aspx?RootFolder=/site/Lists/listname&Source=https://intranet.domain.com

The two parameters of interest are RootFolder and Source.  RootFolder tells SharePoint where to post the document.  If it is removed from the URL then SharePoint will post data to the root of the list where newform.aspx is located.  You could also specify the path to a subfolder there, and SharePoint would post to that subfolder.  Source tells SharePoint where to go when the posting is complete.  The source needs to be a place in the site collection.  In the example link above it is back to the home page.  If source is left out of the URL then SharePoint will just return you back to the root of the list afterwards.

By using these two parameters, you can create lists of links on a page rather than having to drop in web parts, and you will gain more flexibility in how the user experience and navigation work.