Failed To Load SharePoint Designer Workflow

A client ask me to help troubleshoot one of their workflows.  The problem was an inconsistent issue; sometimes it worked, and sometimes it did not.  So I jumped on to my SPD 2007 to take a look at their workflow.  I could not see anything obvious in the workflow, logs and error reports.  It was getting late, so I called it a night.  The next morning I logged back into my SPD 2007 to see if I missed something on the workflow when I received the following error.

It worked last night, what has changed?  Well the client had recently set up a second web front end (WFE), and a network load balance (NLB) piece of hardware.  I had read through a couple of posts...

1. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointworkflow/thread/9874845b-9bf0-4723-9142-7384bbbcb1a6
2. http://blog.qumsieh.ca/2010/01/16/failed-to-load-workflow-error-in-sharepoint-designer/

And while reading the second post, it hit me to check the web.config on the WFEs to make sure that they are identical. It turned out that I was missing an authorizedType Assembly in one of the web.config files.  After adding the line back in, all was happy again.

IIS7 and Multiple IP Addresses That Won't Bind

Recently one of my clients asked to put a Tomcat Server on the same box as their SharePoint 2007 WFE. 

1) Add the IP address (Local Area Connections --> Properties --> Advanced --> IP Address Add...)

2) Stop IIS  (cmd --> iisreset -stop)

3) Set binding information in Tomcat
4) Set binding information in IIS

          (IIS Manager --> Right Click Site --> Edit Bindings --> Edit Port Binding --> Select IP from drop down) 

5) By default, IIS7 binds to ALL port 80 IPs, so we have to disable this behavior for the IP in IIS 

      (cmd --> netsh http add iplisten ipaddress=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)

6) Restart IIS (cmd -->  iisreset)


Warning!!!
If you have created Custom Web Services, running the Net Shell command will bind your Custom Web Services to the IP address and cause them to stop working.  This will give you an error of:  Not Able To Connect To Remote Server.

Centering Your SharePoint 2010 Master Page

The other day, I was working on creating a new master page, starting with the v4.master. The team that I was working with asked to have the page centered in the browser window, and they sent me over a link to SharePoint Blues to use as reference.
http://www.sharepointblues.com/2010/05/06/centered-layout-with-v4-master/

Unfortunately, it did not work in my masterpage, so we kept looking and my coworker Ben found a simple solution:

1. Open up your masterpager
2. Look for the start of the body
3. Insert the following within the body:
•  {margin: 0 auto;}

And that was all that it took to fix the issue...  gotta love simple...

Proxy Server Settings for SharePoint 2007

We do not have any "Content" deployment people at my office so I depend mostly on RSS feeds to keep the sites updated and changing on a constant basis.
One day, our IT department put in a Proxy Server, which killed all of the RSS feeds to SharePoint. I had to update the config file so that the RSS feeds were available once again.

I used the following sites as reference...

http://geekswithblogs.net/hinshelm/archive/2007/10/24/Proxy-server-settings-for-SharePoint-2007.aspx

http://microsoft-sharepoint-services.blogspot.com/2008/12/configuring-proxy-setting-on-sharepoint.html

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912060

You will need to put the Proxy Setting into each Virtual Directory for every site that you want to be able to access the Internet.

The main reason that I am writing about these settings is that it took me too long to figure out that the last slash in the "proxyaddress" is REQUIRED...

In Server 2008, you will find the required files here...

C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\YOUR SITE NAME\web.config

Add the following to the end of the .config file:

<system.net>
  <defaultproxy>
     <proxy usesystemdefault="false" proxyaddress="http://x.x.24.45:3128/" bypassonlocal="true" />
  </defaultproxy>
</system.net>

Weather RSS Data View

The company that I work for travels people all over the word every week of the year. I thought that it would be nice to see what the weather will be so they can be better prepared for their job.

1) Create a Custom List within your SharePoint site, with columns Venue Name, Address, City, State, Zip, and Country.

2) Open up the site in SharePoint Designer.

3) Add a DataView Web Part to bring the Venue Address to the Web Site.

4) Open the Data Source Library

5) Create a Server-Side Script

6) Enter the URL information...

http://weather.msn.com/rss.aspx?wealocations=21076&weadegreetype=F

You can change the "21076" to your own default zip code.

The "add/modify paramiters" should have automatically filled in.

7) Drag the Data Source where you want it displayed on your web site.

8) Hover over the right edge of the Weather Script that you just added and select the Common Tasks button

a) Select Edit Columns

b) Remove all columns except for the description column

c) Select the Common xsl:value-of Tasks

d) Set the Data Field (description)

e) Set the Format as Rich Text (you will get a warning)

9) Go back to the Data View Web Part for the "Venue" that you created in Step 3 and hover over the right corner to select th eCommon Data View Tasks --> Web Part Connections

10) Click Add...

11) Click Next and then Finish...