Connect SharePoint WebApplication to another domain after two way trust

If two way trust is already set. Then you can run below stsadm commands from your server:

Step 1:

First, you have to set an encryption key on all web servers in your farm so that the stored credentials can be encrypted:

Just to be clear, you have to run this on all web servers in your farm and the "AnyKey" value has to be set to the same value on all of those servers.

STSADM.exe -o setapppassword -password AnyKey
where "AnyKey" is any value.

For example,
STSADM.exe -o setapppassword -password B1gL0ngPassw0rd

Step 2

Next, you have to run below stsadm command to search users from other domain in people picker and give them access

stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadforests -pv "forest:DomainA.com;forest:DomainB.com,DomainB\login,password" -url "Your webapp url"

*DomainA: is a domain on which SharePoint installed

Domain B: is a new domain which you have to connect to sharepoint

Once above command runs successfully you will able to search users from DomainB in sharepoint portal which is on DomainA.

Hope this helps!!!!!

Birthday reminder using SharePoint list

If you have SharePoint 2007 and up, AND it is the enterprise version of SharePoint, then you can use what's called Information Management Policies.

1. Create a SharePoint list (custom list template) with all the people (in a people picker field) and their birthday (in a date field)
2. Create a SharePoint Designer workflow on that list, that has one action: Send an email.  Put the birthday person's name in the TO  box of the email, and make the subject and body say whatever you want. 
3. Publish the workflow.
4. Go to the list's advanced settings, and change 'allow mgmt of content types' to YES.
5. In list settings in the list of content types, there will only be one, called Item.  Click Item.
6. Click Information Management Policy settings.
7. Click "define a policy" and click OK.
8. check the box next to "enable expiration"
9. next to "a time period based on this item's properties, pick your birthday field + 1
10. next to 'perform this action" choose to run a workflow
11. Pick the name of the workflow you created at step 2

This will run every night and if it's a person's birthday they will get an email... the next day.

Reference: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/e438fe69-7efa-4ee7-9660-26382611bf32/sharepoint-automatic-birthday-emails

Add Metadata navigation in SharePoint 2013

Metadata Navigation is one of the most useful features that was introduced in SharePoint 2010.By enabling this feature, users can Filter or narrow down the display of Documents within a document Library.The feature is highly beneficial while working with Document Libraries that has large number of documents.

Filtering documents by a Category or by a Metadata column can add a great value for efficient collaboration by the Team.Like the earlier SharePoint version, In SharePoint 2013, when enabled, the Metadata Navigation is added to the quick launch with the pre-Configured Navigation Hierarchies and Key Filters.

Lets look at the detailed Steps to Configure Metadata Navigation for a Document Library in SharePoint 2013.

1. Enable “Metadata Navigation and Filtering” Site Feature in Site Settings
2. Next Navigate to the Document Library Setting and select “Metadata navigation settings”.
3. In the Metadata Settings select the Column that you want to Filter the Documents on.You need to add this Column to the Document Library first.
4. Once you save the settings, a Filter Option appears in Quick Launch bar.

Open PDF files in browser - SharePoint (Secure Way)

SharePoint 2010 prompts to save PDF documents when opening.

Most of the blogs will offer you a solution to change the Browser File Handling property to Permissive in Central Administration for that particular web application.

First of all there are good reasons why SP2010 does not render files in browser, this change was made due to security reasons in SharePoint 2010. PDF included.

After considering the possible dangers you Could enable permissive mode, but that works for all file types. Instead it is much less of a security hole to just enable pdf as allowed inline mime types for the web application:

$webapp = Get-SPWebApplication <your webapp url> 
$webapp.AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes.Add(“application/pdf”)
$webapp.Update()

Hope this helps.......

Delete all attachments from custom SharePoint list without code

There are some times when you asked to delete all attachments from a SharePoint list. SharePoint itself has given simple solution for this which will not require knowledge about coding or PowerShell or any difficult and time consuming techniques.

Few clicks and your work is done.

1. Open your list
2. Go to list settings
3. Advanced Settings
4. In Attachments option select radio button "Disabled" and click OK
5. It will ask you for confirmation
6. And once you confirmed, it will delete all attachments from SharePoint list

Done....

Hope this helps...

SharePoint: This entry cannot be validated. Exception Object reference not set to an instance of object. occurred

Today while using Audience settings in navigation , I got the error while validating groups in Audience setting, even groups are correctly set.

The following error message was appearing during audience validation:
 This entry cannot be validated. Exception Object reference not set to an instance of object. occurred

After some quick search on internet i found that, there might be possibility of User Profile Service is not associated with web application.

To check that, I went to Central Administration --> Application Management --> Manage Web application.
Selected my web application and clicked on "Services Connection"

The check-box in front of User Profile Service Application was unchecked. I selected the check-box and clicked OK.

Then I went to set the audience and problem was resolved.

Cheers!!!!!!. Hope this helps.

External Content Type to read data from SQL Server using SQL Authentication

Found below a good artical on creating external list to read data from SQL server using SQL Authentication:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2012/04/12/sharepoint-2010-external-content-type-to-read-data-from-sql-server-using-sql-authentication-and-secure-store-service.aspx

How to add external css in visual webpart in SharePoint 2010

If you want to add external css on visual webpart,

1. First go to layouts folder in 14 hive, path is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
2. Create a new folder in it and give a proper name to that folder.
3. Add your css files in that newly created folder.
4. Now to call the css file from your webpart code, add below tag in your ascx file <SharePoint:CssRegistration ID="cssReg" runat="server" Name="/_layouts/ForCss/style.css"></SharePoint:CssRegistration>

Done. Hope this helps.

Free Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Templates

Download free SharePoint 2010 templates at:
http://www.microsoft.com/government/en-us/campaigns/pages/sharepoint-templates.aspx 

SharePoint Server 2010: boundaries and limits

This article describes software boundaries and limits of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx

Software boundaries and limits for SharePoint 2010 & 2013

http://sprider.org/2012/12/14/software-boundaries-and-limits-for-sharepoint-2010-2013/

SharePoint 2010 Virtual Labs

The Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet have a whole bunch of virtual labs you can use right from your browser.

For more information on SharePoint 2010 virtual labs visit MSDN SharePoint Server Virtual Labs and TechNet Virtual Labs for SharePoint Products and Technologies.

How to create count related lookup column in SharePoint custom lists?

A lookup count column is a special type of computed field that computes the number of items in the target list that point to the current item.

Let’s say I have two lists Departments and Employee Data. Now in Department list I want to add new column which will calculate how many employees are there in that department.

Here’s how we need to setup our lists:

1) Create a Department list. And add your department values in a title column.

2) Create an Employee Data list. In “Employee Data” list I renamed ‘Title’ column to ‘Employee Name’. And then add column ‘Department’ which will be lookup column pointing to the title column in the Department list.

3) After adding some test values in “Employee Data” list the list will look like this

4) Now go to “Department” list, add a column of type "Lookup" referring to the “Employee Data” list and you'll notice that in the drop-down area where you define the lookup, you'll have a new option called "Count Related". This is here automatically because it recognizes that the “Department” list has a lookup pointing back to this one. Select that Count Related option.

5) Now your Department list will have a column counting how many employees are associated with that Department.

This doesn’t require any coding or JavaScript. A hidden SharePoint magic.