How to use SharePoint's OOB error page to show a friendly error message

In many cases, such as a feature activation, it is best to not overwrite the out-of-the-box error page with a custom one, but have the page show a custom message such that users know where the custom code you wrote, failed.

Envision the following scenario: you have an OOB site collection and on custom feature activation, you try to:

• bind custom fields deployed by the feature to a metadata term store
• add these custom fields to content types
• create subsites programmatically
• set permissions programmatically, etc.

Wrap each action in it's own try-catch statement and inside the catch call your custom Error Handler  method that writes to the ULS logs.

In addition to writing to the ULS logs, have your method also do a forced Response.Redirect to the OOB error page, with "ErrorText" in the QueryString object:

  //write to log first, then:

   string idcurr = CorrelationId.GetCurrentCorrelationToken().ToString();

   errorMessage = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(errorMessage);

   HttpContext.Current.Response.Redirect("/_layouts/error.aspx?ErrorText="+ errorMessage + "&ErrorCorrelationId=" + idcurr);

The ErrorCorrelationId QueryString parameter will ensure that the ID you see on the error page matches what you see in the ULS logs.

But the actual Error Handling, if custom, will generate it's own ID when writing to the logs.

It is necessary for these two to match, basically for the code to associate the custom Error message generated with the ID shown on the page.

The only way to grab the latest CorrelationID generated is to grab it via this class, and I am referencing this blog where I found the solution to the issue:

http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/Working-with-SharePoint-2010-Correlation-ID-in-PowerShell-and-code.aspx

public class CorrelationId

    {

        [DllImport("advapi32.dll")]

        public static extern uint EventActivityIdControl(uint controlCode, ref  Guid activityId);

        public const uint EVENT_ACTIVITY_CTRL_GET_ID = 1;

        public static Guid GetCurrentCorrelationToken()

        {

            Guid g = Guid.Empty;

            EventActivityIdControl(EVENT_ACTIVITY_CTRL_GET_ID, ref  g);

            return g;

        }

    }

Authenticating on a web application with ACS

1. Connect to ACS. You need to be made a co-Administrator to be able to create a new Access Service instance. Create a new one. Call it something relevant (namespace).  Once it is created, if you try to access it from the “Access Control Service” button in the ribbon, you might get a 403 error. The original Administrator of the Azure account needs to go in and under the new ACS instance, User Management, add you as an admin. Only then will you see the options.
2. Create a new Relying party. Add the realm and return address to be the new Azure web app url (with https), leave the certify as default, let it create a new rule group. Leave all as defaults.
3. The identity provider is Windows Live Identity Provider- this is already there out-of-the-box. You are good to go with that. This means you will log in with your Microsoft Live Id.
4. Edit the rule group, make sure you add a new group for “nameidentifier”.
5. Set up the web application for ACS:

• You need Identity Foundation SDK 4 installed. Once installed, the FedUtil (old utility) will be part of Visual Studio. When clicking a web project, you will have a new option in the Tools menu called “Add STS reference”. Add the STS reference. Set the path to its own web.config(it will try to update as a result), set the URL to be the https url of the Azure web app url, add an existing STS by referencing its metadata file. You can get the metadata file from the ACS menu:

• This adds a new section to the web.config file of the web application, called “Microsoft.IdentityModel”. This new section contains the url of the ACS (Access Control Service Instance you have to set up), the URL of the web application (https://servername), and other data.

Installing and setting up PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010

1. 1. Log into the SharePoint 2010 central admin server as a farm administrator (whatever server Central Admin is installed on)
   2. Install PowerPivot from the SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise disk:
   THIS INSTALL REQUIRES AT LEAST ONE RESTART OF THE MACHINE
   THIS INSTALL REQUIRES ENTERPRISE
   
   
   2.1.  Click the Installation option on the left had side and then select New installation or add features to an existing installation
   2.2.  At the Setup Role screen select SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint and select your existing farm installation and click Next
   2.3.  Click Next on the Feature Selection screen (this is read only and for information only)
   2.4.  Setup will now run a rule check, if you get any errors you need to resolve these before you can continue – this should be bypassed now if logged in as farm admin and on the CA machine
   2.5.  Leave the name as is: “POWERPIVOT”
   2.6.  Select an account to run the Analysis Services and click Next. Type in the domain account you used as the app pool service account when you installed the DB engine of the instance that runs SharePoint. (say you have a sql instance that is the sql used by SP, go to configuration manager of that sql instance and look at the service account that was used for the DB engine)
   2.7.  On the summary screen click Install. Please check the summary screen first. It should display the correct Central Administration port. If not, you need to go to the installation configuration file (in the textbox at the bottom of the summary screen), open with Notepad and edit to the right port.
   2.8.  Before hitting install, please check this article. If you install on a CA server without a previous SQL installation, you should not run into errors, but check the 3 issues out of this article anyway before proceeding.
   http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog/Articles/How%20do%20I%20-%20Install%20PowerPivot%20into%20an%20EXISTING%20SharePoint%202010%20farm.asp
           Look at the red sections HACK #1, 2 and 3.
   THIS INSTALL REQUIRES A RESTART OF THE MACHINE
   
   
   3. Configure the farm for PowerPivot:
   3.1.  If the install has succeeded and it says so at the end of it, if you navigate to Central Administration, under ‘Manage Farm Features’, you should see :
   
   
   
   3.2.  Under System Settings, farm solutions you should see the following solutions automatically deployed:
   
   
   
   3.3.  Deploy the powerpivotwebapp.wsp to your web application.
   3.4.  System Settings | Manage Services on Server start the required services:

   ·         Excel Calculation Services 

   ·         Secure Store Service 

   ·         Claims to Windows token Service 

   
   
   3.5.  Under “Manage service applications”, create a new service application of type “SQL Server PowerPivot”, like in the screen below. Use all defaults.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   3.6.   Check to see if you have Excel Services enabled by seeing if it is listed in the Service Applications section of central admin. If not enabled, enable it by creating one. Use all defaults.
   
   3.7.   If there is no listing for a secure store then click on New and select Secure Store Service. Use defaults. Click on Generate New Key and complete the details (I this you should be all set on this one, we generated the key for other purposes in our last session)
   4.     Enable PowerPivot for the site
   4.1.  Site collection features->activate powerpivot:
   
   
   
   
   4.2.  This should deploy the new document library template:
   
   
   
   
   4.3.  When creating a PP library instance, you might get this:
   
   
   
   
   To resolve this, you need to add 

   “<SafeControl Src=”~/_layouts/powerpivot/*” IncludeSubFolders=”True” Safe=”True” AllowRemoteDesigner=”True” SafeAgainstScript=”True” />” 

   to the site collection web config manually.

   
   
   
   
   5.     Additional  setup you need to perform:
   5.1.  Go to your site collection, try to export a list as a datafeed, and if you get this error:
   For security reasons DTD is prohibited in this XML document. To enable DTD processing set the ProhibitDtd property on XmlReaderSettings to false and pass the settings into XmlReader.Create method.
                                   It means you do not have ADO.NET for 3.5 (really just KB 982307) installed. You need to follow this article on MSDN (below) and install on the web server that has the web app that serves your site collection. If farm, on all web servers.
   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff487977(v=sql.105).aspx 
   
   
   THIS REQUIRES ANOTHER RESTART
   5.2.  Double-hop issue: you get prompted on data refresh of the powerpivot charts; you need to follow the steps from this article:
   http://whitepages.unlimitedviz.com/tag/powerpivot/
   
   
   
   

Classic mode to Claims mode migration

On an existing web application that is configured o run in Classic Mode authentication, if NTLM is the authentication provider, if you want to switch to Claims, you need to run the following script:


$WebAppName = "http://serverurl"
$account = "domain\administrator"
$wa = get-SPWebApplication $WebAppName

Set-SPwebApplication $wa -AuthenticationProvider (New-SPAuthenticationProvider) -Zone Default

--wait here for the prompt to migrate users and answer YES

$wa = get-SPWebApplication $WebAppName
$account = (New-SPClaimsPrincipal -identity $account -identitytype 1).ToEncodedString()

$zp = $wa.ZonePolicies("Default")
$p = $zp.Add($account,"PSPolicy")
$fc=$wa.PolicyRoles.GetSpecialRole("FullControl")
$p.PolicyRoleBindings.Add($fc)
$wa.Update()

$wa = get-SPWebApplication $WebAppName
$wa.MigrateUsers($true)

In order to test if this has gone through:

• check the web.config, if the new Membership Provider section for Claims has been added
• log in as a site user, make sure that if you navigate to My Settings, you see the token format of the user, rather than domain\user
• go to Central Administration and check that the Default Zone is set to Claims
• in Central Administration, make sure in User Profiles that there are no duplicate accounts (the migration part of this script should take care of this)

How to show the SharePoint navigation tabs when in edit mode

A lot of times, the space allocated to header and logo is insufficient for a branded customized header. The regular out-of-the-box navigation tabs are not shown in edit mode, because the ribbon needs the space taken by both header and tabs in view mode.

To allocate more space for the header and logo image, many clients prefer to expand the header height by allocating the height used by the tabs, thus moving the tabs further below. When the users go into edit mode though, the Ribbon now only takes up once the height of the header and once the height of the tabs. It will move the page up when in edit mode. A solution is to always show the navigation regardless of mode.

In this case, view mode would show:

• new header(height of old header + height of tabs)
• tabs

Edit mode would show:

• ribbon (height of old header + height of tabs by default)
• tabs

What happens out-of-the-box: when in edit mode, the s4-titlerow  (which contains both Header area and Tabs) gets a "display:none;" and the Ribbon becomes visible.

Simply move the entire html structure from under s4-topheader2 from inside s4-titlerow right after s4-titlerow.

How to center a SharePoint master page

By default, SharePoint 2010 master pages expand to the current browser resolution.
In order to fix the width of the site pages and center them for bigger resolutions, several steps can be taken( below).
For the example below, let's consider 1280px to be the standard resolution. The site should cover the entire browser width when rendered in 1280px. Bigger resolutions such as 1600px should center the site in the middle of the browser and leave a gray margin left and right.

• Find the div called s4-workspace. This is the entire page area and it gets expanded by SharePoint according to the current resolution. Add class="s4-nosetwidth". This will prevent the area from expanding to the browser's resolution.
• Set the body to allow overflow. This will add the scrollbar on the browser window, not the workspace.    The workspace will take up only the center part of the page for bigger resolutions than 1280px, this means we don't want the scrollbar to appear on the centered part, but on the actual browser window.

          body.v4master{ overflow:visible !important; min-height:1200px; height:auto;}
          body #s4-workspace{   min-height:1200px; height:auto; overflow-y:hidden;}

• Apply any generic text styles to s4-workspace and set the width of the workspace. The width is 1258 instead of 1280 to allow for a right vertical scrollbar and border on left and right.

          #s4-workspace

          {/* generic text styles for the entire site */

         font-family:Tahoma;

         font-size:12px;

        color:#434345;

        width:1258px;

           }

• Under the body tag, create two new div-s <div id="main"><div id="centered">

          #main{overflow:visible !important;}
          #area{ background-color:#F6F6F6;}
          #centered{
             margin:0 auto;
           width:1260px;
           border-left:1px solid #B8BABD;
   border-right:1px solid #B8BABD;}

Enabling Forms-based authentication on a SharePoint 2010 site

The easiest out-of-the-box solution is to use the Asp.NET SQL Membership Provider as the repository for the forms-based accounts.

The ASP.NET SQL Membership Provider does not come with a UI for managing/creating users and accounts. A custom solution or a third-party tool is usually used for this approach, in this example I use the

Codeplex FBA Pack  you can download here http://sharepoint2010fba.codeplex.com/, because it offers:

• a user creation web part
• a password recovery web part
• a password reset web part
• code is available for customization
• tools for admin management of users

Installation steps

1. Create the ASP.NET SQL Membership Provider

This membership provider comes with the .NET Framework 2.0 and up and can be installed by launching the following tool:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regsql.exe

Leave all default settings in, type in the correct SQL Server name that will host this membership database and leave the database name to be “default”. This will create a new database called “aspnetdb” on your SQL Server.

2. Create a new forms-based web application that will host your new site collection

You can either create a single web application with both Windows and Forms-based authentication enabled on it, or the better approach is to create a web application with integrated Windows authentication enabled in the Default zone and then extend it onto another port, with Forms-based and anonymous in the Internet zone. This way, admins and a restricted number of internal users can access the   application with their Windows accounts, while the Internet zone can be accessed only via forms-based logins:

Navigate to Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Web Applications > New.

On the new “Create New Web Application” popup, pick “Claims Based Authentication”. Leave Windows/NTLM on and save.

Once your web application is created, click Extend in the Web Applications List Ribbon, while having the newly created web application selected. Chose a similar port and un-check NTLM and type in the new membership and role provider names:

You must enable anonymous access, because at least two of your new pages have to allow anonymous.

Let's call the two new pages "CreateMember.aspx" and "RecoverPassword.aspx". These two pages must be available without being logged in.

In case the out of-the-box login page is to be replaced with a custom one, a third page needs to be created that allows anonymous as well.

Create the site collection and set a Windows account as the site collection administrator. Once there are FBA accounts available, we can set the site collection administrator for the extended Internet zone application.

3. Bind the extended web application to the membership provider

Instructions can be found on a variety of blogs and also on msdn:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee806890.aspx

web.config settings need to be made in three locations: 

• on the extended web application (1)
• in Central Administration and (2)
• in the Secure Token Service (3)

(1)  

• Replace  <add key="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" value="%" /> with  <add key="MyAspNetSqlMembershipProvider" value="%" /> - This setting will ensure that the People Picker control will allow admins the option of searching/adding a new user to SharePoint from the new membership provider.
• Replace the membership provider/ role provider sections with:
  
  <roleManager enabled="true" cacheRolesInCookie="false" cookieName=".ASPXROLES" cookieTimeout="30" cookiePath="/" cookieRequireSSL="false" cookieSlidingExpiration="true" cookieProtection="All" defaultProvider="MyAspNetSqlRoleProvider" createPersistentCookie="false" maxCachedResults="25">
  <providers>
  <clear />
  <add connectionStringName="aspnetdb" applicationName="/" name="MyAspNetSqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
  <add applicationName="/" name="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvidertype="System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
  <add name="c" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPClaimsAuthRoleProvider, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
  </providers>
  </roleManager>
  <membership defaultProvider="i" userIsOnlineTimeWindow="15" hashAlgorithmType="">
  <providers>
  <clear />
  <add connectionStringName="aspnetdb" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true"  passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" requiresUniqueEmail="true" passwordFormat="Hashed" name="MyAspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
  <add name="i" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPClaimsAuthMembershipProvider, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
  </providers>
  </membership>
  
• Add the following connection string after <configSections>
<connectionStrings> <add name="aspnetdb" connectionString="data source=MOSS2010;Initial Catalog=aspnetdb;Integrated Security=SSPI;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /></connectionStrings>

(2)

• Add the following connection string after <configSections>
<connectionStrings> <add name="aspnetdb" connectionString="data source=MOSS2010;Initial Catalog=aspnetdb;Integrated Security=SSPI;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /></connectionStrings>
• <roleManager enabled="true" cacheRolesInCookie="false" cookieName=".ASPXROLES" cookieTimeout="30" cookiePath="/" cookieRequireSSL="false" cookieSlidingExpiration="true" cookieProtection="All" defaultProvider="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider" createPersistentCookie="false" maxCachedResults="25">
  <providers>
  <clear />
  <add connectionStringName="aspnetdb" applicationName="/" name="MyAspNetSqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
  <add applicationName="/" name="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
  </providers>
  </roleManager>
  <membership defaultProvider="MyAspNetSqlMembershipProvider" userIsOnlineTimeWindow="15" hashAlgorithmType=""><providers>
  <clear />
  <add connectionStringName="aspnetdb" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true" passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" requiresUniqueEmail="false" passwordFormat="Hashed" name="MyAspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
  </providers>
  </membership>

(3)

• Add the following connection string after <configSections>
<connectionStrings> <add name="aspnetdb" connectionString="data source=MOSS2010;Initial Catalog=aspnetdb;Integrated Security=SSPI;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /></connectionStrings>
• Add the section below:
  <system.web>
  <membership>
  <providers>
  <add connectionStringName="aspnetdb" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true" passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" requiresUniqueEmail="false" passwordFormat="Hashed" name="MyAspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
  </providers>
  </membership>
  <roleManager enabled="true">
  <providers>
  <add connectionStringName="aspnetdb" applicationName="/" name="MyAspNetSqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
  </providers>
  </roleManager>

You should now be able to navigate to your new site collection and you should be prompted for credentials -
"/_forms/default.aspx" is the out-of-the-box login for forms-authenticated users.
In order to log in here, at least one forms account needs to be created in the database (aspnetdb) and added to SharePoint as a user. You will do this from the new CreateMember.aspx page, once it is set up.

4. Install the Codeplex FBA app

Pre-requisites for installing the FBA Pack:
o   site collection features: "Publishing Infrastructure" should be activated
o   site features: “SharePoint Server Publishing” features should be activated
Follow the installation instructions on Codeplex.

Create a new document library called 'Public' with two pages  "CreateMember.aspx" and "RecoverPassword.aspx", each with the corresponding FBA Pack webpart on it. Enable anonymous access on lists and document libraries only and enable it on the 'Public' library only. Make sure both pages have at least one published major version. You should be able to navigate to these pages without being signed in.
Use the CreateMember.aspx page to create the first generic admin FBA account. Log in as Windows site collection administrator and make this new FBA account site collection admin on the extended web application.