Content Precedes Design

thought leadership collides with learned experience to yield practical advice

  • ULS Viewer for SharePoint

    The go-to tool for trapsing through SharePoint’s ULS logs has always been ULS Viewer, attributed to Daniel Winter (Blog | Twitter) at Microsoft. However, obtaining this tool has recently become a problem because http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer no longer brings you to a place you can download it.

    Apparently Microsoft has retired the MSDN Archive Gallery which hosted this tool.

    I am glad, in this case, that I am slightly OCD and save all of my downoadable installers in an organized manner and back them up. Thus, I can make avaiable the latest copy of ULS Viewer that was available (version 2.0.3530.27850 10/09/2009), as far as I know. According to the license that accompanied the download and applied to the MSDN Archive Gallery, this is legal for me to distribute here. These are the original unaltered files with modification dates from 2012 when I downloaded them.

    ULS Viewer

    The ZIP archive contains the two original files–a Word document describing the tool, and the executable file.

    A good overview of the tool is avaiable in this article or this blog post. There are, of course, other log viewer tools for SharePoint that are out there. I encourage you to try them out to see which one works best for you.

    Please direct any questions regarding the retirement of the MSDN Archive Gallery to ArchiveInfo@microsoft.com.

  • My Slides – Must Love Term Sets: The New and Improved Managed Metadata Service in SharePoint 2013 – SPSNYC14

    Thanks for attending my session at SharePoint Saturday New York City, sponsored in part by BlueMetal!

    Slide Deck

    Pre-Session Playlist

    1. Stereo MCs – Step It Up
    2. Pete Yorn – Life on a Chain
    3. Dar Williams – I Saw A Bird Fly Away

  • SharePoint Content Type Publishing – Delete vs. Unpublish

    The time may come when you need to take a content type out of circulation, or it may just be because you made a mistake and need to replace it. Whatever the reason, if this content type is defined in your content type hub, circulated via content type publishing, then consider the order of operations before clicking buttons.

    The content type in question in the subscribing site collections will have one of two outcomes when it becomes unavailable in the content type hub:

    1. When a published content type is deleted, it will remain available for download for all site collections in every web application that consumes content types from the content type hub. Any copies of this content type will be orphaned.
    2. When a published content type is unpublished, it will become unavailable for download for all site collections in every web application that consumes content types from the content type hub. Copies of this content type being used in subscribing site collections will be unsealed (set to not be read only) and made into a local content type. In no situation will the content type be automatically removed from any subscribing site collections.

    Why does deleting not have the expected effects like unpublishing? Once a content type is published, that content type definition for subscribing is actually stored in the term store database for the managed metadata service of which the content type hub belongs to. The only way to change the content type definition is to manipulate the content type in the content type hub and re-publish, causing an update to that item in the term store database and thus updates to subscribing site collections’ sealed copies. The nature of this structure means that, if you were to delete the content type from the content type hub without first unpublishing it, all copies of the content type in subscribing site collections will become orphaned–they will lose their ability to be updated while still thinking that they are subscribed. In fact, when a new site collection is created that utilizes that content type hub, that orphaned content type will appear because it is being retrieved from its item in the term store database. You will never be able to unpublish an orphaned content type, unless you follow guidance from this blog post.

    So, the workflow must be:

    1. Unpublish the content type.
    2. Delete the content type in the content type hub.
    3. Optionally, clean up unsealed copies of the content type in the subscribing site collections.

    P.S. – Keep in mind that any site columns from the content type hub that were associated with the removed content type in question went along for the ride when it was published. They do not get retracted–unpublishing leaves these site columns behind in the subscribing site collections as well.

  • My Slides – Taming Your Taxonomy in SharePoint – BASPUG

    Thanks for attending my presentation at this month’s Boston Area SharePoint User Group meeting, sponsored by BlueMetal!

    Slide Deck

  • My Slides – Taming Your Taxonomy in SharePoint – SPSBMORE14

    Thanks for attending my session at SharePoint Saturday Baltimore!

    Slide Deck

  • My Slides – Taming Your Taxonomy in SharePoint – SPSDURHAM14

    Thanks for attending my session at the inagural SharePoint Saturday Durham!

    Slide Deck

  • SharePoint Color Palette Tool (“ThemeSlots”)

    Previously presented by Microsoft as “ThemeSlots”, the SharePoint Color Palette Tool will help you create your own .spcolor file (Theme) for a SharePoint 2013 Composed Look.

    The interface presents you with fields to input your color values. Preview your choices by using either the Seattle or Oslo layouts as well as handy Contrast Test and UI Preview layouts. You can also bring in your background image to assist in your testing.

    This is much easier than manually editing a Theme file in Notepad or SharePoint Designer because the color value fields can be grouped to assist you–by UI Groups, UI Type, and Color Buckets. The Color Buckets grouping is particularly helpful if you would like to tweak an existing theme’s colors because all intentionally similar attributes get grouped together. You can then change just a single field and maintain the color value consistency of the other attributes that should match across the theme.

    Don’t know where to start? Pick a single color using the picker to start from and then click the Recolor button. The tool will automatically suggest variations for all of the other attributes.

    Any errors and/or warnings across the Theme are presented to you as you go.

    SharePoint Color Palette Tool

    You will need to upload your .spcolor file to the _catalogs/theme/15/ folder of your site collection in order to select it in Site Settings.

    P.S. – Keep in mind that SharePoint 2013 supports RGBA color values, not just hex! The ‘A’ is for the alpha channel, allowing you to control the opacity.

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