Sharepoint Online (o365 ) - Architectural Considerations

Sharepoint Online :   It is available at all times, It is constantly upgraded and it saves you loads on hardware and operational costs - isn't this what the cloud is all about? Then why is there a hesitation when we talk about the cloud to the clients and our trusted partners? Security of data, limited feature set, cost of migration of the existing environment, adoption, governance..?

Perhaps the greatest threat to adoption of Office 365 is not competitors, but rather reluctance of organizations to move data and applications from on-premise servers and clients to Microsoft’s cloud. Well... with all the tension free life of no-maintenance of the hardware and software comes a tradeoff of the rich feature set which is slightly compromised in the online version and the security of your hosted data concerns.

I spend a lot of time over the net searching for a central location to get the feature set comparison and was lost in the results. Finally, I decided to have all the information collated at one glance to help me in my understanding. The primary ones which shape the architecture of your o365 SharePoint online portal are mentioned here with details on the others tabled below. Hope this helps you as well.

Microsoft decided to exclude certain functionality from SharePoint Online at the time of launch in June 2011. In short, the most important capabilities missing in SharePoint Online are listed below which is very imnportant for architects like me to design a new portal or migrate the existing :

S. No.	Features Not Supported
1	FAST Search
2	Advanced Search Configuration
3	Record Center - Last I heard this was being offered in the Dedicated online version.
4	Word Automation Services
5	Business Intelligence Center
6	Secure Store Service
7	Web Analytics
8	Mail Enabled Document Libraries are not supported, impacting Scanners & Scanner software
9	Locally installing custom software - Any third party agent cannot be run on the server.
10	Advanced public facing web sites
11	Vanity URLs are not supported for intranet zone sites. They can only be applied to your SharePoint Online Public Website.
12	BCS within SharePoint Online does not support a direct connection to SQL Azure. A WCF endpoint is required.
13	Access reporting is not supported by SharePoint Online Access Services because SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is not currently enabled for SharePoint Online. Access reporting requires SSRS.
14	SharePoint Online does not support auditing capabilities to log the opening and downloading of files in a document library.
15	SharePoint Online does not support PerformancePoint Services.
16	Editing the Public Website with SharePoint Designer is not supported.

Feature	SharePoint 2010 Server	SharePoint Online
Developer Dashboard	Yes	No
SharePoint Timer Jobs	Yes	No
Business Data Integration with the Office Client	Yes	No
Business Connectivity Services Profile Page	Yes	No
Audit Opening and Downloading	Yes	No
Records Center	Yes	No
Word Automation Services	Yes	No
Business Intelligence Center	Yes	No
Chart Web Parts	Yes	No
Data Connection Library	Yes	No
PerformancePoint™ Services	Yes	No
Dashboards	Yes	No
Decomposition Tree	Yes	No
Excel Services and PowerPivot for SharePoint	Yes	No
Advanced Content Processing	Yes	No
Tunable Relevance with Multiple Rank Profiles	Yes	No
Business Intelligence Indexing Connector	Yes	No
SharePoint 2010 Search Connector Framework	Yes	No
Contextual Search	Yes	No
Deep Refinement	Yes	No
Federated Search	Yes	No
Query Suggestions, "Did You Mean?” and Related Queries	Yes	No
Relevancy Tuning	Yes	No
Rich Web Indexing	Yes	No
Enterprise Scale Search	Yes	No
Windows 7 Search	Yes	No
Similar Results	Yes	No
Thumbnails and Previews	Yes	No
Visual Best Bets	Yes	No
Advanced Sorting	Yes	No
Web Analytics	Yes	No

Feature	SharePoint 2010 Server	SharePoint Online
Office Web Apps integration	Yes – separate installation	Yes – comes preconfigured

Feature	SharePoint 2010 Server	SharePoint Online
Secure Store Service	Yes	Yes – Tenant Level
Public Website	No	Yes (one per tenant)

Feature	SharePoint 2010 Server	SharePoint Online
Ask Me About	Yes	Yes
Blogs	Yes	Yes
Colleague Suggestions	Yes	Yes
Colleagues Network	Yes	Yes
Discussions	Yes	Yes
Enterprise Wikis	Yes	Yes
Keyword Suggestions	Yes	Yes
Memberships	Yes	Yes
My Site: My Content	Yes	Yes
My Site: My Newsfeed	Yes	Yes
My Site: My Profile	Yes	Yes
Note Board	Yes	Yes
Organization Browser	Yes	Yes
Photos and Presence	Yes	Yes
Ratings	Yes	Yes
Recent Activities	Yes	Yes
Status Updates	Yes	Yes
Tag Clouds	Yes	Yes
Tag Profiles	Yes	Yes
Tags	Yes	Yes
Tags and Notes Tool	Yes	Yes
Wikis	Yes	Yes
Client Object Model (OM)	Yes	Yes
Event Receivers	Yes	Yes
Language Integrated Query (LINQ) for SharePoint	Yes	Yes
Solution Packages	Yes	Yes
REST and ATOM Data Feeds	Yes	Yes
Ribbon and Dialog Framework	Yes	Yes
Silverlight Web Part	Yes	Yes
Workflow Models	Yes	Yes
Access Services	Yes	Yes
Browser-Based Customizations	Yes	Yes
Business Data Connectivity Service	Yes	Yes
External Data Column	Yes	Yes
Business Data Web Parts	Yes	Yes
External Lists	Yes	Yes
SharePoint Designer 2010	Yes	Yes
Forms: Out-of-Box workflows and customization through SharePoint Designer 2010	Yes	Yes
InfoPath Forms Services	Yes	Yes
Sandboxed Solutions	Yes	Yes
Workflow	Yes	Yes
Microsoft Visual Studio® 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools	Yes	Yes
Windows 7 Support	Yes	Yes
Workflow Templates	Yes	Yes
SharePoint Service Architecture	Yes	Yes
In-Place Legal Holds	Yes	Yes
Document Sets	Yes	Yes
Metadata-driven Navigation	Yes	Yes
Multi-Stage Disposition	Yes	Yes
Rich Media Management	Yes	Yes
Shared Content Types	Yes	Yes
Support for Accessibility Standards	Yes	Yes
Content Organizer	Yes	Yes
Unique Document IDs	Yes	Yes
Managed Metadata Service	Yes	Yes
Excel Services	Yes	Yes
Visio Services	Yes	Yes
Calculated KPIs	Yes	Yes
Best Bets	Yes	Yes
Extensible Search Scale	Yes	Yes
Duplicate Detection	Yes	Yes
Metadata-Driven Refinement	Yes	Yes
Mobile Search Experience	Yes	Yes
People and Expertise Search	Yes	Yes
Phonetics and Nickname Search	Yes	Yes
Recently Authored Content	Yes	Yes
Search Scopes	Yes	Yes
Single Site Collection Search	No	Yes
Site Search	Yes	Yes
Click-Through Relevancy	Yes	Yes
View in Browser	Yes	Yes
Basic Sorting	Yes	Yes
SharePoint Lists	Yes	Yes
Web Parts	Yes	Yes
Improved Governance	Yes	Yes
Large List Scalability and Management	Yes	Yes
Multi-Lingual User Interface (MUI)	Yes	Yes
Permissions Management	Yes	Yes
Quota Templates	Yes	Yes
Connections to Microsoft Office Clients	Yes	Yes
Audience Targeting	Yes	Yes
Cross-Browser Support	Yes	Yes
External sharing	No	Yes
SharePoint Ribbon	Yes	Yes
Mobile Connectivity	Yes	Yes
SharePoint Workspace 2010	Yes	Yes
Out-of-the-Box Web Parts	Yes	Yes
Scalability	Yes	Yes
Templates	Yes	Yes
Accessibility	Yes	Yes
Configuration Wizards	Yes	Yes

An exact list of all capabilities missing from the SharePoint online offering is listed in the current Service Description. Over the upcoming service releases, scheduled every 90 days, Microsoft will begin introduce some of the aforementioned features and I am hopeful that the rich feature set is completely available in the online version as well.

Click here to download / open the latest service description

Security of Data : Some countries and organizations have legal limitations on where their data can be hosted, this primarily is applicable for some sensitive data which is of a specific category. Microsoft’s Data Centers are located throughout the world and this might be a legal issue if you chose to go this route.  If your organization’s data cannot leave your region or continent, then Office 365 is not the solution for you currently.

Reference :
MSFT site

SharePoint Online Architectural Considerations

Sharepoint Reports : Group By View

Creating a group by view is perhaps one of the most powerful tools in Sharepoint. Out of the Box, Sharepoint provides you with a great reporting feature which can help you get data presented in a very logical and "report like" fashion.

The steps below will describe the process :

Create a column in the document library which maps to your folder name (e.g. Category)

Upload document(s) to this library, add category info   

On the ribbon > Go to Library Tab and select Create View

Choose a base Existing view: All items

Choose public  view and Give your view a name: say “Group By” and choose the fields to be displayed on your view

Go to the Group by section to select the Category as your Group By parameter

You can access this view from the breadcrumbs as shown below

To add this view on any page > go to Edit page

In the web part settings:

Data Migration to the cloud!

Data Migration from a third party application to Sharepoint is often a requirement and I had this challenge on the Sharepoint online environment, where we do not have access to the Central Admin or the server itself.

Where there is a will there is a way! We had a challenging situation and we figured out a workaround to do the needful...

Since it was Lotus application data- we needed a means to get the data in a Microsoft format so that we could read it ( any third party connections are not supported in the cloud yet), Lotus connectors are not supported.

Solution : get all the data ported to an excel format which can be read from Sharepoint environment!
The data includes attachments as well - so design your excel in such a manner that the last 2 columns have the below information:

1. Number of attachments
2. Path and Name of attachments in the format ( c://attachments/recordId/test1.docx)

This uses the sharepoint client object model to upload the data and since the attachments behaves a little sneaky I used the web services to upload the attachments once the record was created!
There are enough comments in the code to explain the logic but in case you have any questions please let me know!

This console application needs to run in the same domain for picking up Admin credentials of the logged ion user for the upload process and takes a config file which details the parameters like, site, list name etc. Add a web Reference to the http://localhost/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx and call it "SharepointListWS"

Here is the sample excel format : The second hidden row of the excel is the sharepoint column names from the List where the data is uploaded to.

Here is the code snippet that I created to import data from Lotus apps ( in a Excel format) to SPO world.

   
  
  
  private static void importFromExcel(StreamWriter streamwriterW)
  {
  
  try
  
 {
  
 Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application excelApp = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.ApplicationClass();
  
 string workbookPath = _ExcelPath;
  
 Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbook excelWorkbook = excelApp.Workbooks.Open(workbookPath, 0, false, 5,
  
 "", "", false, Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.XlPlatform.xlWindows, "", true, false, 0, true);
  
 Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Sheets excelSheets = excelWorkbook.Worksheets;
  
 Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Worksheet excelSheet = (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Worksheet)excelSheets.get_Item("Sheet1");
  
 object[,] values = excelSheet.get_Range(_ExcelRange).Value as object[,];
  
 ClientContext context = new ClientContext(_SharePointSiteUrl);
  
 context.AuthenticationMode = ClientAuthenticationMode.Default;
  
 Web web = context.Web;
  
 List list = web.Lists.GetByTitle(_ListName);
  
 for (int row = 3; row <= Convert.ToInt32(_ExcelRowNo); row++) // no. of rows of data in excel
  
 {
  
  ListItemCreationInformation listItemCreation = new ListItemCreationInformation();
  
 ListItem listItem = list.AddItem(listItemCreation);
  
 iRecord++;
  
 for (int column = 1; column <= Convert.ToInt32(_iColumnsToImport) + 1; column++) // no of fields/columns in excel to be imported
  
 {
  
 string columnName = values[2, column].ToString();
  
 strcolumnName = columnName;
  
 if (values[row, column] != null)
  
 {
  
  if (columnName == "AttachmentNo")
  
 {
  
 _strNoOfAttachments = values[row, column].ToString();
  
 strcolumnValue = _strNoOfAttachments;
  
 }
  
  else
  
 {
  
 listItem[columnName] = values[row, column];
  
 strcolumnValue = listItem[columnName].ToString(); 
  
 }
  
 }
  
 }
  
 listItem.Update();
  
 context.ExecuteQuery();
  
 string strListItemID = listItem.Id.ToString();
  
 _NoOfRowsImported++;
  
 
 logToFile("Record imported from Excel Row No :" + (iRecord + 2) + " to SP Record Id : " + strListItemID, streamwriterW);
  
 logToFile("No. of Attachments : " + _strNoOfAttachments, streamwriterW);
  
   if (_strNoOfAttachments != "0" && _strNoOfAttachments != null)
  
 {
  
 addAttachment(strListItemID, values[row, Convert.ToInt32(_iColumnsToImport) + 2].ToString(), streamwriterW);// if no. of attachment >0 
  
 }
  
 }
  
 excelWorkbook.Close();
  
 }
  
  catch (Exception e)
  
 {
  
 // log error here 
  
 }
  
 }
  
  private static void addAttachment(string strNewListItemID, string strAttachmentPathUnparsed, StreamWriter streamwriterW)
  
 {
  
  string attachmentUrl = string.Empty;
  
 try
  
 {
  
 //Parse path if delimiter exists 
  
 string[] splitAttachmentPath = strAttachmentPathUnparsed.Split(new Char[] { '|' });
  
 foreach (string strAttachmentPathParsed in splitAttachmentPath)
  
 {
  
  if (strAttachmentPathParsed.Trim() != "")
  
 {
  
 strAttachmentPath = strAttachmentPathParsed;
  
  if (!System.IO.File.Exists(strAttachmentPathParsed))
  
 {
  
 // log error

   return;
  
 }
  
  string fileName = Path.GetFileName(strAttachmentPathParsed);
  
 // Get file contents
  
 Byte[] contents = getFileStream(strAttachmentPathParsed);
  
 // Add the attachment to the new item in the SharePoint list & Instantiate a SharePoint
  
 // List Web Service object
  
 listWs = new SharePointListWS.Lists();
  
 // set the Web Service Credentials
  
 listWs.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
  
 listWs.Url = _SharePointSiteUrl + "/_vti_bin/lists.asmx";
  
 attachmentUrl = listWs.AddAttachment(_ListName, strNewListItemID, fileName, contents);
  
 }
  
 }
  
    
 }
  
  catch (Exception ex3)
  
 {
  
 //log error  
 }
  
  if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(attachmentUrl))
  
 {
  
     // log error

 }
  
 }
  
 }
  
 }
  

Custom RSS feed Display

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a widely used technology for transmitting information across the Internet and intranets. Many Web sites offer RSS Feeds you can subscribe to so you can get the latest information from the source automatically. You can also subscribe to RSS Feeds from SharePoint libraries, lists, and other elements, so you can see when someone adds a document or changes a list item.

You can use a RSS Viewer Web Part to display an RSS Feed on a SharePoint site. One can also keep track of changes in libraries, calendars, and lists on other SharePoint sites. Sharepoint 2010 has provided with a great OOB web part to display the RSS feed and one can modify it for stying and customize it per requirements. more information on how to set this up can be found at  here

I had a requirement to put the RSS feed as an output in a webpart and associate it to the master page.

To get around the credentials I had to use the class XmlUrlResolver

Here is a sample of a function which uses the class SyndicationFeed   and reads the RSS via XML reader, to get the active items only.

   protected void ReadRSS(string ListRssUrl)
        {
            try
            {
                SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
                {
                    XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();

                    // Create a resolver with default credentials.
                    XmlUrlResolver resolver = new XmlUrlResolver();
                    resolver.Credentials = 

                System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

                    // Set the reader settings object to use the resolver.
                    settings.XmlResolver = resolver;


                    // Create the XmlReader object.
                    XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(ListRssUrl, settings);

                    var feed = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);

                    string strCategory = string.Empty;
                    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
                    if (feed == null)
                    {
                        sb.Append("No Feeds in RSS");
                        Div1.InnerHtml = sb.ToString();

                    }
                    else
                    {

                       
                        foreach (SyndicationItem item in feed.Items)
                        {
                            var category = item.Categories;
                            foreach (var cat in category)
                            {
                                // get the active category items only...
                                if (cat.Name == "Active")
                                {

                                    foreach (var link in item.Links)
                                    {
                                      RenderRSS(item.Title.Text,link.Uri.ToString(),sb);

                                    }
                                }
                            }

                        }
                        Div1.InnerHtml = sb.ToString();
                    }


                });
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                //exception handling
            }
        }

  private void RenderRSS(string strRSSTitle, string strRSSLink, StringBuilder sb)
        {
            sb.Append("<li>"); // Begin  Li for each RSSFeedURL feed
            sb.Append("<a href="+"'"+strRSSLink+ "'" + ">"+strRSSTitle+"</a>"); 
            sb.Append("</li>"); //End Li for each RSSFeedURL feed
        }

Helpers in Sharepoint Code :

Last week I managed to secure decent score in getting my MCTS Sharepoint configuration exam.
Being a hectic week ( I had a >100% utilization as well at work), I wanted to share some good code snippets with everyone which helps us get things done faster in Sharepoint ...I am panning to share with everyone my preperation guide and my strategy to get going in a week's timeframe if someone's interested in getting certified!

Now..coming back to the blog...
Helper functions to the rescue: Often as developers we use helper functions, I have planned to use this space to collate them here to get all of them at one Central location!

• Get Custom User profile properties

Often we create custom properties in Active directory which need to be accessible via code. In my most recent project we had such a scenario and a generic helper function below helped us in code reuse

accountName can be the account of the current logged in user  or any user and property is the string which we need to find.

   // this function fetches a property of a user
        public static string GetUserProperty(SPSite site, string accountName, string property)
        {
            try
            {
                string userProperty = string.Empty;
                SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
                {
                    SPServiceContext context = SPServiceContext.GetContext(site);
                    var UserProfMgr = new UserProfileManager(context);
                    UserProfile UserProf = UserProfMgr.GetUserProfile(accountName);

                    if (UserProf[property].Value != null)
                    {
                        userProperty = UserProf[property].Value.ToString();
                    }
                });
                return userProperty;
            }

            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new Exception("Could not get the property:" + property + "of the User:" + accountName);
            }

        }
    }

• Trace Log an Exception

Often for the development team it is a challenge to debug issues in share point. Catching and Throwing proper exceptions is the Best way to troubleshoot issues. the one class i have started using recently is below :

Define an enum for the severity :

   public enum LogSeverity
    {
        Unexpected,
        High,
        Medium,
        Info,
        Monitorable,
        Verbose,
        VerboseEx,
        None
    }

Class file :

 public static class TraceLog
    {
        private static DiagnosticsService myULS = null;

        public static void Log(string msg, LogSeverity severity)
        {
            if (myULS == null)
            {
                myULS = DiagnosticsService.Local;
            }

            if (myULS != null)
            {
                TraceSeverity tSeverity = mapTraceSeverity(severity);
                SPDiagnosticsCategory cat = myULS[CategoryId.General];

                myULS.WriteTrace(5555, cat, tSeverity, msg, myULS.TypeName);
            }
        }

        public enum CategoryId
        {
            None = 0,
            Deployment = 100,
            Provisioning = 200,
            CustomAction = 300,
            Rendering = 400,
            WebPart = 500,
            General = 600
        }

        [System.Runtime.InteropServices.GuidAttribute("DBEWW5AB-C5A7-46B5-A2BB-5581F960C333")]
        class DiagnosticsService : SPDiagnosticsServiceBase
        {
            private static string DiagnosticsAreaName = "Project Name";

            public DiagnosticsService()
            {
            }

            public DiagnosticsService(string name, SPFarm farm)
                : base(name, farm)
            {
            }

            protected override IEnumerable<SPDiagnosticsArea> ProvideAreas()
            {
                List<SPDiagnosticsCategory> categories = new List<SPDiagnosticsCategory>();
                foreach (string catName in Enum.GetNames(typeof(CategoryId)))
                {
                    uint catId = (uint)(int)Enum.Parse(typeof(CategoryId), catName);
                    categories.Add(new SPDiagnosticsCategory(catName, TraceSeverity.Verbose, EventSeverity.Error, 0, catId));
                }

                yield return new SPDiagnosticsArea(DiagnosticsAreaName, categories);
            }

            public static DiagnosticsService Local
            {
                get
                {
                    return SPDiagnosticsServiceBase.GetLocal<DiagnosticsService>();
                }
            }

            public SPDiagnosticsCategory this[CategoryId id]
            {
                get
                {
                    return Areas[DiagnosticsAreaName].Categories[id.ToString()];
                }
            }
        }

        private static TraceSeverity mapTraceSeverity(LogSeverity severity)
        {
            TraceSeverity tr = TraceSeverity.None;
            switch (severity)
            {
                case LogSeverity.Unexpected:
                    tr = TraceSeverity.Unexpected;
                    break;
                case LogSeverity.High:
                    tr = TraceSeverity.High;
                    break;
                case LogSeverity.Monitorable:
                    tr = TraceSeverity.Monitorable;
                    break;
                case LogSeverity.Medium:
                    tr = TraceSeverity.Medium;
                    break;
                case LogSeverity.Info:
                case LogSeverity.Verbose:
                    tr = TraceSeverity.Verbose;
                    break;
                case LogSeverity.VerboseEx:
                    tr = TraceSeverity.VerboseEx;
                    break;
                case LogSeverity.None:
                    tr = TraceSeverity.None;
                    break;
            }
            return tr;
        }
    }

A simple call in catch will, serve the purpose

catch (Exception ex)
            {
                throw new Exception("Exception Occurred, Details :" + " + ex.message.tostring());
            }