Do-It-Yourself SharePoint Tools - SPFeatureHider

Features are cheap! Features are good for you! Use features whenever you can!

As SharePoint developers, we hear this mantra all the time and of course, we create tons of features. This is a good thing, as it affords you control and functionality isolation.

In USP Journal Issue 8, I teach a method that relies heavy on using features. A lot. I’ve created solutions from this method where one ends up with hundreds of features just for the initial deployment. Most of these features are completely irrelevant for end users and thus should be hidden.

However, manually hiding hundreds of features take time. Well, at least it does to you or me, but a computer could hide them all within seconds, which I why I’ve written a small program to do just that.

If you’ve read my previous posts regarding SharePoint tools, you’ll see that this tool falls nicely into the ‘create a tool when you need it’ philosophy, just like the SPSiteLister tool.

The SPFeatureHider tool is very simple, but saves me a lot of time. Basically, it will iterate thorough a folder structure, find all feature.xml files, set the Hidden attribute to True and save the file.

A caveat is that the formatting of the feature.xml file is set to standard one-line per element format. There’s probably a way to work around this, but I can’t be bothered right now.

The syntax is simple. Just run

c:\>SPFeatureHider.exe [path]

Where [path] is the root folder where you want to hide all features.

Because of this simple syntax, it’s also easy to add this program to your external tools. Follow the instructions in the SPSiteLister article and add Solution Directory as a parameter, as shown below.

The whole solution is available for download here (20 kb RAR).

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Free SharePoint Report Repost: Is SharePoint Right for Your Organization?

I sort of forgot to post this to my blog last week. However, I’ve released a new free report that will give you some key insights when considering whether SharePoint is right for your organization.

The report is targeted at business users and managers who have little or no technical interest.

If you’re on the USPJ mailing list, you can download the report from the free section. If not, you can sign up for the list on the new website for the report, http://www.issharepointrightforme.com/

Let me know what you think. I’m considering expanding these reports and create a similar report for IT professionals and developers who want to know if SharePoint is a viable career path and an end user report explaining to end users what they can expect if the organization implements SharePoint.

However, if people don’t like the first report or gain any value from it, I’m not going to waste your or my time writing any more :-)

So, chime in, feel free to do so anonymously, in the comment field below.

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USPJ Academy Price Announced

The most frequently asked question, by far, is “what is USPJ Academy going to cost?” Well, here’s the answer:

http://www.understandingsharepoint.com/training/price

Sorry about the messed up alignment. I’m a coder, not a designer.

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SharePoint Developers Versus Administrators – A Pledge

Somehow, there always seems to be a struggle between developers and administrators. When creating a new project, the developers focus on creating great new features that the administrators hate because developers never think about how the damn thing works in real life.

Developers are always the first on the field of battle. They need to clear out the rubble and sort out the requirements, often long before administrators are even aware that there is a battle coming. Then, when the fighting commences, the developers fight their own little wars, thinking nothing of he support and maintenance troops that will eventually have to take over whatever ensues after the fight is over.

OK, I’ve been watching too many war movies lately.

Now, I’m mostly a developer these days. Sure, I dabble in the odd server setup every now and then, but I have little or no experience from the battlefield (doh, there I go again) when it comes to running a SharePoint installation on a day-to-day basis.

However, I rarely end up in a conflict situation with administrators. Perhaps the reason is that I come from an administrator background and can share tips and tools that help the administrators’ lives become easier. Either that or it must be my irresistible charm and good looks. If you take a look at my profile picture, you’ll realize the irony in that.

For new projects, it takes time to get to know the administrators and to work out whatever differences we may have. Administrators, especially the more experienced one, are quite cautious when it comes to dealing with developers, often because they have spent more than one night awake trying the clean up our mess.

So, I’ve devised a pledge that I hereby make public and that I will honor to the best of my abilities. Feel free to use the same pledge towards your administrators. You’ll find that working with people is a lot easier than working against them.

My pledge to all administrators of any project that I will undertake

1. I will not make your job any more difficult than I absolutely have to.
2. I will document what I do and provide you with instructions on how to deploy, maintain, and live with the solutions I make.
3. I will respect your expertise in operating a SharePoint environment.
4. I will work within the limits you give me with regards to performance or capacity.
5. I will thoroughly test my solutions to ensure that my solutions do not cause undue stress on you or the environment.
6. I will answer, to the best of my abilities, any questions you have regarding the solution in a timely manner.
7. I will not leave unresolved issues for you to fix.
8. I will assist you, in case of problems, in any way I can to make your job easier.
9. If I fail to honor these pledges, I will work as best as I can to mitigate any problems you have as a result of my errors.

[Signed]

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Now, let’s smoke a peace pipe and sing kumbaya. Beer is on me.