Searching pending approval documents

If you have enabled the content approval in your document libraries and only the approvers of the items can access to the unpublished versions, you will have a problem with the search. When a user launches a search query, he will see listed in the search results the pending approval documents although he does not have permissions to access to an unpublished version of it. It will be able to read all the indexed data, but when he tries to access to the item it gets an unauthorized error.

This behavior is correct, because the security trimmer omits the permissions on the draft versions. The solution is to create your own security trimmer and register it for the corresponding crawl rule. If you follow the example in the msdn documentation you only need to add this line to determine if the current user has access to the item listed in the search for each crawlURL:

bool hasPermission = item.DoesUserHavePermissions(web.AllUsers[strUser], SPBasePermissions.ViewListItems);

From the crawl url you can get the GUIDs and ID item required to get an SPListItem (item in the code above).

Enjoy it!

The Sharepoint definition

What is SharePoint? That is the first question that a customer, friend, wife … make when you talk them about SharePoint. My response always was different and here you can see some of the answers that I gave joined in a simple response:

"SharePoint is a Microsoft's product to develop portals …. And it can be used also to search information in many places (Notes, SAP, …) … and gives you a complete collaboration environment… And includes some advanced functionality like workflows, web forms, excels on web… "

This definition is not simple, and the most important, it does not define SharePoint entirely. The reason: SharePoint is too large and cannot be defined it completely on a single sentence.

For that reason, now I have a new definition for SharePoint:

"SharePoint is a Microsoft's product which connects the information with the people in each level of the business"

This sentence is too simple. But from this definition you can explain the functionalities around the fact that SharePoint approaches the information to the people.

Please, feel free to post your own definition or any comment.

SharePoint Designer and Office Live

I am trying to connect to my Microsoft Office Live Small Business Site from SharePoint Designer and it does not work. If I open my office live site using http:// it prompts the credentials form and then shows me the error "Server Error: The Version of Windows SharePoint Services running on the server is more recent than the version of SharePoint Designer you are using. You need a more recent version of SharePoint Designer". If I put the url of my site using https:// it does not ask for my credentials but shows me the same error again.

I have tried the solution that this post offered, but it does not work: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1918526&SiteID=1

It can be possible, because in this video we can see SPD in action with Office Live: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=262657

Did you try? Works for you?

I have SPD with SP1 and my Office Live Site is not beta: http://alexpelaez.web.officelive.com/default.aspx.

Thanks in advance!

Office Live and SharePoint

At this moment everybody can have their SharePoint or some of its functionality and apply to his life or job. Microsoft, in my opinion, is approaching SharePoint to the maximum end users through the different products that have launched recently. So, this is the list of these products that are created for different targets of users.

Individual SharePoint

For those who want to have their documents always online and share it with their friends there is Microsoft Office Live Workspace. It allows you to upload documents, share to other users and includes collaboration functionality integrated with passport authentication. A good idea to suppress the mail with attached documents and the suffix version in the subject. We could reduce this version to a personal document library for everyone.

SharePoint Lite

Oriented to small business there is Microsoft Office Live Small Business. It gives to the small companies the opportunity to get on the web for "free". It allows the managing of the web content and the publishing of different files. On the other hand it offers the option to extend and personalize your site with the integration of SharePoint Designer and installing solution for Office Live. I am waiting to have enough time to investigate it, but it sounds very good. We can see this option like a little SharePoint site oriented to small companies.

Medium SharePoint

Announced at SharePoint Conference 2008 by Bill Gates, the Microsoft SharePoint Online
is the solution to get a fully functional SharePoint in your organization and avoid the infrastructure issues associated to a SharePoint system. It leverages all of the functionality of the product with the minimum costs. It target is those companies with no previous experience with SharePoint and is a perfect start point. The customizations are limited, but it offers, from an end user experience, a WSS installation with all the functionality provided out of the box.

Full SharePoint

The SharePoint which everybody knows installed on your own servers. WSS 3.0 is included on the license of Windows 2003 and MOSS has many licensing options that offer different functionalities (BDC, Search, Forms Services,). This is the perfect tool for medium and large companies with a need: "Connect their employees with their information". It can be extended in different manners using the browser, SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio.

Please, feel free to post your comments and opinions.