List of "illegal" characters that cannot be included in a SharePoint file name

I've been working on a utility that our team is going to leverage for rapidly uploading a ton of existing Policy and Procedure documents from file shares into a SharePoint site (by the way, this includes defining the relevant document metadata which is why we aren't simply copying the files over).  During my investigation, I happened to notice that many of the file names in the file share contain characters that SharePoint is not going to like at all (i.e. '&' is the leading offender).  In case you're curious what these "illegal" characters are for file names, here is a complete list:

• Tilde
• Number sign
• Percent
• Ampersand
• Asterisk
• Braces
• Backslash
• Colon
• Angle brackets
• Question mark
• Slash
• Pipe
• Quotation mark

The source of this information is the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905231

If you're looking for a solution to this problem, one option is to use the code that I created in one of my previous posts that will allow you to rename the file as you're adding to to your document library:  Remove special characters from a string using Regular Expression

How to find SharePoint 2013 Central Administration

I know that I'll be laughing about this post in the future, but I've got to be perfectly honest and tell you that it took me nearly 20 minutes to figure out how to access SharePoint 2013 Central Administration in my new Windows 2012 Server environment.  Here two different methods that I finally stumbled upon ways that will make this happen:

Method 1:

1. Log on to your Windows 2012 Server environment
2. Click on the center of the screen
3. Move your mouse to the upper right corner of the screen and a panel will appear on the far right side of the screen
4. Click on the Search icon
   
   
   
   
5. Locate the Microsoft SharePoint 2013 section
6. Click on the SharePoint 2013 Central Administration icon
   
   
   
   
   

Method 2:

1. Log on to your Windows 2012 Server environment
2. Click on the center of the screen
3. Move your mouse to the upper right corner of the screen and a panel will appear on the far right side of the screen
4. Click on the Start icon
   
   
   
   
   
5. Move your mouse to the bottom of the screen and right click
6. Click on the All Apps icon
   
   
   
   
   
7. Locate the Microsoft SharePoint 2013 section
8. Click on the SharePoint 2013 Central Administration icon

If it makes things easier, you can pin this icon to the Start page or Taskbar by replacing steps 6 and 8, respectively, as follows:

1. Right-click on the SharePoint 2013 Central Administration icon 
2. Click on the appropriate pin option icon

Programmatically obtain a list of SharePoint Web Applications located under a SharePoint Farm

If you ever need to programmatically obtain a list of web applications contained under your SharePoint Farm, here is some code that will do just that...

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
{
    SPFarm farm = SPFarm.Local;
    SPWebService service = farm.Services.GetValue("");

    foreach (SPWebApplication webApp in service.WebApplications)
    {
        // The following code will need to be changed depending on your situation
        ComboBoxItem webAppItem = new ComboBoxItem(webApp.DisplayName, webApp.Id);
        cbWebApp.Items.Add(webAppItem);
    }
});

NOTE: In this particular instance, I'm writing my list of web applications to a combo box control of a Windows application. The idea is that this combo box control will be the first of several chained combo boxes that will allow you to dive deeper into the SharePoint objects based on the items selected in the combo box controls (i.e. Web Application -> Site Collection -> Site -> Document Library -> Document).  Perhaps this my inspire some ideas of how or why this code would be useful.

A solution for providing a "sum" operation on a calculated field in a SharePoint view

One of our site owners recently ran into a situation in which he was trying to create a SharePoint view that would provide a sum of all values contained within a calculated field, but was not able to do so via the simple configuration process.  By "simple configuration" process, I'm referring to the typical way that you would provide a sum on a standard number or currency field which would be to place your view in edit mode, scroll down to and then expand the Totals group, locate your field, select the "Sum" operation listed in the drop down control, and save the change to your view.  Unfortunately, this isn't possible for calculated fields due to the fact that calculated fields don't show up under the Totals group.  With this in mind, a few possible solutions that would provide the requested functionality are listed as follows:

• Use a Content Query Web Part to host the XSLT code that would generate the desired view
• Use SharePoint Designer to modify the XSLT code of the view directly.  In SharePoint 2007, you would do this by inserting a Data View web part and modifying the XLST of that web part. 
• Change the calculated field to a regular number or currency field, add a workflow to the list that would perform the calculations previously associated with the calculated field, and place a sum operation on the field

After a discussion with the user about the requirements for this effort as well as the various options available, we came to the conclusion that it would be possible to use a simple, one-time solution to meet the needs of his effort.  In light of this, we chose the workflow option and decided to add our workflow to the list using SharePoint Designer.  If you're interested in this solution, here are the steps we took to make this happen:

Replace the calculated field with a standard number or currency field

1. Using your browser, open the site and navigate to the list to be modified
2. Under List Tools, click on the List tab
3. Click on List Settings
4. Under Columns, locate your calculated field and click on it's link
5. Record the formula for your calculation
6. Click Delete to remove the column
7. Click on Create column
8. For Column name:, enter the name of the original calculated field that you just deleted
9. Select either the Number or Currency radio button depending on which you require
10. Click OK

Create and publish the calculation workflow using SharePoint Designer

1. Open Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010
2. Click Open Site
3. For Site Name:, enter the URL of the site your list is contained under
4. Click Open
5. Under Navigation, click on Lists and Libraries
6. Click on the list you wish to perform the calculations on
7. Under Workflows, click on the New... icon
8. Add an appropriate Title and Description for you workflow
9. Click OK
10. Once the Workflow Designer appears, click on the Action button
11. Under Core Actions, select Do Calculation
12. Click on the first value link
13. Click on the function icon
14. For Data source:, select Current Item
15. For Field from source:, select your first field that is part of the calculation
16. Click OK
17. Click on the plus link and choose the appropriate option for your calculation
18. Click on the second value link
19. Click on the function icon
20. For Data source:, select Current Item
21. For Field from source:, select your second field that is part of the calculation
22. Click OK
23. Click on the Action button
24. Scroll down to List Actions and click on Set Field in Current Item
25. Click on the field link and select the field you just created previously that replaced the original, calculated field
26. Click on the value link
27. Click on the function icon
28. For Data source:, select Workflow Variables and Parameters
29. For Field from source:, select the Variable: calc item
30. Click OK
31. If needed, continue adding calculation steps until the workflow is complete
32. Click the Save button
33. Under Navigation, click on Workflows
34. Click on the link associated with your newly created workflow
35. Under Start Options, remove the check from the Allow this workflow to be manually started option
36. Place a check in both the Start workflow automatically when an item is created and Start workflow automatically when an item is changed options
37. Click the Save button
38. Click the Publish button

Update your view to provide a sum on the new field

1. Using your browser, open the site and navigate to the list to be modified
2. Under List Tools, click on the List tab
3. Click on List Settings
4. Under Views, locate your view and click on it's link
5. Scroll down to and then expand the Totals group
6. Locate your new field and select the "Sum" operation listed in the drop down control
7. Click Save

With these steps complete, the new "calculated" field will be updated by the workflow every time a list item is created or modified.  NOTE: Users will be able to enter values into the "calculated" field; however, the workflow will ultimately override this value when the items is created or saved.  At this point, you will now have a "sum" operation on your "calculated" field.

Prevent a postback from triggering on a button control when the Enter key is pressed

If you would like to prevent a postback from occurring on an ASP button control whenever the user presses the "Enter" key, one possible option for overriding this functionality is to add "UseSubmitButton = false" as an attribute/property of the appropriate button controls as follows:

<asp:Button id="btnSubmit" runat="server" UseSubmitBehavior="false" ... />

or

Button btnSubmit = new Button();
btnSubmit.UseSubmitBehavior = false;

In case you're curious, the reason we were asked to do this was due to a problem that our users were encountering with a postback being triggered on the "wrong" command button in our gridview control whenever a user would hit the "Enter" key.  Essentially, our gridview's rows contained several command button controls that, when clicked, would perform a variety of activities on the given row depending on which button was clicked.  Naturally, the first button on the selected row, the button with the focus, would be triggered whenever the user hit the "Enter" key; therefore, we all came to conclusion that the best route was to simply disable the "Enter" key postback functionality across all of the button controls contained in the gridview.

SharePoint List Filter web parts not displaying on a SharePoint 2010 Page in Edit mode

Our Business Analyst and I recently ran into an interesting problem in which we were attempting to install a couple of SharePoint List Filter and Apply Filters Button web parts on a page that would help users filter items in a connected list.

After adding the required web parts, our BA noticed that these controls were not appearing on the page as he would have expected despite the fact that the page was undoubtedly in Edit mode.  As a result, he wasn't able to configure the newly added filter web parts as well as set their connections to the associated list web part.

Anyway, I just happened to place the list view web part that these parts were supposed to connect to in Edit Web Part mode and, voilà, all of the filtered web parts suddenly appeared on the page.

At that point, our BA was able to proceed with his configuration and connection work without issue.

Thought it would be nice to share just in case anyone out there happens to encounter the same situation.

Obtaining custom configuration settings from a web.config for a Visual Web Part

If you're looking for a possible route for obtaining special configuration settings/information for a Visual Web Part that will be consistent across all sites contained under a given SharePoint Web Application, one possible route is to reference those configuration settings from the <appSettings> node of the web application's web.config file.  NOTE:  Only pursue this route if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the config settings will be consistent across all sites contained within the given web application.  If there is even a remote chance that you'll need to adjust those settings for each given site, you will wish to pursue another route for configuring your web part such as adding a custom property.  With that said, I'll now proceed with the steps you can use to make this possible:

Add the Custom Configuration Settings to the Web.config

Before you deploy you're web part, you will wish to open the web.config files for each of the SharePoint web applications under which your SharePoint web part will be deployed and add the new configuration setting to the <appSettings> node.  On your SharePoint Web Front End (WFE) server(s), the web applications will be located under the C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories directory and the web.config file will be located immediately under each given web application.  In this particular instance, I'm going to reference a custom setting called "dbConnectionString" which is presented as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>

<configuration>
  <configSections>
  ...
  <appSettings>
    <add key="dbConnectionString" value="Data Source=dbServer;Initial Catalog=dbName;Integrated Security=True" />
  </appSettings>
</configuration>

After making the change, be sure to save the updated web.config file and, now, we move on to actually putting this info to good use...

Referencing the Custom Configuration Settings

To reference the custom configuration settings in your Visual Web Part, you will need to carry out the following steps:

1. Open your Visual Web Part in Visual Studio
2. In Solution Explorer, expand the Project tree, right-click on References and select Add Reference...
3. Click on the .NET tab
4. Locate and click on the System.Configuration component
5. Click OK
6. Open your Visual Web Part's .ascx.cs file
7. Add the following code that will reference the custom configuration setting:

using System.Configuration;
using System.Web.Configuration;
...

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (!IsPostBack)
    {
        string dbConnectionString = string.Empty;
        string errorMessage = string.Empty;
        try
        {
            using (SPSite site = SPContext.Current.Site)
            {
                Configuration config = WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration("/", site.WebApplication.Name);
                if (config.AppSettings.Settings["dbConnectionString"] != null)
                {
                    dbConnectionString = config.AppSettings.Settings["dbConnectionString"].Value;
                }
                else
                {
                    throw new Exception(string.Format("The 'dbConnectionString' <appSettings> node could not be located in the web application's, {0}, web.config file.", site.WebApplication.Name));
                }
            }
            ... Do something with the configuration info
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            ...Handle the exception properly
        }
    }
}

At this point, you can now deploy your web part to sites contained under the web applications that you added the custom setting to (via updating the web.config file, of course) and they will reference the value that you've specified.