Richard Willis – SharePoint Learning Kit Coordinator, SalamanderSoft Owner

In previous versions of SLK, pretty much the only text you couldn’t localise was the phrase ‘E-Learning Actions’. This is how teachers/instructors start the assignment process and is added to document library edit menus when you active the SharePoint Learning Kit feature. In addition to not being localisable, it’s always seemed a poor turn of phrase, especially in schools, as it’s not immediately obvious what it does.

For version 1.5 I’ve moved the text, in addition to all strings associated with features into it’s own resource file which gets deployed when you install 1.5. This now allows localised versions to be added for other language support, but also you can change it on a farm by farm basis if you don’t like the out of the box phrase.

How to change the text

Once you have installed version 1.5, you will need to navigate to the Resources folder where the SLK resource file is located. On a default install of SharePoint 2010 this is

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Resources

For SharePoint 2007, just replace the 14 with 12 (it’s the product number). For non-English OS installations the path will vary as some of it is localised, but it’s the standard SharePoint location for files.

Within that folder, in addition to a large number of standard SharePoint resource files, you will find SLK.resx.

While you are in the Resources folder do not modify any of the other resource files. If you change any of the strings in there you’ll only confuse your users, and they may get overwritten on the next SharePoint upgrade.

Once you have found SLK.resx, open it in your favourite text editor, find the E-Learning Actions resource and change the value to whatever you want it to be.

Make sure that you only change the value element’s text. The name of the data item is how it’s referenced, so if you change that SharePoint won’t be able to find the value, and the menu item will be blank.

Here I’ve changed the test to Assign Work.

Once you have made your changes you will need to recycle the SharePoint application pool or restart IIS. Once that’s completed you can navigate back to your document library to verify that the text has changed

SLK.resx also contains the strings for all the features i.e. the text displayed when activating or deactivating features.

One thing to note is that any changes you make could get overwritten in any upgrade of SLK, so please keep a copy of your changes.

Localisation

To localise the text for another language, you make a copy of the resource file and save it in the same folder, but include the language code in the file name. You can see this from the standard files in the folder of which the following screenshot is a small selection.

Eventually I hope to included localised versions of this in the language packs.

SLK 1.5 has the following SharePoint features you can activate.

Site Collection Level

SharePoint Learning Kit Web Parts

When activated this feature automatically adds the Assignment List Web Part to the web part gallery for a site collection.

Site Level

SharePoint Learning Kit

This is the same feature as present in previous versions of SLK. When this is activated in a site the "E-Learning Actions" menu item is added to document libraries.

SharePoint Learning Kit – Assign Self

This feature add the "Assign To Self" menu item to document libraries. This allows the user to immediately assign an item to themselves and run it.

SharePoint Learning Kit – Assign Site

This feature add the "Assign To Site" menu item to document libraries. This allows the user to start assigning an item to the current site without having to choose the site to assign to. In effect it jumps straight to the Assignment Properties page for the current site.

Web Application Level

SharePoint Learning Kit Admin

This feature adds the Configure SharePoint Learning Kit functionality to Central Administration. This is just here for completeness as it’s actually a hidden feature which is activated automatically so you should never see it or need to activate it.

As you can see I still need a image for it.

With the imminent release of SLK 1.5 I thought that I would run through its new features

Support for SharePoint 2010

This has to be the highlight of the release. SLK now natively supports SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010. The functionality is exactly the same, but there are separate installers for the two versions. I’ve updated it so that the core components are the same, it’s only the installation scripts and a few references in aspx pages are different.

E-Learning Actions can be localised

Since the beginning of the project the phrase "E-Learning Actions", which appears in the document library drop down menu, has not been able to be changed or localisable. I have now moved this out to a resource file and this can now be localised for other languages, or even just changed on a farm by farm basis. So if you wanted your instance to say "Assign Work", you can just edit the text based resource file to change it.

Two New Document Library Edit Options

There’s 2 new options for document library edit menu. These are shortcuts for assigning work to yourself or to the site the resource is stored in. They are called "Assign to Self" and "Assign to Site". Just like "E-Learning Actions" these can also be localized. It is completely up to you which of these 3 actions you have in any site.

Automatically add the Assignment List Web Part to the Web Part Gallery

SLK now includes a feature to automatically add the ALWP to the web part gallery. This has been a big miss in my opinion in the releases so far and just made it annoying to install.

Various Bug Fixes for the Drop Box

This release rolls up all the fixes for all the bugs I’m aware of in the Drop Box.

This is a reminder for myself more than anything.

To set "List Folder Contents" on a folder you need to set:

FileSystemRights.ReadAndExecute

InheritanceFlags.ContainerOnly

PropagationFlags.None

The only difference between "List Folder Contents" and "Read & Execute" is that List Folder Contents is only inherited by folders rather than by folders and files.

There’s now only one week left until the 2010 Learning Gateway Conference. This will be a fantastic learning resource for all those using SharePoint in Education and there’s still just enough time left to register. See http://www.learninggatewayconference.com for more details of the day.

Since my last post on it we have announced the agenda and key note speaker:

Agenda

Key Note Speaker – Simon Shaw

As Head of Institutional Management Simon has led Becta’s work to support schools using ICT to improve parental engagement through online reporting. Working with a national network of leading "advocate" schools and local authorities to develop best practice he led the creation of the online reporting framework and supporting resources. Working with Naace Simon led the development of the ICT Mark and has worked closely with local authorities to engage schools in improvement through self-review. As project leader of the ICT Test Bed project he supported change management in schools to make innovative and effective use of technology for learning and teaching. Early work with Becta included providing procurement advisory services, managing research into the total cost of ownership of ICT in schools and developing lifecycle based investment planning tools to use in capital investment programmes. Simon comes from an educational background as a teacher of science, technology and outdoor activities, a physics subject leader, school ICT coordinator and "in house" system developer. As a MCSE he also used his technical expertise in designing and integrating curriculum and information systems as a business development manager and NGFL service manager working as part of the Capita group.

I’ve blogged before on how to Easily add a dll to the GAC, but that involves two instances of Windows Explorer and the mouse.

It would be quicker and easier to use the command line to update a dll in the GAC. You can do this with the Global Assembly Cache Tool gacutil, but this is only present if you have the .net SDK or Windows SDK installed. This is going to be the case with your development machine, but you don’t really want to be installing it on all your test servers.

To get round this I knocked up a quick utility which will remove an existing version of a dll from the GAC and then install the latest version. The code is:

using System;using System.Globalization;using System.EnterpriseServices.Internal;

namespace Test{    public class GacInstall    {        public static void Main(string[] arguments)        {            try            {                string assemblyPath = arguments[0];                Publish publish = new Publish();                publish.GacRemove(assemblyPath);                publish.GacInstall(assemblyPath);            }            catch (Exception e)            {                Console.WriteLine(e);            }        }    }}

You can then use it by passing it the dll you want as a command line parameter e.g.

GacInstall MyUpdatedCode.dll

Assuming that MyUpdatedCode.dll is in the same directory.

Combined with my last tip Recycle An Individual Application Pool From The Command Line you can now write a bat or cmd file to replace the dll in the GAC and recycle the application pool with 2 key presses: The up arrow key and then return.

When developing SharePoint artifacts which live in the GAC you have the following options to get your new release in as part of the development process:

1. Build your installation package and upgrade it
2. Put the new dll in the GAC and run iisreset
3. Put the new dll in the GAC and recycle the SharePoint application pool

This is because SharePoint will only pick up updated dlls in the GAC after a recycle.

As it is an iterative process when you are developing this happens a lot, so ideally you need a process which is as quick as possible. 1 & 2 take the longest time so you should aim to use 3.

Luckily there is a command line command which will recycle individual application pools, which will be quicker than using the IIS administration tool. The command is

C:\windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe recycle apppool "SharePoint – 80"

Where you replace "SharePoint – 80" with the name of your application pool.

Of course when releasing to a live server you should always go down the proper installation package upgrade, this tip is purely for development purposes on your development server.

There’s a lot more you can do with appcmd – it’s a utility for making configuration changes to IIS so pretty much anything you can do through the IIS MMC snap in can be done via it. There are more details about appcmd on Technet or you can run

C:\windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe /?

to get help details.

Note: appcmd is for IIS7 not IIS6.

I’ve added a property to Salamander My Sites so that you can now filter the site list by a regular expression on the site url.

When the Site Name RegEx is set it checks the sites’ urls and only shows links to those that match the regular expression. In the case pictured only those sites with urls such as

• http://moss/classes/Art1A
• http://moss/classes/Art-b2
• etc

This was prompted by a request from a school who wanted to link to a subjects class sites from their departmental site.

They wanted to keep all the class sites under the classes sub-site, as per the default Microsoft Learning Gateway set up as that’s the easiest way for students to get to them.

Salamander My Sites remains a free web part.