Lesswoodstock 2008: The Black Box Revelation

The main act of Lesswoodstock 2008 is The Black Box Revelation, yeah!

Free ASP.NET Hosting

Finally, I found some good Free ASP.NET Webhosting: Quantasoft (Spain).

The free hosting plan includes 50MB Disk space, ASP.NET 2.0 and Sql Express.

Haven't done heavy programming on it, but the simple ASP.NET stuff (in my case, uploading documents and write/read a sql express database) for the simple sites work, so I'm happy ;-)

Sharepoint: Force Expiry Policy Timer job to run

To test your custom expiry policy, you have to force the Expiry Policy Timer job to run. I found this very useful posting:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mattlind/archive/2007/06/05/force-execution-of-expiration-policies-in-moss.aspx

SharePoint: Create and add a Policy to a content type programmatically

I had to add a custom action to the Sharepoint expiry policy of a content type.

How to make a custom action, and add it to a policy in the Sharepoint configuration screen of the content type is not so hard - see http://jack.whyyoung.com/blog/www-sharepointblogs-com-MainFeed-aspx-GroupID-3/19732-aspx.htm for this.

But to add this policy to a content type automatically - in code int the feature event receiver of this content type - I had to search a little bit harder..

Use the Policy (in namespace Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.InformationPolicy) object (do not use the SPPolicy class, that's for other purposes :) ) to add the expiration policy programmatically to the content type. Here is the code:

using (SPSite site = (SPSite)properties.Feature.Parent)
            {
                string policyFeatureId = "Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.Expiration";
                SPContentType administrativeDocumentContentType = site.RootWeb.ContentTypes[new SPContentTypeId("0x01010091C4CA4E2BA24AE9BD4F276750C0A5A9")];

                //Add the custom action "AdministrativeDocumentExpirationSendEmail" to the policy resource collection
                string actionmanifest = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8"" ?><p:PolicyResource id=""Dolmen.SharePoint.Customer.ExpirationActions.AdministrativeDocumentExpirationSendEmail"" featureId=""Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.Expiration"" type=""Action"" xmlns:p=""urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:server:policy""><p:LocalizationResources>dlccore</p:LocalizationResources><p:Name>AdministrativeDocumentExpirationSendEmail</p:Name><p:Description>Sends a mail on the Expiration date</p:Description><p:Publisher>Dolmen Computer Applications</p:Publisher><p:AssemblyName>Dolmen.SharePoint.Customer.ExpirationActions, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=79b87b017c9b0654</p:AssemblyName><p:ClassName>Dolmen.SharePoint.Customer.ExpirationActions.AdministrativeDocumentExpirationSendEmail</p:ClassName></p:PolicyResource>";
                //string actionmanifest = System.IO.File.ReadAllText("actionmanifest.xml");
                PolicyResourceCollection.Add(actionmanifest);

                if (Policy.GetPolicy(administrativeDocumentContentType) == null)
                {
                    //if the content type hasn't got a Policy yet, create a new Policy
                    Policy.CreatePolicy(administrativeDocumentContentType, null);
                }

                Policy policyOfContentType = Policy.GetPolicy(administrativeDocumentContentType);
                policyOfContentType.Name = "Administrative Document - Expiration Policy";
                //Add expiration policy to the content type
                if (policyOfContentType.Items[policyFeatureId] == null)
                {
                    string customData = @"<data><formula id=""Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.Expiration.Formula.BuiltIn""><number>0</number><property>Expiration</property><period>days</period></formula><action type=""action"" id=""Dolmen.SharePoint.Customer.ExpirationActions.AdministrativeDocumentExpirationSendEmail"" /></data>";

                    policyOfContentType.Items.Add(policyFeatureId, customData);
                }
            }

Tip: to get the customData and the policyFeatureId you can create a policy with the standard Sharepoint configuration screen and read it out in a console application using following code:

SPContentType administrativeDocumentContentType = site.RootWeb.ContentTypes[new SPContentTypeId("0x01010091C4CA4E2BA24AE9BD4F276750C0A5A9")];

                Policy policy = Policy.GetPolicy(administrativeDocumentContentType);

                foreach (PolicyItem item in policy.Items) {
                    Console.WriteLine("Custom data: " + item.CustomData + "\n policy feature id: " + item.Id);
                }