SharePoint 2010 Field Formulas (In Arabic)

Posted on by Ahmed Shokr in General .NET

Just came cross an issue lately with SharePoint 2010 field (Column) formulas.

The issues is when I was applying formulas on Arabic culture sites, SharePoint kept giving me errors parsing the formula.

For example:

I have 2 fields [Start Date] and [End Date]

To calculate the days between the two dates and display “-” if the [End Date] is empty, you can use something like:

=IF(ISBLANK([End Date]),”-“,DATEDIF([End Date],[Start Date],”d”))

This will calculate the days between the two dates only if the [End Date] is blank and works perfectly in English based sites.

If you want to do the same in Arabic Language sites (Even if the column names in English), simple you need to replace the comma “,” with semi column “;”, the result will be something this:

=IF(ISBLANK(النهاية);”-“;DATEDIF(البداية;النهاية;”d”))

As stated in this MSDN article, this must be done for specific languages/cultures and if the website culture changed back again to English, the formula will be changed automatically to use the comma model (Didn’t test this).

I hope that helped

Ahmed

Solve Silverlight Arabic text issue in SharePoint 2010 Organization Browser and Media Web parts

Posted on by Ahmed Shokr in SharePoint Server

Just came across the following solution to solve the common SharePoint 2010 Silverlight web parts (Org Browser and Media Web parts) Arabic display issue.

The solution is very simple:

  1. Locate the following 2 files [HierarchyChart.xap] and [MediaPlayer.xap] in [14 hive]\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\ClientBin
  2. Do the following for the 2 files:
    1. Very important to backup the 2 files first, just in case.
    2. The [.xap] file is basically a compressed folder (Archive), so open the file using a compression tool like [7-Zip]
    3. Open the [AppManifest.xaml] file using notepad, make sure that you open the file from the archive to make sure that the changes will be saved to the archive as well.
    4. Change the [RunTimeVersion] to [5.0.61118.0]
    5. Save the [AppManifest.xaml] (Inside the archive).
    6. Open your browser.
    7. Make sure that you clear the browser cache.
    8. Enjoy your organization browser in Arabic.

image

The idea beyond the solution is to force the Silverlight runtime to the newest version which has the proper RTL support.

Please, try this and submit your feedback.

I hope that helped

Ahmed

Strange issue when you send meeting request from Exchange to Google Calendar

Posted on by Ahmed Shokr in Technical Fun

I have tried the below couple of times with the same result:

1. Send meeting request from Outlook like the following:

Cal

Note: I have the time zone settings as below

cal3

2. Check your Gmail

cal2

The time zone changed to be (AST) which equals to (UTC -4)!!! , however my Google Calendar settings are as the following:

image

3. When I accept the meeting request, I receive the following email

image

My guess, the issue is one of the two scenarios:

  • Google Calendar itself receives and sends the meeting request and its response on behalf of the Gmail account, and according to that it changes the time zone to the default one defined there which is (AST).
  • Microsoft Exchange don’t send the proper information of the time zone in the meeting request, so it’s assigned default one also.

Really, don’t know exactly what is going on, tried it with 2 different Google Accounts and 2 different Exchange Implementation with the same result.

I hope that helped

Ahmed

Project Server 2010 Currency Issue

Posted on by Ahmed Shokr in Project Server 2010

You may receive the following error when trying to create a project on Project Server 2010 PWA:

This error as described in MSDN Project Server Error Codes here, comes from the invalid number of digits after decimal in Currency Format.

 

[ProjectOptCurrencyDigitsInvalid = 1037                      

The optional currency digits are not valid.]

 

The solution simply as the following:

  1. Open Control Panel
  2. Open Region and Language
  3. Click Additional Settings
  4. Click Currency tab
  5. Change the No. of digits after decimal to any value below 3
  6. Restart your server
  7. Now go back to PWA and try to create a project, it should work Smile

 

I hope that helped

Ahmed

2010 in review

Posted on by Ahmed Shokr in General .NET

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,100 times in 2010. That’s about 12 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 5 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 27 posts. There were 12 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 4mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was September 1st with 38 views. The most popular post that day was Home.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were oryxdev.com, social.msdn.microsoft.com, oryxdev.net, google.co.in, and google.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jquery ajax sample, presentation layer sharepoint bi, sharepoint oracle database, php ajax vehicle tracking, and loading effect in silverlight.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Home January 2009
5 comments

2

jQuery AJAX Load Sample February 2009

3

Connecting Oracle Database to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Concepts July 2009
1 comment

4

ASP.NET AJAX 4.0 Deep Dive Live Meeting Presentation and Samples April 2009

5

Using Microsoft Virtual Earth for Vehicle Tracking and Geo Fencing Sample March 2009
5 comments

SharePoint Saturday Presentation and Samples

Posted on by Ahmed Shokr in Business Intelligence, Live events, SharePoint Server, Technical events

Hi all,

Thanks a lot for everyone honored us by being there in the SharePoint Saturday event 16th October 2010.

 

Presentation Cover

 

In this post  – and the updated ones – I’ll post all the related content of my session [SharePoint 2010 Business Intelligence Insights] ISA

You can download the presentation file from here

Then, to configure the lap machine please follow the following steps:

  1. Download the 180 days evaluation software from the following links, if you don’t have licensed ones:
    • Windows Server 2008 evaluation from here.
    • SQL Server 2008 R2 evaluation from here.
    • Office Professional Plus 2010  evaluation  from here, this one only works for 60 days unfortunately Sad smile.
    • SharePoint designer 2010 from here, this one is free Smile.
    • Download the SQL Server 2008 R2 AdventureWorks sample database from here.
    • Download PowerPivot for SharePoint and excel from here, this one is free Smile.
  2. Follow the following guide to have SharePoint 2010 installed here.
  3. When you been asked to create a site collection, create one using the Business Intelligence Center Template.
  4. Install the SQL Server 2008 R2 AdventureWorks sample database executable.
  5. Follow this guide to install the analysis services database.
  6. Install Office Professional Plus 2010.
  7. Install PowerPivot fro excel ( the download page has a small guide for that).
  8. Install PowerPivot for SharePoint using this guide.
  9. Configure Excel Services using this guide.
  10. Add the Data Connection Library on your BI Center to the trusted data connection libraries on the Excel Services manage page.
  11. Configure the unattended service account for PerformancePoint Services using this guide.
  12. To be able to open Office files from SharePoint without annoying unknown errors enable the Desktop Experience Feature using the following guide.

 

Now, you have the presentation and lap machine up and running.

Kindly, note that additional configuration steps will be added within their related demos, as the above setup is the basic one.

Please, try to create the machine and let me know if you need any help.

ISA in the following posts, I’ll create samples using the above created machine on the different tools of the Microsoft BI framework.

I hope that helped

Ahmed