Assigned To name changes when moving list from one site collection to another. April 26, 2008

Bug or Side effect?

I recently ran into something interesting while moving a Task List from a Farm to another using save as template with content. After successfully moving the list over I found out that for some of the items the assigned user have changed from one user to another, but for other items they did not.

Initially I thought that it is a bug on importing the List, then I decided to investigate further.

I opened the xml file from inside the stp file and took a look at the data saved for the Assigned To column. The user was saved in the format of: “#ID;Display Name”. It seems that during the import the #ID was the only one that got imported, and Display Name was changed.

My next question was why?

In the API the SPUser object is the one stored in Assigned To column. I also found that in each site collection there is a hidden list named “User Information List”.

Every time WSS provisions a new site collection, it automatically creates this “User Information List” as a hidden list in the top-level site. WSS then adds a new item for each external principal the first time that principal is assigned permission, or the first time it passes a security check to access a securable object. Note that the user profile stored in the User Information List does not extend across site collections—when users update their profile settings in one site collection, there are no changes to that user’s profile settings in other site collections.

Putting everything together – if we save a list as a template including content and then restore it on another site collection, any column that references a user will not be ported correctly. The contained user might change during this process because in the second environment, the ID numbers in the User Information List may be associated with different names.

Records Center Routing Table April 11, 2008

 

Ok, you have set up a records management site collection containing a Records Center site and set it in the Central Admin but after setting the routing table for your documents, just found that your documents are not routed correctly.

 

When setting the routing table make sure that the location match one of the library names created in Records Center site and not the most important part is that alias should contain the “where clause” aka the content type used by the document and is used to decide if the document match the routing rule or it will be sent to the default location.

Can’t open Task notification email in Outlook April 8, 2008

Suddenlty you can’t open messages that were sent by SharePoint Server 2007 notification.

Why?

The Exchange SP2 was applied to your server. After SP2 is applied the Exchange 2003 cannot convert the MIME-type properties to MAPI-type properties correctly if the names of the properties begin with X-.

What you can do?

1. The fastest thing the you can do is to use OWA access to read the email
2. Or you can change the Outlook settings to not use Cached Mode.
   Go to: Tools -> Advanced Settings… choose your exchange account and click the ‘Change’ button.
   Click “More Settings…” on the Advanced Tab  make sure that “Use Cached Exchange Mode” is unchecked.
   Restart Outlook and you’re good to go.
3. The next best thing is to apply a HotFix released by Microsoft after Exchange SP2 to correct the problem.
   The Hotfix is described here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/930807
   After the HotFix gets applied to the server then you can move back to use Cached Exchange Mode.
4. Install Exchange Server 2007.
   This might take a while but offers the best integration with SharePoint.

Choose the path the best fits your needs.