Kit Kai's Tech Blog

I'm used to deploying webparts using /force switch in SharePoint 2003. Naturally, when I first started to deploy features, I used the /force switch, since it doesn't have any side effect in SharePoint 2003. But boy, was I wrong.

With 3 screwed up development environment, I finally learnt my lessons (talk about s.l.o.w), the /force switch shouldn't be used as often, in fact, I have never used /force switch ever since I learnt my lessons, as SharePoint 2007 gets confused when you install a feature when one is already installed, and you will no longer be able to update features any more, unless you rebuild the environment.

When both my laptops are still in Windows XP, I had my wireless network secured with WPA2. When I upgraded both laptops to Vista, both machines could connect to the network with no problems, but that is until my wireless network was resetted. When I tried to connect, Vista keep telling me "Missing Security Keys", yet, I know that my keys are correct, because I get another error message when I supplied the wrong key. The interesting part is, both laptops can suddenly connect to the wireless after a few days.

The wireless coverage wasn't good enough for the entire house, so I had to shift the router to the location where I would use my laptop most often. But shifting it causes the laptops not to be able to connect because of the above problem. I then have to switch to wired network. But the cable make the house very very very messy. I'm getting very unhappy with Vista, as I thought the problem lies with Vista, since I had no problem with WindowsXP.

A thought suddenly came to me to try upgrade the firmware. I was happy to discover that there was a updated firmware (v1.6). Upgraded the firmware, and my laptops can connect with ease.

I have a personal T42 laptop that I love very much, and I used it for almost everything, even for work in my previous employment. And because of that, the hard disk has lots of treasures. When I joined my current company, I was given a Dell laptop. Sometimes I bring both laptop to work, sometimes I bring one of them, leaving the other at home for my wife. But because of the hectic schedule I'm having now, I never got to copy the files over to the dell laptop, and I will have problems synchronising the files, especially the personal pet projects that I have... Since I have the full suite of Office 2007, why not use Groove?

Setting up Groove is easy, and synchronisation is a fire and forget thing for me. But it gave me some additional benefits as well. My company's firewall blocks most ports, you see. And there was one night, when I was working on my T42 on one of my pet project. I didn't switch on my Dell laptop, hence the files on my pet project didn't get synchronised. But when I reached office, I needed that project to help me find out something about SharePoint. I thought to myself, oh no, I don't have the latest! But I'm wrong, I have the latest as David, general manager for Groove demonstrated before, that Groove is firewall friendly. It synchronise delta changes using port 80!

There was another instance, that Groove would have helped me a lot, if only I remembered before I went home. I was put into a very tight SharePoint project to assist the project team, since I have the skillset that is difficult to find in Singapore. Working with Virtual Machines is possible, on my duo core Dell laptop with 2GB ram, but it was painful, magnified by the fact that I don't have the luxury to wait, hence I work from home, on my Core2Duo desktop with 4GB ram. (Working from home is not as good as you think. I save about 2 hours travel time, but being at home makes you lose track of time too). So on the day that I was supposed to deploy my module at in the afternoon, but I found a major bug in the morning. Luckily, I managed to fix the bug in time. Copied the files into my Dell laptop (groove was not installed on my virtual machine), and rushed of to my customer's office. Happily, I copied the files into the staging server, BUT, yah, a big BUT, I left out an important file.

For 30 minutes, I tried to guide my wife how to copy the file onto the T42, and email the file to me, but it wasn't successful (My wife is a childcare teacher, and not very familiar with computer, especially since my T42 is running Vista too!). Tried transfering via MSN also didn't work. Steve later drove me home to copied the file. When we almost reach my house, I suddenly remembered that the project was set for synchronisation with Groove! I should have just asked my wife to copy that file into the project's folder! Went home and copied the file into the project folder, and copied the file into my thumbdrive, just in case. And true enough, the file reach my Dell laptop at my client's place before I even leave the house!

So if you want to learn how to setup the folder synchronisation, check out this article, or if you like to synchronise folder with your friends, check this out.

I've been working with lots of features for my current project (7 and still counting), building an enhanced version of the discussion board. I've been using Todd Baginski's Feature Manager to deploy those features. Todd's tool is really great, as his is flexible, but I doesn't suit my style of working. Since I haven't build any windows application using .net 2.0 yet, I've decided to create my own tool that is really customised for myself.

My tool has a similar interface as Todd's, but I've added a history list, so that I can quickly update the feature. For some reason, IISReset didn't work for me when I make changes to list definitions, so I need to deactivate, uninstall, install, and activate the feature again. I don't have the luxury of time (very tight project schedule :() to find out which way is supposed to be the way to update your feature, hence the history list.

Anyway, here's the tool...