SharePoint Automation

22Dec/1112

Updating SharePoint 2010 User Information

One of my clients recently had an issue where a particularly high profile user (CEO) had their title spelled incorrectly in Active Directory; unfortunately the error wasn’t noticed right away and now, despite changing the information in Active Directory, SharePoint was still showing the wrong title in the People Picker when granting the user rights to a Site Collection. Fortunately I had a partial PowerShell script to fix the issue and just needed to only slightly modify it – you can see the original script on pages 299 and 300 of my book. So before I show the modified script it’s first important to understand the problem and why I needed to use a script and why what I had in the book is somewhat incomplete.

Whenever you grant a user rights to a Site Collection or when that user creates/updates/deletes any item within a Site Collection, an entry for the user will be added to a hidden user information list, if not already there. This “User Information List” is located at http://<SiteCollectionUrl>/_catalogs/users/detail.aspx:

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By looking at this list you can see that several key pieces of information are stored here – unfortunately, when you change this information in Active Directory the information stored here is not updated (even after running a full or incremental import via UPS). To complicate matters there is no way to edit the information via the browser, thus the need for a PowerShell script. If you click the user’s name you’ll see the additional properties, including an “Edit Item” option, however, the edit dialog is simply a read-only display of the username, helpful right?:

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So let’s first consider the scenario that my book addresses and assume that a user had had their name and/or email address changed. To accommodate this scenario we simply use the Set-SPUser cmdlet along with the -SyncFromAD parameter. The following script is taken directly from my book and simply iterates through all Site Collections and calls the Set-SPUser cmdlet for the provided user:

function Sync-SPUser([string]$userName) {
  Get-SPSite -Limit All | foreach {
    $web = $_.RootWeb
    if ($_.WebApplication.UseClaimsAuthentication) {
      $claim = New-SPClaimsPrincipal $userName -IdentityType WindowsSamAccountName
      $user = $web | Get-SPUser -Identity $claim -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    } else {
      $user = $web | Get-SPUser -Identity $userName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    }
    if ($user -ne $null) {
      $web | Set-SPUser -Identity $user -SyncFromAD
    }
    $web.Dispose()
    $_.Dispose()
  }
}

Before I make any changes to demonstrate this script and the modifications we’ll make to it, let’s first see how my user is currently set in the Site Collection:

And as shown in the People Picker:

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Note the “Name”/”Display Name”, “Work e-mail”/”E-Mail”, and “Title” fields.

Now I’ll change these values in Active Directory (make the “p” in my last name capitalized, change the title, and set the email) and then run the script (I saved the script as Sync-SPUser.ps1):

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(Note that lowercase “p” is the correct spelling for my name, just in case you were wondering Smile ). Now if we look at the user details in the Site Collection and the People Picker we should see the following:

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Notice that the the “Name” / “Display Name” and “Work e-mail” / “E-Mail” fields were updated but not the “Title” field. This is because the Set-SPUser cmdlet and -SyncFromAD parameter only updates these two fields. So how do you update the remaining fields? We simply need to add some code to our function which will grab the SPListItem corresponding to the user from the hidden “User Information List” and then update the corresponding fields manually. The following modified script does this for the “Title” field (note that I’ve changed the function signature to take the title in as a parameter):

function Sync-SPUser([string]$userName, [string]$title) {
  Get-SPSite -Limit All | foreach {
    $web = $_.RootWeb
    if ($_.WebApplication.UseClaimsAuthentication) {
      $claim = New-SPClaimsPrincipal $userName -IdentityType WindowsSamAccountName
      $user = $web | Get-SPUser -Identity $claim -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    } else {
      $user = $web | Get-SPUser -Identity $userName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    }
    if ($user -ne $null) {
      $web | Set-SPUser -Identity $user -SyncFromAD
      
      $list = $web.Lists["User Information List"]
      $query = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPQuery
      $query.Query = "<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='Name' /><Value Type='Text'>$userName</Value></Eq></Where>"
      foreach ($item in $list.GetItems($query)) {
        $item["JobTitle"] = $title
        $item.SystemUpdate()
      }
    }
    $web.Dispose()
    $_.Dispose()
  }
}

The changes to the original function have been highlighted. Note that the internal field name for the “Title” field is “JobTitle” and that is what we are using to set the Title. Now if we run this modified script we should see the Title field updated:

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Okay, so what about the other fields (Department, Mobile Number, etc.)? You can see what fields are available to edit by running the following:

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In the preceding example I’m grabbing a specific item (in this case the item corresponding to my user) so that I can see the internal field names in context with the data stored by the field – this helps to make sure that I grab the correct field name (i.e., “JobTitle” vs. “Title”). Now you can just add additional fields to update right before the call to SystemUpdate() – simply follow the pattern established for the title field.

So, add this guy to your script library and you’ll be good to go next time someone changes their name, email, or job title.

-Gary

Tagged as: PowerShell, Set-SPUser, SharePoint 2010, SPUser, User Information List 12 Comments

19Nov/110

SharePoint Saturday Denver 2011 Slide Decks

Last weekend I had a great time at SharePoint Friday/Saturday Denver 2011 – all the folks who helped organize the event did a fantastic job (and I have to say, it was nice this year not being one of the organizers as I was able to just enjoy the event for once which makes me appreciate their efforts even more). So, at the event I presented two talks, one on PowerShell (of course) and the other was the presentation I gave at the SharePoint Conference in Anaheim last month. The PowerShell talk was a new talk that I’d never done before and it was basically just a bunch of random tips that I’ve found useful over the years. My apologies to those who attended my sessions last weekend for not making these available sooner but I figure better late than never. Anyways, here’s the links to the decks – enjoy!

Tagged as: SharePoint Saturday No Comments

20Aug/113

Resetting SharePoint 2010 Themes – Part 2, the Reset-SPTheme cmdlet

Yesterday I threw up a quick post showing how to reset a SharePoint 2010 theme using a reasonably simple Windows PowerShell script. In that post I promised that I’d convert the script to a cmdlet and make it part of my downloadable extensions. Well, as promised I’ve updated my extensions so that they now include a Reset-SPTheme cmdlet. I added on minor enhancement over the previously shown script in that I allow you to pass in either an SPSite or an SPWeb object and by default it will not force all child webs to inherit from the relevant SPWeb object. This way, if you have a child Site with it’s own theme it won’t wipe out that theme. If you have multiple Sites with a custom theme setting within a Site Collection then you’ll want to provide the -Site parameter and pass in an SPSite reference – this will result in all Sites with custom themes within the Site Collection to be reset. If you only wish to reset a single Site then use the -Web parameter and pass in a SPWeb reference.

Here’s the full help for the Reset-SPTheme cmdlet:

NAME
Reset-SPTheme

SYNOPSIS
Resets a theme by applying all user specified theme configuration settings to the original source files. This is particularly helpful when the original source files have changed to a Feature upgrade.

SYNTAX
Reset-SPTheme [-Web] <SPWebPipeBind> [-SetSubWebsToInherit <SwitchParameter>] [-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>] [<CommonParameters>]

Reset-SPTheme [-Site] <SPSitePipeBind> [-SetSubWebsToInherit <SwitchParameter>] [-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>] [<CommonParameters>]

DESCRIPTION
Resets a theme by applying all user specified theme configuration settings to the original source files. This is particularly helpful when the original source files have changed to a Feature upgrade.

    Copyright 2011 Falchion Consulting, LLC
    > For more information on this cmdlet and others:
    > http://blog.falchionconsulting.com/
    > Use of this cmdlet is at your own risk.
    > Gary Lapointe assumes no liability.

PARAMETERS
-Web <SPWebPipeBind>
Specifies the URL or GUID of the Web containing the theme to reset.

The type must be a valid GUID, in the form 12345678-90ab-cdef-1234-567890bcdefgh; a valid name of Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Web site (for example, MySPSite1); or an instance of a valid SPWeb object.

        Required?                    true
        Position?                    1
        Default value
        Accept pipeline input?       true (ByValue, ByPropertyName)
        Accept wildcard characters? false

-Site <SPSitePipeBind>
The site containing the theme to reset.

The type must be a valid GUID, in the form 12345678-90ab-cdef-1234-567890bcdefgh; a valid URL, in the form http://server_name; or an instance of a valid SPSite object.

-SetSubWebsToInherit [<SwitchParameter>]
If specified, all child webs will be reset to inherit the theme of the specified web or root web.

        Required?                    false
        Position?                    named
        Default value
        Accept pipeline input?       false
        Accept wildcard characters? false

-AssignmentCollection [<SPAssignmentCollection>]
Manages objects for the purpose of proper disposal. Use of objects, such as SPWeb or SPSite, can use large amounts of memory and use of these objects in Windows PowerShell scripts requires proper memory management. Using the SPAssignment object, you can assign objects to a variable and dispose of the objects after they are needed to free up memory. When SPWeb, SPSite, or SPSiteAdministration objects are used, the objects are automatically disposed of if an assignment collection or the Global parameter is not used.

When the Global parameter is used, all objects are contained in the global store. If objects are not immediately used, or disposed of by using the Stop-SPAssignment command, an out-of-memory scenario can occur.

        Required?                    false
        Position?                    named
        Default value
        Accept pipeline input?       true (ByValue)
        Accept wildcard characters? false

    <CommonParameters>
        This cmdlet supports the common parameters: Verbose, Debug,
        ErrorAction, ErrorVariable, WarningAction, WarningVariable,
        OutBuffer and OutVariable. For more information, type,
        "get-help about_commonparameters".

INPUTS

OUTPUTS

NOTES

For more information, type "Get-Help Reset-SPTheme -detailed". For technical information, type "Get-Help Reset-SPTheme -full".

------------------EXAMPLE 1-----------------------

PS C:\> Get-SPSite http://server_name | Reset-SPTheme -SetSubWebsToInherit

This example resets the theme for the site collection http://server_name and resets all child webs to inherit from the root web.

------------------EXAMPLE 2-----------------------

PS C:\> Get-SPWeb http://server_name/sub-web | Reset-SPTheme

This example resets the theme for the web http://server_name/sub-web.

Resetting SharePoint 2010 Themes

UPDATE 8/20/2011: I’ve reworked this script and included it as part of my SharePoint 2010 cmdlet downloads. See “Resetting SharePoint 2010 Themes – Part 2, the Reset-SPTheme cmdlet” for details.

One of my current clients is a local school district here in Denver and we (Aptillon) have recently helped them release a new public facing site for the main district office as well as all the schools in the district. The district has chosen a somewhat fixed brand which has had full theming support added so that the individual schools can adjust the color scheme to match the school’s colors. The master page, page layouts, CSS files, and associated images were all deployed to the Farm using various Solution Packages (WSPs). This allows us to make corrections/additions to the brand related files and quickly deploy them to the Farm, thereby updating the district and school sites quite easily. The problem, however, is that the way theming works within SharePoint 2010 is that it makes a copy of all the CSS and image files and stores them in the /_catalogs/theme/Themed/{THEMEID} folder, as shown in the following figure:

Whenever you apply a theme it will copy all the necessary CSS and image files to a new folder in the Themed folder. This means that the site is no longer basing its look and feel off of the Feature deployed files. So if a school has gone in and customized their site to use themes then any updates that we push out to the style sheets and images will be ignored. So I needed a way to effectively “reset” the applied theme after we push out an update to our branding solution. By reset I mean preserve the various color and font settings but re-apply them against the Feature deployed files.

I did some digging with my favorite tool, Reflector, and found that the out of the box theme settings page just uses the Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.ThmxTheme class to manipulate the themes. So, after a little experimenting I ended up with some code which will regenerate the current theme using all the source files and the user provided theme settings:

#NOTE: Run in a seperate console instance each time otherwise the changes won't get applied
function Reset-SPTheme([Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPSitePipeBind]$spSite) {
    $site = $spSite.Read()
    try {
        # Store some variables for later use
        $tempFolderName = "TEMP"
        $themedFolderName = "$($site.ServerRelativeUrl)/_catalogs/theme/Themed"
        $themesUrlForWeb = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.ThmxTheme]::GetThemeUrlForWeb($site.RootWeb)
        Write-Host "Old Theme URL: $themesUrlForWeb"
        
        # Open the existing theme
        $webThmxTheme = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.ThmxTheme]::Open($site, $themesUrlForWeb)
        
        # Generate a new theme using the settings defined for the existing theme
        # (this will generate a temporary theme folder that we'll need to delete)
        $webThmxTheme.GenerateThemedStyles($true, $site.RootWeb, $tempFolderName)
        
        # Apply the newly generated theme to the root web
        [Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.ThmxTheme]::SetThemeUrlForWeb($site.RootWeb, "$themedFolderName/$tempFolderName/theme.thmx", $true)
        
        # Delete the TEMP folder created earlier
        $site.RootWeb.GetFolder("$themedFolderName/$tempFolderName").Delete()
        
        # Reset the theme URL just in case it has changed (sometimes it will)
        $site.Dispose()
        $site = $spSite.Read()
        $themesUrlForWeb = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.ThmxTheme]::GetThemeUrlForWeb($site.RootWeb)
        Write-Host "New Theme URL: $themesUrlForWeb"

        # Set all child webs to inherit.
        if ([Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb]::IsPublishingWeb($site.RootWeb)) {
            $pubWeb = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingWeb]::GetPublishingWeb($site.RootWeb)
            $pubWeb.ThemedCssFolderUrl.SetValue($pubWeb.Web.ThemedCssFolderUrl, $true)
        } else {
            foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs) {
                if ($web.isRootWeb) { continue }
                Write-Host "Setting theme for $($web.ServerRelativeUrl)..."
                try {
                    [Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.ThmxTheme]::SetThemeUrlForWeb($web, $themesUrlForWeb)
                } finally {
                    $web.Dispose()
                }
            }   
        }
    } finally {
        if ($site -ne $null) { $site.Dispose() }
    }
}

I saved this to a file named Reset-SPTheme so I can then call the function like so:

. c:\Scripts\Reset-SPTheme.ps1
Reset-SPTheme "http://example.com/"

One odd thing I found, however, is that every time I run this it must be run in a new console instance; otherwise the changes are not picked up (this is basically a combination of a threading and caching issue within the code when executed from a PowerShell context). So remember, start a new PowerShell console every time you need to run this script (yeah, I wasted a couple of hours banging my head against the wall trying to figure that little nugget out).

~~BTW: I intend to add this to my cmdlet extensions as I believe it will be something I’ll need often so look for an updated build to come out this weekend.~~

Tagged as: PowerShell, SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Themes 2 Comments

7Jul/112

SharePoint 2010 SP1 Public API Changes

I recently published a post detailing the SharePoint 2010 SP1 PowerShell changes and, in that post, I mentioned that I was probably going to detail the API changes. Well, here they are. Note that the list below is not a comprehensive one in that I’m not showing every assembly (I do have the changes for every assembly but frankly I just got tired of translating the results into a readable format so I kept it to the more prominent assemblies (or at least the ones that I just happened to have done at the time)). In reviewing the list you see that there’s honestly not a whole lot of noteworthy changes, but that’s okay as part of my reasoning for doing this was to discover whether there were any (don’t get me wrong, there are some, in fact, for me there’s 1 very big one that made this whole exercise worth it – I’ll let you figure out which one that is). If you find any I missed please add a comment so that others can see it as well.

Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
- Microsoft.SharePoint.SPRecycleBinItemType
  - New enum value:
    - Web
- Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb
  - New method:
    - public void Recycle()
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Strings
  - New constants:
    - public const string CannotRecycleRootWeb
    - public const string HealthRule_Explanation_BcsShimsAreEnabled
    - public const string HealthRule_Remedy_BcsShimsAreEnabled
    - public const string RecycleBinWebMissingContainerError
    - public const string SPStorageMetricsProcessingJobDescription
    - public const string SPUsageUserCodeRequestsDescription
    - public const string SPUsageUserCodeRequestsMonitoredDataDescription
    - public const string SiteAlreadyExists
    - public const string StorageMetricsDBObjectsNotFound
    - public const string StorageMetricsFreshnessWarning
    - public const string StorageMetricsNotAvailable
    - public const string TimerJobTitleStorageMetricsProcessing
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAce<T>
  - New properties:
    - public Byte[] BinaryId() { get; }
    - public Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPIdentifierType BinaryIdType() { get; }
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPAcl<T>
  - New method:
    - public SPAce<T> Add(string principalName, string displayName, SPIdentifierType identifierType, byte[] identifier, T grantRightsMask, T denyRightsMask)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPContentDatabase
  - New methods:
    - public Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDeletedSite GetDeletedSite(System.Guid id)
    - public void Move(SPContentDatabase destinationDb, List<SPSite> sitesToMove, Dictionary<string, string> rbsProviderMap, out Dictionary<SPSite, string> failedSites)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPContentDatabaseCollection
  - New method:
    - public SPContentDatabase Add(string strDatabaseServer, string strDatabaseName, string strDatabaseUsername, string strDatabasePassword, int warningSiteCount, int maximumSiteCount, int status, bool flushChangeLog, bool changeSyncKnowledge)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDatabase
  - New method:
    - public void ChangeDatabaseInstance(string databaseServiceInstance)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPIncomingEmailService
  - New property:
    - public int RetryDeliveryInterval { get; set; }
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPolicy
  - New method:
    - protected Void OnDeserialization()
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSiteLookupProvider
  - Changed method (breaking change!)
    - public Void RenameHostHeaderSite(Guid siteId, string newHostHeader) => public Void RenameHostHeaderSite(Guid siteId, Uri newHostHeaderSiteUri)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUsageApplication
  - New property:
    - public int UsageInsertionTimeOut { get; set; }
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUserCodeExecutionTier
  - New property:
    - public int PriorityPerProcess { get; set; }
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication
  - New properties:
    - public int StorageMetricsProcessingDuration { get; set; }
    - public uint MaxDiscussionBoardItemsForSiteDataFolderQuery { get; set; }
    - public uint? UserDefinedWorkflowMaximumComplexity { get; set; }
  - New methods:
    - public SPDeletedSiteCollection GetDeletedSites()
    - public SPDeletedSiteCollection GetDeletedSites(SPDeletedSiteQuery query)
    - public SPDeletedSiteCollection GetDeletedSites(Guid siteId)
    - public SPDeletedSiteCollection GetDeletedSites(string sitePath)
    - public void MigrateUsers(IMigrateUserCallback callback)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService
  - New properties:
    - public int ImagingDownloadSizeLimit { get; set; }
    - public bool EnableHostHeaderSiteBasedSchemeSelection { get; set; }
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPActiveDirectoryClaimProvider
  - New method:
    - protected override void FillDefaultLocalizedDisplayName(CultureInfo culture, out string localizedName)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPAllUserClaimProvider
  - New method:
    - protected override void FillDefaultLocalizedDisplayName(CultureInfo culture, out string localizedName)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPClaimHierarchyProvider
  - New methods:
    - protected override void FillDefaultLocalizedDisplayName(CultureInfo culture, out string localizedName)
    - public string GetLocalizedDisplayName()
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPClaimProvider
  - New property:
    - public virtual bool SupportsUserKey { get; }
  - New methods:
    - protected override void FillDefaultLocalizedDisplayName(CultureInfo culture, out string localizedName)
    - public string GetLocalizedDisplayName()
    - public SPClaim UserKeyForEntity(SPClaim entity)
    - public virtual string GetClaimTypeForUserKey()
    - protected virtual SPClaim GetUserKeyForEntity(SPClaim entity)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPClaimProviderDefinition
  - New property:
    - public bool IsVisible { get; set; }
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPClaimProviderOperationOptions
  - New enum value:
    - OverrideVisibleFlag
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPFormsClaimProvider
  - New method:
    - protected override void FillDefaultLocalizedDisplayName(CultureInfo culture, out string localizedName)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Claims.SPSystemClaimProvider
  - New method:
    - protected override void FillDefaultLocalizedDisplayName(CultureInfo culture, out string localizedName)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.BusinessData.Administration.LobSystem
  - New static method:
    - public static LobSystem MergeXml(string xml, out string[] errors, PackageContents packageContents, AdministrationMetadataCatalog metadataCatalog, string settingId)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.BusinessData.Administration.TypeDescriptor
  - New static method:
    - public static TypeDescriptor MergeXml(string xml, out string[] errors, PackageContents packageContents, Parameter parameter, TypeDescriptor parent, string settingId)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.BusinessData.SharedService.BdcServiceApplicationProxy
  - New methods:
    - public bool IsSystemTypeEnabled(SystemType systemType)
    - public void EnableSystemType(SystemType systemType, bool value)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.JSGrid.GridSerializer
  - New method:
    - public void ApplyPostViewIncrementalInsertsAndDeletes(IEnumerable changes, Func> fnGetDefaultValuesForPostViewInserts)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.JSGrid.HierarchyNode
  - New property:
    - public HierarchyNode Parent { get; set; }
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPUtility
  - New static method:
    - public static Stream ExecuteCellStorageBinaryRequest(SPFile spfile, Stream request, bool coalesce, ref Guid partitionID, string userName, bool coauthVersioning, string etagMatching, bool fExpectNoFileExists, string contentChangeUnit, string clientFileID, string bypassSchemaID, long nLockType, string lockID, long nTimeout, bool createParentFolder, out string etagReturn, out bool allRequestSucceeded, out int coalesceHRESULT, out string coalesceErrorMessage, out bool containHotboxData, out bool haveOnlyDemotionChanges, ref int binaryReqCountQuota)
- Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ListFormWebPart
  - New method:
    - public bool ShouldSerializeTemplateName()
- New classes:
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDeletedSite
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDeletedSiteCollection
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDeletedSiteLookupInfo
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDeletedSiteQuery
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUsageUserCodeRequests
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUsageUserCodeRequestsEntry
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUsageUserCodeRequestsMonitoredData
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUsageUserCodeRequestsMonitoredDataEntry
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Health.SPHealthAnalysisRuleInstance
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.IEVersionMetaTag
- New enum types:
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPIdentifierType
- New interfaces:
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.IMigrateUserCallback
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.ISPSiteLookupProviderRecycleBin
Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.dll
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Internal.CodeBehind
  - New property:
    - protected bool IsCurrentUserSiteAdmin { get; }
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls.SpellCheckV4Action
  - New method:
    - protected bool ShouldRenderWithoutTabs()
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls.EditingMenuActions.ConsoleAction
  - New method:
    - protected bool ShouldRenderWithoutTabs()
Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.dll
- Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.TermStore
  - New method:
    - public Group GetSiteCollectionGroup(SPSite currentSite)
Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.dll
- Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileService
  - New methods:
    - public void AddLeader(string accountName)
    - public Leader[] GetLeaders()
    - public void RemoveLeader(string accountName)
Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.dll
- Microsoft.Office.Server.SocialData.PluggableSocialSecurityTrimmerManager
  - New methods:
    - public static string[] GetUrlFoldersRequiringTrim(SPServiceContext serviceContext)
    - public static string[] GetUrlFoldersToAlwaysAllow(SPServiceContext serviceContext)
    - public static void SetTrimmerSettings(SPServiceContext serviceContext, bool enableTrimming)
    - public static void SetTrimmerSettings(SPServiceContext serviceContext, string[] urlFoldersRequiringTrim, string[] urlFoldersToAlwaysAllow)
- Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.BusinessDataCatalogConnection
  - New method:
    - public void Delete()
- Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ConnectionManager
  - New method:
    - public DirectoryServiceConnection AddActiveDirectoryConnection(ConnectionType type, string displayName, string server, bool useSSL, string accountDomain, string accountUsername, SecureString accountPassword, List<DirectoryServiceNamingContext> namingContexts, string spsClaimProviderTypeValue, string spsClaimProviderIdValue, string adClaimIDMapAttribute)
- Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager
  - New methods:
    - public void AddLeader(string accountName)
    - public Leader[] GetLeaders()
    - public void RemoveLeader(string accountName)
- New classes:
  - Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.Leader
Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.dll
- Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CrawlTopologyState
  - New enum values:
    - ActiveToBeRemoved
    - DeactivatingToBeRemoved
- Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceApplication
  - New property:
    - public uint CrawlLogCleanupIntervalInDays { get; set; }
- Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceApplicationProxy
  - New property:
    - public LocationConfigurationCollection LocationConfigurations { get; }
- Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.QueryInfo
  - New property:
    - public string CorrelationId { get; set; }
- Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.QueryManager
  - New method:
    - public System.Xml.XmlDocument GetResults()
Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.dll
- New classes:
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPDeletedSitePipeBind
  - Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPHealthAnalysisRuleInstancePipeBind

Tagged as: API, Service Pack 1, SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 2 Comments

28Jun/110

SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 1 PowerShell Changes

As most people know by now, Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 was released to the public today. There’s already been a lot of hype over some of the new capabilities such as the site recycle bin and some folks have documented/demonstrated some of the new PowerShell cmdlets that are available to manage this new feature; but what about all the other new and changed PowerShell cmdlets – there’s a bunch! So, let’s take a look at what is new, and what has changed.

We’ll start with the new stuff – here’s a quick bulleted list of all the new cmdlets:

Add-SPProfileLeader
Get-SPProfileLeader
Remove-SPProfileLeader
Remove-SPProfileSyncConnection
Add-SPProfileSyncConnection
Disable-SPHealthAnalysisRule
Enable-SPHealthAnalysisRule
Get-SPHealthAnalysisRule
Get-SPDeletedSite
Remove-SPDeletedSite
Restore-SPDeletedSite
Move-SPSocialComments

I haven’t had a chance to try any of these out but I think there’s some cool new functionality here beyond just the site recycle bin. There’s absolutely no documentation for any of these but some of them are fairly straightforward based on the names. For instance, the Add-SPProfileSyncConnection cmdlet (and equivalent Remove cmdlet) are obviously for managing the synchronization connections for UPS. This was a big whole in RTM when it came to doing an end-to-end scripted installation as there was no practical way to add a synchronization connection using PowerShell. The health analysis rule cmdlets are also pretty obvious and, again, this goes a long way towards enabling administrators to script a deployment and enable or disable rules consistently across Farms.

I think the Move-SPSocialComments also has a lot of potential; if it does what I’m guessing it does then this could potentially solve the issue where comments and tags are stored with the absolute URL of the item that has been tagged/commented on – I’m *guessing* that running this command will effectively retarget those items, which is great in situations in which you’ve moved a list or site.

As for the *-SPProfileLeader cmdlets – I have no idea what those guys do so I’ll have to revisit them when I learn more. (The *-SPDeletedSite cmdlets have already been covered quite a bit by others so I’ll forgo any further discussion here).

Alright, so that’s the new stuff – what about the stuff that’s changed? Here’s a quick list with the changes:

Mount-SPContentDatabase
- New Switch Parameter: ChangeSyncKnowledge (I’ve no idea what this does – it’s not yet documented)
New-SPContentDatabase
- New Switch Parameter: ChangeSyncKnowledge (again, not yet documented)
Move-SPSite
- New Parameter: RbsProviderMapping <Hashtable>
  - From TechNet: “Used to move an RBS-enabled site collection from one RBS-enabled content database to another RBS-enabled content database without moving the underlying BLOB content. If the content database has more than one RBS provider associated with it, you must specify all providers. The same providers must be enabled on the target content database and the source content database.”
New-SPPerformancePointServiceApplication
- New Parameter: AnalyticResultCacheMinimumHitCount <Int32> (not yet documented but I think it’s fairly obvious what it does)
- New Parameters: DatabaseServer <string>, DatabaseName <string>, DatabaseFailoverServer <string>, DatabaseSQLAuthenticationCredential <PSCredential>
  - Can I get a hurray for this! This was the only Service Application that didn’t allow us to set the database information when we created it so we were left with this nasty GUID in the name. Hurray! We can finally get rid of the last database GUID! Woohoo!
Set-SPPerformancePointServiceApplication
- New Parameter: AnalyticResultCacheMinimumHitCount <Int32> (not yet documented but I think it’s fairly obvious what it does)
- New Parameters: DatabaseServer <string>, DatabaseName <string>, DatabaseFailoverServer <string>, DatabaseSQLAuthenticationCredential <PSCredential>, DatabaseUseWindowsAuthentication
Remove-SPWeb
- New Switch Parameter: Recycle
  - That’s right, you can in fact cause an SPWeb to go to the new recycle bin by simply providing this switch parameter.
Update-SPProfilePhotoStore (I think this one is a bit of mess and may need a CU or two but I could just be reading the code wrong – it is kind of late right now)
- Update 6/29/2011: From Spence Harbar: “Update-SPProfilePhotoStore change is to address common bug/issue with resize and is for upgrade scenarios”
- New Switch Parameter: CreateThumbnailsForImportedPhotos
  - I’m not entirely sure what this is supposed to do as thumbnails were created previously and will be created without this; however, I should note that they coded this wrong so both of the following syntaxes have the same affect as they are simply checking that the bool? type has a value and not what the value is:
    - -CreateThumbnailsForImportedPhotos $true
    - -CreateThumbnailsForImportedPhotos $false
- New Switch Parameter: NoDelete
  - I’m not 100% on this but I believe that the original behavior of this cmdlet was to copy the image and not actually move it (despite the name); they appear to have changed the behavior to delete the original images after the copy but you can preserve the original behavior by simply adding this switch parameter. However, this is *only* true when the CreateThumbnailsForImportedPhotos parameter is provided (in my opinion this is a bug – it should be irrelevant if that parameter is provided).

Well, that’s all I’ve been able to discover with the core SharePoint Server 2010 cmdlets – I may update this post to account for the Office Web Applications but I don’t currently have that installed on the server in which I just installed SP1 so it may take me a bit to do that analysis. At some point I may write something up to inspect the public classes and their members and do a similar post for the developers out there who want to know what API changes have occurred so keep an eye out for that.

So I think it’s pretty cool that we’ve got some improvements in the PowerShell cmdlets, especially in some of those that have frustrated me when it comes to automated deployments; the real frustrating thing, however, is that some of my just released book content is already out of date! Ugh! Maybe there’ll be a second edition Smile

Happy PowerShelling!

-Gary

Tagged as: PowerShell, Service Pack 1, SharePoint Server 2010, SP1 No Comments

26Jun/112

Getting (and taking ownership of) Checked Out Files using Windows PowerShell

Often when I’m working on a project I need to generate a list of all checked out files and provide that to my client just prior to release to production. Sometimes the client will manually inspect each of them and act as they see fit and other times they’ll ask me to just batch publish all of them (for which I use my Publish-SPListItems cmdlet). So, how do I generate the report for the client? It’s actually pretty easy using PowerShell and a couple of quick loops. Here’s an example that loops through every Site Collection in the Farm and generates a nice report:

function Get-CheckedOutFiles() {
    foreach ($web in (Get-SPSite -Limit All | Get-SPWeb -Limit All)) {
        Write-Host "Processing Web: $($web.Url)..."
        foreach ($list in ($web.Lists | ? {$_ -is [Microsoft.SharePoint.SPDocumentLibrary]})) {
            Write-Host "`tProcessing List: $($list.RootFolder.ServerRelativeUrl)..."
            foreach ($item in $list.CheckedOutFiles) {
                if (!$item.Url.EndsWith(".aspx")) { continue }
                $hash = @{
                    "URL"=$web.Site.MakeFullUrl("$($web.ServerRelativeUrl.TrimEnd('/'))/$($item.Url)");
                    "CheckedOutBy"=$item.CheckedOutBy;
                    "CheckedOutByEmail"=$item.CheckedOutByEmail
                }
                New-Object PSObject -Property $hash
            }
            foreach ($item in $list.Items) {
                if ($item.File.CheckOutStatus -ne "None") {
                    if (($list.CheckedOutFiles | where {$_.ListItemId -eq $item.ID}) -ne $null) { continue }
                    $hash = @{
                        "URL"=$web.Site.MakeFullUrl("$($web.ServerRelativeUrl.TrimEnd('/'))/$($item.Url)");
                        "CheckedOutBy"=$item.File.CheckedOutByUser;
                        "CheckedOutByEmail"=$item.File.CheckedOutByUser.Email
                    }
                    New-Object PSObject -Property $hash
                }
            }
        }
        $web.Dispose()
    }
}
Get-CheckedOutFiles | Out-GridView

Running the above will generate a fairly nice report with URLs and usernames and whatnot; you could also use the Export-Csv cmdlet to dump the results to a CSV file that you can then hand off to your end-users. One cool thing to point out about this is that it will also show you files that you normally can’t see – that is files that have been created by other users but have never had a check in. This is actually pretty cool and I stumbled upon this when trying to fine tune my Publish-SPListItems cmdlet. You see, if the file has never been checked in then iterating through the SPListItemCollection object will not reveal the item (or file I should say); this meant that my cmdlet, as it was previously written, was missing a bunch of files. So to work around this all I had to do was add an additional loop to iterate over the collection returned by the SPDocumentLibrary’s CheckedOutFiles property. For each SPCheckedOutFile object in that collection I then call TakeOverCheckOut() to grab the checked out file so that I can then publish.

I use this enough that I decided to turn it into a cmdlet that is now part of my custom extensions. Like the above script, I return back a custom object that contains the full URLs and other useful information (such as the List, Site, and Site Collection identifiers). I also exposed a TakeOverCheckOut() and Delete() method which simply calls Microsoft’s implementation of those methods.

I called this cmdlet Get-SPCheckedOutFiles (note that I’d previously released this cmdlet under the name Get-SPFilesCheckedOut but have since reworked and renamed that original implementation).

Here’s the full help for the cmdlet:

PS C:\Users\spadmin> help Get-SPCheckedOutFiles -full

NAME
Get-SPCheckedOutFiles

SYNOPSIS
Retrieves check out details for a given List, Web, or Site.

SYNTAX
Get-SPCheckedOutFiles [-Site] <SPSitePipeBind> [-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>] [<CommonParameters>]

Get-SPCheckedOutFiles [-Web] <SPWebPipeBind> [-ExcludeChildWebs <SwitchParameter>] [-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>] [<CommonParameters>]

Get-SPCheckedOutFiles [[-Web] <SPWebPipeBind>] [-List] <SPListPipeBind> [-AssignmentCollection <SPAssignmentCollection>] [<CommonParameters>]

DESCRIPTION
Retrieves check out details for a given List, Web, or Site.

Copyright 2010 Falchion Consulting, LLC
> For more information on this cmdlet and others:
> http://blog.falchionconsulting.com/
> Use of this cmdlet is at your own risk.
> Gary Lapointe assumes no liability.

PARAMETERS
-Site <SPSitePipeBind>
Specifies the URL or GUID of the Site to inspect.

The type must be a valid GUID, in the form 12345678-90ab-cdef-1234-567890bcdefgh; a valid URL, in the form http://server_name; or an instance of a valid SPSite object.

Required? true
Position? 1
Default value
Accept pipeline input? true (ByValue, ByPropertyName)
Accept wildcard characters? false

-Web <SPWebPipeBind>
Specifies the URL or GUID of the Web to inspect.

The type must be a valid GUID, in the form 12345678-90ab-cdef-1234-567890bcdefgh; a valid URL, in the form http://server_name; or an instance of a valid SPWeb object.

Required? true
Position? 1
Default value
Accept pipeline input? true (ByValue, ByPropertyName)
Accept wildcard characters? false

-List <SPListPipeBind>
The list whose checked out files are to be returned.

The value must be a valid URL in the form http://server_name/lists/listname or /lists/listname. If a server relative URL is provided then the Web parameter must be provided.

Required? true
Position? 1
Default value
Accept pipeline input? true (ByValue, ByPropertyName)
Accept wildcard characters? false

-ExcludeChildWebs [<SwitchParameter>]
Excludes all child sites and only considers the specified site.

Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters? false

-AssignmentCollection [<SPAssignmentCollection>]
Manages objects for the purpose of proper disposal. Use of objects, such as SPWeb or SPSite, can use large amounts of memory and use of these objects in Windows PowerShell scripts requires proper memory management. Using the SPAssignment object, you can assign objects to a variable and dispose of the objects after they are needed to free up memory. When SPWeb, SPSite, or SPSiteAdministration objects are used, the objects are automatically disposed of if an assignment collection or the Global parameter is not used.

When the Global parameter is used, all objects are contained in the global store. If objects are not immediately used, or disposed of by using the Stop-SPAssignment command, an out-of-memory scenario can occur.

Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? true (ByValue)
Accept wildcard characters? false

<CommonParameters>
This cmdlet supports the common parameters: Verbose, Debug, ErrorAction, ErrorVariable, WarningAction, WarningVariable, OutBuffer and OutVariable. For more information, type, "get-help about_commonparameters".

INPUTS

OUTPUTS

NOTES

For more information, type "Get-Help Get-SPCheckedOutFiles -detailed". For technical information, type "Get-Help Get-SPCheckedOutFiles -full".

------------------EXAMPLE------------------

PS C:\> Get-SPCheckedOutFiles -Site "http://server_name/"

This example outputs a list of files that are checked out for the given Site Collection

RELATED LINKS
Get-SPFile

In the following example I’m retrieving pages from the root Pages library that are checked out:

In this example I am running the cmdlet as the aptillon\spadmin user and I’m now able to see the checkout by the user aptillon\glapointe. I ran the cmdlet twice so you could see the default tabular view as well as the more detailed view. Again, you could easily use the Export-Csv cmdlet to dump this information to a file that you can provide your end-users.

I hope you find this cmdlet useful – it personally has proven invaluable to me, particularly when working on anonymous access internet sites as end-users are notorious about creating pages and not getting them checked in.

P.S. With this release the Publish-SPListItems cmdlet has been updated to now consider files that don’t have any existing check-ins.

Tagged as: Cmdlets, Files, PowerShell 2 Comments

25Jun/1125

Programmatically Setting SharePoint 2010 Calendar Overlays

I recently did a project where my client needed several calendars provisioned via a Feature Receiver when a particular type of Site Collection was created; they had one primary calendar and they wanted all the other calendars to be overlaid onto the primary one using SharePoint 2010’s Calendar overlay capabilities.

Here’s a quick summary of this feature if you’re not familiar with it. When you are looking at a calendar you should notice that there is a ribbon button titled “Calendar Overlay”:

Clicking this button brings you to the Calendar Overlay Settings page; from this page you can add or edit the overlay calendars. Clicking “New Calendar” brings you to an application page where you can define what calendar to overlay:

As you can see from the above screenshot, you can add not just a SharePoint calendar as an overlay but also an Exchange calendar. After configuring calendar overlays you will see overlaid items when looking at the month view for the calendar:

In this example, the pink item is coming from the overlay calendar. Overlay items are added dynamically after the page loads (some JavaScript and Ajax take care of loading the items and rendering them on the page).

So that’s the basics from the end-users perspective. Now what about the technical details? Well, there’s not a lot of information out there that describes how this is done but here’s the gist of it – there’s a simple XML structure that is stored in the SPView’s CalendarSettings property; this property defines the overlays. Once you know that the rest is just a matter of figuring out what that structure looks like. The easiest way to start is to simply go through the browser and set up one or two overlays and then use some simple PowerShell to dump out that XML:

Here’s a better view of what that XML looks like:

<AggregationCalendars>
    <AggregationCalendar Id="{26ddb82c-9e2b-4c5d-9b7e-4ee25cf5c357}" 
                         Type="SharePoint" 
                         Name="My Overlay Calendar" 
                         Description="" 
                         Color="5" 
                         AlwaysShow="False" 
                         CalendarUrl="/Lists/MyOverlayCalendar/calendar.aspx">
        <Settings WebUrl="http://demo" 
                  ListId="{428bd2cb-a32d-4867-b658-6498158636a8}" 
                  ViewId="{09928cd4-9a5e-44ed-9bf2-dfe1fc85661b}" 
                  ListFormUrl="/Lists/MyOverlayCalendar/DispForm.aspx" />
    </AggregationCalendar>
</AggregationCalendars>

I want to call particular attention to the WebUrl attribute of the Settings element; this value *must* be the full URL of the SPWeb object that contains the overlay calendar list. Okay, you’re thinking, not a huge deal, SharePoint stores the full URL for lots of things and it doesn’t really pose issues right? WRONG! Think about a scenario where you have an extended web application. So in my example I have an authoring site located at http://demo and I’ve extended this site for anonymous access under the URL http://demo.aptillon.com. Due to what I consider a design flaw with the overlays, the overlay feature will only work when the web application you are accessing the site as matches the web application defined for the WebUrl attribute. So if I were to try and access my overlay using the anonymous site I’d get the following error:

And of course, due to this error, the overlays will not show up. So even if I’ve only changed the protocol (http to https) I’d still get this same error. This means that, effectively, calendar overlays using SharePoint lists will only work under the context of the Web Application (and protocol) from which the overlay was defined. (I’ve torn through the code that does this and it’s something that Microsoft should be very embarrassed about – very poor performance and just flat out horribly implemented. Okay, I digress, let’s get back to the details.

Another thing you’ll want to do to understand this XML structure is to look at the code that constructs it. There’s two places to look and both require Reflector or some equivalent disassembler; the first is the SerializeAccessors() method of the Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.Calendar.CalendarAccessorManagerImpl class. This method takes the properties provided to it and constructs the XML structure shown above. So where are these properties set? For that we need to look at the BtnOk_Click() method of the Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.AggregationCustomizePage class. I’m not going to show the details of these methods here but suffice it to say these methods have everything you need to understand this structure.

As I previously noted, for my particular client I needed to set several overlays within a Feature Activated event; to make this easier (because there was technically several places I had to do this) I created a simple method that I could call; this method took in my target list and the list I wanted to overlay as well as several other properties. For this post I’ve taken that code and created a modified version of it which supports adding Exchange-based calendars. Here’s that code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace Lapointe.SharePoint2010.Automation.Common.Lists
{
    public enum CalendarOverlayColor
    {
        LightYellow = 1,
        LightGreen = 2,
        Orange = 3,
        LightTurquise = 4,
        Pink = 5,
        LightBlue = 6,
        IceBlue1 = 7,
        IceBlue2 = 8,
        White = 9
    }

    public class SetListOverlay
    {
        public static void AddCalendarOverlay(SPList targetList, string viewName, string owaUrl, string exchangeUrl, string overlayName, string overlayDescription, CalendarOverlayColor color, bool alwaysShow, bool clearExisting)
        {
            AddCalendarOverlay(targetList, viewName, owaUrl, exchangeUrl, null, overlayName, overlayDescription, color, alwaysShow, clearExisting);
        }
        public static void AddCalendarOverlay(SPList targetList, string viewName, SPList overlayList, string overlayName, string overlayDescription, CalendarOverlayColor color, bool alwaysShow, bool clearExisting)
        {
            AddCalendarOverlay(targetList, viewName, null, null, overlayList, overlayName, overlayDescription, color, alwaysShow, clearExisting);
        }
        private static void AddCalendarOverlay(SPList targetList, string viewName, string owaUrl, string exchangeUrl, SPList overlayList, string overlayName, string overlayDescription, CalendarOverlayColor color, bool alwaysShow, bool clearExisting)
        {
            bool sharePoint = overlayList != null;
            string linkUrl = owaUrl;
            if (sharePoint)
                linkUrl = overlayList.DefaultViewUrl;

            SPView targetView = targetList.DefaultView;
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(viewName))
                targetView = targetList.Views[viewName];

            XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
            XmlElement aggregationElement = null;
            int count = 0;
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(targetView.CalendarSettings) || clearExisting)
            {
                xml.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("AggregationCalendars"));
                aggregationElement = xml.CreateElement("AggregationCalendar");
                xml.DocumentElement.AppendChild(aggregationElement);
            }
            else
            {
                xml.LoadXml(targetView.CalendarSettings);
                XmlNodeList calendars = xml.SelectNodes("/AggregationCalendars/AggregationCalendar");
                if (calendars != null)
                    count = calendars.Count;
                aggregationElement = xml.SelectSingleNode(string.Format("/AggregationCalendars/AggregationCalendar[@CalendarUrl='{0}']", linkUrl)) as XmlElement;
                if (aggregationElement == null)
                {
                    if (count >= 10)
                        throw new SPException(string.Format("10 calendar ovarlays already exist for the calendar {0}.",targetList.RootFolder.ServerRelativeUrl));
                    aggregationElement = xml.CreateElement("AggregationCalendar");
                    xml.DocumentElement.AppendChild(aggregationElement);
                }
            }
            if (!aggregationElement.HasAttribute("Id"))
                aggregationElement.SetAttribute("Id", Guid.NewGuid().ToString("B", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));

            aggregationElement.SetAttribute("Type", sharePoint ? "SharePoint" : "Exchange");
            aggregationElement.SetAttribute("Name", !string.IsNullOrEmpty(overlayName) ? overlayName : (overlayList == null ? "" : overlayList.Title));
            aggregationElement.SetAttribute("Description", !string.IsNullOrEmpty(overlayDescription) ? overlayDescription : (overlayList == null ? "" : overlayList.Description));
            aggregationElement.SetAttribute("Color", ((int)color).ToString());
            aggregationElement.SetAttribute("AlwaysShow", alwaysShow.ToString());
            aggregationElement.SetAttribute("CalendarUrl", linkUrl);

            XmlElement settingsElement = aggregationElement.SelectSingleNode("./Settings") as XmlElement;
            if (settingsElement == null)
            {
                settingsElement = xml.CreateElement("Settings");
                aggregationElement.AppendChild(settingsElement);
            }
            if (sharePoint)
            {
                settingsElement.SetAttribute("WebUrl", overlayList.ParentWeb.Site.MakeFullUrl(overlayList.ParentWebUrl));
                settingsElement.SetAttribute("ListId", overlayList.ID.ToString("B", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
                settingsElement.SetAttribute("ViewId", overlayList.DefaultView.ID.ToString("B", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
                settingsElement.SetAttribute("ListFormUrl", overlayList.Forms[PAGETYPE.PAGE_DISPLAYFORM].ServerRelativeUrl);
            }
            else
            {
                settingsElement.SetAttribute("ServiceUrl", exchangeUrl);
            }
            targetView.CalendarSettings = xml.OuterXml;
            targetView.Update();
            /*
            <AggregationCalendars>
                <AggregationCalendar 
                    Id="{cfc22c0b-688e-4555-b1d0-784081a91464}" 
                    Type="SharePoint" 
                    Name="My Overlay Calendar"
                    Description="" 
                    Color="1" 
                    AlwaysShow="True" 
                    CalendarUrl="/Lists/MyOverlayCalendar/calendar.aspx">
                    <Settings 
                        WebUrl="http://demo" 
                        ListId="{4a15e596-674f-4af7-a548-0b01470e8d75}" 
                        ViewId="{594c2916-14e7-4b08-ba36-1126b825bf45}" 
                        ListFormUrl="/Lists/MyOverlayCalendar/DispForm.aspx" />
                </AggregationCalendar>
                <AggregationCalendar 
                    Id="{cfc22c0b-688e-4555-b1d0-784081a91465}" 
                    Type="Exchange" 
                    Name="My Overlay Calendar"
                    Description="" 
                    Color="1" 
                    AlwaysShow="True" 
                    CalendarUrl="<url>">
                    <Settings ServiceUrl="<url>" />
                </AggregationCalendar>
            </AggregationCalendars>
            */
        }
    }
}

I’m not going to bore you with the details of this code as all I’m doing is basic XML manipulation. I created a couple of method overloads to allow for creating SharePoint or Exchange-based overlays. So, did you notice the namespace? Yup, no point in releasing code here if I’m not going to turn it into a cmdlet

I’m not sure how useful this cmdlet will be in everyday use but imagine the scenario in which you have a primary calendar on your company portal and you want to add it as an overlay on every calendar throughout portal – you could easily do this using this cmdlet. Before we get to that, let’s see the full help for the cmdlet, which I called Set-SPListOverlay:

PS C:\Users\spadmin> help Set-SPListOverlay -full

NAME
Set-SPListOverlay

SYNOPSIS
Sets calendar overlays for the given list.

SYNTAX
Set-SPListOverlay -Color -OverlayTitle [-OverlayDescription ] -OwaUrl -WebServiceUrl [-TargetList] [-ViewName ] [-DoNotAlwaysShow ] [-ClearExisting ] [-AssignmentCollection ] []

Set-SPListOverlay -Color [-OverlayList] [-OverlayTitle ] [-OverlayDescription ] [-TargetList] [-ViewName ] [-DoNotAlwaysShow ] [-ClearExisting ] [-AssignmentCollection ] []

Set-SPListOverlay [-OverlayLists] [-TargetList] [-ViewName ] [-DoNotAlwaysShow ] [-ClearExisting ] [-AssignmentCollection ] []

DESCRIPTION
Sets calendar overlays for the given list.

Copyright 2010 Falchion Consulting, LLC
> For more information on this cmdlet and others:
> http://blog.falchionconsulting.com/
> Use of this cmdlet is at your own risk.
> Gary Lapointe assumes no liability.

PARAMETERS
-Color
The color to use for the overlay calendar.

Required? true
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters? false

-TargetList
The calendar list to add the overlays to.

Required? true
Position? 1
Default value
Accept pipeline input? true (ByValue)
Accept wildcard characters? false

-ViewName []
The name of the view to add the overlays to. If not specified the default view will be used.