It is imperative that companies are able to identify areas of risk vs Dodd-Frank and to rectify any possible situation as fast as possible. This means understanding your employees interactions in real-time – both topically and structurally within your company. Anomalous communications and interactions should be identified and examined proactively and investigated further before much greater liability is incurred. With possible huge payouts, the incentives are all on the side of governmental intervention vs. internal resolution. Vigilance is more important than ever both from the governance perspective as well as the risk management perspective.

Question:

What is your company doing to improve insight into employee interactions and their meaning vs your company’s risk profile?

• Is Microsoft Project required to use ProjectGoo?

Yes. The Project Manager client relies on MS Project 2007 Standard or Professional to create the project plan and also requires MS Project to receive assignment updates, etc. The Team Client does not require MS Project and can be distributed to as many project team members as you’d like.

• Is there a charge per user for ProjectGoo?

No. ProjectGoo is completely free for an unlimited number of users and projects.

• Can you customize ProjectGoo to my company’s requirement (x)?

Yes! We’re happy to work with you to customize ProjectGoo. We’ve fielded requests to integrate with Jira, Mediawiki, and SharePoint and while there is a cost associated for the service, we’re happy to implement your requirements. Feel free to contact us with your needs.

• When is the next release of ProjectGoo and will it work with Project 2010?

ProjectGoo is scheduled for its 3.0 release end of Q1 2011 and will work with Project 2010, .NET 4.0 and Windows 7.

• I’m having issues installing ProjectGoo. The installer won’t launch.

Please review the system requirements for the application. Make sure that you have .NET 3.5 installed and that you have both a Google Docs and Google Calendar account. All installation issues reported so far have related to a lack of one of the three requirements.

If you don’t see the answer to a question you have, please email ProjectGoo Support. We’re excited to help jumpstart your use of  the application.

In Sharepoint there are many ways of notifying a user when an item gets updated on a list.

1. Setting up an alert.

2. Subscribing to an RSS Feed.

3. Using workflow via the List Settings, Sharepoint Designer or Visual Studio.

All these mechanisms have their pros and cons, but there is one thing that is not supported by any of them: Sending a notification to users when they are set up in a multi-choice person list within the SAME list. Additionally, 1 and 2 above require the user to set this up manually on their own, while 3  is much more complicated and has limitations. I chose to write my own Event Receiver in order to accomplish this task.

I won’t go into the details of creating an Event Receiver in Sharepoint and publishing it, since there is already a lot of documentation on this on the internet. In my example, the List Name is called “MyDocs” and the field that contains the users is called “Notifiers” (note: this field can contains a multiple users).

    public class MyDocsItemEventReceiver : SPItemEventReceiver
    {

        public override void ItemUpdated(SPItemEventProperties properties)
        {
            base.ItemUpdated(properties);
            DisableEventFiring();

            try
            {
                SPListItem myDocsItem = properties.ListItem;
                var notifiers = myDocsItem["Notifiers"] as SPFieldUserValueCollection;
                SendEmailToNotifiers(notifiers);
            }
            finally
            {
                EnableEventFiring();
            }

        }
        private void SendEmailToNotifiers(SPFieldUserValueCollection _notifiers)
        {

            if (_notifiers != null)
            {
                List<string> _notifierList = new List<string>();

                foreach (SPFieldUserValue _notifier in _notifiers)
                {
                    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(_notifier.User.Email))
                        _notifierList.Add(_notifier.User.Email.Trim());
                }

                if (_notifierList.Count > 0)
                {
                    SmtpClient _smtpClient = new SmtpClient();
                    _smtpClient.Host = "email_server_name";
                    _smtpClient.Port = 25;
                    _smtpClient.EnableSsl = false;

                    MailMessage _mailMessage = new MailMessage();

                    foreach (string _reviewer in _notifierList)
                    {
                        _mailMessage.To.Add(new MailAddress(_reviewer));
                    }

                    _mailMessage.From = new MailAddress("fromaddress@company.com");
                    _mailMessage.Subject = "the subject line";
                    _mailMessage.Body = "the body of the email";

                    _smtpClient.Send(_mailMessage);
                }
            }

        }
}

Our professional services engineers are experts in the development of collaboration, workflow,  portal and social networking technologies that utilize cloud computing designs and embody cutting edge research in the social sciences.

Whether developing a bespoke application for a single client or releasing products such as ProjectGoo and FarSight OI, ManageScope is focused on adding value to your organization through the improved orchestration of people and technologies and the subsequent increase of Organizational Intelligence (OI).

We invite you to learn more about our design philosophy, services and products and understand how ManageScope can deliver immediate value to your organization.

For more information about ManageScope’s presence at the Gartner ITxpo or to receive prior information and demos of FarSight OI, please contact ManageScope’s FarSight Team.

It appears that Sharepoint logs VIEWs for Document Libraries very well, but fails miserably for logging VIEWs on every other type of Item, including Picture Libraries (this is true for WSS and MOSS). Basically, Sharepoint logs the List that the Item is contained in, but there is no logging as to the actual Item that was clicked on. So after Googling around bit I found that there was very little information on how to get around this and wanted to post a solution that works for most Items, but still fails for certain ones, e.g. Discussion Items for one. Maybe someone else here can enhance this solution to grab the missing ones.

My solution involves a custom HttpModule (not an HttpHandler), that inspects the IIS requests and if can load the Sharepoint context, Site, List and Item, then it manually adds the Audit Entry via the Sharepoint Object Model. This approach is only needed for non Document Libraries, since the regular Sharepoint Auditing does a better job at logging these types of Items.

The code for the HttpModule is below. You will need to do a bit of research on how to deploy an HttpModule, but there is plenty of information on this on the web. Essentially, you will need to compile this, strong name it, deploy it to the GAC and add an entry to the web.config of the Sharepoint site you wish to Audit.

Enjoy!

Imports System.Web
Imports Microsoft.SharePoint

Public Class AuditViewHttpModule
    Implements IHttpModule

    Public Sub Dispose() Implements System.Web.IHttpModule.Dispose

    End Sub

    Public Sub Init(ByVal context As System.Web.HttpApplication) _
    Implements System.Web.IHttpModule.Init

        AddHandler context.PreRequestHandlerExecute, _
        AddressOf Application_PreRequestHandlerExecute
    End Sub

    Private Sub Application_PreRequestHandlerExecute( _
        ByVal _source As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)

        Dim _application As HttpApplication = Nothing
        Dim _context As HttpContext = Nothing

        Try

            _application = CType(_source, HttpApplication)
            _context = _application.Context

            Dim _site As SPSite = SPContext.Current.Site
            Dim _list As SPList = SPContext.Current.List
            Dim _item As SPListItem = SPContext.Current.ListItem

            If Not _site Is Nothing Then
                If Not _list Is Nothing Then
                    If Not _item Is Nothing Then
                        If _
                        _list.BaseTemplate <> _
                        SPListTemplateType.DocumentLibrary _
                        Then

                            _list.Audit.WriteAuditEvent( _
                            SPAuditEventType.View, "", "")
                        End If
                    End If
                End If
            End If

        Catch ex As Exception
            ' handle the error otherwise your
            ' sharepoint pages will crash!
        End Try
    End Sub

End Class

Our developers (including myself) were banging our head up against the wall with this problem until we found a pretty reliable way of capturing when the user single clicks on a record on the DataGrid. I cannot answer why most WPF controls don’t have the Mouse Single Click Event, but this functionality should have been better exposed since it has so many useful applications. This one is a gem, so please comment if you found this article useful in your project.

Enjoy!

Private Sub myDataGridControl_PropertyChanged _
(ByVal sender As Object, _
ByVal e As System.ComponentModel.PropertyChangedEventArgs)
Handles myDataGridControl.PropertyChanged

    If e.PropertyName = "GlobalSelectedItems" Then
        'myDataGridControl.SelectedItem was clicked!
    End If

End Sub

Guess what? By default, all Generic Lists in the .Net framework are compatible data sources. To show how easy it is to bind the Xceed datagrid to a Generic List of Objects, I have created a sample project (which you can download) that does essentially 3 things:

1. Declares a class named: MyRecord with 4 public properties (First, Last, Title and Phone).
2. Defines a function that creates a Generic List of MyRecord objects, sets temp data for each object and returns the new Generic List of MyRecord objects.
3. In the New() method of the Window that contains the DataGrid, we simply set the ItemsSource to the Generic List of MyRecord objects.

Enjoy!

Class Window1 

    Public Sub New()

        InitializeComponent()

        DataGridControl1.ItemsSource = GetMyRecords()

    End Sub

    Private Function GetMyRecords() As List(Of MyRecord)
        Dim MyRecords As New List(Of MyRecord)

        Dim _myRecord As MyRecord

        _myRecord = New MyRecord
        _myRecord.First = "Carlos"
        _myRecord.Last = "Gonzalez"
        _myRecord.Title = "Managing Director"
        _myRecord.Phone = "213-555-1212"
        MyRecords.Add(_myRecord)

        _myRecord = New MyRecord
        _myRecord.First = "Vivien"
        _myRecord.Last = "Dracon"
        _myRecord.Title = "Managing Director"
        _myRecord.Phone = "213-777-1212"
        MyRecords.Add(_myRecord)

        _myRecord = New MyRecord
        _myRecord.First = "John"
        _myRecord.Last = "Doe"
        _myRecord.Title = "Developer"
        _myRecord.Phone = "213-111-1212"
        MyRecords.Add(_myRecord)

        _myRecord = New MyRecord
        _myRecord.First = "Jane"
        _myRecord.Last = "Doe"
        _myRecord.Title = "Sales"
        _myRecord.Phone = "213-999-1212"
        MyRecords.Add(_myRecord)

        _myRecord = New MyRecord
        _myRecord.First = "Bill"
        _myRecord.Last = "Gates"
        _myRecord.Title = "Retired"
        _myRecord.Phone = "213-222-1212"
        MyRecords.Add(_myRecord)

        Return MyRecords
    End Function

    Private Class MyRecord
        Private _first As String
        Private _last As String
        Private _title As String
        Private _phone As String

        Public Property First()
            Get
                Return _first
            End Get
            Set(ByVal value)
                _first = value
            End Set
        End Property

        Public Property Last()
            Get
                Return _last
            End Get
            Set(ByVal value)
                _last = value
            End Set
        End Property

        Public Property Title()
            Get
                Return _title
            End Get
            Set(ByVal value)
                _title = value
            End Set
        End Property

        Public Property Phone()
            Get
                Return _phone
            End Get
            Set(ByVal value)
                _phone = value
            End Set
        End Property
    End Class

End Class

For this reason, I created a custom function that returns to me the list of files in a SharePoint Folder. I could then use this to warn the user if a file with the same name already exists on the SharePoint folder and have him/her take a manual action. The function uses the SharePoint List Web Service GetListItems() method and parses the XML in order to get the files in the folder queried.

Enjoy!

Private Function GetListOfFilesInSPFolder(ByVal listsWS As WebSvcLists.Lists, _
         ByVal folderPath As String) As List(Of String)
        Dim _files As List(Of String) = New List(Of String)

        ' set up xml  doc for getting list of files under a folder
        Dim doc As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument()
        Dim queryOptions As XmlElement = doc.CreateElement("QueryOptions")
        queryOptions.InnerXml = "<Folder>" & folderPath & "</Folder>"

        ' get the list of files
        Dim listItemsNode As XmlNode = listsWS.GetListItems( _
        WssDocumentLibraryRootFolder, Nothing, _
        Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, queryOptions, Nothing)

        Dim xmlResultsDoc As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument()
        xmlResultsDoc.LoadXml(listItemsNode.OuterXml)
        Dim ns As XmlNamespaceManager = New XmlNamespaceManager(xmlResultsDoc.NameTable)
        ns.AddNamespace("z", "#RowsetSchema")

        For Each row As XmlNode In xmlResultsDoc.SelectNodes("//z:row", ns)
            _files.Add(row.Attributes("ows_LinkFilename").Value)
        Next

        Return _files
End Function