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  • Run STSADM commands from SAF

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    I am pleased to announce that it’s now possible (with release 1.2.3463.00) , to run STSADM commands from the SharePoint Action Framework (SAF). Hence, if you add the standard STSAdm commands (that ship with SharePoint) to the truly awesome collection that Gary Lapointe has developed, (available on his STSADM Blog), you are looking at over 250 useful SharePoint Actions.

    This functionality has been made available by a new Action called “StsAdm”. The Action should be called via an Alias like this “Action.StsAdmin”. (Aliasing is for convenience so that you don’t have to put the full 4 part assembly reference into the Macro).

    An example :

    This example illustrates how to create a Macro that calls the new Action and executes 2 STSAdm commands to delete a group and also create the group.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"  ?>  
    <objects  xmlns="http://www.springframework.net">  
      
      <!-- Defines the main macro to process -->  
      <object  id="MacroToProcess"  type="Macro"  >  
      <constructor-arg  name="id"  value="{8BB25F02-5E41-4e86-BCA2-E253747354A3}"  />  
      <constructor-arg  name="actions">  
      <list  element-type="IAction">  
      
      <!-- Runs the STSAdm Command-->  
      <object  name="RunStsAdminCommands"  type...

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  • Content Migration using SAF

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    SAF contains 6 ready-to-use Actions that allow the Exporting and Importing of :

    - List Items

    - Lists

    - Webs

    The 3 pairs of Actions that allow you to do this, are namely :

    - ExportListItem & ImportListItem

    - ExportList & ImportList

    - ExportWeb & ImportWeb

    The actions are listed as pairs, for convenience, although there is nothing that mandates that they have to be run one after the other. In fact, you can export a List and import it into a completely different Farm months later if you so wish. In addition to this, although each pairing exports and imports different types of content, they all follow the same process, which is  :

    1. Export to a Content Migration Package (CMP) according to settings specificied in the “Export” Action.

    2. Import from a CMP file according to settings specificed in the “Import” Action.

    In principal that’s it! If you download the source code from here : http://SAF.Codeplex.com, you will find some useful examples at the locations listed below :

    1. {YourDrive}\src\CollaborisSaf.SampleFeatures\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\WSS.ContentMigration.CopyListItem
    2. {YourDrive}\src\CollaborisSaf.SampleFeatures\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\WSS.ContentMigration.CopyList
    3. {YourDrive}\src\CollaborisSaf.SampleFeatures\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\WSS.ContentMigration.CopyWeb

    The examples all demonstrate how to export and import in one go from a Feature. However, in reality, you will more than likely Export from a ...

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  • How to install SAF

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    A couple of you emailed and asked how to install SAF (version 2), so here's some instructions.

    Installing...

    If you have never insalled SAF on your SharePoint Farm then you need to install. To do this, you need to use STSAdm commands which I have popped into a batch file. Hence follow the steps below :

    1. Logon to a SharePoint Server in your Farm as a Farm Administrator.
    2. Download "Install.bat" to that server in your SharePoint Farm (right click "Save Target as...")
    3. Remove the '.txt' extension.
    4. Download the latest version of SAF from "http://saf.codeplex.com/".
    5. Extract "SAFv2.wsp" to the same folder as the batchfile in step 2.
    6. Ensure the path in STSAdm in "install.bat" is correct.
    7. Run "install.bat"

    Upgrading...

    If you already have a version of SAF on your Farm and want to upgrade to a newer version, please complete the steps below :

    1. Logon to a SharePoint Server in your Farm as a Farm Administrator.
    2. Download "Upgrade.bat" to that server in your SharePoint Farm (right click "Save Target as...").
    3. Remove the '.txt' extension.
    4. Download the latest version of SAF from "http://saf.codeplex.com/".
    5. Extract "SAFv2.wsp" to the same folder as the batchf ile in step 2.
    6. Ensure the path in STSAdm in ...

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  • SAF is released!

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    At Last! Finally, we have released the SharePoint Action Framework (SAF) on CodePlex!! Please take a look at : http://saf.codeplex.com .

    Now that I can take a minute, I just wanted to spend a bit of time detailing why we have spent the best part of 18 months (with lots of late nights building it!) Here's a FAQ to give you some answers:

    If you are developing with SharePoint, do you suffer from any of these ?

    • Lots of Defects caused by differences in SharePoint Farms. – eg. “It works on Integration, but not on QA!” .
    • Your Development team find it time consuming telling your Release team what to do for each release. “How hard can it be to put 5 columns in a Content Type?”
    • You have release documents (notepad, word, etc) that don’t contain enough information on how to deploy, or they always miss things and are extremely time consuming to create. “By heck surely there must be a better way of telling the Operations team what I need doing ?”
    • Deployments to key farms are always late and very stressful. “I hope we don’t get a release like that again, I didn’t finish till ...

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