Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Internet Facing Deployment (IFD)

This post will cover all the steps that need to be follow to configure Internet facing deployment (IFD) for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 On premise deployment.

Environments:

1. Dynamics CRM Server 2013 installed on Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard.
2. ADFS 2.0 server on a separate Windows Server 2012 Standard.

First you will need to purchase the appropriate certificates for the IFD configuration or you can create your own domain certificates and bind them with the sites as described in below:
  
Steps to create domain certificate:

1. First go to the ADFS server and open IIS manager and then go to server certificates then create a domain certificate.

 

 

 

2. In the next step specify the certification authority and enter the friendly name. Click finish.

3. Now export this certificate from the ADFS Server.

 

Import the certificate to CRM Server.

 

After this we need to bind the certificate with ADFS server site as mentioned below:

1. Go to the default website of ADFS server in IIS manager right click the default site and click on edit bindings...

2. Under Type, select https.

Under SSL certificate, select your SSL certificate and then click OK and then Close.

3. Repeat the above step 1 and 2 for Dynamics CRM site as well on the CRM Server.

 

Now the CRMAppPool account will need to have rights to the certificate.


In my case CRMAppPool is running under Network Service account so i need to give read permission to the certificate for the Network Service account.

Follow below steps to give permission to Network Service account:


1. Launch the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) console and go to File menu and select Add-Remove Snap In.

2. Select Certificates from the available snap-ins and click Add

 

3. Select Computer Account and click Next.

4. Click Finish on the next window and then click Ok.

5. Expand Certificates->Personal->Certificates ->Right click on Manage Private keys

6. Select the Network Service which is running the CRM application pool and give it read permissions and then Ok.

Now follow below steps to setup ADFS on the Server.

1. Launch Server manager and click on Add roles and features.
   
   

       

2. Click Next
   

    

3. Select Role-based or feature based installation and click Next
   
   

    

4. Select a server from the server pool and click Next

5. Select Active Directory Federation Services

6. Click on Add Features and then click Next

7. Then on the confirmation page click Install.

Once ADFS get installed then we need to configure that:

 

1. Launch Administrative tools and then select ADFS management. 

2. Click on ADFS Federation Server Configuration Wizard and then select Create a new Federation Service and click Next

3. Now depending upon your requirement you can choose the appropriate option. The screen explains each of the options.

I will choose New federation server farm.

4. Specify the Federation Service Name.

5. Shows you the summary of what is about to be installed. Click Next to continue.

 

6. Wait for the configuration process to complete and click the Close button. 

 Configuring CRM server for claims based authentication

Now the next step is to configure Dynamics CRM for claims based authentication.
Go to CRM Server and open the Deployment Manager and then go to properties and select the tab Web Address.

 

Now enter the internal network URL for CRM and update the binding type to HTTPS then click on "Apply".

2. Now go to Configure Claims-Based Authentication in the deployment manager.

 

 

3. On the Specify the security token service page, enter the Federation metadata URL, such as https://adfs.techperspect.com/federationmetadata/2007-06/federationmetadata.xml and click Next. To verify the correct URL, open an Internet browser by using the URL to view the federation metadata. Verify that no certificate-related warnings appear.

4. Now specify the encryption certificate and click Next

 

5. On the System Checks page, review the results, perform any steps required to fix problems, and then click Next

6. On the Review your selections and then click Apply page, verify your selections, and then click Apply.

7. Click View log file and scroll to the bottom and copy the Federation metadata URL we will need that in further steps.

Now we need to configure claims provider trusts and relying party trusts on ADFS Server.

Follow below mentioned steps:

1. Start ADFS Management on the ADFS Server and in the Navigation Pane, expand Trust Relationships, and then click Claims Provider Trusts. Under Claims Provider Trusts, right-click Active Directory, and then click Edit Claims Rules.
   
   

   

   
    

2. In the Rules Editor, click Add Rule, In the Claim rule template list, select the Send LDAP Attributes as Claims template, and then click Next

3. Create the following rule

Claim rule name: UPN Claim Rule (or something descriptive)

Attribute store: Active Directory

LDAP Attribute: User Principal Name

Outgoing Claim Type: UPN

Click Finish, and then click OK to close the Rules Editor

After you enable claims-based authentication, you must configure Dynamics CRM Server 2013 as a relying party to consume claims from ADFS for authenticating internal claims access.

4. Start ADFS Management. On the Actions menu located in the right column, click Add Relying Party Trust. In the Add Relying Party Trust Wizard, click Start.
   

   
   

   

5. On the Select Data Source page, click Import data about the relying party published online or on a local network, and then type the URL you copied earlier from the log file. So that will be https://crm.techperspect.com/FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml.

Verify that no certificate-related warnings appear by opening it in the browser. 

 

6. On the Specify Display Name page, type a display name, such as CRM Claims Relying Party, and then click Next

7. On the Choose Issuance Authorization Rules page, leave the Permit all users to access this relying party option selected, and then click Next

 

8. On the Ready to Add Trust page, click Next, and then click Close.

 

9. If the Rules Editor appears, click Add Rule. Otherwise, in the Relying Party Trusts list, right-click the relying party object that you created, click Edit Claims Rules, and then click Add Rule.

 

10. In the Claim rule template list, select the Pass Through or Filter an Incoming Claim template, and then click Next.

11. Create the following Rule #1

Claim rule name: Pass Through UPN (or something descriptive)

Incoming claim type: UPN

Pass through all claim values

Click Finish.

 

12. In the Rules Editor, click Add Rule, in the Claim rule template list, select the Pass Through or Filter an Incoming Claim template, and then click Next.

 

13. Create the following Rule #2

Claim rule name: Pass Through Primary SID (or something descriptive)

Incoming claim type: Primary SID

Pass through all claim values

Click Finish

 

14. In the Rules Editor, click Add Rule. In the Claim rule template list, select the Transform an Incoming Claim template, and then click Next.

 

15. Create the following rule #3

Claim rule name: Transform Windows Account Name to Name (or something descriptive)

Incoming claiming type: Windows account name

Outgoing claim type: Name

Pass through all claim values

Click Finish, and when you have created all three rules, click OK to close the Rules Editor.

So now we have claims setup for CRM.

In both Servers (ADFS and CRM) go to IE -> tools -> IE options -> security-> local intranet -> sites -> add internal URL and ADFS URL (https://crm.techperspect.com and https://adfs.techperspect.com ) This would have to done on any machines that are accessing the internal access points so that ADFS and CRM can pass those Kerberos tickets without being prompted for credentials.

Now at last we need to configure CRM Server for IFD

Go to the the CRM Server and follow below steps:

1. Start the Deployment Manager. In the Deployment Manager console tree, right-click Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and then click Configure Internet-Facing Deployment. Click Next.

2. Enter the URLs for the Web Application Server Domain, Organization Web Service Domain and the Discovery Web Service Domain and click on the Next button.

3. In the Enter the external domain where your Internet-facing servers are located box, type the external domain information where your Internet-facing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2013 servers are located, and then click Next.

The domain you specify must be a sub-domain of the Web Application Server Domain specified in the previous step. By default, "auth." is pre-pended to the Web Application Server Domain.

4. On the System Checks page, review the results, fix any problems, and then click Next.

 

5. On the Review your selections and then click Apply page, verify your selections, and then click Apply and Finish.

6. Now do the IIS Reset.

Test the accessibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM

You should now be able to access Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2013 externally using claims authentication. As shown below.

References:

• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg188602.aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh699814.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/niran_belliappa/archive/2014/01/16/step-by-step-configuring-crm-2013-internet-facing-deployment-ifd.aspx
• http://www.interactivewebs.com/blog/index.php/crm/how-to-set-up-crm-2015-ifd-on-windows-2012-and-adfs-3-0/

Why usability of an application is important?

Testing the user friendliness of an application is called Usability testing.

Let us start with an example such that we have two applications A & B which are different but doing the same job. In this, we see which one is user friendly

Given below are some of the parameters we look into for testing. In this most of them are not measurable,

1)Speed

2)Help

3)Navigation should be simple

4)Compatibility

5)Look & feel

6)Features

7)Location of components

One important parameter other than the above said parameters is “Effort needed to learn the application”. 

Suppose in the example, we understand the software A in 2 hrs, but we take 4 hrs to understand B. Let us see different cases here,

since we understand A in 2 hrs, it becomes user friendly compared to B

suppose look & feel is not good for A. In this case though, we understand A in 2 hrs, we cannot say that A is user friendly. 

Therefore, we look into many parameters before we say user friendliness of a software

What is LOOK & FEEL

The application should be such that it should be pleasant looking [ suppose if we have red color text in yellow background, definitely we don’t feel like using it ] and make a feel to the end-user to use it. 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 new solution feature

The much awaited required feature is finally introduced by Microsoft in Dynamics CRM 2016 release i.e. export and import of an individual entity assets like now whenever you add an entity into a solution you will get option to add all assets of an entity or you can select required assets like dashboards, views, charts, fields etc.

1. Create new solution.

2. Add the required components.

3. Export the solution from the CRM instance.

4. Import the solution into the other CRM instance.

Software Testing - Methods

There are different method that can be used for software testing.

Black-Box Testing

The technique of testing without having any knowledge of the interior workings of the application is called black-box testing. The tester is oblivious to the system architecture and does not have access to the source code. Typically while performing a black-box test, a tester will interact with the system's user interface by providing inputs and examining outputs without knowing how and where the inputs are worked upon.

Advantages 

•  Well suited and efficient for large code segments.
•  Code access is not required.
• Extra lines of code can be removed which can bring in hidden defects.
• Due to the tester's knowledge about the code, maximum coverage is attained during test scenario writing.

Disadvantages 

•  Limited coverage, since only a selected number of test scenarios is actually performed.
•  Inefficient testing, due to the fact that the tester only has limited knowledge about an application.
• The test cases are difficult to design.

White-Box Testing

White-box testing is the detailed investigation of internal logic and structure of the code. White-box testing is also called glass testing or open-box testing. In order to perform white-box testing on an application, a tester needs to know the internal workings of the code.

The tester needs to have a look inside the source code and find out which unit/chunk of the code is behaving inappropriately.

The following table lists the advantages and disadvantages of white-box testing.

 Advantages 

• As the tester has knowledge of the source code it becomes very easy to find out which type of data can help in testing the application effectively.
•  Extra lines of code can be removed which can bring in hidden defects.
• Due to the tester's knowledge about the code, maximum coverage is attained during test scenario writing.

Disadvantages 

• Due to the fact that a skilled tester is needed to perform white-box testing, the costs are increased.
•  Sometimes it is impossible to look into every nook and corner to find out hidden errors that may create problems, as many paths will go untested.
• It is difficult to maintain white-box testing, as it requires specialized tools like code analyzers and debugging tools.

Importance of Timesheets

What are timesheets?

Timesheets in this context are the documents, electronic or otherwise that record what time was spent by the person on what tasks. Some time sheets might also record the start and end time of each task rather than just the total time.

Why use timesheets?

The argument is sometimes around the fact that professionals work at different efficiencies so recording time against each task tends to normalise professional activities for the wrong reasons. By their nature most professionals need to apply some creativity to their work so they may have different approaches to their work: this is good. Professionals also take pride in their work so they will work to the task rather than the time: this is also good. Timesheets may be seen to undermine that.

The argument for timesheets is about having some record of people’s activities and contribution to the organisation. Of course, measuring contribution is very difficult and arguably subjective; however, using time is also arguably better than nothing. A record becomes important for a number of business functions if nothing else. Some of those are about the person’s performance but most are about the metrics of any associated project and the organisation as a whole.

So what is the value of timesheets?

Person level: the person is communicating their contribution to the organisation and to each project or activity in terms of time. They are acknowledging that they have satisfied the requirements of their employment contract. In some sense, when all the members of an organisation are completing time sheets, there is an implicit fairness between people, of the roles and contributions by those people. When summarised, the split of work between different types of activities can be calculated; that is, their utilisation. At the person level, utilisation, when compared to others in similar roles, provides information about their work habits (good, bad or otherwise).

At an organisation level and for service based businesses the time sheet data is very often the record for invoicing. Timesheet data improves an assurance that the invoice is reasonably determined.

Utilisation can also be calculated at a team and an organisational level. In this case it provides information about how good the processes are at allowing people to do their primary role (their real job).

Timesheet data can also be compared to planned effort for any project or task to track the accuracy of those estimates. In some cases this might inform decisions about how the project or task advances. In other cases it might simply inform the next project or task of the same type.

Timesheet data can also be abstracted to a cost (using a cost rate for each person). In this case, it can be used to track the costs actually incurred on a project or task and compared to the planned costs. Reactions to a difference between actual and planned costs can be slightly more sophisticated because balancing straight time may not be as important as balancing project costs.

Because timesheets are typically recording admin and leave time (annual leave, sick leave, parental leave, etc.), they also become the record for leave entitlements.

Often the reason to require timesheets of staff are compelling: because they provide the data for invoicing to clients. Otherwise, timesheets are a good democratiser of the efforts of people in an organisation. Finally, the value of timesheets to the managers of the business invariably outweighs the imposition to people in the organisation. That imposition should be minimised by using a timesheet mechanism that suits the nature of the business.

Problem with Minimal Download Strategy in SharePoint 2013

Minimal download strategy is a feature in SharePoint 2013 which improves the user navigation experience faster also improve the performance of the SharePoint site by reducing the page load time. It can improve the performance by sending only differences (delta) data when user navigates from one page to another page in SharePoint, browsing navigation controls, speed and smooth transitions by updating the areas that can be changed.
When SharePoint site has Minimal Download Strategy is enabled then site has _layouts/15/start.aspx page in the URL which is followed by the #.
MDS formatted URL is like:
http://<URL>/_layouts/15/start.aspx#/SitePages/Home.aspx,

Problem

The big problem with MDS is that it only works well with the out-of-the-box stuff on a Team Site, or similar templates. As soon as we start to drop our own Web Parts, custom scripts or customization that has not been adapted for the Minimal Download Strategy you will not see any performance benefits, we will see a performance degradation in many cases – so we turn the MDS feature off.
One of the biggest problems is that the more and more customization in SharePoint involve JavaScript and so far I have not seen a single non-SharePoint native script that can handle MDS. Common approaches to this is to use the SharePoint _spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push() or the jQuery $(document).ready() {} method. These methods rely on the DOM events when the page loads, so it might work perfectly fine on our first page load when MDS is enabled, since we need to fetch the full page, but on subsequent page transitions the JavaScript will not fire. An MDS page transition does not fire any DOM document load events since it asynchronously partially updates the page.

To De-activate Minimal Download Strategy,
• Click on Gear icon from top right corner of the SharePoint home page.
• Click on Site Settings
• Navigate to Site Actions -> Manage Site Features
• Find Minimal Download Strategy from list of feature and Click on Deactivate button.

Once you de-activate the Minimal Download Strategy feature, it will remove _layouts/15/start.aspx from MDS formatted URL and your page URL become like:
http://<URL>/SitePages/Home.aspx .and it works like earlier normal SharePoint page URL.

What is bug life cycle in bug tracking.

Bug Life cycle is the journey of a defect from its starting stage to its closure stage. This cycle varies from organisation to organisation. This cycle help to generate tracking report i.e how much bugs are active ,resolved, deferred, closed etc.

There are several stages in this life cycle.

 1. Open :  When a bug is raised, the status of bug is active.

 2. In-Progress : When developer identified the bug and bug are under fixing.

 3. Not a Bug : If system or application is working according to requirement then developer mark bug as a not a bug/ not reproducible.

 4. Deferred : When a bug is addressed to future release then bug assigned to deferred stage.

 5. Duplicate : If the bug is already reported, then one bug status is changed to duplicate.

 6. Fixed : The bug has been fixed and passed to testing team to verify the fix is working or not. The status of bug is changed to 'resolved'.

7. Reopened : When bug is not fixed or didn't work as expected then bug is changed from resolved to reopened.

8. Closed : If bug is verified and it is fixed then tester mark bug as closed. Duplicate or not a bug can also mark as closed bug.

Material Design

Material Design

 Material Design   is a design and developed by Google.(2014)

 Material design is one of the most influential visual philosophies in design. It’s shaping

 the way people see and interact with interfaces because of clear design and usability guidelines like a  paper effect.

 Material design framework works with all the android platforms and is know for flat

 graphical interface. Google’s new visual design framework is flat, elegant, and vibrant

 creating a unified Android experience.

 Material design is a comprehensive guide for visual, motion, and interaction design across platforms  and devices. Android now includes support for material design apps.

The material theme provides a new style for our  app, system widgets that let you set their color palette, and default animations for touch feedback and activity transitions.

Material design mostly three basic concepts:

Realistic visual cues:- The design is grounded in reality and actually inspired by design       with paper and ink.

 Bold, graphic and intentional:- Fundamental design techniques drive the visuals. Typography, grids, space, scale, color and imagery guide the entire design. Elements live in defined spaces with a clear hierarchy. Color and type choices are bold and deliberate.

Motion provides meaning:- Animation is a key component of Material Design, but it can’t just be there for the sake of movement. Animations need to happen in a single environment, serve to focus the design and include simple and easy transitions. Movements and actions should mirror the physical world.

 

Test case designing using BVA OR EP?

Boundary value analysis(BVA) and Equivalence partitioning(EP) both are test case design strategies in black box testing.

The values at the extremes (start/end values or lower/upper end values) of such classes are known as Boundary values. Analyzing the behavior of a system using such values is called Boundary value analysis.

For example: How do you do BVA for range between 1-10?

The boundary value analysis can have 6 text cases.
n,n-1,n+1 for the upper limit and n,n-1,n+1 for the lower limit.
In our example, as per BVA, there are 6 test case data, 

Equivalence partitioning  is a technique to divide the input data of software into different equivalence data classes i.e for input values.
For example: How do you do EP for range between 1-10?
Test condition: 
1. Any number greater than 10 i.e 11, then it is considered invalid.
2. Any number less than 1 i.e 0 then it is considered invalid.
3. Numbers 1 to 10 are considered valid.
4. Any 3 digit number say -100 or 100 is invalid.



These cases are derived from the requirements specification for input data. These method reduces the time for testing and useful for effective test cases.

Introduction to Ajax and Its Pros and Cons

AJAX

Ajax in nothing but short form of Asynchronous JavaScript And XML.By using Ajax we can Post and Get the data without fully page load event .Ajax implementation uses JavaScript functions to call methods from a web service, webpage request in response to get response.

Ajax Syntax for C# .NET-

function MyFunction(Param1, Param2) {      

 $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "MyPage.aspx/MyMethod",
        data: "{ Param1: '" + Param1+ "',Param2: '" + Param2 + "'}",
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
        dataType: "json",
        success: function (msg) {
            // On success                 
        },
        Error: function (x, e) {
            // On Error
        }
    });
}
type-Type of request Get or Post.
Url-Requested Page URL.
Data- Parameter to pass to the requested function.
ContentType-Encoding type.
DataType-Data format it may be XML/JSON.
Success-What needs to be done on success of ajax call.
Error- What needs to be done on failure of ajax call  

Advantages of AJAX

• Reduce the traffic travels between the client and the server.
• Response time is faster so increases performance and speed.
• We can use JSON(JavaScript Object Notation) which is alternative to XML. JSON is key value pair and works like an array.
• We can use Firefox browser with an add-on called as Firebug to debug all Ajax calls.
• AJAX communicates over HTTP Protocol.

Disadvantages of AJAX

• JavaScript disabled browsers cannot use the application.
• It can increase design and development time
• More complex than building classic web application
• Security is less in AJAX application as all files are downloaded at client side.
• Search Engine like Google cannot index AJAX pages.We cannot Bookmark AJAX URL because It might be same for more then one page.

Brief introduction of TX Text Control and print "Hello World" in pdf file

Hi,

Sharing a not new but different Technology to generate a PDF report by programming with "TX Text Control"

   It's a technology to generate a report in format of  '.pdf' and '.rtf'. In my current project, I am using it to generate a Dynamic Report with program which contain tables and paragraph of text. Generally, Tx Text control is using with '.tx' type template which contain all static information and dynamic data bind with Tx text control. Here, MailMerge class is playing crucial role. Main classes which generally use, are
1. ServerTextControl
2. MailMerge
3. SaveSetting
4. LoadSetting

Hello world!! program

  Before start with TX Text Control You have to install at your system. You can download from
Tx Text Control Download link. After filling some detail You can get trail version.

• Add Tx Text control Reference to your project in lib folder.

Tx Text Control references dll

• Graphical User Interface of TX Text Control.

Tx Text Control GUI

var tx = new ServerTextControl();
var res = "D:\tmp\12345.pdf";
tx.Create();
tx.Text = "Hello World !!";
var s = new SaveSetting();
tx.Save(res, GetOutputType(res), s);

I will come in my next blog with Table, paragraph ,text formatting and more changes in Tx Text Control..

Bootstrap Introduction

                                                             
Introduction:

Bootstrap is a free, open-source and is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework developed by twitter for creating responsive web applications.

It includes HTML and CSS based design templates for common user interface components like Buttons, Dropdowns,  Tabs, Forms, Tables, Navigations, Alerts, Modals etc. along with optional JavaScript extensions.

Bootstrap framework is based on open standards - HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This means bootstrap can be used with any server side technology and any platform. You can use it with any web application built with any server side technology like ASP.NET, JAVA etc.

What are the advantages of using bootstrap

Supports responsive design : One of the greatest advantages of using bootstrap is that it helps us create responsive web applications faster and easier. So the obvious question that comes to our mind is, what is a responsive web application? A responsive web application automatically adapts to different screen sizes (i.e desktop computers, laptops, tablets. mobile phones etc). A responsive application provides optimal viewing and interaction experience i.e easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices. So you don't have to worry about your application not being compatible with multiple devices.

Saves lot of development time : One of the biggest advantages of using Bootstrap is that it saves lot of development time. Instead of writing code from the scratch, bootstrap offers ready made blocks of code that you can use and customize to suit your application requirements. There are also many websites out there that offer free and paid Bootstrap themes that saves even more development time.

Consistency : Bootstrap was developed by Twitter to encourage consistency across thier internal tools by giving their developers a centralised development code. Since all the developers are working using a centralised code, the end result is consistent regardless of who’s working on the project and which web browser is being used.

Biggest Professional Rivalry.......!!!!

Hi All,

Going to share my experience on one of the biggest professional clashes that happens within an organization. Personally they all are friends and colleagues but when it comes to their work, it always lead them to havoc which most of the times cost the project in which they are working.

Yes, I am talking about Testers v/s Developers.

I have recently joined my current organization and there I faced this for the first time in my professional career. So, I have analyzed and derived few of the reasons due to which this all time riot between testers and developers keep on thriving.

1)  The stress and the high pressure caused by the strict deadline set by the management, to complete the project in a much shorter time, than it would normally take is a most prominent reason that could result in an out busting of conflict between the two.

2) Taking base of my first point, usually we have fluctuating requirements from clients end which leads to the last time changes in a software. This makes developers to stretch their working hours and testers to run the test cycle again and again in order to finish the project under the deadline. This is obvious if someone is working extra hours under immense pressure of deadline and not getting proper amount of time for the work he/she is doing then the chances of errors and bugs are much higher.
Below flow will explain the reason for all this:

3) The difference in the job functionality between the two can also result in an interpersonal conflict. Primary responsibility of the developer is to maximize efficiency by getting the work done using the resources smartly, whereas the most desired responsibility of the tester is effectiveness, i.e. to ensure quality when delivering the end product. The difference between the job functionality and the goals of the two can automatically lead to a clash.

4) The difference in the level of experience can also result into a clash or conflict. Mostly, highly experienced developers work with the less experienced testers and the difference in the opinion and the different perceptions of the two regarding the organization can outburst the clash. Most of the testers have issues regarding job securities and self-esteem, as most organizations give more importance to the developers and to stay and prove themselves, testers have to work and exert more.

5) Another possible reason of the conflict can be the difference in the personality attributes and mental process of the testers and the developers. Most of the developers become too protective when testers identified a defect or flaw in an application, coded by them.

MVC Hidden controls are not validated

If you have used default MVC validation framework (using Annotations and jquery.validate.js) you might have faced issues with validating the controls which are hidden. As an example, in one of the scenario, I had a MVC view with too many controls, so to reduce its screen layout, I wrapped the MVC view in small expand-collapse divs, but this caused the validation to be disabled for the hidden fields.

After bit of investigation I found that it is due to the default settings of jquery.validate.js framework which explicitly excludes validation of all the hidden controls by setting the below option:

To change the settings, I have injected custom code on window.load(). Example shown below:

$(window).load(function (e) {
    if ($('#<your formID>')[0] != undefined) {
        var validatorInitialised = $.data($('#<your formID>')[0], 'validator');
        if (validatorInitialised) {
            var settings = validatorInitialised.settings;
            //settings.ignore = ":hidden";
            settings.ignore = "";
        }
    }
});

This code first checks if the MVC page as a valid form to POST and that if there are validations applied on the page, changes the settings by removing the 'hidden' tag from the ignore list.

How to assign defect priority and severity?

Defects are given a priority and severity level. Such classification is absolutely needed as the development team can not resolve all defects simultaneously so we need to indicate how soon we want to get the defect fixed, and how big the impact on the functionality of the application under test is.Here are some classification levels:

Defect priority

High Priority: Fix the defect immediately.A core functionality fails or test execution is completely blocked.

Medium Priority: Fix the defect soon.An important functionality fails but we don't need to test it right away and we have a workaround.

Low Priority: Don't fix this defect before the high and medium defects are fixed.

Defect priority indicates the impact on the test team or test planning. If the defect blocks or greatly slows down test execution, we might want to select the highest grade for the defect priority.

Defect severity

Critical: A core functionality returns completely invalid results or doesn't work at all.

Major: This defect has impact on basic functionality.

Moderate: There is impact on the business, but only in a very few cases.

Minor: The impact on the business is minor. Any user interface defect not complicating the functionality often gets this severity grade.

Defect severity indicates the impact on the business of the client. If important functionality is blocked or if that functionality functions incorrectly,then we mostly selects the highest defect severity.
Assigning a defect priority and severity is always subjective as we measure the impact from our point of view.

Extension Methods in c#

 What is Extension Method

1. Extension method feature introduced in c# 3.0.

2. Extension of a method is a way to add some more methods as per requirement into an       existing library.

3. For Example in string we have methods like length(), split(), substring() etc. If we want that we should     have one more method that will count number of words in a string we can extends string methods by     adding one more method WordCount().

Properties of Extension Methods

1. It is a static method.

2.It must be in a static class

3. It uses "this" keyword as first parameter with a type in .NET.

Sum of Digits of a number using extension method

Step1. Very first we will create an extension method.

The above method takes and integer number as input and calculate the sum of its digit and returns sum of digits of the number.

Step 2. Now we are going to call this method from code like other inbuilt methods.

And we have created an extension method for int numbers and we have seen it can be call like other inbuilt method. 

Example Flow

Full Control Rights User (Owners Group) cannot create sub sites

Hi All,

Sharing another live issue faced in my current project (SP 2013).

A user who is part of Owners group on a SharePoint site (having Full control), is not able to create subsites. When they do they receive an error “Sorry, you don’t have access to this page” or “Access Denied”.

Sharing the link below to the post on my blog:

https://letussharepointblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/full-control-rights-user-owners-group-cannot-create-sub-sites/

SharePoint Crawl DB size increasing @20GB per day

Recently, one of my SharePoint farms faced an issue where the volume utilization of DB server (SharePoint crawl database) went upto 99% within 10 days.

Analysis:
- Looking at the crawl DB log in SharePoint, the incremental crawl was running every 1.5 hours with 0 success and 100% failures.

- There were about 961K errors with each incremental crawl scheduled at every 2 hours.

- There is a temporary folder that Crawl uses to place files temporarily on the server. The path is C:\Users\"SPAdminAccount"\AppData\Local\Temp\gthrsvc_OSearch14\

- I found out that this temporary folder was somehow missing / deleted.

Solution:

On creating the above mentioned folder manually, the success rate of crawl went high and there were very less failures (as expected)

Post this, the space utilization went about 10 MB a day which is expected during crawl.

SharePoint detect when crawl account is accessing your page

Many a times we put some code in our SharePoint pages to add an entry in a list, whenever  a particular page is accessed. This is usually done for getting the page visit count or to keep the record of the latest visited page/document per user. However you may not want to add entries for the search account when it performs a crawl of your content source as this could cause serious performance issues; as we faced, since we were having multiple site collections and in those site collections we had our custom document set home pages implementing the same logic of updating a list whenever the page is accessed.

In order to fix this, I had to detect that whether the page is being accessed by normal user or by the SharePoint Crawl account. The best way I found to detect the page access is using "User-Agent". When the Crawl accesses the page, it adds following string as user agent in Request headers:

MS Search 6.0 Robot

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT; MS Search 6.0 Robot)

I was simply able to detect whether the page is accessed by normal user or SharePoint Crawl by checking the following value:

if (!HttpContext.Current.Request.UserAgent.Contains(“MS Search 6.0 Robot”))
        {

          //Add your logic to add/update the list

        }

This works for both SharePoint 2010 as well as 2013 since the Robots tag value is same for both the versions.