Taiwan 10D9N Itinerary - Eat, Shop, and Relax

For my own reference, you are free to take a look :-)

This map was created after many hours spent traversing forums, travel websites, and racking my brains out trying to decipher Mandarin. Focusing on Taichung then Taipei for a leisurely trip, as I don't think traveling across the island is a good plan with heavy luggage in tow.

Day 1:
Upon touching down at Taoyuan International Airport, head directly to Taichung via the HSR (High Speed Rail). Tickets can be purchased online in advance, with a discount for early booking.
If reach Taichung early, we could stroll along West District (經國綠園道)
Spend the night at Taichung at a hotel within walking distance of Fengjia Night Market.

Day 2:
Head out early for a visit to Lavendar Cottage, or Monster Village by bus, followed by a visit to Sun Moon Lake. You could either take a taxi there (if 4 or more), or hop on the bus. Go on a cruise across the lakes to visit the many attractions. Ride the cable car for the marvellous view. The Aboriginal Village Amusement Park is worth a visit if you like One Piece.
Spend the night at Sun Moon Lake.

SharePoint 2010: Display scrolling list items using jQuery and SPServices

This is a pretty common requirement for intranet administrators, so today I thought I'd share how to display the contents of a SharePoint list using jQuery. The good part about this is you need to have some knowledge on the CAML query and that's it.

First download these 3 components and store it somewhere accessible on SharePoint. Thanks to the wonderful folks who did the hard work and came up with those great components!
jQuery - http://jquery.com/
jQuery.SPServices - http://spservices.codeplex.com (read documentation thoroughly for compatibility)
jQuery.Marquee from givainc - http://www.givainc.com/labs/marquee_jquery_plugin.cfm
(in the case of jQuery Marquee, make sure you also include the css file for default styling)

Create a simple text file and include references to those components. I am using a plain text file so that I could include it later in a Content Editor Webpart.

 <link rel="stylesheet" href="/sites/SiteCollectionDocuments/jquery.marquee.min.css" />   
 <script src="/sites/SiteCollectionDocuments/jquery-1.8.3.js"></script>  
 <script src="/sites/SiteCollectionDocuments/jquery.marquee.min.js"></script>  
 <script src="/sites/SiteCollectionDocuments/jquery.SPServices-2013.01.min.js"></script>  

SharePoint 2010: How to find broken links using SharePoint Designer

There used to be a feature to show all broken links in SharePoint Designer 2007, unfortunately this is no longer available in SPD2010.

However, you could still find it using a more roundabout way.

Launch SharePoint Designer 2010 and open your site.

Open up ANY page in Edit mode.

Click to the View tab. Expand the task Pane and click on Hyperlinks.

Christmas Decorations at Straits Quay Penang, 2013

It's that special time of the year again... Christmas is just around the corner!

Here are some pics, to share the Christmas cheer...

A Christmas tree made from stacks and stacks of books.

Close-up.

SharePoint PowerShell: A roundabout approach to mysites cleanup Part I

I had a situation where the company mysites cleanup job was turned off, and we needed a manual process to:

1. Detect mysites whose users who are no longer active in AD (Active Directory)

2. Update the site owner to someone else

3. Delete the user profile (to clean up organizational chart)

4. Remove/archive the mysite after x days.

Practically all articles on the WWW on this topic was to adopt an approach using the UserProfileManager to detect users removed from AD. However, this approach did NOT address my particular need.

This approach assumes that:

1. ALL of your mysites follows the same naming convention e.g. http://mysites/personal/username

2. The inactive users were either (1) totally removed; or (2)still in AD, but was moved to a separate OU (Organizational Unit)

For now, let's focus on detecting mysites where users are no longer active.

Creating tabbed menus with jQuery and CSS

While searching for free code downloads that allow me to create tabbed browsing effects with minimal fuss and zero dependency, I stumbled across this gem: jQueryUI

This is really cool as it makes use of the latest version of jQuery to display nice effects and best of all, it is extremely easy to plug this piece of code onto any environment (SharePoint included) :P

There are a lot more useful utilities out there. I just did not have the luxury of trying them all.

http://jqueryui.com/tabs/

http://www.menucool.com/tabbed-content

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Navigation-Tab-Menu-4fa637f1

AgilePoint step by step: Bulk Process Migration

Real World Scenario: AgilePoint BPMS 5.0 SP4

So you have a couple of workflows already deployed to Production, and have hundreds of active processes running. One day your Business User comes to you and says: "Can we do X and Y and then also R,S,T, U while you're making the changes.."

Fine, you think. OK, a couple of days later you deployed the new workflow, and THEN your Business User says: "Look there's a system bug and the issue is not fixed. How come my process is still doing A and B? I thought you have already made changes???"

err.... didn't I already mention that the change would only apply on NEW processes? LOL.

Now here's what you need to do to remedy it!

How to upload InfoPath 2010 attachments to a SharePoint document library without code

It was extremely, insanely hard to get a proper reference to a way to upload InfoPath attachments to a SharePoint document library WITHOUT CODE. I hope this will help you or at least point you in the right direction.

This is for SharePoint 2010.

Firstly in the InfoPath form, create a Query web service Data Connection.
Make the web service call to /_vti_bin/Copy.asmx.wsdl.

Next, select the CopyIntoItems method. Leave all fields blank and proceed to assign the data connection a proper name.

Find processes making outgoing HTTP requests using the NETSTAT command

A set of simple commands to trace Internet traffic:

First you want to list out all connections by launching Command Prompt. If not sure which flag to use, type netstat --help to list all available commands.

If you type netstat without any additional flags, only active connections will be listed.
Typing netstat with the flag will list out the process ID as well. e.g. netstat -p

I will usually follow up with running the tasklist command to locate which executable the process belongs to.