Correlation Tokens in SharePoint workflow

Correlation tokens are unique identifiers in SharePoint that bridges to map the objects between the workflow and windows workflow environment. Windows workflow acts as a intermediate layer to communicate with other software. When incoming request arrives, runtime receives the request and determines the request and identifies the workflow instance. Then it process the request for the instance.

Windows workflow acts as a communication channel for all the workflow instances. We can have two separate correlation tokens for Workflows and task references. We cannot assign the correlation token to workflow task that used for workflow.

We have to declare the correlation token for the workflow in OnWorkflowActivated activity. We have to bind the this correlation token to  each activity in the workflow.

OnWorkflowActivated activity raises when workflow initiated  for SharePoint. This is the first event raised in workflow. Each task should have its own correlation token that provides the task related information. 

ViewFormPagesLockDown feature in SharePoint

In General by enabling the anonymous access in SharePoint site, anonymous users will have read-only access to the site. But when we enable anonymous access to SharePoint publishing site, we can have issues with anonymous users in SharePoint site due to ViewFormPagesLockDown feature. This feature will block users to view list view pages. Users can able to access all other web pages. Generally we can face this issue whenever users wanted to comment a blog post as anonymous in SharePoint blog site located in SharePoint publishing site collection.

We can check the ViewFormPagesLockDown feature is active or not by using following Power Shell command.

get-spfeature –site SiteURL

Here SiteURL is URL of the Site to check ViewFormPagesLockDown feature is active. By entering this command we can the list of features that are active in SharePoint site.

By disabling ViewFormPagesLockDown feature we can set anonymous users to access list view pages. to disable that we have to run following PowerShell commands

$lockdownFeature = get-spfeature viewformpageslockdown

disable-spfeature $lockdownFeature SiteURL

here SiteURL is URL of the site to disable ViewFormPagesLockDown feature. By disabling this feature anonymous users can access list view pages as usually.

Configure Web Part page security in SharePoint

In SharePoint webparts are the reusable sections in a SharePoint web page. We can add the functionality to SharePoint site by customizing webparts. We can connect the links to one WebPart to another WebPart by using WebPart connections.

We can manage the security of webparts from SharePoint central administration. To manage the security, Navigate to Security section in SharePoint central Administration, Click on Manage Web Part security link in General security section.

Select web application in Security for Web Part Pages page, Web Application section. In “Web Part Connections” section, we can specify the users to allow the connections by passing data or values from a source Web Part to target Web Part. By Selecting “Allow users to create connections between Web Parts” option we can allow people to create the connection. By Selecting “Prevents users from creating connections between Web Parts, and helps to improve security and performance”

In Online Web Part Gallery section, we can specify users to access the online Web Part gallery. By Selecting “Allow users to access the online Web Part Gallery” option we can allow users to access the online WebPart.

We can allow the scriptable webparts by specifying “allow contributors to add or edit scriptable Web Parts” option in Scriptable Web Parts section. Click on Ok to save the settings

Content Iterator in SharePoint

In SharePoint object model while getting the data from large lists through SPQuery, we can get SPQueryThrottleException saying that “The attempted operation is prohibited because it exceeds the list view threshold enforced by the administrator”. We can get rid of this exception by using Content Iterator (CI). Content Iterator provides implementation interface for SharePoint objects to regularize the amount of data to be transferred. This will helps queries in on the lists to not put the load on database excessively. It will iterate the content in the list instead of executing the query. So that it will process each item in the list to avoid the throttling limits.

We can process the content iterator to crawl the list items. Following is the sample code will give us the detail about Content Iterator processing

public static void ProcessListItems(SPWeb site)

{ 

string iteratorName = "item iterator"; 

ContentIterator iterator = new ContentIterator(iteratorName);

iterator.ProcessLists(site.Lists,

delegate(SPList list){ 

ContentIterator.EnsureFieldIndexed(list, list.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName("Title").Id);

string query = "<Where><And><BeginsWith><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'></Value>RT</BeginsWith></And></Where>"; 

ContentIterator itemsIterator = new ContentIterator(iterator);

itemsIterator.ProcessListItems(list,query,true,

delegate(SPListItemCollection items){

foreach (SPListItem item in items){

ProcessItem(item);

}

},null);

},

delegate(SPList list, Exception e)

{

OnListException(list, e);

});

}

Retention stages for SharePoint 2013 Document library

In SharePoint Document library retention policies we can set the retention policy for Content type and library document and folders. By applying the retention policies to document library items we can make them delete or make them records with the existing options.

To set the retention policies for library items or folder we have to navigate library settings page and click on Information management policy settings link in Permissions and Management section.

In Information Management Policy Settings page click on Change Source link in Source of retention for this library.

Select Library and Folders option in “Source of Reflection” section. We’ll see a popup with warning message by selecting that option saying that “when library and folder based integration schedules will select, all the Content types will be ignored”, Click on Ok.

We can new section with “Library Based Retention schedule” with description text box. Click on Add a retention stage link to add new retention.

We can see new dialog box specifying the Event and action details. Select the Event and Action for retention stage and click on Ok to save the settings. We can add many retention stages for the document library. Click on Ok in Library Based Retention Schedule page to save the settings.