I know, the last update is almost a year old… But yes, I’m trying to work on it when I find some free time. So this update brings some important changes.

What’s new?

First of all, to add a new sync configuration, the dialog has only a few fields left. SPSync will try to find every other setting automatically for you. Here is the new dialog:

As you can see, the advanced configuration dialog can be opened via the link. The automatic detection will only work if you are using NTLM/Basic (On-Premises) authentication or Office 365. For ADFS you need to enter some more info on the advanced dialog.

Another new feature is that you can now configure, whether you want to sync in both directions or only one of them (Local->Remote or Remote->Local) which was a suggestion on UserVoice with a high vote. Also deleted files (local or remote) are now always send to the recycle bin and never get automatically deleted for ever.

With this new version I’ve decided to drop the support for SharePoint 2010 (and before), because of some missing features for the upload/download handling. This is to make the development much easier and better to maintain. That’s also why SPSync requires now .NET 4.5.1.

Last but not least, a lot of bugs are now hopefully fixed. If you find something, please send me an error report and attach the DebugLog.txt from C:\Users%username%\AppData\Local\SPSync

Download the new version 0.9.5 here: http://spsync.net and leave a comment or drop me a line at: support (at) spsync(dot) net

PS: The next new feature will be to be able to sync sub-folders within a document library as it has already 20 votes on UserVoice.

As I’ve mentioned here, Microsoft recently had a promotion to get up to 5 free vouchers for some specific exams for Prometric because after 31th of December, Pearson Vue will be the only exam provider.
I decided to try three of them:

• 70-532 Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions (beta)
• 70-346 Managing Office 365 Identities and Requirements
• 70-347 Enabling Office 365 Services

I’ve passed all of them, which is especially great for the Azure exam, because that one was really hard.
With the two Office 365 exams I’m now a ”Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate for Office 365” (MCSA: Office 365).

You can find the details how to access my transcript here.

Ok, this one is a strange issue.

I have created a console app with Visual Studio 2013. Added the “App for SharePoint Web Toolkit“ NuGet package to get the SharePoint.Client.dll
Then wrote just a few lines to test if it works:

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            ClientContext context = new ClientContext("https://sharepoint/sites/test1");
            var web = context.Web;
            context.Load(web);
            context.ExecuteQuery();
            Console.WriteLine("Title: " + web.Title);
        }

This is against an on premises installation with Kerberos authentication (NTLM and Basic are also enabled). On the line context.ExeucteQuery(); it just waits a long time and then gives me a timeout and 400 error.

The weird thing: If Fiddler is open during the execution, everything works as expected. No timeout, no error.

Solution

The solution is fairly simple:

Just attach a handler to the ExecutingWebRequest event and set the WebRequest.PreAuthenticate to true:

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            ClientContext context = new ClientContext("https://sharepoint/sites/test1");
            **context.ExecutingWebRequest += context_ExecutingWebRequest;**
            var web = context.Web;
            context.Load(web);
            context.ExecuteQuery();
            Console.WriteLine("Title: " + web.Title);
        }

        static void context_ExecutingWebRequest(object sender, WebRequestEventArgs e)
        {
            **e.WebRequestExecutor.WebRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;**
        }

With SharePoint 2013 you can create great solutions not only with a "SharePoint Hosted-App", but with a plain JavaScript file within a Content Editor Web Part. Vesa Juvonen named it app script part pattern.

So development today is like:

• Open the style library in Explorer and open the javascript file with your favorite editor. Not ideal, because you are not working within a solution in Visual Studio, so no source control integration, etc.
• Use SharePoint Designer to work with the files –> Not a development environment you want to work with

Solution

Here comes my Visual Studio extension to the rescue. Install it directly from within Visual Studio->Tools->Extensions and Update. Search for SPDeployer or download directly from the Visual Studio gallery.

Open a solution with your web project, then click Tools->"Add SPDeployer to project". This will add a new spdeployer.config file to the currently selected project.

Just enter the details to you SharePoint dev site and add a line for each file you want to have SPDeployer automatically upload on save.

Now whenever you make changes in one of the monitored files, it will automatically upload to your SharePoint library.

You can find the sources on GitHub. Feel free to add issues or pull requests.

I’m happy to announce, that ProxySwitcher is now open source on GitHub.

I have just not enough time to maintain ProxySwitcher. The last update is from 2012, so there is room for improvements in the code.

You can find it here on GitHub: https://github.com/mwiedemeyer/ProxySwitcher