Sharepoint 2010 Notifications across web applications - sharepoint-2010

We have several SharePoint websites. I'd like to be able to send update notifications from one website to the others. Is there anything that can do this without purchasing 3rd party software? We are on a very limited budget. We do not have Exchange capabilities.
Thank you in advance,
Tara

Perhaps create a central site that is used just for notices, search crawl into a specific "notices" content source, and have all of your disparate sites have a web part to read the search content of that type (shared/not locked down) and display in a CSS-formatted web part so it's consistent messaging across all sites?? That way it's a business-process rather than relying on a "Send" or push mechanism you are simply relying on an updated search and the notice is then relatively immediate wherever the web part resides...

Related

How can I protect my API and know what is calling it?

I am building a Web application, and Web API. The Web application will do ajax call to the server and receive JSON results. The same will happen to the Web API.
I am planing to ask developers to use keys to access the Web API so that I can charge for their uses of it.
The problem is the Web API will be use by the Web application to get the content for the web pages. Is there a way to know if it is my Web application using the Web API or someone trying to highjack the API so that they don't have to pay for it?
I am using PHP on my server.
It's difficult to protect completely but there are techniques that help. ApiAxle (disclaimer: my company) gives you the option of using short lived keys. These will be impossible for a leecher to generate without knowing your secret key. Paired with rate limiting you're getting somewhat closer to where you want to be.
Not foolproof but a start.
When trying to secure something on the web, it might be useful to think about how you want to protect the information that you provide by the api before you try to find a technique for protecting the api.
An example:
Say that your api provides the current weather in London and your web application is an open web page that provides this information while also showing some web ads. You don't want someone else to use the api and show the Lonodn weather somewhere else without showing the web ad because that would ruin your sole income from this service.
You could limit access to the api by providing i.e. short time keys or another complicated protocol, but the problem here is that the information you provides, the London weather, is available to anyone on the web page anyway. If someone wants to "steal" your information and provide the London weather on a different web site they can just write a script that loads your web application, reads the information from the web page and display this in their own web application.
If a person is able to access the information, then he can also write a script that reads this information and display the information somewhere else.
Securing information is actually more about limiting who you want to give access and not so much about how they should get access. If you or your clients makes this information freely available on the net in one form or another, then you cannot (technically) prevent someone else from picking it up and redistribute it.

How do I talk to my TransportAgent?

So I have my TransportAgent (sort of) working. How do I talk to it to configure it? And I need to allow individual users to make settings for their account (like an anti-virus being given a white-list for a specific user). I need this for Exchange 2007/2010/2013 so I assume EWS is out. I would like to have:
I can write an Outlook AddIn that communicates including the user
identification so I know who to set things for.
A web page that
provides the same (part of the web mail_server/owa web page is
fine).
A means for administrators to set both system config and
individual user settings. Using whatever means for the U.I. that is
standard.
Also, is there a good book out there that covers all of writing TransportAgents, including questions like these?

Can you create Google Forms from Google Docs in an application?

I am thinking about app that will use google form and I need to create forms from that app. Is there a way how can I create form in google docs without using website but through some api or some other way?
I can offer an idea for a solution using Google App Script.
Since the beginning of 2013 you can create new forms using the App Script Forms Service API quite easily.
var form = FormApp.create(title)
.setDescription(description)
.setConfirmationMessage('Thanks for responding!')
;
The problem now is how to get that App Script running from your non App Script code.
You can use App Script to create a Web App that reacts to HTTP GET requests.
So putting it together, you may be able to create an App Script Web App that reacts to a GET request and when it gets the right URL parameters, it creates the form.
(Nov 2020) Yes, it is possible to programmatically create Google Forms. You can do it with Google Apps Script using its Forms service. You can also extend the code to read in the contents from Google Docs (with Apps Script's Document service) and use it for the creation of Google Forms.
I created a Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) Add-on, which you can think of as a Google Docs extension, called GFormIt. Its original purpose was intended for teachers to write exams/quizzes, possibly with answers, in Google Docs, then automatically convert them to Google Forms to distribute to students who submit their answers into Google Sheets (the destination for Google Forms submissions).
Furthermore, if you (the teacher) provided answers to your test questions, GFormIt would also auto-submit your answers to the Sheet as if you were a student. If you do that, and use a tool like Flubaroo to grade the exam, you could designate your row in the Sheet as “the answer key.” You can learn more about how it works, including viewing a short video, at the GFormIt page linked above.
This Google Docs add-on, along with others for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, etc., are all certified/validated by Google and available for free to anyone from the Google Workspace Marketplace. (However, your admins may have to grant permissions for you to try to install them to your corporate Workspace account.) If interested in building your own add-on, please see the developer documentation and perhaps some of my introductory videos to get started, the most relevant being the one linked to at the top of this answer.
Apps Script is a serverless Google technology, meaning you write your code (using JavaScript) in the browser, and it is hosted by & executed on Google servers. If you wanted to create your own web app (and hosted anywhere), you would have to wait for a Google Forms REST API which does not exist at the time of this writing. (If we ever launch one, you'll find its documentation at https://developers.google.com/forms along with the others like Sheets https://developers.google.com/sheets, Gmail https://developers.google.com/gmail, Drive https://developers.google.com/drive, etc.)
Earlier this year (Mar 2022) the new Google Forms Api graduated from Beta. It is more powerful that the previous versions and caters for two main use cases:
Automated form creation and editing: Enables automated form creation
and editing. Enables rapid form generation from large volume question
banks or other data backends.
Reaction to Form responses: The API also enables developers to build
automations for acting on incoming responses. Examples include
developing real-time dashboards or visualizations and triggering
business workflows based on response data.
We have used it to build an integration that Creates documents and slides each time a form is completed: www.portant.co/google-forms-to-docs and it works really well.
I think the other key use case looks like it would be a good fit for you and others looking for a solution like this.
Cheers, James
Sorry, the API doesn't support programmatically creating forms.

Google Analytics for Mac OSx application

Is it possible to use Google Analytics API's to track Mac OSX applications?
If not could any one suggest me an alternative for Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is designed to work with web applications not for desktop apps. Although it might be possible to collect info about your application and send it to your Google Analytic account but the amount of work required to retrofit might be better spent, building your own Analytic solution.
A good starting point would be to create a simple web service, which collects information regarding clicks. Then rewrite your application to call that web service on every click within your application.
You would ideally want to store this information locally and submit it to the web service in batches. You would also want to design the application, so that if you ever shut down the web service, the application would still be able to operate.
UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments by Václav Slavík, they have added apps analytics for iOS/Android.
I made a simple set of classes for doing this:
https://github.com/stephenlind/SimpleCocoaGoogleAnalytics
Google Analytics is not only for web applications, but also for mobile. It's available on the platform like android, iOS, etc. If you want to track your MAC OS X application, you can choose DeskAppTrack or DeskMetrics. DeskAppTrack is only available on MAC. It provide a professional data statistical analysis and it's free. While DeskMetrics is available on MAC and Windows. Either one is ok.
This really depends on how detailed you want to get. If you are are truly looking for analytics with detail and control flow data, you are better suited to created your own web service, as mentioned.
However, if you simply want to know a small number of operations, that occur at a small volume, i.e. when the app is launched (a quick and dirty solution): then in theory you could create a landing page on your site that contains a minimal head section, and a blank body, and then load the URL with an NSURL when you want to trigger the action.
Of course, you would have to include the google analytics tracking codes in the header, and you may need to load an off-screen webview to get the javascript to run. Like I said, quick and dirty.
In either case, you want to make sure the application will continue to perform properly, even if the web service / page is not present.

Any SharePoint geek to comment on architecture?

We are working with an existing SharePoint solution for a Company (its an Intranet). Now, the company is splitting into two and so is their intranet. Each company, of these two, from now on will have their own Intranet. So, idea is to split this Intranet (which is just a web application) into two web applications. But wait, these companies will also have some information to share in between. So, the idea is to put the shared information (Administrative stuff etc) into a separate web application. So, we have three web apps so far.
Previously, Company's intranet was managing the data of about 50 facilities in the form of Subsites. Now, according to new design, each web application will have 25 facilities each. In other words, each company will have 25 facilities. But, problem is that each facility is having large amounts of data almost 5GB+. So, its not possible for me to put the restriction quota at the site level. Although, we can put restriction on the size at SiteCollection level (as per my understanding). So, the idea so far is to create one site collection for each facility, it means we will have 25 site collections in a web applications. Navigation could be a nightmare. But, can we solve navigation problem with managed path etc?
any other suggestions/improvements will be warmly welcome and appreciated! Even your little comment may help me to improve my design ;)
In the proposed design, you will have to manually setup the navigation (managed paths will probably not help unless you want to have something other than /sites/ in the url).
I do question why you now have to split each of the facilities into their own site collection when, before the split, subsites worked. I would only recommend each facility be a unique site collection if you can forsee being asked to move facilities between the two new companies.