Migrating the SharePoint 2007 “FAB 40” templates to SharePoint 2010 (Surya Kiran)

Introduction

As a consultant for Microsoft Global Delivery, I recently worked with a Customer who asked for continued use of the Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (known as the Fab 40 templates) in their Office 365, SharePoint Online Dedicated environment. But we were in a dilemma, because some templates were not working with the SharePoint 2010 release. With the help of .Net Reflector, I have found a resolution to this dilemma.

Background

Basically, there are some issues with a few of the .wsp files after upgrade. In particular, after upgrading, some customers are unable to create new sites based on the following templates: Absence Request and Vacation Schedule Management, Call Center, Help Desk, IT Team Workspace, Knowledge Base, and Physical Asset Tracking and Management.

There are freely downloadable templates which can work in SharePoint 2010, but not with sites that have been upgraded from SharePoint 2007.

After the fixed FAB 40 templates are installed on a SharePoint 2010 environment, they will work with sites upgraded from SharePoint 2007, and new sites can also be created. See the Conclusion and Links section at the end of this article for the location where you can download the templates.

Note   Because the migrated FAB 40 templates are not sandboxed solutions, they cannot be used in Office 365 Standard. They can only be used in Office 365 Dedicated.

The problem

The following templates had issues with the Post Provisioning Event Handler, ZonedWebPartsUrlList:

• Physical Asset Tracking and Management
• Absence and Vacation Schedule
• IT Team Workspace
• Knowledge Base

The list of files that are passed to the ZonedWebPartsUrlList property are read by Post Provisioning Event Handler, and each Web Part on the page is updated with the list GUID. Unfortunately, many methods in thePost Provisioning Event Handler are obfuscated and cannot be reverse-engineered by .Net Reflector. However, I was still able to deduce the problem.

An error is thrown when the method, SubstituteTokens, gets executed in the Provisioning Event Handler. Here is the code as revealed by .Net Reflector.

In addition, the following templates had issues with other Event Handlers:

• Document Library and Review
• Inventory Tracking

The solution

Here are the five fixes in detail:

• Comment the ZonedWebPartsUrlListproperty in onet.xml for these templates: 
  • Physical Asset Tracking and Management
  • Absence and Vacation Schedule
  • IT Team Workspace
  • Knowledge Base  

 

• Replace the List ID with the List Name in the Data View Web Parts of these templates: 
  • Physical Asset Tracking and Management
  • Absence and Vacation Schedule
  • IT Team Workspace
  • Knowledge Base

• Comment the existing features in onet.xml, and write new event receivers for the following templates. I used .Net Reflector to examine the old DLL files and copied the same code to  new event receiver DLL files. 
  • Document Library and Review 
  • Inventory Tracking     

 

• Comment the existing features in onet.xml TSA Content Types and Fields Feature
• Change the URL navigation in onet.xml. In SharePoint 2010 the value of the Url property is not being resolved from the resource file.

Download migrated FAB-40 SharePoint 2010 templates from https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Migrating-the-SharePoint-edf9ed0c

Conclusion and Links

For more information, see the following:

• https://www.reflector.net
• SharePoint 2010 Products: Upgrade and the Fabulous 40 Application Templates
• https://sympmarc.com/2008/12/16/replacing-listids-with-listnames-in-data-view-web-parts/

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 03, 2012
  Would be interesting to know which of the Fab 40 templates works with SharePoint Online?

• Anonymous
  June 04, 2012
  All the FAb-40 templates will work in SharePoint Online - Dedicated They don't work in SharePoint Online - Shared, as they are not sand boxed solutions

• Anonymous
  June 05, 2012
  Great .. This is one of the most asked in SharePoint 2010

• Anonymous
  June 06, 2012
  Now - are those migrated Fab40 templates supported by Microsoft, since  you're publishing this here? Most of them are based on site definition model - wouldn't we want to move away from that, since WebTemplate element provides same capablity?

• Anonymous
  June 12, 2012
  These templates are not supported by Microsoft. These migrated templates are for the customers who want to migrate data from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and have the same capabilities of FAB-40. If we want to get a way with the above approach, we need to built the capabilities of FAB-40 using WebTemplates and try to migrate the data alone from MOSS 2007

• Anonymous
  June 18, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  June 18, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2012
  FAB40 Web-Templates are also available now from the below link gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Migrating-the-SharePoint-edf9ed0c

• Anonymous
  August 06, 2012
  Source code is available on http://fab40.codeplex.com/

• Anonymous
  February 02, 2013
  Nice one, can we have something like this for SharePoint 2013

• Anonymous
  March 05, 2013
  Would love to see someone convert them for Sharepoint 2013

• Anonymous
  August 01, 2013
  Btw, for HelpDesk and Knowledge Base you can look to our products: www.harepoint.com Are commercial products, designed for SharePoint 2010, versions for 2013 will available in two weeks. WBR, Aleksandr