SharePoint URL TinyURL and IIS Virtual Directories

Using SharePoint you would probably have come across the URL character cap. For instance if the URL you are trying to link to on a particular site gets very deep it has the potential to expand past the 256 character limit and therefore become truncated. This URL truncation results in broken hyperlinks, this is often experienced when trying to link directly to InfoPath URL forms.

I found this helpful post: http://fmuntean.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/tiny-url-in-sharepoint/

This information has enabled me to create some really nice Virtual directory re-directions to essentially create a really functional form launch center for long un-linkable InfoPath hyperlinks.

This is how it is done:

1. On the SharePoint server (this needs to be repeated on other Web Front End servers if needed) open IIS.
2. Navigate to the Portal IIS Website (SP_Portal_Site_80 for example), right click it and click on new > New Virtual Directory > Click Next
   
3. Type in an alias to use for the URL, if you want to create a list of virtual directory hyperlinks for your InfoPath forms use something like 'FormURL'.
4. Browse to the default IIS directory such as c:\Inetpub\wss\virtualdirectories\80 and create a new sub folder inside your sharepoint directory, feel free to use the same as your alias. Click next > next > finish.
   
5. This will be your new SharePoint url to house the links to the InfoPath form links. For example http://intranet/FormURL.
6. Now for each form you would like to link to you need to create a new virtual directory under the one created before.
7. Follow the same steps as above to do this. Name the alias relational to the particular form you will be linking. (for example Timesheet)
   
8. Right click the newly created virtual directory and click on properties.
9. Select 'A redirection to a URL' and copy and paste the URL from the SharePoint URL InfoPath form (do this by clicking on 'New' in InfoPath form library and copying the address bar URL) into the 'Redirect to:' field.
10. Check the 'Permanent Redirection' box and click on apply.
11. Repeat the process for as many SharePoint InfoPath forms as you like.

Now you may link the URLs using the SharePoint tiny URLs created above. So for your Timesheet InfoPath URL you have created you can now use http://intranet/FormURL/Timesheet. You can use these URLs all over your site including the Top link bar, Side Link Navigation, Summary Link Web Parts etc.

Enjoy!