Home - Laura Rogers @WonderLaura

1/29/2010

Today I’m going to show an interesting way that you can use SharePoint content types. First, I’ll show you what the end result looks like, which will help explain the concept of using content types as statuses.

Statuses? I’m referring to a field in any kind of list, that is used to indicate the status level of a list item, such as a Task list. There is a built in field in a task list that contains a field called status, with levels like In Progress, Completed, etc. In this example, we have a patient admissions system as a SharePoint list. There are three different stages that a patient goes through in this list. They’re admitted, then they’re considered a current patient, and then they’re discharged from the hospital.

A requirement of this example patient list, is that for each “status level”, there are different fields that need to be filled out in the form. This is where content types can be quite useful. Here are screenshots of the end result of this example. Notice the “Content Type” drop-down box on each one, and the fields in each form… they’re different.

Notice that not only are the displayed fields different, but the required fields are also different at every step. This is all done using out of the box functionality in WSS or MOSS, and here’s how:

First, in planning, put together a spreadsheet that defines the list of all the fields (columns) that will exist in the SharePoint list, so that it can be determined which field needs to be in each status as “Optional”, “Required” or “Hidden”. It will look something like this (for time’s sake, I’m only entering four fields):

FIELD	Admission	Current Patient	Discharge
Admit Date	Required	Optional	Hidden
Case Manager	Optional	Optional	Optional
Discharge Date	Hidden	Optional	Required
Discharge To	Hidden	Hidden	Required

In the chart above, you can see that depending on what’s going on with the patient, certain fields are required or hidden. Here’s how to go about setting this type of list up on your site once the planning has been done. As I go through these steps, I’d like to point out that I’ve been through and messed up this process many many many times, and some of these steps need to be done in a certain order, or it can just end up getting hosed up and can be extremely time consuming.

Note that these next steps where we create the site columns and content types can be done in different order. Create all the site columns first or the content types first. I’m just choosing to create the content types first here.

A “master” content type is created first. In Site Settings and go to Site Content types. Click the <Create> button. Name it something appropriate. In this case I called it “Case Mgmt All”.
Since ultimately the type of list I’ll be using for this will just be a custom list, I’m going to pick “List Content Types” and Item as the parent for this first one, and I’m choosing to create a new group, which is just how it’s listed on the page with all the other content types:
Next, create each of the other status levels as content types. I chose to put numbers (1-3) in front of the names of each of mine, just so they’d be displayed in that order. Click the create button for the next one. Pick the parent type that was just created, as the parent, and for the group, choose the existing group (that was entered as a new group in step 2):
Repeat step 3 for each of the other status level content types, with the only difference being their names and descriptions. They should all use that first content type as the parent.
The next step is to create a bunch of site columns to associate with the new content types. On the Site Settings page, click Site Columns. Click Create. This is all pretty standard. For the first one, choose to create a new group called Case Mgmt. (we created the group in the content type gallery, and now we’re creating on in the site columns gallery.) Fields that will end up being set as required in all content types can be set as required on this screen also.
Just create all the rest of the columns, just as you would normally, just try and remember to pick your new grouping for each one.
Next is the fun (and sometimes tedious) part, where the site columns are put into content types. Go back to Site Settings and Site Content Types. Click on the name of the parent content type first. In this one, I called it Case Mgmt All.
Click “Add from existing site columns”
From the drop-down box, select the name of the column grouping that was created in step five, which will filter the list by only the pertinent columns. If you missed one or two, and forgot to place them in the new grouping when they were created, they won’t show here (I’ve done this many times) ;-)
Select all of the column names on the left, and click to ADD them to the right and click OK.
Now, notice that when back in the site gallery, as you look through each of your different status content types, they will each contain ALL of the fields that were just added to the parent!
<golf clap>
The next step is to go through each of the fields in each of the child content types, and change the ones that have to be required or hidden. I don’t recommend messing with the Title field at all here, or even changing the name of it. Not worth the hassle, we’ll do that later, but just keep in mind what it should be called. In this case, it’s “Patient Name”.
If the columns need to be re-ordered, I recommend doing it at the parent content type level first, and the children will inherit that order. After that, the children can still be re-ordered individually.
Just to clarify… Click on the first child content type, in this case it’s “Admissions”. Click on a field that should be set as required, and change it to Required, as so. Do this throughout all content types, for the required fields:
Note that fields can be set as required in the parent content type also, which will force that field to be required in all of the children.
For the fields that can be hidden from each content type, they can be Removed from those children. Do NOT remove any fields from the parent, as it will then be removed from all the children, and do not set any of the parent’s columns to hidden, either. So, look back at that original table you created, and for each of the ones that can be hidden in each content type, you can click the Remove button. I’ll show you a benefit of that compared to simply changing them to “Hidden”… in a minute.
In the Content type gallery, now when I click on my first content type called “1 Admissions”, this is what the screen looks like. Notice that a couple of the columns are required, and several have been removed.
Now it is time to create a new SharePoint list to put these content types in. For mine, I create a new custom list on the site, called “Patient List”.
In the list’s settings, go to Advanced Settings, and under “Allow management of Content Types”, change it to Yes.
In the Content Types section on the List Settings page, click “Add from existing site content types”. In the drop-down, pick that custom content type grouping you created in step 2, to filter the list. Select ONLY the one parent content type and click Add and click OK.
Since this is a custom list I’m using, the default content type that was already in my list, is called “Item”. Click the name of the item content type, and click “Delete this content type”.
Now the other, child content types can be added to the list. Click “Add from existing site content types”, choose your custom group in the drop-down, and then select all the rest of the content types and add them. Click OK.
Go ahead and rename the Title field to something else if need be, here at the list settings level. Optional.
Notice something cool in the list settings now. Next to each column name is a list of all of the content types that it exists in! In step 13 when I mentioned that removing the columns was better than hiding them, this is why. When they’re only set to hidden, then every content type shows up next to every field in this screen, and there isn’t a quick way to be able to see what lives where.
Next, it’s time to just make sure that the different status levels show in the desired order in the form. Still on the list settings screen, click “Change new button order and default content type”. Order the “statuses” as desired. If you uncheck any of them here, they will not only be hidden from the New drop-down button but also from within the edit form of any item.

All done. Now when you create new items in the list, only the fields in the first content type will be available to fill out. Then, you can edit an item and change the content type, to dynamically see the fields in the form change. This solution isn’t going to be for everyone. For example, you may not want the users to be able to switch between content types like that. One thing I’ve done for that kind of situation, is to uncheck all but the first content type (in that last screenshot). The, the content types are only changed via a workflow. For example, once a certain check box is checked or field is filled out, then the content type is changed by the workflow. then, the next time the users open the item, it will show the fields from that other content type. Not sure how well I explained that last part… maybe I’ll have to write a whole other blog post for that.

Click here to view an 8 minute screencast of this whole process.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,content types,WSS,site columns

Posted at 2:42 PM by Laura Rogers | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (14)

1/20/2010

Working With Data in SharePoint Designer 2010

The SharePoint eMagazine 2010 Special is out! I wrote an article about the new Data View Web Part interface in SharePoint 2010. Here’s the link to download the PDF of this magazine:

Free DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine 2010 special

Mirjam van Olst and Marianne van Wanrooij did an amazing job putting this magazine together, and I’m humbled to be among such a list of esteemed SharePoint gurus. Check it out, and enjoy learning about all about SharePoint 2010.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,data view web part

Posted at 11:57 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: Web Parts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/19/2010

Trying Out Visio Services in SharePoint 2010

Task lists in SharePoint 2010 have a button on the List tab in the ribbon’s Connect & Export section, called Create Visio Diagram. Thought I’d try this out, and see what I could mock up using this, so I created several tasks in a list, and clicked the button. It’s the one on the right of “Sync to SharePoint Workspace”, that looks like a little diagram.

Clicking the Create Visio Diagram button launches Visio 2010 and automatically creates a diagram with the following tabs:

Tasks Status
Workload Distribution
Incomplete Tasks by Assigned To
And if there are workflows on the site that utilize this Tasks list, there will be a tab called “Workflow Tasks Status”

Interesting. This generated diagram seems to be static, though, meaning changes in the data won’t change the diagram. Here are the steps to make the data dynamic:

In Visio, click the <Data> tab in the ribbon. Click <Link Data to Shapes>
In the Data Selector, choose “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Services List”. Click <Next>
Enter the URL for your SharePoint site. Not a URL to a list, just the root of the site that the tasks list is in. Click <Next>
On the Select a List screen, choose “Tasks” and click <Next> and click <Finish>
Now a list of the tasks will be displayed at the bottom of the diagram in Visio. You now have the ability to manually drag each item in the task list up to the matching item in the diagram. The other way to match up the data is AUTOMATICALLY.
On the Data tab in the ribbon, click the <Automatically Link> button.
A wizard will pop up. “All shapes on this page” will be selected. Click <Next>.
The next screen will allow you to pick the field to match up the items in the diagram with the items in the Tasks list. By default, ID is selected. That’s a good one, since it’s unique. Click <Next> and then click <Finish>
Now, in the data table at the bottom of the diagram, there will be a little link icon next to each task row item, as so:
In Visio, click the <File> button, choose the <Share> tab on the left, and then click <Save to SharePoint> in the middle. In this demo, I chose a document library on the same site as the tasks list. Choose Web Drawing, and then click <Save to SharePoint>
When prompted, a pertinent name for this diagram would be “Tasks”.

Now, the data and the diagram are linked, so that viewing the diagram will always represent the current information in the tasks list. Nice!

The next thing to try out is the Visio Web Access web part with this task list, and see what happens when connecting web parts.

On the tasks list (all items view), click <Site Actions> and choose <Edit Page>
In the middle of the page, click <Add a web part>, choose “Office Client Applications” in the web part categories, choose the Visio Web Access web part, and click <Add>
In the Visio Web Access tool pane, the URL to the Visio diagram is needed, to enter as the “Diagram URL”. Simply click the ellipses next to the Diagram URL text box, to navigate to and select the Tasks.vdw that was just created.

Note that you could just click OK and stop right here, and you would still have a good graphical representation of the tasks in the Visio diagram above the task list. Further steps entail web part connections, for filtering of data… just to get a little more fancy.
For “Shape Data items to make available to Web Part connections”, type ID
Remember when we did that “automatically link” thing and chose the ID as the common field? Well, that’s why we’re using that field here. Click OK in the web part tool pane.
Next is the creation of a web part connection between Just like we’ve always created web part connections, click the little drop-down box at the top right of the Visio web part, choose “Connections”, then “Send Shape Data To”, then TASKS.
For the connection type, choose “Get Filter Values From” and click <Configure>
For the Provider and Consumer field names, choose ID for both. Click <Finish>
(if step 4 above was skipped, ID will not be an option from the Provider)
In the Visio web part, switch over to the Workload Distribution tab, as so:

NOW, on that Workload Distribution tab, when you click on individual tasks, it will automatically filter the tasks list to that one task! See in the screenshot below, I clicked on Molly’s In Progress task, which put a blue box around it and filtered the task list to that one item.

CropperCapture[84]

Also, take a look again at that screenshot at #5 above. Look at all the many different ways that you can connect this Visio Web Access web part to other web parts! Seems like some pretty neat little solutions could be created with Visio incorporated. Also, think about SharePoint workflows, and how they’re now tightly integrated with Visio. I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with creative ways to display the live diagrams of workflows as they’re running!

If you’re interested in reading more about Visio Web Services, Toni Frankola has written a great article for the SDN E-magazine SharePoint 2010 special. The PDF of this magazine can be downloaded here:

http://www.sdn.nl/FreeMagazine

Technorati Tags: Visio Web Services,sharepoint 2010,office integration,diagram

Posted at 10:56 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: Web Parts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

1/15/2010

Social Connector in Outlook 2010

This blog post is about the Social Connector in Outlook 2010 Beta, as it works with SharePoint 2010 Beta and Exchange 2010 Beta. I just wanted to quickly share with you a couple of discoveries of mine as I play with these products.

Environment:

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 are installed on one server, which is also the domain controller
I’ve installed Exchange 2010 on a second server, and went into group policy and set it up so that it allows everyone to log in locally. (so I can take turns logging in as pretend users)
Several pretend “Contoso” users have been created in Active Directory, and their profiles have successfully been imported into SharePoint 2010.
I’ve logged into SharePoint as each of these pretend users, and filled in some profile information, and went through a test Team Site and tagged items, rated items, and made Note Board notes.

In Outlook 2010, there’s a Social Connector that lets you connect to your SharePoint environment. When you select an email, at the bottom of the screen, there are a couple of little icons of gray people. Click that little arrow thingy, and it will expand the People Pane.

Then, click the Add button, as seen here: CropperCapture[67]

This will bring up the screen where you can add social network accounts. Currently in this beta version, it appears as though SharePoint 2010 is the only option. I added the URL to my test environment: http://moss In the future, I believe there will be more options in here, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, etc.

Anyway, the main cool thing I wanted to show you today, is the Newsfeed that I discovered in Outlook 2010. I noticed that listed immediately after my Junk Email folder on the left side, there is a folder called Newsfeed. So I clicked on it to see what the heck it was.

THERE is the newsfeed of all of the activities that I’m following on my MySite in SharePoint!! Your profile on your MySite in SharePoint 2010 lets you follow all of the following activities. Hmmm, I thought the only place the followed activities were displayed was the My Network page on the MySite. Apparently this feed is in Outlook also. Bonus!

This is what it looks like, and you can click the image to get a closer look:

This is the “Molly Clark” mailbox on the Contoso domain. I clicked News Feed on the left. This feed lists all of the activities that Molly is following. When I click on an item, the reading pane shows me the following:

A user named Sean Chai rated a document with a 4 of 5
There is a link to the document, which is called “Test Move.docx”
People Pane: Since Sean has uploaded a picture of himself on his MySite, this picture is displayed here.

The little green plus under Sean’s picture allows you to add him to one of your social networks. The Office icon is a link directly to his MySite. Each time you receive emails in your inbox, you’ll be able to use the plus icon to add people who aren’t already in your social networks.

Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010,Outlook 2010,Exchange 2010,People Pane,social media

Posted at 9:37 AM by Laura Rogers | Category: MS Office | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

1/11/2010

SharePoint Basics – Compressing Image Files

Before I got my gig as a consultant, and I worked a regular day job down in the trenches as a SharePoint Administrator at a large company, one of the things I did every day was look at SharePoint site quotas. We had many site collections, so I was able to closely keep tabs on their sizes.

Users frequently upload inordinately large files to their picture libraries, and don’t realize that these sizes aren’t really necessary just to display some company picnic or other such pictures on their site. When digital cameras are set to 6 megapixels or larger, there can be a default file size of 2 or 3 megabytes. Users tend to simply plug that camera into the computer and just dump everything up to their website, with no compression. Here are the steps to take, in order to compress large image files that have already been uploaded to SharePoint. Note that you should most likely discuss what you’re doing with the end user… just incase they do have a specific reason their files are that large. In most cases, though, they don’t know it.

To look at a site collection’s size, click <Site Settings> at the site collection level, and click <Storage Space Allocation> in the “Site Collection Administration” section. The libraries and lists will automatically be sorted with the largest size on top. The image libraries will have this icon: Click the name of the image library, and quickly look at some files sizes. Click the <View> drop-down box, choose <All Pictures> and choose <Details>. You can even sort by file size to see the largest. If there are files larger than, say 500KB, they are probably good candidates for compression.

Here’s how to compress all the files in a SharePoint Image Library:

Grab the URL to the library by copying it to your clipboard. Don’t copy the part at the end with the Forms\Allitems.aspx.
Open Picture Manager by clicking <Start> <Programs> <Microsoft Office> <Microsoft Office Tools> and <Microsoft Office Picture Manager>
Click the <File> menu, and choose <Add Picture Shortcut…>
In the Folder Name box, paste the URL to your picture library and click <Add>
Now, the image library images will be shown, and there will be a new shortcut under “My Picture Shortcuts” on the left.
Click the <Edit Pictures…> button.
Click to select a single picture, and then click the <Edit> menu and choose <Select All>
Click <Compress Pictures> on the right.
On the Compress Pictures panel, click to select “Web Pages”. This screen will now show the original total size of all the pictures in the library, and the estimated total size when they’re all compressed.
Click OK, and then click to <Save and Close>.
Note that this won’t work on BMP (bitmaps).

Now the images in the library have all been compressed and saved back to the library, and you’ve saved a bit of space on the server. You can train your end users to compress the files before uploading them to SharePoint also, also by using Picture Manager.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Picture Library,Images,compression

Posted at 11:00 AM by Laura Rogers | Category: Documents | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

1/4/2010

Laura’s 2010 Update

2010 update… 2010 the year, as opposed to the version of SharePoint.

This year is going to be great, and I’m looking forward to going to some SharePoint events and also learn more and more about SharePoint 2010. Here’s a little update on some stuff I have coming up. There’s a list of Speaking Engagements on my blog, on the right side, but here’s a more detailed list of upcoming stuff.

Tuesday, January 12th – Birmingham, Alabama SharePoint User Group Meeting

I’ll be speaking on the new social experience in SharePoint 2010. We’re trying to grow our group, so please spread the word if you’re from around here. Let me or @catpaint1 or @LoriGowin know if you’d like to be on the mailing list, or if you’re a vendor who is interested in sponsoring us. Also, we’re always looking for new speakers. You don’t need to do some extravagant PowerPoint presentation. It can be something as simple as a demo of something you’ve been working on, or something cool you figured out how to do.

Follow: @bhamspug @catpaint1 @LoriGowin

Saturday, January 23rd – Virtual SharePoint Saturday EMEA

This is the first virtual SharePoint Saturday, and it is a global event! The site has a list of the parts of the world and associated times. For me in the Central Time Zone, the event starts at 2AM. Wow, I’m dedicated. Please take a look at the site, and there’s a link to register.

Follow: @EUSP @ericharlan, Hash tag: #spsemea

February 10-12 - SharePoint Technology Conference (SPTECHCON) in San Francisco

This one is going to be fantastic! I already wrote a blog post, listing all of the sessions I’ll be teaching. Of the list of sessions, the one I’m looking forward to the most will be the half-day workshop called “Creating Custom Business Solutions”. This is ALL about the data view web part!

First, I’ll be going over the main fundamentals working in SharePoint Designer 2007 with data. Then, the bulk of the afternoon will be demonstrations of custom solutions using the data view web part, and maybe I’ll throw in a little workflow stuff. Then, the last hour or so will be all about SharePoint Designer 2010, with a demo or two, and discussion of what’s new.

If you’re going to this one, note that I’m doing two different presentations about web parts. One is about MOSS 2007, and the other is SharePoint 2010.

Follow: @sptechcon, Hash Tag: #sptechcon

February 27th – SharePoint Saturday New Orleans

This SharePoint Saturday is going to be extra special for me, because New Orleans is my home town! I was born in Metairie, which is a suburb of New Orleans. I grew up in Luling, which is a very small Cajun town across the river from New Orleans. We moved to Baton Rouge when I was 12, and I ended up going to college at LSU (Louisiana State University).

With all that said, I’m excited about taking a trip back home, visiting parents and relatives, and speaking at SharePoint Saturday. Maybe I’ll even run into old friends or schoolmates!

Follow: @spsnola @tiffanywi @cheritnola, Hash Tag: #spsnola

April 19-21 - SharePoint Evolution Conference in London

This conference in London is going to be amazing! It’s put on by Steve Smith / Combined Knowledge, and there is a phenomenal list of speakers to present there. I haven’t been to Europe in at least 15 years, so I’ll be glad to go back and have some further London adventures. Besides myself, other SharePoint911 colleagues who will be presenting are Shane Young and Todd Klindt.

Follow: @stevesmithck Hash Tag: #spevo

In Summary, it’s going to be an exciting first quarter for me. All of these events are on my SharePoint calendar, if you’d like to connect to it or export these events to your calendar.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,New Orleans,SharePoint Saturday,EMEA,SPUG,SPtechcon,spevo

Posted at 2:40 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

12/15/2009

SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) Item-Level Formatting

When a data view web part is created in SharePoint Designer 2010, there is a new way of formatting list items. In the SharePoint list’s data view web part, at the item level, there are two options that can be selected, as shown in this screenshot:

Show list item menu
Show link to item

Now, I’ll go into what each of these mean, and how to use them.

Show list item menu

First of all, what is the “list item menu”? That’s the menu that shows as a drop-down box on each item in a SharePoint list. Out of box, each list has a default field that this drop-down box displays on, which is typically the “Title” field. If you’ve ever created a custom list, you will have noticed this default field. It’s been pretty limited in the past, as seen in the following SharePoint 2007 example:

This list was created as a custom list, and the Title field was renamed as the Patient Name. In views, this field is the only one that can be displayed with the “edit menu”, as seen below:

This field is also restricted in that it can only be a single line of text field, with the field type being hard coded.

Flash forward to SharePoint 2010…

Pick ANY field in the data view, select it, click the little chevron next to it, and put a check box next to “show list item menu”. There can even be multiple fields in the same view, with this edit menu attached to them. Gone are the days where that one specific field has to be used in the view, just to get the menu on it.

Show Link To Item

The option to Show Link To Item, is just an easy way of creating a link to open that list item. In this screencast, I show the old SharePoint 2007 way of creating a hyperlink to an item in the data view web part. With this new option, simply select the check-box, and the link to the display form is created, with no further configuration necessary. This can be done on multiple fields in the same view.

What happened to the data view field options that used to exist on the menu for an item in a data view web part, as it was in SharePoint 2007 (as in this screenshot)?

You’ll miss this menu in SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) but here’s how you can find it:

Right-click on the list item, choose format item as, and then choose the desired format type. If the hyperlink needs to be configured to direct to an item link other than the display form (I showed you how to do that one the quick way by using “show link to item”), there are also more hyperlink options here.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint 2010,sp2010,data view web part

Posted at 11:50 AM by Laura Rogers | Category: Web Parts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

12/6/2009

“Data View Preview” in SharePoint Designer 2010

When editing a data view in SharePoint 2010, using SharePoint Designer 2010, on the <Design> tab, there’s a section called <Preview>. This title is a little misleading, because there are some pretty powerful options in this section, having to do with inline editing. Jennifer Mason wrote about “SharePoint 2010- Inline Editing for Views”, which shows how to set up a list or library view with inline editing. As is apparent, the view does not need to be created in SharePoint Designer in order to use inline editing, it can just be a regular browser view. In this post, I’ll describe a way to create a data view web part using SharePoint Designer 2010, and some extra functionalities that exist when inline editing is used.

Open the SharePoint 2010 site in SharePoint Designer 2010.
Click “Lists and Libraries” on the left side of the screen, and then click on the name of the list or library to modify. In this example, the list is called “Sales Report”.
On the right side of this page, in the Views section, click <New…> to create a new view. I’m going to be creative and call mine “Custom” and click OK.
Then, click the name of the view to edit it. All list view web parts are data view web parts in SharePoint 2010, so there’s no worry about breaking the page away from the site definition at this point.
When any part of the list view in the middle of the page is selected, the contextual ribbon at the top of the page will display the <List View Tools> set of tabs. On the <Options> tab, click the Inline Editing button. This toggle button will insert a seemingly empty column into the left side of the list. Again, Jennifer Mason’s blog shows examples of what inline editing looks like on a list item.
Click on the <Design> tab, and now that inline editing is turned on, there will be a couple of more configurations possible. In the Preview section of this tab, click the Data View Preview drop-down box.

The Edit Template and Insert Template choices are only available when inline editing is turned on.
Edit Template – This is the interface that displays in inline edit mode on any individual item in the list.
Insert Template – This interface is used when the “Plus” icon is clicked to add a new item to the list in an inline fashion. Editing the insert template will change the way this screen appears.

These screens were not easily configurable in SharePoint 2007.
There is another cool new option in this “Data View Preview” section, unrelated to inline editing. This is the option to edit the ‘No Matching Items’ Template. Back in the days of SharePoint 2007, when we wanted to change the text displayed when there were no items in a view, we could do only that… edit the text. An example of a case in which to use this functionality: There is a lit of tasks, filtered by tasks assigned to the logged in user. Instead of the default “There are no items to show in this view…”, the text can be changed to something more specific, like “There are currently no tasks assigned to you”. Now in SharePoint 2010, there’s the ability to edit that whole page that is displayed where there are no items in the view. In the Data View Preview drop-down box, choose ‘No Matching Items’ Template.
In this example, I edited the text, and also inserted an exclamation mark image.

Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010,sharepoint designer,data view web part,inline editing

Posted at 10:31 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: Views | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

12/1/2009

The “New!” Icon in a Data View Web Part

When new items are added to lists and libraries in SharePoint, a cute little icon appears next to each list item for 2 days after the creation date. When a data view web part is created, this icon does not exist by default, so it needs to be added back. Here are the steps for adding the New icon back, and how to configure it so that it displays only when items are new, as usual.

In a regular list view, take a look at the a list, so that the location of this icon may be grabbed. Here, I’ll do it for you. I right-clicked on the New icon, and copied the following part of the icon’s URL (in WSS 3.0):

/_layouts/1033/images/new.gif

This image exists on the server, so we can simply reference that image, without having to make a copy of it in a site image library.

Now that the icon’s location has been obtained, it can be inserted into the data view web part. In this example, there is a library with company policies in it. Put a space after the document name, and insert the image. The page will look like this, with the New icon next to each item in the list:

CropperCapture[3]

Notice that the page is displayed in split view, and note that the URL to the image is the same one that we just obtained.

Next, conditional formatting will be used in order to further customize the New button. At the top of the screen, click the <Data View> menu, and choose <Conditional Formatting>. This will display the Conditional Formatting pane on the right side of the screen.

Click to select any one of the icons. In the Conditional Formatting pane, click the <Create> button, and choose <Show Content…>.

On the Condition Criteria screen, click the <Advanced…> button.

CropperCapture[4]

In the “Select a function category” drop-down box, choose “All”.

Double-click on IfNew, to add it to the expression box. Create the expression as shown in the above screenshot. When the expression has been created, notice the Preview section at the bottom. All of the trues and falses represent the items in the document library, whether this item will be displayed next to them or not. Click OK. Click OK again.

Now, only the new items will have this icon displayed next to them. There’s your default list view functionality back!

There’s another cool thing that can be done with IfNew. Not just the Created field, but ANY date field in the list can be used in this expression. There could be a special icon that says “Modified”, and it could be inserted in the list, only to be displayed next to items that have been modified in the past couple of days.

In the following example, I created a custom field called “Due Date”. With a custom icon, and the expression in place with “Due Date” instead of “Created”, these icons will automatically display next to items whose due dates are within the next couple of days.

CropperCapture[7]

Where does this “2 days” thing come from, anyway? It is a setting at the web application level, and can be changed with the following stsadm command:

stsadm.exe -o setproperty -propertyname days-to-show-new-icon -propertyvalue [days the icon will be visible] -url [web app URL]

The screencast of this method is shown here:
http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2009/12/08/sharepoint-new-icon-screencast/

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,WSS,data view web part,IfNew,new item

Posted at 10:56 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: Web Parts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (3)

11/24/2009

SPTECHCON is Coming Up in February

There’s another SharePoint conference getting closer. It’s the SharePoint Technology Conference! I’ll be presenting the following sessions at this conference, and will be looking forward to seeing you there!

Half Day Workshops

W5-AM: SharePoint and Office 2007 Integration

Me and Mark Miller
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Discover the best ways to tackle your daily work with Office 2007. Tips include how to use Search folders in Outlook to keep all your SharePoint lists and libraries within easy reach, and how to display library metadata within Word 2007 documents. From offline document editing and two-way list sync, to reporting on SharePoint library data, this session is packed with tricks you can use to increase your SharePoint productivity. The demonstration will feature a company policy management system and will highlight Access custom lists, content types and quick parts. We will also touch on what’s new in SharePoint 2010 integration with Office 2010.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Basic
AUDIENCE: Business users, project managers

W7-PM: Creating Custom Business Solutions

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Some of the most commonly asked questions that SharePoint site managers and end users ask involve the need to create custom business solutions. In this workshop, you will learn how to use Data View/Data Form Web Parts in SharePoint Designer. Not only will this workshop cover these Web part fundamentals, but you will also learn from specific examples of ways to put these skills into play. You will learn how to create a merged list of multiple document libraries, how to create a change control system mashup, how to create a joined view of two different lists, and how to create a list/library permissions dashboard. The new Data View Web Part interface in SharePoint 2010 will also be demonstrated.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Beginner
AUDIENCE: End users, project managers

Technical Classes

105: SharePoint 2010: Out-of-the-Box Web Parts

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In this session, you will get an introduction to the out-of-box web parts that are new in SharePoint 2010! You will not only see how the new web part user interface is different, but will get a demonstration of some new ones, like the Chart Web Part. The Tag Cloud Web Part will be demonstrated, along with how tagging works, and so will the new Data View Web Part in SharePoint Designer 2010. As always, it is important to get a feel for what you can do with SharePoint already, before starting with custom code.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Basic
AUDIENCE: Business users, project managers, developers

502: Making the Most of Out-of-the-Box Web Parts

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This session will demonstrate just how flexible and useful the out-of-the-box Web parts are in SharePoint Server 2007, and will include a detailed look at the Filter, KPI, Excel Web Access, Outlook Web Access and Business Data Catalog Web parts. Attendees will be given a demonstration on customizing some of these Web parts using SharePoint Designer.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Basic
AUDIENCE: Business users, project managers, developers

804: Help! Creating a Community of Support for SharePoint

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How do users obtain SharePoint-related help? In this session, we will go over challenges in helping and supporting SharePoint end users, and how to address those challenges. There are many different avenues available when it comes to SharePoint help, and we will cover how to consolidate that information to a single point of reference for your end users or customers, reducing calls to the help desk. Attendees will hear some user perspectives about SharePoint help, and learn why it’s important to do research find out what users are looking for in SharePoint help.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Basic
AUDIENCE: Project managers, business users, architects

403: Creating an Electronic Form Solution Using InfoPath and SharePoint

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Paper, paper everywhere. There are so many forms in an office to keep track of that the task can overwhelm both the people who create the forms and those who fill them out. This class will show you how to ensure everyone is using the correct version of the form and create dynamic forms using InfoPath 2007 and the Forms Server capabilities built into SharePoint.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: Basic/Intermediate
AUDIENCE: Business users, power users, architects

Technorati Tags: sptechcon,sharepoint 2010,web parts,conference

Posted at 2:34 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

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Laura Rogers @WonderLaura