cjwalker's WebLog : SharePoint & FrontPage

SharePoint User Group for Brisbane

cjwalker — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:05:00 GMT

Adam Clark has kicked off the Brisbane SharePoint User Group with a first meeting today.

The plan is to get together over lunch (12:00-1:30) on the 2nd Wednesday of each month at the Microsoft office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane.

Today's meeting was very informal, just getting a few interested parties together to get some input into future meetings.

In general the idea is to get technically minded people together to share experiences, techniques, best practices etc and hopefully impart new knowledge to each other around:

SharePoint integration with workflow, BizTalk, InfoPath and other MS products
SharePoint development - site definitions, customisations, web parts
SharePoint/CMS - what's coming with the next release
Applying SharePoint to real-life business scenarios
General SharePoint tips and tricks

Please contact Adam directly if you'd like an invite to the next meeting Adam@scrumpa.net

UPDATE::: http://bspug.officeisp.net/default.aspx the web site is now up and running.

Pre-populating a document library with pages/files using ONET.XML

cjwalker — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 01:15:00 GMT

I recently came across a forum post that indicated that this wasn't possible - well just keep those challenges coming :)

It IS possible to pre-populate a Document Library with files.

Here goes (this adds a Web Part Page to a Document Library - obviously you could create a Document Library where the default page template is a Web Part Page)

1. in your ONET.XML add a module under your existing Default module
2. The name can be whatever
3. Use the List ID from whichever Library you want your docs or pages to go to (look earlier in the ONET file for this) - Shared Documents in STS is 101 by default, likewise use the Url to specify the URL of the Document Library
4. specify the Path to where your source files are (relative to the root Site Definition in the file system)

<Module Name="randomNameForModule" List="101" Url="Shared Documents" Path="DOCTEMP\SMARTPGS">

5. you can then add FILE elements for each file

<File Name="NewDocument.aspx" Url="spstd1.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary" >

... at this point you can also add web parts to web part pages using the AllUsersWebPart element

6. Include the module in the Configuration (usually the one with ID="0" Name="Default" - if you made a copy of the STS Site Def and just modified the default Team Site config)

voi la

the only gotcha I have found so far is when trying to add these new pages to a NavBar in ONET.XML - it seems that SharePoint uses one set of NavBars and FrontPage another (not quite, but it can appear that way) - I think it is problematic due to ghosting.

30 new applications for SharePoint

cjwalker — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 01:20:00 GMT

These look pretty handy - I haven't looked under the covers yet - just discovered them today.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sppt/wssapps/default.mspx

Sorting numeric values in a Data View when sourcing data from a web service

cjwalker — Sun, 29 May 2005 11:05:00 GMT

There is something quirky going on that I can't explain. If you add a simple XML file with no schema (with int and string elements) to the Data Source Catalog and open the Sort & Group dialog for the Data View you get the choice of sorting on elements containing numeric values as numeric values - and not as strings. This is shown in the dialog as <fieldname>(Number).

For some strange reason this does not appear when you want to sort numeric values returned through a web service...

Anyway, to fix it:

Select the desired sort field in the dialog.
Edit the XSL - look for the dvt_1.body template, find the xsl:for-each and the xsl:sort within it that selects your sort field - add the attribute data-type="number"
Voi la

Adding page numbers to a paged Data View web part

cjwalker — Fri, 27 May 2005 17:35:00 GMT

I found it hard to believe that no one had posted something on this already...

I think I have heard it grumbled now and again - it's nice that SharePoint Lists support paging - but where are the individual page numbers? why do I have to click Next, Next, Next!!!

I can now end this misery and winging by adding page numbers to Data Views.

The solution leverages the fact that the navigation links created by default pass a parameter indicating what row number to start rendering from. By looping through the row data and checking the current position we can simply output a page number ( ((position() - 1) div $RowLimit) + 1) ) everytime we get to a row number that would be the start of the next page ( using position() mod $RowLimit ). I am not sure how efficient it is - happy to accept feedback on your experiences... this is just a sample - who knows how well it will work against your 10,000 rows of data :)

This solution assumes you have created a Data View and changed its options to "Display items in sets of this size X"

To implement:

1. Using FrontPage 2003, view the HTML (XSLT) source of your Data View

2. Find <xsl:template name="dvt_1.navigation"> and add <xsl:param name="Rows"/> as the last param

3. Somewhere in the <table> that is output in this template

<tr><td colspan="2" class="ms-vb">
   <xsl:for-each select="$Rows">
      <xsl:if test="(position() mod $RowLimit) = 1">
         <a>
              <xsl:attribute name="href">javascript: <xsl:value-of xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" select="ddwrt:GenFireServerEvent(concat('dvt_firstrow={',position(),'}'))"/>;</xsl:attribute>
              <xsl:value-of select="((position() - 1) div $RowLimit) + 1"/></a>
              <xsl:text xmlns:ddwrt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/runtime" ddwrt:nbsp-preserve="yes" disable-output-escaping="yes">&nbsp;</xsl:text>
      </xsl:if>
   </xsl:for-each>
</td></tr>

4. Find <xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.navigation"> and add <xsl:with-param name="Rows" select="$Rows"/> as the last param

This should be enough to get you started. You could add an <xsl:if test> statement to prevent the current page number from being created as a link.

the 'real' essential FrontPage/SharePoint tips are here

cjwalker — Fri, 27 May 2005 17:32:00 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/frontpoint/

These tips are essential for any decent customisation of SharePoint using FrontPage. FrontPoint rocks.

Adding a form field to filter the contents of a Data View web part

cjwalker — Wed, 25 May 2005 14:13:00 GMT

If you haven't worked it out by now, I am using my blog to capture useful titbits on SharePoint, BizTalk and InfoPath that I don't want to forget myself.

Anyway - here's another useful one for SharePoint and Data View web parts that I think is great, but maybe just not that obvious for working out yourself.

The idea is to effectively create a simple "search" facility on a Data View web part, which is enabled by creating a Form Web Part with a single text field that provides this value as input to the Data View, the Data View is filtered based on the input value.

To create:

From FrontPage 2003, add a Data View web part to your Web Part Page
Configure a Filter on the Data View web part. set the Comparison to "Contains" and the Value to "Input_Parameter"
Add a Form web part to the page
Create a web part connection from the Form web part to the Data View web part. Have it "Provide Form values to" another web part, and set the Target Action to "Modify View using parameters from"
Select the form field and map it to the Input_Parameter
Give it a go.

One gotcha I came across was trying to setup a Contains filter on a Lookup column. It seems that it is a constraint imposed by FrontPage 2003. I found that you can set it on a string value, have a look at the XSLT, and then apply this same change to a Lookup column and it works fine.

fun with List Templates and Data Views in SharePoint Portal Area's

cjwalker — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:43:00 GMT

Have you tried to create a new Custom List then wanted to create a new instance elsewhere?
Ever tried to create a Data View in one area that access a List created in the 'Home' Area?

I did - and it wasn't quite what I was hoping for or expected. Certainly life is easier under WSS.

Initially I was trying to create a bunch of lists to manage some data in the portal and to display this data in other portal Area's. So the initial design was to create the Custom Lists in the Home area and then create a Data View web part that displayed this data in new and interesting ways in different Area's throughout the portal. Sounded good in theory - certainly works easy enough in WSS. <insert sound effect for wrong answer in a game show>

Anyway, I looked further into it and the error seemed to stem from the Area not "knowing" about the List template since the sub-Area was using a different template to the Home Area. So I then tried (stay with me, this learning experience is going somewhere) saving the Custom List as a List Template and to create a new instance in the other Area. Crash and burn again! Can't do that either. So you can save it fine, but you can only create that same Custom List in Areas that use the same template - ahhh! So you can see all the different List Templates in the one List Template Gallery but when you go to a specific Area and try to Create a new List it will only show those Lists that were created in the same Area Template.

So the solution is that you need to create Custom Lists in an Area that uses the same template as the Area's you would like to use and display that List (if that makes sense). In my case I created a new "hidden" Area called PortalData (below Home) and just "Excluded it from the Portal Site Navigation" (in the Area Settings - Display). I then also changed the Settings so that any sub-Areas created below my PortalData area inherited the template, thus allow me to create and use the Custom Lists. This finally worked. I create sub-Areas from the same PortalData, and can move them around (drag & drop them in the Portal Site Map) to wherever I want them. You may also need to un-exclude them from Portal site navigation if they are not showing up in the top navigation bar.

All's well. Hopefully that saves at least one other person from hours of pain!

Updated - 15 April 2005
Mads has a workaround that will save you re-creating Lists in different Areas. Thanks Heather
Check it out here http://weblogs.asp.net/mnissen/archive/2004/10/01/236593.aspx