Author Archive

SharePoint Community Partner

Date:February 12th, 2013 Author: Category: General Comments:0 ;

Mark over at Collboris has setup a SharePoint Community Partnership group for companies and individuals who are experts and active in the SharePoint community in some way – and we’re privileged to be invited to join.

(Collaboris produce some interesting Policy Management software for SharePoint – for companies that need to distribute paperwork and policies and ensure they have been read and acknowledged)

If you like our free tools or products, show your appreciation with a quick click to give us an upvote!

The goal of this list is to make a definitive reference of SharePoint blogs, products, conventions, and communities. Just click the tags to show each category: The most popular (by votes) will rise to the top of the list.

http://list.ly/list/32f-sharepoint-community-partners

Planner web part is now compatible with SharePoint 2013

Date:January 29th, 2013 Author: Tags:
Category: SharePoint Planner Comments:0 ;

Our Planner web part is now compatible with SharePoint 2013 as of version 2.8.1.

You can download and install the latest version and find upgrade instructions in the online manual.

If upgrading from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 simply perform the upgrade then install the latest version – your old settings and license key will be picked up.

SharePoint Planner

The following page will be updated as our other web parts are made SharePoint 2013 compatible.

How to learn SharePoint

Date:January 24th, 2013 Author: Tags:
Category: General, Training Comments:0 ;

SharePoint is a HUGE product. Add to that the Microsoft upgrade treadmill (e.g. SharePoint 2013) and even though I’ve been working with it for nearly 8 years now I am still finding new things.

Perhaps the most common question you see in forums (StackExchange, Microsoft Community Groups, Linked In groups or plenty of other places is “How do I learn SharePoint?”. And this isn’t just restricted to Developers – its power users, end users and everyone else in the spectrum. And its not just individuals – as Veronique eloquently points out – many companies install SharePoint and then… then… wonder “We’ve got SharePoint, Now What?”.

So where do you start? Some would argue that depends if you’re a developer, power users, user or admin – and whilst that’s true to some extent if you’re a developer you really need a good grounding otherwise you will spend days recreating something that’s already built in if only you knew it existed! If you’re an administrator how are you going to set policies for something you don’t know inside-out?

Mark at Collaboris has put together some lists of resources using that you can vote on using a cool service called list.ly. As votes are cast the best content should surface to the top – How to learn SharePoint and where to get training.

In addition to that if you’re a developer you obviously need to start with a solid grounding in ASP.NET. After that you are not short of places to start but two that spring to mind are Bjorns (who never afraid to be opinionated!) – What is a SharePoint developer post and Stuarts 10 things developers should know about SharePoint

Check out this list of SharePoint resources and vote for your favourites!

FilterPoint web part is now compatible with SharePoint 2013

Date:January 22nd, 2013 Author: Tags:
Category: Filter, FilterPoint Web Part, General Comments:0 ;

Our FilterPoint web part is now compatible with SharePoint 2013 as of version 1.3.2.

You can download and install the latest version here.

If upgrading from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 simply perform the upgrade then install the latest version – your old settings and license key will be picked up.

PivotPoint web part

This page will be updated as our other web parts are made SharePoint 2013 compatible

PivotPoint web part is now compatible with SharePoint 2013

Date:January 17th, 2013 Author: Tags: ,
Category: General, PivotPoint Web Part Comments:0 ;

Our PivotPoint web part is now compatible with SharePoint 2013 as of version 2.4.0.

You can download and install the latest version here.

If upgrading from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 simply perform the upgrade then install the latest version – your old settings and license key will be picked up.

This page will be updated as our other web parts are made SharePoint 2013 compatible

PivotPoint web part

SharePoint 2013 Compatibility

Date:November 21st, 2012 Author: Tags:
Category: General Comments:0 ;

Now that SharePoint 2013 has reached the RTM milestone we’re hard at work making sure our web parts are compatible with SharePoint 2013. We’ve been through this process before (Pentalogic sold its first SharePoint product in 2005 and we have experience working with SharePoint 2003, 2007 and 2010) and don’t expect any problems.

This work will be completed over the coming months and updates posted on this blog and the SharePoint 2013 compatibility page with links to upgrade instructions.

As part of this process we will no longer be supporting SharePoint 2003 for Planner and Reminder but intend to continue supporting SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013 for all our products.


SharePoint 2013

Complete guide to filtering SharePoint lists by the current week.

Date:September 17th, 2012 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: Calculated Columns, Filter, SharePoint Ideas Comments:7 ;

A common requirement in SharePoint is to filter lists so you’re only showing the current week, month, quarter etc. If you only want to see the last X number of days (e.g. last 30 days) then it’s simple enough.

If you want setup a SharePoint view to see the current calendar week then its a little more complex – especially if you define your week differently from the standard Sunday to Saturday or Monday to Sunday.

First you must look at and really understand the method for setting up SharePoint views to filter the current calendar month or week as it’s not really obvious.

Long story short – here are the steps :-

  • Use one of the calculated column formula below to find the “Start of week
  • Use a calculated column formula of “End of Week
        = [Start of Week] + 6
  • Setup a View Filter showing items when [Today] is in that range.
        Start of Week <= [Today] AND End Of Week >= [Today]

Again – see this post for showing the method in step-by-step detail.

If your week goes Sunday to Saturday or Monday to Sunday then use :-

Start of week End of week
Sunday to Saturday
 =[Due Date] - WEEKDAY([Due Date]) +1
 =[Start of Week] + 6
Monday to Sunday
 =[Due Date] – WEEKDAY([mydate],2) + 1
 =[Start of Week] + 6

Obviously you will replace [Due Date] with your own particular date field.(Check out the WEEKDAY function to understand what the 2nd argument does)

The other options are a bit more complex to find the start of the week (again end of week = start + 6)

Start of week
Tuesday to Monday
 =[Due Date]-WEEKDAY([Due Date])+IF(WEEKDAY([Due Date])<3,-4,3)
Wednesday to Tuesday
 =[Due Date]-WEEKDAY([Due Date])+IF(WEEKDAY([Due Date])<4,-3,4)
Thursday to Wednesday
 =[Due Date]-WEEKDAY([Due Date])+IF(WEEKDAY([Due Date])<5,-2,5)
Friday to Thursday
 =[Due Date]-WEEKDAY([Due Date])+IF(WEEKDAY([Due Date])<6,-1,6)
Saturday to Friday
 =[Due Date]-WEEKDAY([Due Date])+IF(WEEKDAY([Due Date])<7,0,7)

See this picture for some test data, its in a strange order (Thursday to Wednesday if first) but check it out on your desk calendar if you’re not convinced!

SharePoint Online – options for email enabled document libraries and lists.

Date:August 18th, 2012 Author: Tags: , , ,
Category: General, SharePoint Online / 365 / Cloud Comments:2 ;

“Email enabled document libraries” are a popular feature in SharePoint – you can send email to a specific address and the email gets put into a document library or list.

This feature isn’t supported in the hosted version of SharePoint (SharePoint Online / Office 365 or BPOS) but there are 3rd party apps that enable this.

A SaaS app that allows rules for what happens to the emails based on email address, content, attachments and promote email content to list meta data. Currently in limited beta, pricing not decided.

Runs as an application on a local workstation and moves emails from an Exchange Online mailbox to SharePoint Online list according to user defined rules. Free to use – support provided if you set MessageOps as ‘partner of record’.

SaaS app to to provide email enabled document libraries with options to store attachments away from SharePoint storage. Pricing not disclosed.

Desktop program that runs in the background on a user’s computer and move emails from Outlook 2007/2010 folders into SharePoint online or on-premises. From $165 per profile (folder/incoming email address).

In the Cloud: New web parts for SharePoint Online!

Date:July 23rd, 2012 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: General, SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Online / 365 / Cloud Comments:0 ;

We know that some customers are considering moving to SharePoint Online and have been asked if our SharePoint web parts are compatible.

To run on SharePoint Online a web part has run in the Sandbox Model. Quite frankly this is hard and there are many restrictions – which is why there are so few vendors selling cloud compatible web parts. For our own products some features would have to be removed (e.g. web part connections in Planner and PivotPoint) some would have to be radically re-designed (such as TeamTime) and with some (FilterPoint and Highlighter) it’s just not possible to run them in the sandbox model at all.

The strategy we’re adopting is to create SharePoint Online / Cloud specific versions of our web parts to avoid having to ‘dumb down’ our normal on-premises web parts.

Date based email alerts for SharePoint Online

First up is a cloud specific version of Reminder that allows you to add customizable and date based email alerts to SharePoint Online / Office 365.

Date based email alerts for SharePoint online

Email enabled document libraries in SharePoint Online

We’re also developing a service that will allow you to use Email enabled document libraries in SharePoint Online – something that’s provided out of the box in normal on-premises SharePoint installations and many people are surprised to learn is just not available in SharePoint Online.

Email enabled document libraries for SharePoint online / 365

Not in the cloud?

Don’t worry, our feet are still firmly on the ground! We’re not going to forget about those of you who don’t plan to move to SharePoint Online and those of you who appreciate the extra flexibility of traditional on-premises installations that give more power to be able to adapt and enhance the platform your your needs.

As always – get in touch if you have any questions or feedback or would like to let us know which product you would like us to adapt.

Tip – Keyboard shortcut for Paste As Plain Text in SharePoint

Date:June 14th, 2012 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: General Comments:5 ;

If you spend any amount of time copy and pasting stuff into SharePoint’s wiki or rich text fields (or indeed working with web based rich text editors of any kind) then you’ve undoubtedly have been burned by the crAzY FormaAting monster! This is because the formatting that works so beautifully in one place may not work well in another site.

Of course in SharePoint 2010 you’ve got the Paste as plaintext option in the toolbar, but I am a keyboard warrior damn it! I don’t have time for faffing about with a mouse!

If you’re as impatient as I am (or aren’t using SharePoint 2010) you’ve probably got around this with the Notepad dance to remove formatting – Select source, CTRL+C, Open Notepad, CTRL+V, CTRL+A (select All), CTRL+C, switch to destination and finally CTRL+V to paste plain text… but there is an easier way – CTRL + SHIFT + V to Paste As Plain Text!

If you’re using :-