Archive for the ‘PivotPoint Web Part’ Category

New versions of PivotPoint and TeamTime replace Adobe Flash based charts with HTML5/JavaScript

Date:June 4th, 2019 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: PivotPoint Web Part, SharePoint TeamTime Comments:0 ;

New versions of PivotPoint (v4.1.2) and TeamTime (v4.1) are available that replace Adobe Flash based charts with HTML5/JavaScript charts using the ChartJS library.

PivotPoint

Adobe Flash is set to be discontinued at the end of 2020 and major browsers like Chrome already require permission to enable Flash each time the browser is restarted in an effort to speed up the move away from Flash to alternative technologies.

The JavaScript charts will be used automatically on SharePoint 2013 and above (but you can switch back to Flash if you wish).

Internet Explorer (even IE11) do not support HTML5 when running with SharePoint 2007 and 2010 so they will continue to use Flash on these old versions of SharePoint. If you are using other browsers like Chrome or Firefox with older versions of SharePoint you can override this to force it to use JavaScript charts on these older versions of SharePoint too.

You can upgrade by simply installing over the top – your settings will be saved. (As with all SharePoint installations please do this out of hours)

NOTE – you may need a new license key issuing if you currently have an older major version (e.g. anyting less than v4.x). This is included if you have an active Premium Support and Maintenance agreement in place. If you are unsure please check with us!

Google Chrome v43+ incompatibility – new version of Planner, PivotPoint and TeamTime available

Date:June 1st, 2015 Author: Tags: , , , , ,
Category: PivotPoint Web Part, SharePoint Planner, SharePoint TeamTime Comments:0 ;

New versions of Planner, PivotPoint and TeamTime are available that correct an incompatibility with Google Chrome v43+.

This incompatibility can cause the web part to be hidden when using the web part configuration toolpane (edit web part).

As Google Chrome is automatically updated it’s important that any customers who use Chrome update to the latest version.

You can download the latest trial version and upgrade by installing over the top – your existing settings will be saved and the License Key picked up to activate the full version.

Add Highlighting & Conditional Formatting to PivotPoint tables

Date:March 12th, 2014 Author: Tags: , , , , ,
Category: PivotPoint Web Part, SharePoint Ideas Comments:1 ;

Our PivotPoint web part for SharePoint allows you to summarise data from your SharePoint lists in a similar way to Excel’s Pivot Tables and Charts.

A few users have asked how you can add highlighting or conditional formatting to the Pivot Tables – to do things like highlighting the High Risk column, or any cell above a certain value.

We have a Highlighter app that allows you to do this on normal Lists but it doesn’t work with PivotPoint so I thought I would put together some examples of how you can do this using every SharePoint hackers favourite tools – JavaScript and jQuery.

You will need some experience with programming and/or JavaScript to be able to modify these examples to do what you want but there are lots of comments in the code to help.

If you’re looking for an easy way to add conditional formatting/ highlighting for SharePoint Lists then check out Highlighter.

So lets get started. The files you need for the article can be found in a zip file here. Inside you will see a test .html page that can be used just to experiment with the javascript and a .js.txt file that contains the javascript to use on your site.

Adding JavaScript to a page

The first thing we need to know is how to add JavaScript to a page. Read up about that and come back!

In SharePoint 2013 you can add a Script Editor web part (under Media and Content). This blog post walks you through.

For SharePoint 2010 and 2007 you have to use the Content Editor web part (CEWP)

You could use the Source View of the CEWP and put the JavaScript directly into it, but you could also staple your tongue to a door and it will probably be less painful!

A much better way is to save the script as a .txt file in a document library and then include the file on the page with the Content Editors “Content Link” feature. Christophe walks you through this method here.

jQuery or not?

The examples given here use jQuery – a great addition to JavaScript that simplifies many common tasks.

You could adapt these ideas to run without jQuery if you like – but you’re on your own with that!

You can see the reference to jQuery on the first line of the example scripts.

One thing you should determine is

a)      Has jQuery already been added to all your SharePoint pages (by an administrator adding them into a custom master page)? If so then you should remove the jQuery reference from these examples as there is no point in including it twice.

b)      These jQuery files are loaded from Googles CDN servers. If you don’t have external internet access you will have to copy jQuery to some other location (such as a document library).

Show me the examples already!

Download and unpack these zip files – inside you will see

.htm files that you can experiment with.

Open them in a browser to see what they look like. Open them in a text editor like Notepad to change how they look and then re-load in the browser (F5).

.js.txt files that you can use in SharePoint.

Use a text editor to copy the changes you’ve made in the example .htm file in and then add them to the page that you have PivotPoint on using any of the methods in “Adding JavaScript to a page”.

The two examples are :-

Highlighting PivotPoint cells based on the value

The first example we’re going to look at is to highlight different cells depending on the value that’s in them.

For our example –

  • If it’s less than or equal to 160 then we want the text in red
  • If it’s more than or equal to 180 then it should have a background in yellow.

The result should be a web part like this.

highlight-by-cell-value

There are plenty of comments in the JavaScript source code but basically what it’s doing Is looping through each cell in the PivotTable, checking what value It is and applying a CSS style.

See the source of highlight-by-cell-value.html and highlight-by-cell-value.js.txt in the ZIP file

 

Highlighting PivotPoint based on the row and column

In this example we’re looking to highlight a cell based on what Row and Column it appears in.

E.g. in this risk matrix we want to highlight the “High Risk” and “Frequent Probability” in red.

risk-matrix

There are two ways to do this in the javascript example given.

The first is to highlight based on the position, e.g.

highlightCellByIndex(0,0,'background','red');

Will highlight the cell in column 0, row 0 by setting the background red. (Yes sorry, the rows and columns start from number 0!).

But – if the layout of your table changes in future (e.g. someone adds a “Super Extra High Risk”) column) then everything will move and this will be in the wrong place.

In that case the better way is to highlight by the value of the Column and Row headers – e.g.

highlightCell("Rare","Low", 'background','red');

See the source of highlight-by-column-and-row.html and highlight-by-column-and-row.js in the ZIP file

Tips –

  • When making changes to the javascript do a small amount at a time, then you will know where to start if this doesn’t work!
  • You’re not just limited to setting colours, you can also add in any other effect possible in CSS.
  • Use the developer toolbar (F12 in IE and Chrome) if you have an error – this tool will enable you to track it down, but how to use it is beyond the scope of what we can show here!
.css('font-weight','bold');
.css('font-size','200%');
.css('border','1px solid red');
  • You can also add images (e.g. flags)
.append("<img src='some-url-to-an–icon.gif'>");

 

Disclaimer – these technique is provided as is and free of charge to get you started. You will need some experience of JavaScript or programming and the browser developer tools to modify these to do exactly what you want. Whilst we can’t provide technical support for this we will endeavour to help customers with active Premium Support and Maintenance contracts in place for PivotPoint.

 

New version of PivotPoint – chart axis controls

Date:June 13th, 2013 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: PivotPoint Web Part Comments:0 ;

A new version of our PivotPoint web part for SharePoint is available – v 2.4.4

This new version adds options for manually controlling the scale and layout of the axis in charts.

Auto Scale

If you show values on the graph the Auto Scale option will scale large numbers to improve the display. For example 10,500 will be shown as 10.5K and 50,000,000 will be shown as 50M

pivotpoint-auto-scale

Axis Maximum & Number of Division Lines

Normally the maximum value on the axis and how many division lines are used is set automatically based on the data you’re charting. However with some settings – particularly small numbers it doesn’t always get it right. For example :-

pivotpoint-auto-axis

You can now manually specify these settings, in this example the axis is set from 0 to 10 with 10 division lines giving divisions at every exactly 1 intervals for a much better looking chart.

pivotpoint-manual-axis

More details are in the online manual.

You can download and upgrade to the latest version without losing any settings.

.

The Ultimate Flexible CRM solution for SharePoint

Date:March 5th, 2013 Author: Tags:
Category: FilterPoint Web Part, General, Highlighter, Partners, PivotPoint Web Part, SharePoint Reminder Comments:0 ;

The Ultimate Flexible CRM Solution for SharePoint

SharePoint is the platform millions of organizations use to manage various facets of their businesses.  However, in many cases, SharePoint’s built-in functions do not provide the ease of use and advanced functions that users need to work efficiently and effectively.

Some SharePoint consulting firms will recommend custom-built web parts to provide the necessary functionality required.  Before going this route, companies would be wise to evaluate pre-built applications and web parts to save significant time and money!  Evaluating and sourcing the right products however can be an overwhelming task – and falling prey to vendor hype a common outcome.  This is particularly true with CRM technology (Business/Customer Relationship Management).

Benefits of a 100% SharePoint- based CRM application:

A system that is designed to be highly configurable and evolve with the business’s ability to embrace change is the key to a successful implementation and a higher than average level of user acceptance.

  • Single point of user login where all business related information is stored
  • Maintenance of  sensitive customer data inside a controlled environment
  • Leverages existing technology investment

sharepoint-crm-dashboards

manage-leads-in-sharepoint

sharepoint-crm-outlook-plugin

Designed exclusively for SharePoint, SharePoint CRM by LookOut Software revs SharePoint up with dynamic, flexible and powerful features out of the box – yet is easy to personalize, scale, and upgrade as needed.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, LookOut Software partnered with one of the top Web Part developers in the industry to provide powerful, yet optional, enhanced functionality for its CRM application.

Pentalogic’s Filter Point, Pivot Point, Highlighter and Reminder  web parts enhance and further empower SharePoint CRM with easy to use, flexible and comprehensive interactive Charts, Graphs, Filters, Alerts and more.

Some examples:

filterpoint-sharepoint-filtering pivotpoint-sharepoint-crm-charting
highlighter-sharepoint-color-coding reminder-mini-workflow-sharepoint-crm

SharePoint CRM and Pentalogic’s simple- to-use and effective add-on web parts combine to create the ultimate Flexible CRM Solution for SharePoint.

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

Turn A SharePoint Task List Into A Task Master

Date:October 19th, 2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , ,
Category: FilterPoint Web Part, Highlighter, PivotPoint Web Part, SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Planner, SharePoint Reminder, SharePoint webparts Comments:0 ;

Here’s how you can turn SharePoint’s built-in Task list into a powerful task tracking tool, using Pentalogic products.

These are just examples to get you started – we’re only scratching the surface here of what’s possible with our range of flexible SharePoint web parts.

To start, just create a new blank site and add a task list. Here’s one I made earlier:

start

Now just follow our guide for each section (or just the sections you want):

Each section has step-by-step instructions and a screenshot of the configuration to compare against.

Task list: Priority and Due Date highlighting

Uses Highlighter

To make the high-priority and upcoming tasks really stand out, we’re going to add a couple of highlighter columns.

Here’s what you will see on the All Tasks view – coloured flags to show priority, a column showing how long we’ve got left to complete items and a red highlight for things that are overdue.

highlighter_result

hl_priority

Highlight Priority

  • Create a new Pentalogic Highlighter column
  • Name the column Task Priority
  • Choose the column type Highlighting
  • Choose Show Icons
  • Click the Default icon, then click Clear
  • Change Base on column to Priority
  • Select Replace ‘Priority’ on all views
  • Under Rules click the Auto-create button
  • Click OK

Due Date Countdown

    • Create a new Pentalogic Highlighter column
    • hl_countdownName the column Due
    • Choose the column type Countdown
    • Change the Start option to [Today]
    • Change the End option to Due Date
    • Select Add to default view, on the Right
    • Uncheck all the display options except Days
    • Under Rules click the Auto-create button

Home page: Task calendar overview and summary

Uses Planner

On your site’s home page we’re going to add an at-a-glance overview of your tasks: A view of the task list (highlighted, if you did the previous section) and a task calendar.

Here’s what your home page will look like once we’ve finished:

mainpage

List view

  • Edit the page and add Tasks from the Existing Lists category
  • Edit the web part
  • Change the Selected view to All Tasks (to ensure Highlighter columns are displayed)
  • Click OK

Task calendarplanner_config

  • Edit the page and add Planner v2 from the Miscellaneous category
  • Set the Style to By Category
  • Set the Planner Source to Tasks
  • Set the Start Date to the column Start Date
  • Set the End Date to the column Due Date
  • Set the Category to Assigned To
  • Set the Label to Title
  • Set the Progress to % Complete
  • Set the Period to Auto
  • Change Set colour by column to Priority
  • Assign appropriate Colors to the priorities (e.g. High – Red)
  • Optional: Set a Fxed width under the Appearance section
  • Optional: Set the Font size to Medium

Analysis page: Graphs and granular reporting

Uses FilterPoint and PivotPoint

Now we’re going to create an Analysis page to produce some graphs and reporting data from your task list.

You will have an Analysis page that looks like this – showing  charts for each persons workload.

analysispage

Creating the page

  • From Site Actions choose New Document Library (to put the page in)
  • Call the library Pages
  • Set Quick Launch to Yes
  • Set Versioning to No
  • Change the Document Template to Web Part Page
  • Click Create
  • From Site Actions choose More options…
  • Under Page choose Web Part Page
  • Call the page Analysis
  • Change the Template to Full page, Vertical
  • Set the Document Library to Pagespivotpoint_pie_config

Graph and Report: Priority skew

Let’s add a graph to show us if tasks are being raised too often as “High priority”:

  • Edit the Analysis page
  • Add the PivotPoint web part from the Pentalogic.net category
  • Edit the web part
  • Set Display to Both
  • Set List to Tasks
  • Under Columns set Field to Priority
  • Under Chart options set Chart type to Pie
  • Click OK

Graph and Report: Status by Personpivotpoint_stack_config

Next we’ll add a graph to show the status of tasks assigned to everyone. That’ll show us if we have any bottlenecks in the team:

  • Edit the Analysis page
  • Add the PivotPoint web part from the Pentalogic.net category
  • Edit the web part
  • Set Display to Both
  • Set List to Tasks
  • Under Columns set Field to Status
  • Under Rows set Field to Assigned To
  • Under Chart options set Chart type to Bar
  • Set Color mappings to Automatic colors
  • Click OK

Filteringfilterpoint_config

Lastly, let’s add a filtering web part. this will allow us to drill down into our data by selecting certain statuses and date ranges:

  • Edit the Analysis page
  • Add the FilterPoint web part from the Pentalogic.net category
  • Connect the other web parts via the menu (Connections -> Provide filter to)
  • Edit the web part
  • Under Filters click New
  • Change the Label to Status
  • Set the Style to Drop Down
  • Under Get the filter values select From a list
  • Still under Get the filter values, the list Tasks and field Status
  • Under Filters click New
  • Change the Label to Start Date
  • Set the Style to Date Range
  • Set the Field name to From the connected web part and select Start Date
  • Click OK

You can display the page on the Quick Launch menu via Site Actions -> Site Settings and selecting the Quick Launch option under Look and Feel.

Alert page: Configure “Overdue” alerts

Uses Reminder

The last step is to configure Reminder to send email alerts to us when tasks are overdue. You’ll need to create the Pages document library if you skipped the previous section, and then continue with the instructions:

  • From Site Actions choose More options… reminder_config
  • Under Page choose Web Part Page
  • Call the page Reminder
  • Change the Template to Full page, Vertical
  • Set the Document Library to Pages
  • Edit the page
  • Add the Reminder web part from the Miscellaneous category
  • Edit the web part
  • Set Watch list to Tasks
  • Under Email to select Assigned To from the dropdown
  • Under Email CC enter the manager’s e-mail address in the text box
  • Next to Subject click “” and enter the following into the popup box:Overdue task ([Title])
  • Next to Message click “” and enter the following:This task is overdue: Title: [Title]
    Due date: [Due Date]
    Priority: [Priority]
  • Under Send When expand Overdue and choose by 1 Days
  • Click OK

You should hen see the following on the page:

reminderpage

You can also setup email alerts to remind you when tasks are due in a few days.

Finished!

Your mundane Tasks list is now an all-singing all-dancing Task Master!

This is just one example of the many possible solutions that can be achieved with our products. Please feel free to browse the product pages below to learn more or take advantage of our 30 day free trial:

New version of PivotPoint web part for SharePoint – v2.2.3

Date:May 15th, 2012 Author: Tags: , , ,
Category: General, PivotPoint Web Part Comments:0 ;

A new version of our PivotPoint web part for SharePoint (v2.2.3) is ready.

This new version improves performance for large lists, corrects bugs when you have angled brackets (“<” and “>”) in your row or columns, adds support for site column lookups and a 2 new features.

Sort by Title or Total

The new version of PivotPoint allows you to sort by both the Title and Total rows, either ascending or descending.

Title and Total cells

For example, instead of sorting alphabetically by product you can sort by their total sales – showing your best performing products at the top of the table or left of the chart.

PivotPoint showing all columns

More details are in the online manual.

Show Top N

In combination with sorting by the Total you can choose to show the Top N columns or rows.

For example given the following data the vast majority of revenue comes from 2 products (Bottle-o-matic and Can-o-Matic) and we have a ‘Long Tail’ of other products.

We can choose to only display the top 2 columns (products) and optionally group all the other sales into “Other”

PivotPoint for SharePoint showing top 2 columns

 More details are in the online manual.

You can download and upgrade to the latest version without losing any settings.

Date Range filtering with the new version of FilterPoint, PivotPoint and Planner.

Date:December 13th, 2011 Author: Tags: , , ,
Category: Filter, FilterPoint Web Part, PivotPoint Web Part, SharePoint Planner, SharePoint webparts Comments:0 ;

FilterPoint has had the ability to send Date Filters but a common request has been Date Ranges – like showing everything this month, last year or between two arbitrary dates.

FilterPoint - Date Range Filtering

The good news is that we’ve added this in to FilterPoint as of version 1.2

The bad news is that this will only work with our other SharePoint products – Planner and PivotPoint – it won’t work with SharePoints built in List View web part (LVWP).

That’s disappointing!

Yes it is – it’s just a limitation of SharePoints filtering I am afraid, but all is not lost!

This page shows how you can do things like Month filtering using calculated columns and this blog article shows how you can setup “Current Month/Previous Month” views using nothing more than Calculated Columns and View filters.

Upgrading

As always you can upgrade without losing any settings by downloading and running the latest trial version and selecting “Upgrade” when prompted (don’t forget you need the a recent version of Planner (v2.6.9+) and PivotPoint (2.2.0+) to accept date range filters.

SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner Update – dealing with Public Holidays

Date:September 1st, 2011 Author: Tags: , , , ,
Category: PivotPoint Web Part, SharePoint Planner, SharePoint Reminder Comments:0 ;

Customers who use our SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner Toolkit often ask about the best way to deal with public holidays.  Public Holidays tend to affect the whole team.  So you want them clearly marked on your Vacation Planner dashboard, but you certainly don’t want to have to enter each public holiday for each team member as a separate event.  And you probably also don’t want to be firing off absence approval requests for each holiday either.

So here are our suggestions on the best way of handling Public Holidays within the SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner Toolkit.

First you need modify your list.  Go to list settings and open up your “Reason” field.  In addition to your existing reasons for absence add a new reason – Public Holiday.

Then open up the settings for your “Requested By” column and make sure you have “Allow Multiple Selections” checked.

Now you need to modify your Planner web part.

So, “Edit Shared Web Part” then, under your “Category”  picker, check the “split multiple selections box”.  This is key if you want to be able to create just one event for each public holiday but have it show up against each of your team members.

Now go down to the Planner Colors section of the Toolpart and update your color coding by column section to include an extra color code for your new Reason for absence that you created in your list – Public Holiday – I am going for a nice orange.

Now check your PivotPoint web part. For this to work you are going to need PivotPoint 2.1.4 or above.  Download it here if you don’t have it already (free to all PivotPoint v2 customers, or v1 customers with Premium Support). In the Toolpart make sure that in the “Split Multiple Values” dropdown you have chosen “Split Records”.  This will ensure that when we enter a 1 day public holiday for 4th of July, for example, 1 day gets entered against each team member in the pivot table.

Finally, before we start adding events, to ensure that we don’t accidentally fire off approval requests and notifications all over the place, access the Reminder web parts that you have set up and in the “Reminder Testing”  section at the bottom of the Toolpart enter your own email address so that any emails generated whilst you are adding the public holidays go to you.  This will be a better solution than simply switching the Reminders off as you work, as it will mean that if any “real” requests are submitted whilst you are working you will be able to redirect them, rather than them being lost.

Add a Public Holiday

So, from your Planner dashboard add a new item.  Let’s do 4th July. Set it up as an all day event.  Set yourself as “approved by”, you will need to approve the event before it will show up in people’s dashboards.  Now add your whole team to the “Requested By” field.  It’s easiest to do this using the Address Book.  Now ensure you have selected “Public Holiday” in your Reason field.  Approve the request.  Discard all the “Request approved” notifications that are redirected through to you.  And now you will see your public holiday, nicely marked against each of your team members.  Repeat as needed for all of your other public holidays, remove the redirect from your Reminder emails and then you can relax for another year!

I hope this helps you in using Vacation Planner.  If you have any questions or requests about the Vacation Planner we would love to hear them.