As you’ve probably noticed we have had a few changes on our SharePoint blog in recent weeks.  We’ve been doing some work on making it a little more user friendly and a bit nicer to look at (hope we haven’t spoiled it with the photos!)

Whilst I was working on the blog I noticed that we have quite a few little gems hidden away in the archives. Old posts – things that were written maybe a couple of years ago, that those of you who are new to the blog might not be aware of, but might find useful.  The useful ones fall into a few categories – general SharePoint tricks, tips and ideas, and ideas and tips for users of our web parts.  So here they are, I hope you find them useful.

SharePoint tricks tips and ideas

Extend and customise SharePoint Task lists

Task Lists are one of the best loved and most used features of SharePoint and this post shows you how to better tailor them to meet your particular needs.

Advanced SharePoint View and Filter techniques

This article explores some of the uses of SharePoint Views and Filters.

Working Days, Weekdays and Holidays in SharePoint Calculated Columns

SharePoint Out of the box doesn’t automatically distinguish between working days and weekends but if you are setting things like job duration or due dates you may need to – this article shows you how.

The Truth about using [Today] in SharePoint Calculated Columns

This article explains why the often repeated trick for using [Today] in SharePoint calculated columns does not work, and suggests workarounds.

The … ehem… Truth about using [Today] in SharePoint Filters

This one looks at the differences between SharePoint 2003 and 2007 when using [Today] in filters.

Setting a default duration for new SharePoint Calender Events

So you might be a medical receptionist scheduling appointments for doctors, appointments are always 45 minutes long unless the doctor tells you differently, how much easier would it be to just have SharePoint create an end time 45 minutes after the start time automatically?

How To Use Filters in SharePoint to show items in the current Calendar Month

It’s easy to think of occasions when you might want to filter a SharePoint list to show items falling in the current calendar month: “sales this month” springs to mind, or “subscriptions due for renewal this month”. This post shows you have to achieve this using calculated columns.

SharePoint Reminder Webpart Ideas

SharePoint Reminder Webpart – Setting a variable Due In or Overdue By time

Lots of people use Reminder to send an alert when a message is due soon or overdue.  Usually its fine for the message to go out at a fixed time before or after the event, for all list items, but there are occasions where you might want to vary the times at which you send your alerts.  For example, sending alerts for overdue helpdesk items: for high priority items you might want to send an alert when an item is 1 hour overdue, whereas for low priority an alert for items 1 day overdue might be fine.  This article shows you how.

Customize SharePoint Reminder Emails with Merge Data

Whilst SharePoint’s out of the box alert emails come in a standard format, with Reminder its possible to customize the alert emails you send by merging data from your list items.

Tip – don’t send SharePoint email alerts for old items.

There are some situations where, when you are setting up a Reminder for the first time, you could end up sending out alerts for a lot of very old list items, this post shows you how to avoid doing that.

Tip – Sending an SharePoint email Alert when a Task is completed

If you are using Reminder to drive simple workflow you may very well want to send an email when a task is completed – maybe when a holiday request form has been filled in for example.  This post shows you how.

SharePoint Planner Webpart Ideas

Tip – Showing multiple columns in SharePoint Planner Webpart

There may be times when you want to display timeline or category information from more than one list column in a gantt chart. For example in the chart below we have taken information from the “priority” and “title” columns of a list to populate the category labels.

5 things you never knew you couldn’t do with SharePoint Gantt Charts

Shows you a few of the things that aren’t possible with SharePoint OOTB gantt charts, but can be done with Planner.

Related posts:

1. Advanced SharePoint View and Filter techniques Advanced SharePoint view and filter techniques focusing on the task...
2. SharePoint Reminder Webpart – version 1.7.8 now available New version 1.7.8 of SharePoint Reminder webpart is now available...
3. Use SharePoint Filtered Views to Stop Sending Alerts to Yourself How annoying is it when you have just created...

How annoying is it when you have just created or amended an item in SharePoint, and you immediately get an Alert email about it?

You know the kind of situation: you might be working in a team list, you have the list set up to alert you when an item assigned to you is added or amended, so as soon as you add or amend an item yourself an alert email pings through to your inbox. Completely unnecessary inbox clutter.

So, lets switch off those annoying “alerts to myself” – has to be an easy one click operation, right?

Wrong!

What we want to do is “not send alerts to me, for items assigned to me, when I have created or amended an item myself”

So, lets have a look at a Task List first:

OK, so that’s fine, just select “Alert Me “  from the “List Actions” drop down and then from “Send me an alert when”  we need to select the “Someone else changes an item assigned to me” option.  Nice and easy.

So now lets look at a Project Tasks list:

Oh dear, the option we need “Send Alert when Someone else changes an item assigned to me” simply doesn’t exist.  Even though there is an “assigned to” column in the list.

It’s the same story with any other list – there is no simply one click mechanism to turn off alerts to yourself.

So how do we do this then?

Well you need to set up a filtered view.

Call it something like; “My Items, Modified by others”.

Set up the filter so the Assigned to” column is equal to [Me] and the “Modified by” column is not equal to [Me].  Like this:

Then, when you go to set up your Alert you get this option:

So, it’s do-able, but its a bit of a hassle.  In order to simply switch off alerts to yourself, for items assigned to you that you have just created or amended you need to create a filtered view which you wouldn’t really need for any other reason. And the alert will have to be set up individually for each user of the list who needs this functionality.

This annoying little glitch doesn’t just apply to SharePoint out of the box alerts, as far as we are aware you will also have the same problem in all the 3rd party alert enhancement tools on the market.

So for our Reminder we decided to eliminate the problem:

Ticking the “Don’t email the last modifier” box will solve the problem in one click, for everyone on the list.  We hope it makes you working day just a little bit easier.

This feature comes with newly released Reminder v1.7.6.

Related posts:

1. Tip – Sending an SharePoint email Alert when a Task is completed This post shows you how to set up a SharePoint...
2. 5 Things you never knew you couldn’t do with SharePoint Alerts SharePoint Alerts: an overview of capabilities, limitations and enhancements offered...
3. SharePoint Alerts not working? This is one of the most common questions posed...

Its very easy using the Filter feature of SharePoint views to show only items completed in the last 30 days or items due in the next X days; for example :-

Completed >= [Today]-30

On the Advanced SharePoint View and Filter techniques post Ed asked how you could filter for the current calendar month rather than a rolling 30 day period (for example all tasks due this calendar month).

Like all great questions it seemed simple enough – something like only showing items where the Month and Year of the due date = the Month and Year of the current date.

Alas, we can’t use [Today] in calculated columns and we can’t use functions like Month([Due Date]) in the filter – so this approach will not work.

The solution is to turn this on its head – its a bit weird, so bear with me!

We need to have two calculated fields, one showing the first day of the month that the due date is in and one showing the last day of the month that the due date is in.

We can then use the filter to show only records where

[Today] >= First Day Of Month

AND

[Today] <= Last Day Of Month

So looking at this in graphical form we have :-

Timeline

• In this diagram the current date is 15th Nov (the orange dotted line).
• Task 1 & 2 should be shown if the current date [Today] is in between the first and the last day of November (the blue line)
• Task 3 will not be shown until [Today] is between the first and the last day of December (the blue line)

To put this into SharePoint open your list, click Settings > List settings > Create Column and setup the following two columns. The first column will be called something like Start of Month Set the column type to Calculated and the data type to Date only Uncheck the ‘Add to default view’ button as we want these columns to stay behind the scenes The Start of Month column formula should be     =DATE(YEAR([Due Date]), MONTH([Due Date]), 1) The End of Month formula :- =DATE(YEAR([Due Date]), MONTH([Due Date])+1,1)-1 (Which is the first day of next month - 1)

View a few records to check the formula is working OK and you see the correct dates.

Now create a new view, call it something like “Due This Month” and setup the filter for Start of Month is less than or equal to [Today] AND End of Month is greater than or equal to [Today]

Further tips

You can use this with date fields other than [Due Date] – e.g. [Created] for items created in the current month, [Modified] for items well… urm… modified in the current month!

Using the same technique you can also use the following formula

The current week (Sunday to Saturday inclusive)

 Start Week =[Due Date] - WEEKDAY([Due Date]) +1
 End Week   =[Due Date] +7 - WEEKDAY([Due Date])

The previous month

 Start Month =DATE(YEAR([Due Date]), MONTH([Due Date])+1, 1)
 End Month   =DATE(YEAR([Due Date]), MONTH([Due Date])+2,1)-1

The next month

 Start Month =DATE(YEAR([Due Date]), MONTH([Due Date])-1, 1)
 End Month   =DATE(YEAR([Due Date]), MONTH([Due Date]),1)-1

The current year

 Start Year =DATE(YEAR([Due Date]),1,1)
 End Year   =DATE(YEAR([Due Date]),12,31)

Edit

I should make clear that this technique will not work correctly on Event lists with recurring event as SharePoint only records the start time of the first event, not each occurrence in the series.

References

• Date and time functions

Related posts:

1. The … ehem… Truth about using [Today] in SharePoint Filters This post looks at the different requirement for using [Today]...
2. Advanced SharePoint View and Filter techniques Advanced SharePoint view and filter techniques focusing on the task...
3. Using [Today] in SharePoint calculated default values You can't use Today in SharePoint calculated columns but you...