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.

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

Highlighter is now compatible with SharePoint 2013 as of version 1.7.3.

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

With the release of the controversial new SharePoint Designer 2013, has the ever-popular Conditional Formatting option died a death?

Why is SharePoint Designer 2013 controversial?

The bee in everyone’s bonnet is SPD 2013’s lack of a Design View; one of the staple tools of every Designer user. The place to get up to speed on this topic is Marc Anderson’s article: SharePoint Designer 2013’s Missing Design View

How does this effect the Conditional Formatting option?

I asked the same question myself, so I installed SPD 2013 and gave it a try. After clicking, selecting, choosing, and swearing at pretty much every component I came to the conclusion that I was clearly missing something.

I posted on SPSE expecting a quick helpful pointer. Instead I was met by a resounding silence. After a suitable pause, I reposted onto MSDN, only to find that Conditional Formatting on list view web parts doesn’t seem to be supported anymore! Please feel free mock me mercilessly if this isn’t the case.

Of course it’s still possible to use it for other purposes, but formatting list views is the major purposes of that feature; it seems kind of pointless without it.

Is SharePoint Designer 2013 dead too?

It may still be early days, but when initially searching around for an answer, I was struck by how hard it was to find any blog posts about SPD 2013 (other than complaints about the Design View). For comparison, with the release of SPD 2010, the community was positively frothing over with articles and praise.

The same was true when posting on the forums: I leapt into the middle of the mainstream SharePoint 2013 river, expecting to be swept away by all the keen Designer users already trying out all the features. Instead I found myself sat in a rather shallow puddle.

So how can we apply Conditional Formatting in 2013?

Instead of wildly speculating on the popularity of SharePoint 2013’s tools, here are a couple of methods for working around the problem:

XSLT: It’s possible to create your own XSLT template by customising the default main.xsl, and then assigning it to the LVWP. I’ve searched high and low for a guide on how to apply conditional formatting using this method, with no success. Please let me know if you’ve seen such a thing.

Buying a solution: Inevitably the vulturous SharePoint software vendors have swept down on SPD 2013’s dying form, hoping to profit from its misfortune…

Oh! On an unrelated note; did I mention a new 2013-compatible version of SharePoint Highlighter has just been released? 😉

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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:

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

• Task list: Priority and Due Date highlighting (uses Highlighter)
• Home page: Task calendar overview and summary (uses Planner)
• Analysis page: Dashboards, graphs and reporting (uses FilterPoint and PivotPoint)
• Alert page: Configure “Task Overdue” email alerts (uses Reminder)

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.

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
• Name 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:

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 calendar

• 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.

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 Pages

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 Person

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

Filtering

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…
• 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:

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:

• SharePoint Highlighter
• SharePoint Planner
• SharePoint Reminder
• Pentalogic FilterPoint
• Pentalogic PivotPoint

The next version of SharePoint Highlighter has been released, now with more options and less buttons:

Color category

If you liked Highlighter’s icons, but still wanted to see the column values as well –  now you can!

This is now the default for Icon-based highlighter columns (existing columns will remain unchanged). You can pick and choose which you’d like to see simply by customizing your rules.

New color picker

Now you can pick colors faster and with greater flexibility, using our new color picker (courtesy of JSColor).

More icons

Now even more choice of icons. Above are just a few you can use to make your lists stand out. These include a select few from the famous FamFamFam Silk icon set.

Want more icons? See the “How do I add more icon to the picker” section here: Highlighter Manual: Icon Picker

To upgrade

To upgrade to the latest version without losing any settings simply download and install the latest version.

SharePoint’s datasheet is a powerful tool and a source of much trouble: This article is a quick summary of the common problems and their solutions, where possible.

Unfortunately there is rather a lot that is not possible; the datasheet is not like any other part of SharePoint, as it’s produced by an entirely different method. As James Love explains:

Customisations to the Data Sheet View are not supported, as this is generated using the Microsoft Office Access Web Datasheet Component, which renders the grid using the same base engine as the data sheet view that Microsoft Access uses.

So for the vast majority of questions, the answer is simply:

No

This is a list of the common scenarios that are not possible via the datasheet view. Click the numbered links for example questions (and further information):

Can I modify the datasheet using JavaScript/jQuery? [1] [2]

No. The datasheet is not rendered as HTML, so it can’t be edited via JavaScript.

Can I apply Conditional Formatting to the datasheet? [1] [2] [3]

No. The datasheet is not rendered via XSL, so Designer can’t be used to change its rendering.

Can I make my cascading lookup work with the datasheet? [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

No. Editing Custom Field Types is simply not supported in the datasheet:

In SharePoint Foundation, columns based on custom field types are read-only in Datasheet view.

Can I wrap the datasheet column headings onto a second row? [1] [2]

No. To quote Mr. Hammer: "Can’t touch this."

Can I use the datasheet view with BCS (e.g. External Lists)? [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

No. The datasheet view is only configured for displaying SharePoint data and sees through the the SharePoint-like veneer provided by BCS.

Can I use the datasheet in Chrome/FireFox/Safari/64-bit IE? [1] [2] [3]

No. The datasheet requires the use of ActiveX controls: These are only only available on 32-bit versions of Internet Explorer.

Yes

Surprisingly, there are many problems with the datasheet that can be solved:

Can I add the datasheet to a different page? [1] [2]

Yes. Simply add a List View Web Part to the page, and edit it to display a view on the list that’s set to show the datasheet by default.

Can set the datasheet to only allow editing (not adding/deleting items)? [1] [2]

Yes. Edit the users’ list permissions so that they only have access to Edit and View Items.

Can I fix the error "The selected cells are read only"? [1] [2]

Mostly. Here are three possible causes of this:

• Multiline rich-text fields: Switch them to plain text to edit
• Approval is enabled: Disable it
• Metadata fields: Not supported

So this isn’t a very good "Yes", but at least there are workarounds for most of the problems.

Why can’t I open the datasheet view? [1] [2] [3]

This appears to usually be caused by having 64-bit Office installed on the client machine. It can apparently fixed by installing the 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components according to KB 2266203.

Interestingly, if you happen to not have Office at all (because you’re on a server, or writing an article on your home laptop) you may need to install the Microsoft Access 2010 Runtime instead.

Can I completely rewrite the datasheet view? [1]

Apparently yes (see linked question), although I’m not sure you’d want to.