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Posts Tagged ‘Countdown’

Turn A SharePoint Task List Into A Task Master

Date:October 19th, 2012 Author:Stuart Pegg Tags: Countdown, Filter, Graphs, Highlighting, SharePoint, SharePoint alerts, Task list
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:

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:

How to create a Countdown in a SharePoint list

Date:May 17th, 2011 Author:Stuart Pegg Tags: Countdown, Highlighter, Javascript, SharePoint, SharePoint Development, SharePoint Highlighter
Category: Highlighter, SharePoint Development, SharePoint Free Tools, Training Comments:0 ;

If you’ve got a list containing important dates (such as the above example), it’s very useful to be able to easily see how long is left before that date, or how long since it has passed. Unfortunately basing a calculated column on the current date isn’t supported by SharePoint natively, as discussed in my previous article: How to use [Today] in a SharePoint list

So how can we work around this shortcoming without having to wave signs and shout outside Microsoft’s offices? The are a few options available to us:

JavaScript: Use a Content Editor Web Part.
Designer: Create a custom view in SharePoint Designer.
Code: Make your own custom field type from scratch.
SharePoint Highlighter: Buy our custom field type.

JavaScript

Since SharePoint is so uncooperative about using the current date on the server side (i.e. with a calculated column), we can wait until the information gets to our browser and fix it there with JavaScript.

We can get JavaScript onto a page using a Content Editor Web Part, which is added just like any other web part. Christophe at Path to SharePoint has put together a script that displays the date difference on hover, that can be modified slightly to display just the countdown: Countdowns – A second method

Adding a CEWP to each page your list is displayed on can become quite arduous if it’s displayed in a lot of places. In addition to this, information in a CEWP is quite vulnerable to accidental edits, as they are accessible to any user that can edit page content.

Designer

SharePoint Designer is a free and powerful tool from Microsoft for customizing SharePoint. Unfortunately, because it can do so much, its use is often frowned upon by site administrators (and sometimes even banned).

If you’re lucky enough to be allowed to use it, then (in an unusual twist) Christophe may once again be the person to look to. In a break from his many and various JavaScript solutions he’s put together a Designer solution for this problem too: A countdown for tasks lists

As with the JavaScript solution above, the Designer changes will have to be made on each view web part you want to see the countdown on, but fortunately the changes can only be overridden by someone else using Designer, or an administrator.

Code

If you already have the backbone of a custom field type coded, then adding the XSLT to display this in 2010 should be reasonably straightforward. Alternatively this can be done within the custom field type class.

If you’re using 2007, then CAML rendering unfortunately fails you here, and it’s necessary to use a JavaScript workaround in one form or another.

Creating a custom field type from scratch for this sole purpose is probably going to be remarkably costly (in terms of time). Actually making the foundations of a custom field type is a bit of an investment, but thankfully Microsoft has put together a walkthrough to at least help you get started.

The benefit of using this method is that columns created from a field type are displayed on every page without having to add any additional code to the page itself.

SharePoint Highlighter

Of course, it is possible to get all the benefits of a custom field type with much less pain: Buy a commercial solution.

If you have a glance at out handy product comparison, you can see the wealth of products we managed to find that offer this functionality. So far that grand total is… One: SharePoint Highlighter.

So if you’re looking for a commercial solution it looks like we’re the only option. If you know otherwise then please do tell us; but for the time being we’ll cheerfully carry on being the front-runner in this one horse race.