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Posts Tagged ‘SharePoint’

SPBiz – SharePoint conference for Business and Power Users!

Date:June 9th, 2015 Author:Ryan Tags: Conference, Office 365, SharePoint, Tip, Training
Category: SharePoint Ideas, SharePoint Online / 365 / Cloud, Training Comments:3 ;

As with any technology a successfully SharePoint implementation relies just as much on the business and ‘softer’ user adoption skills as the technical aspects. Which is why I’ve always found it strange that there are huge amounts of great technical resources (books, examples, best-practices, blogs, conferences etc) but far less aimed at business and power users.

The free on-line SPBiz conference is going to balance this a little with its focus on the needs of SharePoint Business and Power Users. There is still some great technical content in there but the focus is on empowering the less technical audience with resources to get things done and make SharePoint a success.

Just some of the sessions at SPBiz!

Create a GTD Dashboard in Office 365 to “Get Things Done”
Want to use SharePoint for internal communications?
Secrets of Successful SharePoint Intranets
How to build a knowledge sharing culture
Strategies to Deliver Successful Employee Portals
Leverage SharePoint 2013 for Better Collaborative Project Management
How to be productive with Office 365
Change business processes into easy SharePoint workflows
Find out about the best “no-code” solutions for SharePoint
SharePoint Governance 101

June 17th and 18th – Free and Online.

Register Today for free or browse the Agenda for Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th.

New version of SharePoint Reminder – corrects a problem caused by Chrome v37

Date:October 27th, 2014 Author:Ryan Tags: Chrome v37, New Version, Reminder, SharePoint, Web Part
Category: SharePoint Reminder Comments:0 ;

A new version (1.9.6) of Reminder for SharePoint which enables date based email Alerts is available.

The main change in this version is to make it compatible with Google Chrome v37. Controversially Google removed a feature (showModalDialog) that has been included in most browsers since 1994 and is still part of the latest HTML5 specification.

We’ve also added

Improved compatibility with custom master pages or other controls that use jQuery and the ability stop reminder including jQuery on a page that already has it. (options under the Support tab).
Reduced storage requirements for state data to support large lists
Configurable Web Part processing timeouts (for large lists)
A correction to an error that occurred if you use List and View name with angle brackets in the title.

To upgrade simply download and install the latest trial version – your license key will be picked up during the upgrade and all your settings will be saved.

Warning – Once you’ve upgraded to v1.9.6 or above you can’t rollback to a version older than 1.9.6.

SharePoint – wildcard / free text searching the List View web part

Date:May 30th, 2014 Author:Ryan Tags: Filter, SharePoint, SharePoint Designer
Category: Filter, FilterPoint Web Part, SharePoint Development Comments:8 ;

It’s a common requirement to be able to do wildcard free text searches on SharePoint lists.

Whilst you can’t do wildcard or complex Boolean search (that’s what the search system is for) you can get close with a contains search. Thus searching for “Acme” will return “ACME Construction” and “Big ACME Rentals” but not “Rent-A-Crane”

It’s not easy though, and does require SharePoint Designer and a Filter Provider such as our FilterPoint product.

Filter Providers and Filter Consumers.

In SharePoint you have

Filter Providers (like FilterPoint or SharePoint Enterprises own filter web parts)
Filter Consumers (like the List View web part or other web parts such as our PivotPoint).

The Filter Provider sends the filter you’ve entered (e.g. “Customer” and “Acme”) but it’s entirely up to the Filter Consumer what it does with that filter.

This means that if you want to do things like Date Ranges, wildcard filtering using “Contains” operations you have to set those options on the Filter Consumer.

Our products (PivotPoint, Planner etc) have options to allow you to easily set what to do with the incoming filters, but SharePoints built in List View web part does not.

Using “Contains” filters to do free text search in FilterPoint.

We’re going to use SharePoint Designer to setup Parameters and Filters in the List View Web Part (LVWP) so we can do wildcard type filtering.

(It’s a limitation of SharePoint that you can’t do this without SharePoint Designer – sorry!)

First go to the web part page that has your list (or create a new, empty web part page and add your list to it).

In our example we’ve got a list of Customers with the customer name in the Title field.

Customers List

Open this page in SharePoint Designers edit view.

(Depending on what type of page this is will invoice different steps – see these tips for more help on using SharePoint Designer or the online manual for SharePoint Designer)

Once in the edit view, click anywhere List, then click on the Parameters icon on the Ribbon (under Options)
If you’re using SharePoint Designer 2013 you will have to select the List View web part differently as the design view has been removed – follow the instructions and then continue

SharePoint Designer List Parameters

In the Data View Parameters window :-
- Click New Parameter,
- In the Name box put Customer_Search.
- (You can use whatever name you want here but it needs to be consistent across the next few steps, also note an underscore, no spaces!)
- Change Parameter Source to Form
- Change Form Field to Customer_Search
- Click OK

SharePoint Desinger - add parameter

Now select Filter from the Ribbon (top left of the edit page view) to open the Filter Criteria window

SharePoint Designer - filter criteria

Choose
- The field name you want to filter on – in our case the customers’ names are in the Title field.
- Set the Comparison operator to Contains (this means that searching for ACME will return “ACME Corporation “or “Big ACME rentals” etc.)
- Set Value to be the parameter we created above – Customer_Search.
- Click OK

We’re done with SharePoint Designer (SPD) now so you can hit save and close SPD.

Open the page you’ve been working with in the browser – notice that the list won’t be displaying any results as we’re not passing in anything to our Contains Parameter.

Edit the page and add the Filter Point web part (or another FilterProvider web part of your choosing)

FilterPoint web part added

Select the Web Part menu (button on top right highlighted) and then Connections > Provide Filter To > Customers (or whatever your list is called.

Connect FilterPoint to customers list

On the next dialog box select Get Parameters From and then Finish

Web Part Connection get parameters from

Right – we’ve added a Parameter and a Contains Filter to the List view and connected the FitlerPoint web part to the List View, nearly there!
Next open FilterPoint’s configuration toolpane

FilterPoint - edit web part

Select New and enter a label such as Customer
Set the Filter Style to “Free Text”
Set the Field Name to From the connected web part and choose the parameter that you set above – in our case Customer_Search.

Click OK and you’re finally done.

(For more info on configuring FilterPoint see the manual)

Searching for “acme” or “rent” will now return any customer that has that string in their name :-

A couple of points to note :-

You can’t do complex searches like “acme AND rent” or “Rent*Crane” – just Contains or Begins With searches.
If you want to setup additional filters then once you’ve connected the web parts in “Get Parameters” mode (rather than the normal “Get Filter Values” mode) you will have to repeat the above steps to create Parameters and Filters in the List for each filter. It’s a pain but a limitation of SharePoint.
If you do add additional Parameters and Filters be sure to set the And/Or operator correctly – for most use cases you will want And.

SharePoint Designer 2013 – How to modify List View web part filters and parameters

Date:May 30th, 2014 Author:Ryan Tags: Filter, SharePoint, SharePoint 2013, SharePoint Designer
Category: Filter, FilterPoint Web Part, General, SharePoint Development, SharePoint Ideas Comments:18 ;

SharePoint Designer is especially useful for things like setting up complex filters and parameters for List View web parts like ‘wildcard’ searches and ‘before or after a date’ filters.

In SharePoint Designer 2013 (SPD 2013) the “Design View” was (controversially) removed so now it’s a little harder to use as you have to wade through some X/HTML soup. There is also a bit of a wicked bug that’s going to trip you up as well so in this post I am going to give a few tips on how get to the Parameters and Filters options in the ribbon menu.

SharePoint Desinger 2013 - Filter and Parameters

Note –this post is NOT a tutorial on how to use SharePoint Designer (its complex and worth a whole book in itself) but just a few tips for those already familiar with using SPD on how to do use the 2013 version. It won’t put back all you’ve lost, just allow you to access the Parameter & Filter options.

Missing Designer View and finding the List View Web Part

When you edit a page the most obvious difference in SPD 2013 is that you don’t get a Design View (the WYSIWYG view that allows you to see how the page will look whilst editing it). Instead you’ve only got the code view and you’re going to have to work through some angle bracket gibberish!

You’re looking for the code that defines the list view – it starts with <WebPartPages:XsltListViewWebPart and ends with </WebPartPages:XsltListViewWebPart> (pink in the pic here).

SharePoint Designer 2013 - how to find List View Web Part LVWP in code view

But save your eyes! Just search (CTRL+F) for XsltListViewWebPart! If the cursor is between the two XsltListViewWebPart tags then this is the same as clicking on the List in the old Design / Split view.

(If there are more than one List View on the page you will have to figure out which is which by the position of the web part in the page or look for the URL listed in TitleUrl, DetailLink or Url)

Getting the List View Tools options to show in the Ribbon

After putting the text cursor (or clicking) in the code that makes up the List View web part the ribbon should show the List View Tools option.

Except… there is a wicked bug in SPD 2013 at the time of writing that means the Ribbon doesn’t update to show the Options menu (unless you’ve turned off Server Rendering).

The trick (given to me by MdMazzotti) is to right click on XsltListViewWebPart then select Tag Properties and then click OK without clicking anything SPD - Tag Properties

You will now have access to the List View Tools > Options ribbon and the Filter and Parameters button (see picture at the top of this page)

You can view these steps in a video :-

TeamTime 2: SharePoint time tracking reborn

Date:July 24th, 2013 Author:Stuart Pegg Tags: Release, SharePoint, Teamtime, Timesheet, Update
Category: SharePoint TeamTime, SharePoint Timesheets Comments:0 ;

SharePoint TeamTime version 2 has just been released! Time tracking in SharePoint is now a faster, cleaner, and more customizable experience.

Here are some of the features you’ll see in this new version:

A brand new theme
Archiving old data
Settings for individual users
and more …

New Theme

We’ve worked with our designers to produce a simple clean interface to keep the focus on what matters: Tracking and reporting on your teams’ time.

Archiving

Old data slowing your site down? Archive it away to improve performance. Don’t worry, you can still view the archive’s Reports and Analysis, as well as pulling it into an Overview site.

TeamTime Manual: Archiving

User Settings

Different people work on different projects, have different working days or hours, and different approvers. Now you can configure all these settings and more on a per-user basis.

TeamTime Manual: Users

More!

Here are some more of the new features we’ve added:

Cost Reports: View and export detailed reports on your teams’ costs
Change the week start: Don’t start work on a Monday? Now your site can match your working week.
Dates on the timesheet: Avoid confusion by displaying the day’s date on the timesheet
Hide custom columns: Don’t want to see a custom column in a certain site? Now you can hide it.

Try it out!

Give our 30 day free trial a go:

How do I upgrade?

If you’re already using TeamTime version 1 and have Premium Support, then upgrading is simply a matter of installing the new version and sending us your new Installation Code (as well as your old License Key).

Similarly, if you have purchased TeamTime version 1 in the past 90 days, then we’re happy to upgrade you free of charge.

You can contact us at [email protected]

New version of PivotPoint – chart axis controls

Date:June 13th, 2013 Author:Ryan Tags: New Version, PivotPoint, SharePoint
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

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 :-

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.

More details are in the online manual.

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

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:

Highlighter 1.6: More options, less buttons

Date:October 9th, 2012 Author:Stuart Pegg Tags: Highlighting, SharePoint, SharePoint Highlighter, Update
Category: Highlighter Comments:0 ;

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 Datasheet FAQ

Date:October 5th, 2012 Author:Stuart Pegg Tags: Datasheet, FAQ, SharePoint
Category: General, Training Comments:3 ;

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.