Home - Laura Rogers @WonderLaura

3/9/2010

Word 2007 Integration Tidbits

Today when I tweeted about the ability in Word to visually compare multiple versions of a document, I was surprised at the number of people who weren’t aware of this feature. So, this post is a quick step-by-step on a couple of cool things you can do with SharePoint 2007 and Microsoft Word 2007 integration.

Compare versions
Built in site columns related to Office files

Versioning

When versioning has been turned on in a document library’s versioning settings, you have the ability to not only view a list of versions from SharePoint in the browser, but you can view versions and visually compare them from within Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010. Here’s how:

Open a Word document that exists in a SharePoint document library with versioning turned on.
Click the <Review> tab in Word. (in the ribbon at the top)
Click the Compare button.
See that there are multiple options at this point. You can not only compare versions to each other, but you can COMBINE revisions from multiple versions… into one single document.
Click the <Specific Version> button.
See the list of versions, which is the same list you’d see from SharePoint.
Click the <More> button at the bottom, to get even more options. You can compare WHAT in the documents gets compared!
Click to select a previous version, and then click the <Compare> button.
Now you’ll see the two documents side-by-side, with a list of all the differences. If you don’t see both on the screen, click the <Show Source Documents> button in the ribbon.

Default Document Site Columns

When looking at the list of default site columns in a SharePoint site, you may have noticed some in a group called “Core Document Columns”. Here’s how you can put a couple of those (Author & Keywords) to use, and how they inherently integrate with Office files!

In a document library, go to Document Library Settings
Click “Add from existing site columns”
From the “Core Document Columns” group, select Author and Keywords, Add them to the right, and click OK
What does this do? Try it out. Upload a new document to the library. Check it out, the Author field automatically defaults to the name of the person who originally created the document in Word. Click OK.
What about the keywords? Next step is to go ahead and open the file in Word, in edit mode. Click <File> and <Save As>.
See in the above screenshot. There’s the “Tags” text box. Type a couple of keywords in there, separated by semicolons, and click Save.
Go back to the document library in SharePoint. Notice that the keywords field is now filled in with the tags that you added in Word.

If you’re not familiar with this whole “tagging” thing, it’s definitely a concept that you’ll see more and more of, especially in SharePoint 2010. May as well start using it in 2007, and ramp up! ;-)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Microsoft Office,Microsoft Word,Integration,versioning,tagging

Posted at 4:16 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: MS Office | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

3/3/2010

Travel Request Workflow in SharePoint Designer

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of speaking at SharePoint Saturday in New Orleans, my home town. Good times were had by all! One of the presentations that I did is called “SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflow: A Case Study”. In this session, I referred to a workflow that I had created back in the old days of SharePoint Designer 2007. I compared the old workflow interface to the new one in SharePoint Designer 2010, and talked about how the same workflow would be accomplished differently in the new version.

Back in June of 2009, I put together this “Travel Request” workflow, and did a half hour recording of the process of creating it. The idea behind this recording was to compare a SharePoint Designer workflow to other 3rd party SharePoint workflow products. I created the workflow in SPD, and then Chris Geier of K2 created the same workflow using a K2 workflow product. We invited other vendors to weigh in, but they did not.

Here is the link to the 30 minute screencast of my travel request workflow. (SPD 2007)

Here is the link to the PDF of full documentation screenshots of my workflow.

Here is the PDF of the presentation I did in New Orleans. (SPD 2010)

Note that the 2010 presentation itself was mostly a demonstration, so the slides by themselves are probably not very useful.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,workflows,sharepoint designer

Posted at 3:28 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: workflows | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/21/2010

Asynchronous Update in SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2010, we can now set up asynchronous updates on lists, libraries and other data views. Basically, this means that instead of users having to refresh the browser to see any changes to data on the screen, asynchronous updates can be used to either display a refresh button right on the list, or set it up to refresh automatically at an interval.

There are a couple of different ways to set up asynchronous updates:

From within the browser
From within SharePoint Designer 2010

From Within the Browser

It’s all about the web part properties. Go to the web part properties of a list view web part, and expand the AJAX Options section.

CropperCapture[1]

See in this screenshot that you can enable the asynchronous update. If you’d like end users to be able to click a button to refresh the data, choose “Show Manual Refresh Button”. There is also an option to automatically refresh the data in the web part at a certain interval. This means that if a user navigates to the web page and leaves it up in the browser all day, they will continue to see live data without having to use F5 to refresh the site.

When “Show manual refresh button” or “enable asynchronous automatic refresh” options are checked, the first option to “Enable asynchronous update” will automatically be selected when the web part properties are saved.

Enable Asynchronous Load can be selected independently of the Asynchronous update. With this option, data is requested from the server and loaded in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. The resulting behavior? When navigating to the page in SharePoint, everything else on the page will load, but it won’t wait for this web part. There will be a second or two (depending on network speeds and the amount of data) that you will see this GIF that indicates that the data is loading.

GEARS_AN

Since these are all web part properties, they can be set on any of your list view web parts, and remember that ALL regular views of lists are also web part pages. Here’s how to change the web part settings on a list view… it’s not going to be in the “Modify View” settings.

Navigate to your list or library’s default view by clicking the name of it in the quick launch (such as AllItems.aspx).
At the top left, choose <Site Actions> and choose <Edit Page>.
At the top right of the web part, in this case “Shared Documents”, click the drop-down and choose Edit Web Part.
Then that’s where you then expand the AJAX Options section as shown above.

From Within SharePoint Designer 2010

Asynchronous update can also be configured on any data view web part from within SharePoint Designer. When you open your list view or data view page and click to put your cursor anywhere inside the data view part of the page, the contextual ribbon will then display 4 tabs in a “List View Tools” section. On the Options tab, there’s a section with all of the settings you’ll need. Check the box next to “Asynchronous Update” in order to make the other two options enabled.

Note that each time you set up asynchronous update on web parts, there will be hits to the server each time the refresh is done. Just something to consider in planning… don’t go crazy with this feature.

Technorati Tags: DVWP,SharePoint 2010,Microsoft SharePoint,Asynchronous,web parts

Posted at 9:04 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: Web Parts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

1/29/2010

Using Content Types as Statuses

Today I’m going to show an interesting way that you can use SharePoint content types. First, I’ll show you what the end result looks like, which will help explain the concept of using content types as statuses.

Statuses? I’m referring to a field in any kind of list, that is used to indicate the status level of a list item, such as a Task list. There is a built in field in a task list that contains a field called status, with levels like In Progress, Completed, etc. In this example, we have a patient admissions system as a SharePoint list. There are three different stages that a patient goes through in this list. They’re admitted, then they’re considered a current patient, and then they’re discharged from the hospital.

A requirement of this example patient list, is that for each “status level”, there are different fields that need to be filled out in the form. This is where content types can be quite useful. Here are screenshots of the end result of this example. Notice the “Content Type” drop-down box on each one, and the fields in each form… they’re different.

Notice that not only are the displayed fields different, but the required fields are also different at every step. This is all done using out of the box functionality in WSS or MOSS, and here’s how:

First, in planning, put together a spreadsheet that defines the list of all the fields (columns) that will exist in the SharePoint list, so that it can be determined which field needs to be in each status as “Optional”, “Required” or “Hidden”. It will look something like this (for time’s sake, I’m only entering four fields):

FIELD	Admission	Current Patient	Discharge
Admit Date	Required	Optional	Hidden
Case Manager	Optional	Optional	Optional
Discharge Date	Hidden	Optional	Required
Discharge To	Hidden	Hidden	Required

In the chart above, you can see that depending on what’s going on with the patient, certain fields are required or hidden. Here’s how to go about setting this type of list up on your site once the planning has been done. As I go through these steps, I’d like to point out that I’ve been through and messed up this process many many many times, and some of these steps need to be done in a certain order, or it can just end up getting hosed up and can be extremely time consuming.

Note that these next steps where we create the site columns and content types can be done in different order. Create all the site columns first or the content types first. I’m just choosing to create the content types first here.

A “master” content type is created first. In Site Settings and go to Site Content types. Click the <Create> button. Name it something appropriate. In this case I called it “Case Mgmt All”.
Since ultimately the type of list I’ll be using for this will just be a custom list, I’m going to pick “List Content Types” and Item as the parent for this first one, and I’m choosing to create a new group, which is just how it’s listed on the page with all the other content types:
Next, create each of the other status levels as content types. I chose to put numbers (1-3) in front of the names of each of mine, just so they’d be displayed in that order. Click the create button for the next one. Pick the parent type that was just created, as the parent, and for the group, choose the existing group (that was entered as a new group in step 2):
Repeat step 3 for each of the other status level content types, with the only difference being their names and descriptions. They should all use that first content type as the parent.
The next step is to create a bunch of site columns to associate with the new content types. On the Site Settings page, click Site Columns. Click Create. This is all pretty standard. For the first one, choose to create a new group called Case Mgmt. (we created the group in the content type gallery, and now we’re creating on in the site columns gallery.) Fields that will end up being set as required in all content types can be set as required on this screen also.
Just create all the rest of the columns, just as you would normally, just try and remember to pick your new grouping for each one.
Next is the fun (and sometimes tedious) part, where the site columns are put into content types. Go back to Site Settings and Site Content Types. Click on the name of the parent content type first. In this one, I called it Case Mgmt All.
Click “Add from existing site columns”
From the drop-down box, select the name of the column grouping that was created in step five, which will filter the list by only the pertinent columns. If you missed one or two, and forgot to place them in the new grouping when they were created, they won’t show here (I’ve done this many times) ;-)
Select all of the column names on the left, and click to ADD them to the right and click OK.
Now, notice that when back in the site gallery, as you look through each of your different status content types, they will each contain ALL of the fields that were just added to the parent!
<golf clap>
The next step is to go through each of the fields in each of the child content types, and change the ones that have to be required or hidden. I don’t recommend messing with the Title field at all here, or even changing the name of it. Not worth the hassle, we’ll do that later, but just keep in mind what it should be called. In this case, it’s “Patient Name”.
If the columns need to be re-ordered, I recommend doing it at the parent content type level first, and the children will inherit that order. After that, the children can still be re-ordered individually.
Just to clarify… Click on the first child content type, in this case it’s “Admissions”. Click on a field that should be set as required, and change it to Required, as so. Do this throughout all content types, for the required fields:
Note that fields can be set as required in the parent content type also, which will force that field to be required in all of the children.
For the fields that can be hidden from each content type, they can be Removed from those children. Do NOT remove any fields from the parent, as it will then be removed from all the children, and do not set any of the parent’s columns to hidden, either. So, look back at that original table you created, and for each of the ones that can be hidden in each content type, you can click the Remove button. I’ll show you a benefit of that compared to simply changing them to “Hidden”… in a minute.
In the Content type gallery, now when I click on my first content type called “1 Admissions”, this is what the screen looks like. Notice that a couple of the columns are required, and several have been removed.
Now it is time to create a new SharePoint list to put these content types in. For mine, I create a new custom list on the site, called “Patient List”.
In the list’s settings, go to Advanced Settings, and under “Allow management of Content Types”, change it to Yes.
In the Content Types section on the List Settings page, click “Add from existing site content types”. In the drop-down, pick that custom content type grouping you created in step 2, to filter the list. Select ONLY the one parent content type and click Add and click OK.
Since this is a custom list I’m using, the default content type that was already in my list, is called “Item”. Click the name of the item content type, and click “Delete this content type”.
Now the other, child content types can be added to the list. Click “Add from existing site content types”, choose your custom group in the drop-down, and then select all the rest of the content types and add them. Click OK.
Go ahead and rename the Title field to something else if need be, here at the list settings level. Optional.
Notice something cool in the list settings now. Next to each column name is a list of all of the content types that it exists in! In step 13 when I mentioned that removing the columns was better than hiding them, this is why. When they’re only set to hidden, then every content type shows up next to every field in this screen, and there isn’t a quick way to be able to see what lives where.
Next, it’s time to just make sure that the different status levels show in the desired order in the form. Still on the list settings screen, click “Change new button order and default content type”. Order the “statuses” as desired. If you uncheck any of them here, they will not only be hidden from the New drop-down button but also from within the edit form of any item.

All done. Now when you create new items in the list, only the fields in the first content type will be available to fill out. Then, you can edit an item and change the content type, to dynamically see the fields in the form change. This solution isn’t going to be for everyone. For example, you may not want the users to be able to switch between content types like that. One thing I’ve done for that kind of situation, is to uncheck all but the first content type (in that last screenshot). The, the content types are only changed via a workflow. For example, once a certain check box is checked or field is filled out, then the content type is changed by the workflow. then, the next time the users open the item, it will show the fields from that other content type. Not sure how well I explained that last part… maybe I’ll have to write a whole other blog post for that.

Click here to view an 8 minute screencast of this whole process.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,content types,WSS,site columns

Posted at 2:42 PM by Laura Rogers | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (22)

1/20/2010

Working With Data in SharePoint Designer 2010

The SharePoint eMagazine 2010 Special is out! I wrote an article about the new Data View Web Part interface in SharePoint 2010. Here’s the link to download the PDF of this magazine:

Free DIWUG SharePoint eMagazine 2010 special

Mirjam van Olst and Marianne van Wanrooij did an amazing job putting this magazine together, and I’m humbled to be among such a list of esteemed SharePoint gurus. Check it out, and enjoy learning about all about SharePoint 2010.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,data view web part

Posted at 11:57 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: Web Parts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/19/2010

Trying Out Visio Services in SharePoint 2010

Task lists in SharePoint 2010 have a button on the List tab in the ribbon’s Connect & Export section, called Create Visio Diagram. Thought I’d try this out, and see what I could mock up using this, so I created several tasks in a list, and clicked the button. It’s the one on the right of “Sync to SharePoint Workspace”, that looks like a little diagram.

Clicking the Create Visio Diagram button launches Visio 2010 and automatically creates a diagram with the following tabs:

Tasks Status
Workload Distribution
Incomplete Tasks by Assigned To
And if there are workflows on the site that utilize this Tasks list, there will be a tab called “Workflow Tasks Status”

Interesting. This generated diagram seems to be static, though, meaning changes in the data won’t change the diagram. Here are the steps to make the data dynamic:

In Visio, click the <Data> tab in the ribbon. Click <Link Data to Shapes>
In the Data Selector, choose “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Services List”. Click <Next>
Enter the URL for your SharePoint site. Not a URL to a list, just the root of the site that the tasks list is in. Click <Next>
On the Select a List screen, choose “Tasks” and click <Next> and click <Finish>
Now a list of the tasks will be displayed at the bottom of the diagram in Visio. You now have the ability to manually drag each item in the task list up to the matching item in the diagram. The other way to match up the data is AUTOMATICALLY.
On the Data tab in the ribbon, click the <Automatically Link> button.
A wizard will pop up. “All shapes on this page” will be selected. Click <Next>.
The next screen will allow you to pick the field to match up the items in the diagram with the items in the Tasks list. By default, ID is selected. That’s a good one, since it’s unique. Click <Next> and then click <Finish>
Now, in the data table at the bottom of the diagram, there will be a little link icon next to each task row item, as so:
In Visio, click the <File> button, choose the <Share> tab on the left, and then click <Save to SharePoint> in the middle. In this demo, I chose a document library on the same site as the tasks list. Choose Web Drawing, and then click <Save to SharePoint>
When prompted, a pertinent name for this diagram would be “Tasks”.

Now, the data and the diagram are linked, so that viewing the diagram will always represent the current information in the tasks list. Nice!

The next thing to try out is the Visio Web Access web part with this task list, and see what happens when connecting web parts.

On the tasks list (all items view), click <Site Actions> and choose <Edit Page>
In the middle of the page, click <Add a web part>, choose “Office Client Applications” in the web part categories, choose the Visio Web Access web part, and click <Add>
In the Visio Web Access tool pane, the URL to the Visio diagram is needed, to enter as the “Diagram URL”. Simply click the ellipses next to the Diagram URL text box, to navigate to and select the Tasks.vdw that was just created.

Note that you could just click OK and stop right here, and you would still have a good graphical representation of the tasks in the Visio diagram above the task list. Further steps entail web part connections, for filtering of data… just to get a little more fancy.
For “Shape Data items to make available to Web Part connections”, type ID
Remember when we did that “automatically link” thing and chose the ID as the common field? Well, that’s why we’re using that field here. Click OK in the web part tool pane.
Next is the creation of a web part connection between Just like we’ve always created web part connections, click the little drop-down box at the top right of the Visio web part, choose “Connections”, then “Send Shape Data To”, then TASKS.
For the connection type, choose “Get Filter Values From” and click <Configure>
For the Provider and Consumer field names, choose ID for both. Click <Finish>
(if step 4 above was skipped, ID will not be an option from the Provider)
In the Visio web part, switch over to the Workload Distribution tab, as so:

NOW, on that Workload Distribution tab, when you click on individual tasks, it will automatically filter the tasks list to that one task! See in the screenshot below, I clicked on Molly’s In Progress task, which put a blue box around it and filtered the task list to that one item.

CropperCapture[84]

Also, take a look again at that screenshot at #5 above. Look at all the many different ways that you can connect this Visio Web Access web part to other web parts! Seems like some pretty neat little solutions could be created with Visio incorporated. Also, think about SharePoint workflows, and how they’re now tightly integrated with Visio. I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with creative ways to display the live diagrams of workflows as they’re running!

If you’re interested in reading more about Visio Web Services, Toni Frankola has written a great article for the SDN E-magazine SharePoint 2010 special. The PDF of this magazine can be downloaded here:

http://www.sdn.nl/FreeMagazine

Technorati Tags: Visio Web Services,sharepoint 2010,office integration,diagram

Posted at 10:56 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: Web Parts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

1/15/2010

Social Connector in Outlook 2010

This blog post is about the Social Connector in Outlook 2010 Beta, as it works with SharePoint 2010 Beta and Exchange 2010 Beta. I just wanted to quickly share with you a couple of discoveries of mine as I play with these products.

Environment:

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 are installed on one server, which is also the domain controller
I’ve installed Exchange 2010 on a second server, and went into group policy and set it up so that it allows everyone to log in locally. (so I can take turns logging in as pretend users)
Several pretend “Contoso” users have been created in Active Directory, and their profiles have successfully been imported into SharePoint 2010.
I’ve logged into SharePoint as each of these pretend users, and filled in some profile information, and went through a test Team Site and tagged items, rated items, and made Note Board notes.

In Outlook 2010, there’s a Social Connector that lets you connect to your SharePoint environment. When you select an email, at the bottom of the screen, there are a couple of little icons of gray people. Click that little arrow thingy, and it will expand the People Pane.

Then, click the Add button, as seen here: CropperCapture[67]

This will bring up the screen where you can add social network accounts. Currently in this beta version, it appears as though SharePoint 2010 is the only option. I added the URL to my test environment: http://moss In the future, I believe there will be more options in here, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, etc.

Anyway, the main cool thing I wanted to show you today, is the Newsfeed that I discovered in Outlook 2010. I noticed that listed immediately after my Junk Email folder on the left side, there is a folder called Newsfeed. So I clicked on it to see what the heck it was.

THERE is the newsfeed of all of the activities that I’m following on my MySite in SharePoint!! Your profile on your MySite in SharePoint 2010 lets you follow all of the following activities. Hmmm, I thought the only place the followed activities were displayed was the My Network page on the MySite. Apparently this feed is in Outlook also. Bonus!

This is what it looks like, and you can click the image to get a closer look:

This is the “Molly Clark” mailbox on the Contoso domain. I clicked News Feed on the left. This feed lists all of the activities that Molly is following. When I click on an item, the reading pane shows me the following:

A user named Sean Chai rated a document with a 4 of 5
There is a link to the document, which is called “Test Move.docx”
People Pane: Since Sean has uploaded a picture of himself on his MySite, this picture is displayed here.

The little green plus under Sean’s picture allows you to add him to one of your social networks. The Office icon is a link directly to his MySite. Each time you receive emails in your inbox, you’ll be able to use the plus icon to add people who aren’t already in your social networks.

Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010,Outlook 2010,Exchange 2010,People Pane,social media

Posted at 9:37 AM by Laura Rogers | Category: MS Office | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

1/11/2010

SharePoint Basics – Compressing Image Files

Before I got my gig as a consultant, and I worked a regular day job down in the trenches as a SharePoint Administrator at a large company, one of the things I did every day was look at SharePoint site quotas. We had many site collections, so I was able to closely keep tabs on their sizes.

Users frequently upload inordinately large files to their picture libraries, and don’t realize that these sizes aren’t really necessary just to display some company picnic or other such pictures on their site. When digital cameras are set to 6 megapixels or larger, there can be a default file size of 2 or 3 megabytes. Users tend to simply plug that camera into the computer and just dump everything up to their website, with no compression. Here are the steps to take, in order to compress large image files that have already been uploaded to SharePoint. Note that you should most likely discuss what you’re doing with the end user… just incase they do have a specific reason their files are that large. In most cases, though, they don’t know it.

To look at a site collection’s size, click <Site Settings> at the site collection level, and click <Storage Space Allocation> in the “Site Collection Administration” section. The libraries and lists will automatically be sorted with the largest size on top. The image libraries will have this icon: Click the name of the image library, and quickly look at some files sizes. Click the <View> drop-down box, choose <All Pictures> and choose <Details>. You can even sort by file size to see the largest. If there are files larger than, say 500KB, they are probably good candidates for compression.

Here’s how to compress all the files in a SharePoint Image Library:

Grab the URL to the library by copying it to your clipboard. Don’t copy the part at the end with the Forms\Allitems.aspx.
Open Picture Manager by clicking <Start> <Programs> <Microsoft Office> <Microsoft Office Tools> and <Microsoft Office Picture Manager>
Click the <File> menu, and choose <Add Picture Shortcut…>
In the Folder Name box, paste the URL to your picture library and click <Add>
Now, the image library images will be shown, and there will be a new shortcut under “My Picture Shortcuts” on the left.
Click the <Edit Pictures…> button.
Click to select a single picture, and then click the <Edit> menu and choose <Select All>
Click <Compress Pictures> on the right.
On the Compress Pictures panel, click to select “Web Pages”. This screen will now show the original total size of all the pictures in the library, and the estimated total size when they’re all compressed.
Click OK, and then click to <Save and Close>.
Note that this won’t work on BMP (bitmaps).

Now the images in the library have all been compressed and saved back to the library, and you’ve saved a bit of space on the server. You can train your end users to compress the files before uploading them to SharePoint also, also by using Picture Manager.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Picture Library,Images,compression

Posted at 11:00 AM by Laura Rogers | Category: Documents | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

1/4/2010

Laura’s 2010 Update

2010 update… 2010 the year, as opposed to the version of SharePoint.

This year is going to be great, and I’m looking forward to going to some SharePoint events and also learn more and more about SharePoint 2010. Here’s a little update on some stuff I have coming up. There’s a list of Speaking Engagements on my blog, on the right side, but here’s a more detailed list of upcoming stuff.

Tuesday, January 12th – Birmingham, Alabama SharePoint User Group Meeting

I’ll be speaking on the new social experience in SharePoint 2010. We’re trying to grow our group, so please spread the word if you’re from around here. Let me or @catpaint1 or @LoriGowin know if you’d like to be on the mailing list, or if you’re a vendor who is interested in sponsoring us. Also, we’re always looking for new speakers. You don’t need to do some extravagant PowerPoint presentation. It can be something as simple as a demo of something you’ve been working on, or something cool you figured out how to do.

Follow: @bhamspug @catpaint1 @LoriGowin

Saturday, January 23rd – Virtual SharePoint Saturday EMEA

This is the first virtual SharePoint Saturday, and it is a global event! The site has a list of the parts of the world and associated times. For me in the Central Time Zone, the event starts at 2AM. Wow, I’m dedicated. Please take a look at the site, and there’s a link to register.

Follow: @EUSP @ericharlan, Hash tag: #spsemea

February 10-12 - SharePoint Technology Conference (SPTECHCON) in San Francisco

This one is going to be fantastic! I already wrote a blog post, listing all of the sessions I’ll be teaching. Of the list of sessions, the one I’m looking forward to the most will be the half-day workshop called “Creating Custom Business Solutions”. This is ALL about the data view web part!

First, I’ll be going over the main fundamentals working in SharePoint Designer 2007 with data. Then, the bulk of the afternoon will be demonstrations of custom solutions using the data view web part, and maybe I’ll throw in a little workflow stuff. Then, the last hour or so will be all about SharePoint Designer 2010, with a demo or two, and discussion of what’s new.

If you’re going to this one, note that I’m doing two different presentations about web parts. One is about MOSS 2007, and the other is SharePoint 2010.

Follow: @sptechcon, Hash Tag: #sptechcon

February 27th – SharePoint Saturday New Orleans

This SharePoint Saturday is going to be extra special for me, because New Orleans is my home town! I was born in Metairie, which is a suburb of New Orleans. I grew up in Luling, which is a very small Cajun town across the river from New Orleans. We moved to Baton Rouge when I was 12, and I ended up going to college at LSU (Louisiana State University).

With all that said, I’m excited about taking a trip back home, visiting parents and relatives, and speaking at SharePoint Saturday. Maybe I’ll even run into old friends or schoolmates!

Follow: @spsnola @tiffanywi @cheritnola, Hash Tag: #spsnola

April 19-21 - SharePoint Evolution Conference in London

This conference in London is going to be amazing! It’s put on by Steve Smith / Combined Knowledge, and there is a phenomenal list of speakers to present there. I haven’t been to Europe in at least 15 years, so I’ll be glad to go back and have some further London adventures. Besides myself, other SharePoint911 colleagues who will be presenting are Shane Young and Todd Klindt.

Follow: @stevesmithck Hash Tag: #spevo

In Summary, it’s going to be an exciting first quarter for me. All of these events are on my SharePoint calendar, if you’d like to connect to it or export these events to your calendar.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,New Orleans,SharePoint Saturday,EMEA,SPUG,SPtechcon,spevo

Posted at 2:40 PM by Laura Rogers | Category: conference | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

12/15/2009

SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) Item-Level Formatting

When a data view web part is created in SharePoint Designer 2010, there is a new way of formatting list items. In the SharePoint list’s data view web part, at the item level, there are two options that can be selected, as shown in this screenshot:

Show list item menu
Show link to item

Now, I’ll go into what each of these mean, and how to use them.

Show list item menu

First of all, what is the “list item menu”? That’s the menu that shows as a drop-down box on each item in a SharePoint list. Out of box, each list has a default field that this drop-down box displays on, which is typically the “Title” field. If you’ve ever created a custom list, you will have noticed this default field. It’s been pretty limited in the past, as seen in the following SharePoint 2007 example:

This list was created as a custom list, and the Title field was renamed as the Patient Name. In views, this field is the only one that can be displayed with the “edit menu”, as seen below:

This field is also restricted in that it can only be a single line of text field, with the field type being hard coded.

Flash forward to SharePoint 2010…

Pick ANY field in the data view, select it, click the little chevron next to it, and put a check box next to “show list item menu”. There can even be multiple fields in the same view, with this edit menu attached to them. Gone are the days where that one specific field has to be used in the view, just to get the menu on it.

Show Link To Item

The option to Show Link To Item, is just an easy way of creating a link to open that list item. In this screencast, I show the old SharePoint 2007 way of creating a hyperlink to an item in the data view web part. With this new option, simply select the check-box, and the link to the display form is created, with no further configuration necessary. This can be done on multiple fields in the same view.

What happened to the data view field options that used to exist on the menu for an item in a data view web part, as it was in SharePoint 2007 (as in this screenshot)?

You’ll miss this menu in SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) but here’s how you can find it:

Right-click on the list item, choose format item as, and then choose the desired format type. If the hyperlink needs to be configured to direct to an item link other than the display form (I showed you how to do that one the quick way by using “show link to item”), there are also more hyperlink options here.

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Posted at 11:50 AM by Laura Rogers | Category: Web Parts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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Laura Rogers @WonderLaura