The SharePoint Hillbilly

SharePoint Rant – Please stop doing that!

Mark Rackley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:39:37 GMT

Okay, now that I have a blog, I have a desire/need to write blogs. Sometimes I have nothing technically interesting I’m working on at the moment or I simply don’t have the time to dedicate to a technical post. I am, however, very opinionated and generally let people know what I’m thinking. So, combine the fact that I need to write a blog, don’t have the time for a technical entry, and I’m really opinionated and you get posts like this… so… enjoy…

I’m not going to be saying anything today you hopefully have not heard over and over already, but maybe I can drive the points home a little more or give you a gem or two of knowledge that you didn’t think about before.

Where was I? Oh yeah… All you End Users, Business Analysts, and Project Managers… STOP Doing that!

Please stop trying to customize SharePoint when it may not need customization!

Does anyone else get this complaint A LOT! “I thought you could develop applications faster with SharePoint?”

YOU CAN! Just stop asking for the world every single time. Look, SharePoint offers a lot of GREAT out of the box functionality. Use that, and embrace that and I can get your site out to you in just a few hours. If you start customizing it “Oh… just add this one really small detail…” Well sure, let me crack open Visual Studio and now go through a full software development life cycle.

Now that you have SharePoint, stop, take a moment, and take it into consideration when designing your applications. If you work around what SharePoint offers you out of the box you will get your applications out there MUCH faster!

Really, think about it, how important is feature “x”. Think of the trade offs, I can have my site TODAY if I get rid of feature “x”. Feature “x” can be written and implemented at a later date. I don’t have to wait 2 months for my application? This is not something to complain about, its something very cool! Start doing more NOW… we’ll get you the glitter and extras later. One step at a time people!

Please take advantage of what SharePoint offers you!

Recently a user on a project site had a GREAT idea! “Hey everyone! I uploaded an excel file so we can all keep track of our availability during this project! Please check out the excel spreadsheet from the shared documents when you get a chance and edit it to show your availability! Isn’t this great! Collaboration rocks my world!”

Uh? what? really? Stop doing that! If you create a SharePoint List with the same information as that spreadsheet everyone can edit it without waiting for someone to check it in! Better yet! You can put a Calendar view on that SharePoint list and visibly SEE when people will not be available! Take advantage of what SharePoint offers!

You may have to change the way you think about things.. sorry! SharePoint is NOT just a file share! (some may argue it’s not really a file share at all!)

I’ll take this a step further (entering heavy opinion area here). If you have an Excel spreadsheet that will be a living document for the life cycle of your site then there is a very good chance that it could be a SharePoint list and NOT a shared document. Sure, there are a myriad of reasons why it should NOT be a SharePoint List, but ask yourself this question “Can I make my life and everyone else’s life easier if I make this a SharePoint List?” Think about the views you can get, and you can always export it to an Excel Spreadsheet if you really want to.

This is only one reason of users not REALLY using SharePoint to its potential. Please share others, I can think of a few more off the top of my head, I’m just too lazy to write them down. :)

Please stop whining!

“This is not how I’m used to doing things”

“But it LOOKS like SharePoint”

“I wanted a pie chart!”

“Can’t you just make it do ______ “

Oh stop it! Regardless of what TV has taught you, it’s NOT all about you and you can’t necessarily have it YOUR way. Tough! You can still do your job better and faster with SharePoint. Please come out of your comfort zone for a moment and open your eyes up to the possibilities. At least CONSIDER the fact that maybe your SharePoint Admins, Architects, and Developers actually KNOW what they are talking about!

We are trying to help you. Let us help you. We are trying to make your life easier and give you the tools you need to do your job faster and easier. I’m sorry if the button is not as pretty as you want it.

So……………………

Okay… my rant is sufficiently over until next time. When it comes down to it, the person that can be blamed for the way these users are behaving is staring me right in the face when I look in the mirror. Train your users well. Help them understand what can and can’t be done in SharePoint easily. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is SharePoint, stop trying to make it something else. Sure, I can make it do that, but do you really want to wait 2 months when I can give you this today? When it comes to SharePoint, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is misery, frustration, and stubbornness. True, many users just don’t like change, and to those users I offer a slap to the back of the head and ask them to go back to their VHS tapes, beepers, rotary dial phones, and tape players.

SharePoint can give you a lot of quick wins if you will just stop it. Seriously, just stop it.

Setting SharePoint Form Fields Using Query String Variables Without Using JavaScript

Mark Rackley — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:56:22 GMT

Okay you whiny people… You’ve been bugging me for months now about the JavaScript I had previously posted to automatically populate a SharePoint Form Field based upon a Query String Variable… “It doesn’t work right for me”… “I don’t know how to copy and paste”… “I don’t like JavaScript”… and on and on and on!

Enough already! I get it.. you are lazy like me! There’s nothing wrong with that really… Some of the greatest things in the world were invented by lazy people… naps… cold pizza… foot rests…. wine (think about it.. “oh crap.. I forgot I left my grape juice out.. oh well.. I’m sure it’s still good”). It’s actually a lot more work to be lazy than you think. Us lazy people spend a lot of brain power to try and figure out how to do things faster and with less effort.

Enough already… this typing is taking too much work. Where was I? Oh yes… previous blog post. In my previous blog post on creating a parent/child relationship using SPD there was a section of the blog which contained a chunk of JavaScript. This JavaScript was used in the NewForm.aspx page to automatically set the value of a SharePoint Form field based upon a value in the Query String. I dove into the JavaScript a little more in a later post on Setting SharePoint Form Fields Using JavaScript. However, as I stated earlier, some people were having problems with the JavaScript. Some people had issues getting it to work because they were not placing it in the correct location in their file or they forgot to copy part of the JavaScript or they were confused about how to tweak the JavaScript to make it work for them. One individual just did not want to use JavaScript and wanted another solution. Well… I took this as a challenge. I’m always up for learning something new. So, I wanted to see what I could figure out, and what do you know! I actually got something working. I was able to use SPD and not write a single line of JavaScript to automatically set a SharePoint Form Field based upon a Query String Variable.

If you are following along and want this to work for you, stop right now and go back to my post on creating a parent/child relationship and follow that post up until the section labeled “CREATE A PAGE FOR CREATING A NEW TIME LOG ENTRY AND STORE PARENT’S ID”. You with me? You know where we are at? At this point you have a Issue display page that also shows the corresponding time entries in a list. You also have a link to “Create a new Time Log Entry…” in that list. Clicking that link should take you to the New Item entry page for a time entry with a Query String variable of “IssueID” and a value.

Excellent.. now we can actually start to do something. So, at a very high level we are going to:

1. Create a new page to hold new Time Entry form
2. Insert a Custom List Form on new page
3. Create a parameter that contains the IssueID passed from the Query String
4. Convert the field that is to contain the IssueID to a text box field
5. Set the converted field based upon the Parameter IssueID
6. Make sure it works, then hide the field from Display

Doesn’t sound too hairy I hope? Let’s get to it:

Create a page to hold new Time Entry form

So, first thing we are going to do is create a new page that users will use to enter a new Time Entry. Make sure to create the page in the same site as your Issues and Time Entry lists. If you are a total newb like I was at one point and don’t know how to create a page in SharePoint here is what you need to do:

1. Create a new document library to hold your pages. (Site Actions –> Site Settings –> Site libraries and lists –> Create new content –> Document Library)
2. Give your document library a name (I generally use “Pages” because that’s how I roll).
3. Specify a Document Template of “Web Part page” from the drop down list and click “Create”

4. When list is created click on “New” and create your new page. As far as template layout is concerned, choose whatever floats your boat. Also, name your page “NewTimeEntry” for the purposes of this blog, anything else is fine too if you just want to be a rebel.

Okay! Your new page is now created… now comes the fun parts. Yes.. it IS kinda sad that I consider this fun… you should see me on the weekends.

Insert a Custom List Form on new page

Now that we have our new page let’s open it up in SharePoint Designer.

Fire up SPD and open the site (File->Open Site) containing your issues list, time entry list, and the page we just created.

Open up the page we just created (expand Pages and double click on “NewTimeEntry.aspx”).

Now insert a “Custom List Form” for a New Time Entry:

1. Click in the “Header” area of the design view to get the proper focus on the page.
2. Click Insert->SharePoint Controls->Custom List Form
3. When the pop-up window appears select the Time Entry list as the “List or document library to use for form:”
4. Make sure “Item” is selected for “Content type to use for form” (unless you have a custom content type of course)
5. Make sure the radio button “New item form” is selected and click “OK”

There you go.. you should now see a poorly formatted New Item entry page for your Time Entry:

Go ahead and save your page… #1 rule of SharePoint Designer… “Save Often”.

Before we go any further, let’s go back to the DispForm.aspx for our Issue Page and make our “Create a new Time entry” link point to the page we just created.

Double click on that page to open it up. Click on “Split” or “Code” view and find the link to the “Create a new Time Log entry…” It will look something like:

<td class="ms-vb" colspan="99">
     <a href="../Time/NewForm.aspx?IssueID={$IssueID}" onclick="javascript:this.href = unescapeProperly(escape(this.href)); GoToLink(this); return false;" target="_self" class="ms-alignleft">Create a new Time Log Entry...</a>
</td>

We need to make it point to our new page so replace ‘href="../Time/NewForm.aspx?IssueID={$IssueID}"’ with ‘href="../../Pages/NewTimeEntry.aspx?IssueID={$IssueID}" ’. So the resulting code looks like:

<td class="ms-vb" colspan="99">
     <a href="../../Pages/NewTimeEntry.aspx?IssueID={$IssueID}" onclick="javascript:this.href = unescapeProperly(escape(this.href)); GoToLink(this); return false;" target="_self" class="ms-alignleft">Create a new Time Log Entry...</a>
</td>

Save your page. Okay, so now… if you go to the “Issue” display page and click on the link to “Create a new time log entry” it should take you to our newly created page. Pretty easy? Still with me?

Another important note.. ALWAYS use RELATIVE URLS! Never use FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Names) for your links. You will thank me later.

Create a parameter that contains the IssueID passed from the Query String

Now we need to store the IssueID passed in the Query String and store it in a Parameter our DataFormWebPart can use.

So, go back to your “NewTimeEntry.aspx” page. It’s okay.. I’ll wait…

Open up the “Common Data View Tasks” menu by click on that tiny arrow at the top right of your DataFormWebPart and click on “Parameters…”

Click on the “New Parameter” button. Give your Parameter the name “ParamIssueID”. The Parameter Source is “Query String” and the Query String Variable is “IssueID”. When all is said and done your parameter should look like the following:

Click “OK”.

Convert the field that is to contain the IssueID to a text box field

We now need to get that Parameter Value stored in the IssueID field. The only problem is, we can’t do it with the field in the current state. Go ahead and try, if you try to set the IssueID’s value to the parameter value you get an error.. SPD won’t let you do it.

What we need to do is convert the IssueID field to a text field and then we can store the value. In order to convert the Lookup field to a text field do the following:

Right click on the “IssueID” field and select “Format Item as->Text Box”.

Why? How hard did you think it was going to be?

Set the converted field based upon the Parameter IssueID

Okay.. we are just about done. We now need to set the value of this IssueID Text Field to the value of the Parameter we previously created.

Open up your NewTimeEntry.aspx page up in “Split” or “Code” view and find the IssueID field. The code will look something like:

<tr>
<td width="190px" valign="top" class="ms-formlabel">
     <H3 class="ms-standardheader">
          <nobr>IssueID</nobr>
     </H3>
</td>
<td width="400px" valign="top" class="ms-formbody">
     <asp:TextBox runat="server" id="ff4{$Pos}" text="{@IssueID}" __designer:bind="{ddwrt:DataBind('i',concat('ff4',$Pos),'Text','TextChanged','ID',ddwrt:EscapeDelims(string(@ID)),'@IssueID')}" />
                            
     <SharePoint:FieldDescription runat="server" id="ff4description{$Pos}" FieldName="IssueID" ControlMode="New"/>
</td>
</tr>

We need to change the ‘text={@IssueID}’ to contain our parameter, so change that to ‘text={$ParamIssueID}’ (Really, that’s all there is to it). So, when all is said and done the code will now look like:

<tr>
<td width="190px" valign="top" class="ms-formlabel">
     <H3 class="ms-standardheader">
          <nobr>IssueID</nobr>
     </H3>
</td>
<td width="400px" valign="top" class="ms-formbody">
     <asp:TextBox runat="server" id="ff4{$Pos}" text="{$ParamIssueID}" __designer:bind="{ddwrt:DataBind('i',concat('ff4',$Pos),'Text','TextChanged','ID',ddwrt:EscapeDelims(string(@ID)),'@IssueID')}" />
                            
     <SharePoint:FieldDescription runat="server" id="ff4description{$Pos}" FieldName="IssueID" ControlMode="New"/>
</td>
</tr>

And there you have it. Save your page. Go to you Issue Display Page and click on the “Create new Time Log Entry” link. It will open up the NewTimeEntry.aspx page we created and the “IssueID” field will contain the same value as the Query String variable “IssueID”. Go ahead, save your entry… it works fine. Trust me. well.. don’t trust me… try it first.

Make sure it works, then hide the field from Display

Okay, you’ve made sure everything works okay. You’ve saved a time log entry or two and made sure it appeared in your Issue ID Display page? right? Well… go do it… make sure it works… the rest of us will wait… but we are getting impatient…

Okay.. thanks.. welcome back… If you were go forward with this into production you do NOT want the “IssueID” field to be visible on the page for a user to start calling you and say “Hey, what’s that there for” or worse yet, they get clever and change the value which screws everything up. So, lets hide the field from view but make sure the value still gets stored.

Go back to that code up there that we modified, you know.. this code:

<tr>
<td width="190px" valign="top" class="ms-formlabel">
     <H3 class="ms-standardheader">
          <nobr>IssueID</nobr>
     </H3>
</td>
<td width="400px" valign="top" class="ms-formbody">
     <asp:TextBox runat="server" id="ff4{$Pos}" text="{$ParamIssueID}" __designer:bind="{ddwrt:DataBind('i',concat('ff4',$Pos),'Text','TextChanged','ID',ddwrt:EscapeDelims(string(@ID)),'@IssueID')}" />
                            
     <SharePoint:FieldDescription runat="server" id="ff4description{$Pos}" FieldName="IssueID" ControlMode="New"/>
</td>
</tr>

You don’t want to delete these lines of code obviously or everything we worked for will not work. What we need to do is change the class of the label and field to “ms-hidden”. This will prevent the field from displaying but still allow it to hold values. So, when you are done, the code will look like:

<tr>
<td width="190px" valign="top" class="ms-hidden">
     <H3 class="ms-standardheader">
          <nobr>IssueID</nobr>
     </H3>
</td>
<td width="400px" valign="top" class="ms-hidden">
     <asp:TextBox runat="server" id="ff4{$Pos}" text="{$ParamIssueID}" __designer:bind="{ddwrt:DataBind('i',concat('ff4',$Pos),'Text','TextChanged','ID',ddwrt:EscapeDelims(string(@ID)),'@IssueID')}" />
                            
     <SharePoint:FieldDescription runat="server" id="ff4description{$Pos}" FieldName="IssueID" ControlMode="New"/>
</td>
</tr>

Makes sense? Go back and test it again… the Issue ID field is gone from the NewTimeEntry.aspx page, but everything still works.

And there you have it! Happy? Solve your issues? Open up new issues? Keep the questions coming and I’ll do what I can to help! Thanks again for stopping by.

SharePoint 2010 – I really have nothing useful to say at this point

Mark Rackley — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:00:02 GMT

Wow… so, I just got back from the SharePoint Conference and my first look at 2010 and all I can say is wow…

Wow…

I mean… really… wow…

Have you seen this thing? If you thought 2007 was a beast, just wait until you start to wade through the features in 2010. It’s almost like Microsoft made SharePoint 2007 as a stop-gap to 2010 so that we wouldn’t be completely overwhelmed by 2010 and to give them more time to develop the features… seriously… I cannot even fathom trying to go from SharePoint 2003 to 2010.

Let me visually explain to you the history of SharePoint to give you some idea (please don’t leave a comment berating my knowledge on the history of SharePoint, I’m just trying to be somewhat clever and entertaining):

*Digital Dashboard Starter Kit* I’m cute, but don’t do much.	SharePoint 2001 Someone Please play with me.

SharePoint 2003 I’m just happy I can do something useful.	SharePoint 2007 I’m here, I’m coming for you, and I will eat you for dinner.

SharePoint 2010 We are Borg, resistance is futile.

SharePoint 2010 is truly gargantuan and has some amazing features:

@eshupps: Many features?
@mrackley: Oh yes, many!
@eshupps: Would you say it has a plethora of features?
@mrackley: A what?
@eshupps: A *plethora*.
@mrackley: Oh yes, it has a plethora.
@eshupps: Mark, what is a plethora?
@mrackley: Why, Eric?
@eshupps: Well, you told me it has a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone it has a plethora, and then find out that that person has *no idea* what it means to have a plethora.
@mrackley: Forgive me, Eric. I know that I, Mark, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me?

Are my attempts at humor getting annoying yet?

ANYWAY!

A couple of bright notes, junior developers will have a much easier time developing web parts and workflows in 2010 AND workflows do not have to be tied to a particular list which is very cool. There is “sandboxed” development and the debug process is enormously easier. Although, you will still desperately need cream-of-the-crop devs if you hope to develop some of the more advanced features like Service Applications.

Speaking of Service Applications… I can honestly say with SharePoint 2010 it feels like SharePoint is really coming into it’s own as a mature platform with real solid features for integrating into your backend business systems (Both BCS and Service Applications look freaking amazing). Where 2007 was a solid fit for collaboration, 2010 seems to be ready to make SharePoint the ‘must have’ connectivity and integration tool. I, of course, am speaking from MY perspective with my company in mind. The company I work for is made up of several smaller companies that have been acquired over the years and it has always been a struggle to integrate and share information across the different business systems. As I sat in the sessions at SPC I really saw a world opening up that before was not possible in SharePoint (well… it would be possible, but would require a lot more work). You want more details? Wish I could give them to you. I really need to dedicate some more time to these features and develop an educated opinion about them.

Needless to say, from an Architect and dev standpoint, I’d love to be in production with 2010 right now. IF Microsoft can truly deliver on its promises we will soon all be able to stop having to answer the question “SharePoint? Never heard of it. What’s SharePoint?”