Formatting Texts in a SharePoint List Item columns

This could be an old-school  thought of wanting to apply different formats to the values stored in list columns.

Well, one can definitely go a number of ways to achieve that, but here’s an approach when an end-user can drop some code in a calculated field to achieve this very easily and more precisely, getting to a number of different formatting styles.

Format 1: Displaying a Hyperlink Text in a calculated column

Create three columns in a list as below:

Column1: [ActualURL] of type “Single line of text”. (We will store values like “http://neerajch.blogspot.com” in this column)

Column2: [URLTitle] of type “Single line of text”. (We will store values like “NeerajCh” in this column)

Column3: [HyperlinkHTML] of type “Calculated”.

Type the below in the Formula box:

=CONCATENATE("<DIV><a href='",ActualURL,"'>",URLTitle,"</a></DIV>")

Select “Number (1, 1.0, 100)” in the [Data Type returned from this formula] section.

Leave the “Automatic” in [Number of Decimal Places].

That’s it. Hit OK and create one new list entry with values mentioned above. [Title] can be anything.

You should see something like this. Hurray !!!

Now that “Concatenated” formula piece can be a real handy and fruitful, if used wisely. Let’s see another small example.

Format 2: Displaying a Hyperlink Text in a calculated column as BOLD

With the same configurations for the list columns as above, we modify the formula to include <b> & </b> tags within the <DIV>.

=CONCATENATE("<DIV><b><a href='",ActualURL,"'>",URLTitle,"</a></b></DIV>")

And now you see something like this:

Wow, I know, you must be smiling. Nothing great here!! Just plain HTML. And that is my intent.

Let the things be as simple as they can be, for this has to be done by an end user not a developer/designer.

So the end users now have a great handy tool and can make it even powerful, if they can extract more complex HTMLs from their peer developers and embed here.

No item exists at http://servername/sitename/pagename.aspx?ID=88. It may have been deleted or renamed by another user

So, We have upgraded our MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010. One of the other challenges that we have been facing after this Database Attach process is that the links having query string parameters have started to fail (Surprisingly…..this error appears randomly on different links). The error it generates is : “No item exists at http://servername/sitename/pagename.aspx?ID=88. It may have been deleted or renamed by another user”

Well, as soon as I searched for this error, I got to see this Microsoft Support article having a resolution to this issue. You can find it here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972225

According to Microsoft, this is a know issue and this is what they suggest:

“Change the query string parameter from ID to CustomID. Then change the details page from QueryString(ID) to QueryString(CustomID). Once this is done the page will display with no errors.”

So, when I changed my link URLs to “http://servername/sitename/pagename.aspx?BID=88” everything worked fine.

But here are a couple of questions that has kept me wondering, and I am still looking for an answer to them:

#1. My 2007 sites work perfectly with this piece of code. So does that mean, this issue has been introduced in SP 2010?

#2. Even in 2010, not all the links with query string parameters (?ID=nn) are failing. Some seem to work. This seems very weird. Any answers to this?

Customizing "Created By" column in Survey lists

Well, I had'to modify the display of a column in a Survey, where it was required to get the email ID displayed instead of the User's name.
By default, you cannot edit the “Created by” in the question lists. But there's a workaround for you to edit this column as per the below steps:

1. Open your survey, click "Survey Settings" (You will need the Admin rights for this).
2. In the Questions section, click any question of your survey;
3. Change the URL parameter in the Browser:
set Field=Author,
Change the aspx page to FldEditEx.aspx
4. The URL should resemble something like this:
http://yourserver/_layouts/FldEditEx.aspx?List=yourlistGUID&Field=Author
(replace "yourserver" and "yourlistGUID" accordingly)

After this you can select the field you want to display in “Created by”, which can be anything from the dropdown list:
- email
- ID
- Firsname
- Lastname, etc.

Things to remember:
- Page to use: "FldEditEx.aspx"
- Use the respective Internal column names for the columns to modify:
[Created By] = “Author”
[Modified] = “Editor”
[View Response] = "DisplayResponseNoMenu"

Interesting !!! kind of hacking the SharePoint.

How to get a list of all features deployed in your environment

Ever wondered how powerful is the STSADM command in MOSS. Actually it is the core of all action items you need to perform. To your much interest, you will be really excited to know about what Gary LaPointe has to share with you. Take a look at this site where he has a bunch of extended commands for SharePoint.

I was actually looking for a quick and easy way to get a list of all the features deployed to the servers in the farm. I had a set of 6 servers, so I simply wanted to run a line-of-code on all of them to help me identify them. Thanks to my colleague Jeff, who pointed out this command to me and help in getting a quick resolution.

Gary's command are all pre-fixed by "gl-" and below is an example of the enumfeatures which did the job for me. Take a look:

C:\>stsadm -o gl-enumfeatures -url http://myserver:1237

1. TeamCollab: Team Collaboration Lists (Web - Active)

2. ReviewWorkflows: Routing Workflows (Site - Active)

3. PremiumWeb: Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Site features (Web - Active)

4. PremiumWebApplication: Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Web application features (WebApplication - Active)

5. MyTestFolder: Cases (Web - Inactive)

6. TransMgmtLib: Translation Management Library (Web - Active)

7. MultipleUploadWebpart: MultipleUploadWebpart (Site - Inactive)

8. GlobalWebParts: Global Web Parts (Farm - Active)

9. DisplayUserProfiles: DisplayUserProfiles (Site - Active)

10. SmartTools.jQuery: SmartTools.jQuery v1.2 (Site - Active)

11. OSearchEnhancedFeature: Office Server Enterprise Search (WebApplication - Active)

12. BaseWebApplication: Office SharePoint Server Standard Web application features (WebApplication - Active)

13. MySiteFeatureStapler: My Site Creation Feature Stapler (Farm - Active)

14. SpellChecking: Spell Checking (Farm - Active)

15. SmartTools.DockNavigation: SmartTools.DockNavigation v1.0 BETA2 (Web - Active)

16. SignaturesWorkflow: Collect Signatures Workflow (Site - Active)

17. Reporting: Reporting (Site - Active)

18. UserChangePassword: User Change Password Web Part (Site - Active)

19. PremiumSite: Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features (Site - Active)

20. PublishingWeb: Office SharePoint Server Publishing (Web - Inactive)

21. BaseWeb: Office SharePoint Server Standard Site features (Web - Active)

22. MySiteCustomListInstance: Case Custom List (Web - Inactive)

23. MySiteDocumentLibrary: ListDefinition1 (Web - Inactive)

24. MyCoolDemoContentType1: MyCoolDemoContentType1 (Site - Inactive)

25. BaseSite: Office SharePoint Server Standard Site Collection features (Site - Active)

26. OSearchBasicFeature: Office Server Site Search (WebApplication - Active)

27. TranslationWorkflow: Translation Management Workflow (Site - Active)

28. ExpirationWorkflow: Disposition Approval Workflow (Site - Active)

29. MyCoolDemoField1: MyCoolDemoField1 (Site - Inactive)

30. DataConnectionLibraryStapling: Data Connection Library (Farm - Active)

31. ExcelServer: Excel Services Farm Feature (Farm - Active)

32. SearchWebParts: Office SharePoint Server Search Web Parts (Site - Inactive)

33. PublishingSite: Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure (Site - Inactive)

34. MySiteDocumentLibraryInstance: MyWorkspace Document Library (Web - Inactive)

35. IssueTrackingWorkflow: Three-state workflow (Site - Active)

You may install the extensions from the site and start exploring with all of them.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SharePoint,STSADM,Extentesion,Features

SharePoint 14 -New services

It looks like SharePoint 14 is going to be cool in a multiple ways. Trust me, the look-n-feel will definitely give you throbs, if you think finding an option to configure AAM or setting up a Policy for Web Applications is very easy to find. This may again take a while for of all of us to get used to the drill-downs of the Central Admin options.

The new layout of the Central Administration is drastically changing. Though still in its ALPHA stage, a lot would change in the coming BETA and any further releases. So it all depends on the feedback Microsoft gets back. So hold on tight and wait for the exciting 14 release (maybe late 2009 or early 2010).

To give you a bit of taste, here are few of the MUST-HAVEs that was always desired in MOSS 2007.

- Web Analytics Web Service

- Word viewing Service

- LotusNotes connector

- Visio Graphics Service

- BDC Service

- Application Registry Service

to name a few. Not gauranteed, but we may possibly see these getting integrated into the next release.

I also expect Microsoft to either acquire some of the great SharePoint tools available today in the market or have it developed internally. These could be SharePoint Security Explorer, Backup-Restore from AvePoint, Idera and some cool web parts from Bamboo Solutions. There are also some Imaging solutions which are highly wanted in the MOSS world.

Stay tuned...

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SharePoint,14

Know your WSS 3.0 or MOSS version numbers

This can be really helpful in case you are planning for an upgrade or trying to migrate content from one another.

I found this Blog where Dirk has tried to compile all of them in a tabular format. Nice work from him !

Updated: Aug 17, 2010

Bringing the tabular data from Dirk's site here as recently I experienced problem accessing his site.

Remember that you can find these version numbers in Central Administration -> Operations -> Servers in Farm (/_admin/FarmServers.aspx)

Here is a quick table for those who want to find out what version of WSS/MOSS you are currently patched up to:

Service Pack/Hotfix Version	WSS V3.0	MOSS 2007
Infrastructure Update (KB951695 & KB951297)	12.0.0.6318	12.0.0.6318
Post-SP1 hotfix (KB948945)	12.0.0.6303	12.0.0.6303
Post-SP1 hotfix (KB941274)	12.0.0.6301	12.0.0.6301
Post-SP1 hotfix (KB941422)	12.0.0.6300	12.0.0.6300
Service Pack 1	12.0.0.6219	12.0.0.6219
Release To Manufacturing (RTM)	12.0.0.4518	12.0.0.4518

Technorati Tags: WSS,3.0,MOSS,Upgrade,Migrate,Version

How-to see descriptive Error messages in MOSS

How many times you have cursed Microsoft for that single line error message that always appear for so many different reasons but always says "An unexpected error has occured." :-(

To have a more detailed messages in MOSS while you perform your development tasks, you may want to enable debugging in the web.config file for the SharePoint web application. Please note here that this is not recommended to be done in a Production environment.

Edit your web.config file as shown in red below:

<SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true" DirectFileDependencies="10"TotalFileDependencies="50" AllowPageLevelTrace="false">

And:

<customErrors mode="Off" />

And get rid of any bugs from your application quickly.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,Unexpected,Error,Web,Config,CallStack,customErrors,mode

SharePoint Designer coming your way !!!

Good news guys. The most useful tool for the MOSS community has finally come out-of-the shell, it is believed to be made available for "FREE" coming 1st April, 2009.

Yes, you heard it right. Free, you may download the designer from the official Microsoft download site starting April 1st, 2009.

But administrators, watch out. There may be a bit of thinking required before the developers start using this tool to make those site-level changes. This could mean more efficient backup-restore planning would be required.

But definitely, this is yet another big step for MOSS to get closer to the world.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,SPD,2007,SHarePoint,Designer,Microsoft,Tool

Remove the '! New' tag for uploaded items

A requirement to reduce the time period for which the "! New" tag is displayed for any new items uploaded to a site made me hunt for this solution.

And it is right under the STSADM hood, such a powerful tool indeed !

I wanted to get the "! New" tag displayed only for the current day on which a document is uploaded to a document library. By default, MOSS looks like it remembers this for more than a day.

Here is a simple command, which does the job fairly easily.

stsadm.exe -o setproperty -pn days-to-show-new-icon -pv 1 -url [your site url]

You may set the propertyvalue (pv) = 0, if you don't want to display it ever.

Technorati Tags: MOSS,New,Tag,Document,Library,STSADM,setproperty,icon

SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool

This one was a long awaited from Microsoft. They have released "SPDisposeCheck" which looks at the code in SharePoint and confirms that there are no memory leakages or extra memory consumption. As we are all aware of, this has been an issue since long going un-noticed into the deployment. So let's use this tool to run our projects through this checker before we go for any deployments.

Visit the MSDN code page and download SPDisposeCheck

Technorati Tags: MOSS,Code,Tools,Microsoft