Reordering items in data view

A links list in SharePoint has an interesting functionality - to change the order of items.

I've tried and this functionality can be applied to all the lists and used in a data view. Let's go in order.

To reorder the list go to _layouts/reorder.aspx?list={list_guid} in the same site. If you don't know the list guid, go to list settings and replace listedit.aspx with reorder.aspx. You'll go to the interface to reorder items in that list:

 
The change will not be visible in SharePoint's AllItems.aspx page.
 

To sort items in the data view according to ordering you just made:

With data view inserted to the page the first thing we need to do is add the order field to the data view fields. To do this click the list name in the task pane Data Source Details. 
 

Next click button Fields, find and select Order in the left column and click Add.
 

Click OK to confirm the changes and close the Data Source Properties dialog by clicking OK again. Now you select data view Sorting (in Common Data View Tasks select Sort and Group) and you can choose Order. If you can't find Order in the dialog box, click the last option (Add Sort Expression) and click Add.
 

In the next dialog box, you can select Order from the fields.
 

Now confirm all the selections by clicking OK to close all dialog boxes.

That's not all. Now it's sorted according to order number, but the XSLT is taking this like a text. So we have to fix this. In source code, find <xsl:sort select="@Order" and add a data-type="number" parameter to it.
 

That's it. Now you have items sorted according to the ordering you've made.

What I usually like to add to the data view is a link to reorder items. Just add a footer and in the footer add a hyperlink to the reorder page (the one mentioned at the beginning).

Oznake ponudnika Technorati: SharePoint,Data View,SharePoint Designer

Are you a web designer? Want to get sponsored?

I'm happy to announce that in our company we're making effort to contribute to open source and design community. We're looking to sponsor web designs that will be free to use.

If you are interested, you can find more information on Web Designers Sharing Point.

There are already some members in the community, the latest one is Andreas Viklund.

As the result there are already two templates available free to download:

1.Internet Studio

Download - Check sample

2. Small Corporation
 
Download - Check sample

There will be more to come. If you wish to participate and get sponsored, please visit the blog and contact Jose.

Oznake ponudnika Technorati: Web Design,free templates,css

SharePoint site and multiple domains - alternate access mappings is the way

This is an update to one of my older posts - SharePoint 3 is bound to host headers - I was explaining the problem how the SharePoint binds itself to one host header and a simple trick to avoid this. There is a better way to add another host header to the web application:

On the Server in SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration select Operations tab and select Alternate Access Mappings under Global Configuration.
 

 
Now change the web application you want to edit public URLs for by using the dropdown on the right hand of the page
 

Next click Edit Public URLs
 

And now enter full URLs (including http:// or https://. You can add up to 5 URLs to which the web application will respond


 

At the end also add the host headers to the Website in the Internet Information Services manager.

Note that this works on the web application level. If you have site collections with custom URLs you can't configure multiple URLs for each of these (or if someone know the way, I'd appreciate if you left me a comment).

Oznake ponudnika Technorati: SharePoint,SharePoint administration

Great site with a lot of free tools

It's useless to talk and search out all the good free software, when this guy is making an amazing job. Almost daily you can find here new and useful freeware tools. I found it by coincidence, but it's absolutely worth linking to it.

Visit Freeware Genius

Don't miss also the site's featured article: Reinstall Windows and outfit your system with all Freeware programs.

Oznake ponudnika Technorati: FreeWare,Free Tools

Navigating through SharePoint Site using URL

I like to access lists, document libraries directly instead of visiting site or subsite and then clicking my way around. SharePoint has very logically structured URLs. Here are some of the most common:

To access:	Type url http://[URL]+
Lists	/lists/[List name]*
List New Item form	[list URL] + NewForm.aspx
List item details (display)	[list URL] + DispForm.aspx?ID=[item ID]
List item edit	[list URL] + EditForm.aspx?ID=[item ID]
Document Libraries	/[Document Library Name]*
Document library upload	[DocLib url] + /Forms/Upload.aspx
Document library item details	[DocLib url] + /Forms/DispForm.aspx?ID=[item ID]
Document library item edit properties	[DocLib url] + /Forms/EditForm.aspx?ID=[item ID]
Special SharePoint pages	http://[URL]+/_layouts+
View all site content	viewlsts.aspx
Recycle Bin...	recyclebin.aspx
Site Collection's recycle bin	adminrecyclebin.aspx
Create	create.aspx
Site Settings	settings.aspx
New Subweb	newsbweb.aspx

* in cases of Lists and document libraries only spaces get preserved (and translated in %20 in url). Special characters are excluded (for example: list Special Čheck url would be http://[sute url]/lists/Special%20heck/

These things are quite obvious. What I'm trying to point out is if you're accessing certain lists/document libraries/settings often, it's not a bad idea to start paying attention to URLs.

Oznake ponudnika Technorati: SharePoint

How SharePoint stores field names

In my one of my previous posts I've received a good comment from Mike that got me talking quite a lot about SharePoint List / Document Library Field Names. So it's better to dedicate a post to it. First I'll explain some exceptions and then show how to quickly get a sharepoint field name.

You can't change SharePoint field name

Once you create a field, you can't change the "SharePoint" name for it. Im using this sometimes when creating lists. I'll create a field called FirstName and then rename it to First Name. Like that I have no complications with spaces or any unstandard characters. So now (compared to previous post) I can filter with FilterField1=FirstName. 

 

Title field

No matter which list you create (except survey), there will always be one Title field no matter how we have it named. We can recognize this title field as the one that is linked to the item (with edit menu)

No matter what you rename this field to, this field will always be "SharePoint" named Title.

Field names for Out-of-the-box lists

Lists that are already included in the templates (like for example Contacts) have different "SharePoint" names than "Display" names. For example: In a Contacts list we can see a field called Fax Number, but "SharePoint" name for it is WorkFax. How to discover real names? Skip to the end of this post and read more.

Spaces and special characters in field names

Spaces in field names get converted to _x0020_. 0020 represents the Unicode character code. If you'd like to know any other, I've found this very good web character convertion tool. Just enter character into Characters field and you'll find the code in Hexadecimal code points but make it a 4 digit number (for example 20 for space should be 0020).

When using those special characters in URL, the underscore (_) gets converted to %5F

So how the heck to know SharePoint field names?

You COULD mess around with all the specialities and translations and conversions that I've mentioned untill now, but there's an easier way:(two actually):

1. Sort the List / Document Library and check in URL for SortField parameter value.
 

2. Go to List / Document Library Settings, click on the name of the column to modify it and in URL find the last parameter value
 

 

And ofcourse if you need to use the field name in other places than URL (like in SharePoint designer), don't forget to convert %5F to underscore.

P.S. - Yes, I know there is also a way to see SharePoint Field Names in SharePoint Designer (mouseover a field name in Data Source Details), but in this post I wanted to focus on work without it.

Oznake ponudnika Technorati: SharePoint