God help me, I’m up to part 6 of series about a technology I dislike and still going. For those of you that have just joined us, then you might want to go back to the very beginning of this series where I used JavaScript to improve the SharePoint user experience. Since then, I’ve been trying to pick a path through the thorny maze of what you could term, ‘sustainable customisation’.

By that, I mean something that hopefully will not cause you grief and heartache the next time a service pack is applied!

So no mood for jokes this time – I want to get this over with so let’s get straight to it and finish this thing!

So where are we at?

• Part 1 looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the issue of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries.
• Part 2 examined some of the issues with the part 1 JavaScript hacks and wrapped it into a web part using the content editor web part.
• Part 3 then examined the various issues of adding this new web part to certain SharePoint pages (NewForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx and DispForm.aspx). I also covered using SharePoint Audience targeting to make the hiding/unhiding of form elements personalised to particular groups of users.
• Part 4 started to address a couple of remaining usability issues, and introduced ‘proper’ web-part development using Visual Studio and STSDEV. I created a project to perform the same functionality in part 3, but would not requiring the user to have any JavaScript knowledge or experience.
• Part 5 then used STSDEV to create a solution package that allowed easy debugging, deployment and updating of the web part developed in part 4.

So what could we possibly have left to cover? Basically this article will revisit the web part code and make some functionality improvements and then I will cover off some remaining quirks/issues that you should be aware of.

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6]

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using JavaScript – Part 6”

Hello and welcome to part 5 of another epic CleverWorkArounds blog post.

If you think I write a lot on my blog, you should see my documentation and training material! I seem to be rare insofar as I actually like to write documentation and can churn out reasonable quality pretty fast. So if you need your scary SharePoint farm/infrastructure audited and fully documented, you know who to call! 🙂

Anyhow, here is the current state of play.

• Part 1 of this series looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the common request of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries. We looked at a Microsoft documented method, then a better, more flexible method.
• Part 2 wrapped this JavaScript code into a web part which has been loaded into the SharePoint web part gallery.
• Part 3 then examined the trials and tribulations of getting this new web part added to certain SharePoint pages (NewForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx and DispForm.aspx), and then with a few simple edits, use this web part to hide form fields as desired. Finally, I demonstrated the power of combining this with SharePoint Audiences targeting functionality to make the hiding/unhiding of form elements personalised to particular groups of users.
• Part 4 introduced Visual Studio and STSDEV. I created a project to perform the same functionality in part 3, but not requiring any JavaScript knowledge or experience. By the end of part 4 I had a STSDEV project that compiled with no errors.

And now we are onto Part 5 where we turn our attention to the packaging and deployment of our web part. As you are about to see, STSDEV makes this a very quick and painless experience. If you aren’t convinced of the merits of STSDEV and the SharePoint solution framework by the time you finish this article, then I don’t know what will convince you.

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 6]

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using Javascript – Part 5”

Hi there. As I write this post, the media are telling me that the stock market is stuffed, the US economy is going to the dogs and banks are writing down billions from sub-prime excess. I dare not check my online broker, road traffic this morning was abysmal, I was late, brought in the wrong laptop and left an important DVD at home.

Could it get any worse? Who knows, but it sounds like the sort of day to re-visit JavaScript and get frustrated with writing a web part for the first time.

So to recap on our journey thus far..

• Part 1 of this series looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the common request of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries. It looked at a Microsoft documented method, then a better, more flexible method.
• Part 2 wrapped this JavaScript code into a web part which has been loaded into the SharePoint web part gallery.
• Part 3 then examined the trials and tribulations of getting this new web part added to certain SharePoint pages (NewForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx and DispForm.aspx), and then with a few simple edits, use this web part to hide form fields as desired. Finally, I demonstrated the power of combining this with SharePoint Audiences targeting functionality to make the hiding/unhiding of form elements personalised to particular groups of users.

All in all a pretty clever workaround so far if I say so myself. 🙂

My original goals for this JavaScript was to find an effective, easily repeatable way to customise SharePoint form pages by hiding fields or form elements when we need to. Specifically:

• Allow hidden fields based on identity/audience
• Avoid use of SharePoint Designer
• Avoid customisations to the form pages that unghosted the pages from the site definition

We achieved these goals in part three, but was I satisfied? No. The quest for more clever workarounds always goes on!

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5 and Part 6]

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using JavaScript – Part 4”

Hey there. Welcome to part 3 of my series on SharePoint customisation using JavaScript and web parts.

So here is the lowdown so far. We are trying to find an effective, repeatable way to easily customise SharePoint form pages, so that we can hide fields or form elements when we need to. The goals were to:

• Allow hidden fields based on identity
• Avoid use of SharePoint Designer
• Avoid customisations to the form pages that unghosted the pages from the site definition

So how have we progressed thus far?.

• Part 1 of this series looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the common request of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries.
• Part 2 wrapped this JavaScript code into a web part which has been loaded into the SharePoint web part gallery.

So let’s knock the rest of this over and pick up right from we left off…

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement of this post depends on how much you hate JavaScript.

Metrosexual web developer   

Socially inept technical guy   

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6]

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using JavaScript Part 3”

Hi again.

JavaScript sucks! There I said it. Despite me hating it as a programming language, I can’t deny that in SharePoint, it does have its uses.

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement of this post depends on how much you hate JavaScript.

Metrosexual web developer
Socially inept technical guy
Luddite IT manager	(sorry … why are you here anyway?)

[Quick Navigation: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6]

To quickly recap the first post of this series, we looked at how we can use JavaScript to deal with the common request of hiding form elements from the user in lists and document libraries. The technique demonstrated can be used for columns, buttons and whatever else you want. The method once debugged, is fairly easy to implement with SharePoint designer with and some cut and paste.

But there are several problems with the method that prevent it from getting a better CleverWorkaround rating than “Meh”. They include:

• One size fits all, fields are hidden for all visitors irrespective of need.
• You need to modify the page in SharePoint designer via cut and paste of JavaScript code
• You need to modify auto-generated pages
• You need to modify a page from its site definition
• Insecure, relying on client side to hide content/controls is not a secure solution

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using JavaScript Part 2”

Hi all

I thought with my last post that involved XSL/XSLT, I’d escape from horrid programming languages and write about more interesting topics but it wasn’t meant to be. This time round I had to delve back into the world of JavaScript – something I swore that I would never do again after a painful encounter back in 2000. (Yep, it’s taken me 8 years to face it again!)

But like everything else with SharePoint, by being a ‘specialist‘, you seem to have to use more technologies and IT disciplines than you would think possible.

As I progressed writing this article, I realised that I was delving back into branding again and toyed with the idea of making this part 8 of the branding series. But the governance topic in part 7 for me rounded off that series of posts nicely, so I will deal with this separately for now and perhaps refresh that series in the future.

Like a vast majority of my posts, this will also be a mini series.

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement rating (for Metrosexual web developers):

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement rating (for the rest of us ):

[Quick Navigation: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6]

Continue reading “More SharePoint Branding – Customisation using JavaScript – Part 1”

For those of you who are developers and have to program XSL and XSLT, you have my deepest sympathies. I thought that regular expressions were bad, but this takes the cake! Despite my best efforts as a SharePoint architect/consultant, I seem to invariably have to deal with programming issues more often than I’d like.

In saying that though, XSL/XSLT is very powerful of course and I fully appreciate why the Data View web part is popular among developers. Anyway, I digress. This post is about forms services and SharePoint Designer workflow, but I had to dabble into this world to solve my problem. A word of warning though, this is a workaround but it’s not that clever.

The Symptom

You create a SharePoint designer workflow and attach it to a forms library, configured to run in forms server mode (in the browser). You create a “Collect Data From a User” workflow action, and when the workflow recipient clicks on the task, the “Related list item” field in the task is not rendered in the browser.

Continue reading “Form Services and SPD Workflows…”

When I am in SharePoint Admin (Nazi) mode, I flatly refuse to accept any significant customisation/code changes unless they are packaged up as a solution that is activated via features. Some developers hate this and feel I am being “difficult” and I get the old chestnut excuse “oh but this will now take me twice as long to do“. I have little sympathy for them, and in fact I see this as a good test of whether a developer has a decent appreciation or understanding of governance.

This is because all they are doing increasing my governance risk because they do not want to do the extra work to make their work easier to deploy/ upgrade/retract etc. The risk increases exponentially when you maintain a farm with several WFE servers.

When consulting to clients, I deliberately try to scare the crap out of younger developers who are been earmarked to work with SharePoint and try and instil a sense of what governance is all about. These sorts of considerations tend not be given too much thought until you have been through something bad happening 🙂

So when Yoda Sezai put me onto a codeplex project called STSDEV, I took a look and was very, very impressed.

Now all you developers have no excuses!! Stop what you are doing and go to codeplex and watch the introduction video right now!

I like it so much, I’m thinking of now mandating that all development is performed via STSADM projects 🙂

CleverWorkArounds Rating: Exceptional

Welcome to part 4 of my series on demonstrating SharePoint’s usefulness for storing Cisco configuration backups. What a hard slog it’s been! The last article (part 3) of this series focused on how to modify an open source C# TFTP server to upload files into a SharePoint document library using the SharePoint SDK.

Here is the quick recap on what we have covered so far

• Part 1 illustrated how it it possible to use SNMP to tell a Cisco IOS device to dump its configuration to TFTP. We talked about the version control feature of SharePoint and why it makes sense to TFTP your configs to a SharePoint document library. We covered the WEBDAV network provider supplied with XP and Win2003 and finished off with a basic example using the TFTP server TFTPD32.
• Part 2 went into more detail about the issues you can face when using the WEBDAV network provider. It also went into more detail on 3 TFTP server products (WinAgents TFTP, SolarWinds TFTP Server and TFTPD32 and why TFTPD32 ended up being the best choice for this purpose.
• Part 3 then looked at a wonderful open source TFTP server written in C# called TFTPUtil. We modified the source code of this TFTP server to use the SharePoint SDK and upload files to a SharePoint document library.

Now both the WEBDAV and SDK methods had some issues. The WEBDAV method was obviously easy to set up because pretty much any application (theoretically anyway) can be made to work with it. I, however, had reliability issues with this method as part 2 detailed. The SDK method was much more reliable, but had its own problems. Many people would be uncomfortable with having to perform custom modification of an existing open source TFTP server, but more importantly, there are security implications with this method too.

So we have one remaining method that we can explore. This method is still based around modifications to the TFTPUtil source code but instead of using the SharePoint SDK, we instead use the SharePoint web services.

Continue reading “SharePoint for Cisco Fanboys (and more developers) – Part 4”

As I write this series, it is getting less and less about Cisco and more and more about SharePoint. This article is definitely developer centric, but since Cisco guys tend to be interested in the guts of the detail, I decided to keep going :-).

If you read my articles I tend to take the piss out of IT role stereotypes just to make it more entertaining reading. Sales guys and IT Managers tend to cop it the most, but I also like to have a dig at the expense of the nerds too. Cisco nerds on the whole are a great bunch, but I have to say, the scariest nerd I have ever met drank Cisco kool-aid in jumbo size!

If you have gotten to this article after reading the first two and you are scoffing at my audacity to suggest you TFTP your configs into SharePoint, chances are most people think you’re scary! If you are hitting this series of articles for the first time, go back and read part 1 and part 2 before being scary!

Seriously now, I thought that this would be a 2 part set of articles, but I got all bogged down in the methods of getting files into SharePoint. The WEBDAV based methods described in the previous article is easy to do, but ultimately is not the recommended method. So now, we will look at the ‘proper’ ways to do it and see if they are worth the effort. They work okay, but are more complex and I’m not convinced that the governance issues are necessarily worth it for many readers.

Degree of difficulty for this article is varied.

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement rating (for an application developer):  

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement rating (for a non developer):    

Continue reading “SharePoint for Cisco Fanboys (and developers) -Part 3”