SharePoint Development & Administration + InfoPath

In this article I explain the steps to include a custom User Control in a Master Page in SharePoint 2010 using SharePoint Designer .   In my case, the example User Control I am adding to the Master Page in this tutorial is in the following location which would vary depending on the name and of the Control and the folder it is saved in:  “~/_controltemplates/SP2010_UserControl_Example/DynamicSiteTitle.ascx file” SharePoint Designer 2010 Master Page User Control Using SharePoint Designer 2010, open the Site and Master Page Library where the Master Page will be stored containing the User Control.  In this example, I am creating a copy of the default v4.master used in SharePoint 2010 in the root site Master Page Library and calling it v4b.master. Open the Master Page you wish to modify by right clicking the and selecting the “Edit File in Advanced Mode” option. Close to the top of the markup below the existing @Register / @Import tags, add the fol...

The following is a reference to an article which explains a simple solution to hide the Global Navigation settings from the Navigation Settings page on a SharePoint site .  If you need to allow site owners to manage the navigation links on their site, but want to control the global navigation to prevent them from changing or breaking the inheritance you can modify the Navigation Settings page (  AreaNavigationSettings.aspx ) so that the Global Navigation section is not displayed on the page. Example customised Navigation Settings page without the Global Navigation section (from the article). The OOB AreaNavigationSettings.aspx page is customised using inline styles, and by removing the elements used to display the global navigation settings.  Once modified, the global navigation can still be managed from the top level site in the site collection. For details, including step by step instructions on how to implement the solution, please see: Hide SharePoint Globa...

Last night I set up a fresh development environment for SharePoint 2010, but ran into a few issues when I came to install Visual Studio 2010 on the server, and also SharePoint 2010 once Visual Studio was installed, although there were a number of possible causes of SharePoint stopping working during the process.  In this article, I explain the steps taken to resolve issues with the Visual Studio 2010 installation and the SharePoint 2010 environment. Server Configuration The server is configured with Windows Server 2008 Standard as the operating System, which was created from a snapshot taken from the base install some months ago.  In the “base install”, I had installed MS SQL Server 2008, and SharePoint 2010 which were both working fine at the time the snapshot was created. The problems and steps taken to resolve: After creating a new VM from the snapshot and testing SharePoint, I was able to load the root SharePoint site as expected.  No other sites ex...

Today I needed to work with a document library in SharePoint by opening it via it’s UNC path using Windows Explorer.  The issue that I faced, was that the library would be opened in Explorer as a Web Folder using the URL of the library ( via http/https ) and not using the UNC as I required. I needed to work with files in bulk, including opening and saving using their native client software/application.  When I attempted to load a selection of files, instead of the files opening in the client, each file would be opened in a new browser tab/window before prompting to open or save the file.  Not useful to me at all.. Solution: The solution was simple in my case, was simply to adjust the network provider order for the connection that was being used so that the “Microsoft Windows Network” provider takes precedence over the “Web Client Network” provider. Adjust the Network Provider order: Network Provider Order on Windows 7 : Start -> type “view ne...

Adding a column to all content types and list in SharePoint is simple, but there are implications that first need to be considered before doing so.  Once completed, the new column will be available in all existing content types in the Site Collection, as well as lists and libraries that exist on SharePoint sites. Implication: The implication of this change, is that the process to reverse is not nearly as simple as the process to implement. Removing the column from the content type(s) will not remove the association of the column with lists that previously had the global column.  A custom solution could be developed to automate removal of the column from content types and lists, but the alternative would be to manually remove each instance which could be time consuming in larger, more complex environments. Process: Content Types in SharePoint inherit from the Item content type.  If a column is added to this content type (with the “Update all content ...

This article explains how to create a dynamic filter menu for content in SharePoint.  Methods from the article  SharePoint: List Distinct (unique) values from a specific column in a list are used to obtain unique values from a specific column in a SharePoint list to be displayed as each menu item.  When an filter option from the menu is selected, content on the page will be filtered based on the selection.   For a single menu displaying filter options dynamically, you only need to associate the menu with one column from the main list.  When an option is selected, the browser is redirected to the same page with a query string parameter set to the selected filter parameter using JavaScript.  The main list on the page is then configured to filter contents based on the parameter. Components: Document Library with custom column "Heading" One Web Part page with the following components: Data View Web Part displaying the actual documents in the li...

The following describes two methods to list distinct/unique values from a specific column in a SharePoint list.  An example where this may be useful is a menu system providing filter options for items in a list, using only values that are being used at the time.   Display Unique Values using Data View Grouping (No Code): Obtaining a distinct/unique list of values from a specific column in a SharePoint list can be achieved easily using a Data View Web Part, and by applying sort and group criteria to group items.  When grouping (group by) criteria of a Data View web part has been provided, the result is a distinct (unique) list of values from the particular column in the list that will be displayed as group headings.  Once the Data View is listing items grouped by the specified column, you can manually modify (remove cells/rows) the XSL template used to display the table to remove the actual list items from under each group (use Design mode in SPD to ...

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When playing around with "Multiple Lines of text" fields that were configured to append changes to the previous versions. I found that when trying to use the value in the field in a workflow created using SharePoint Designer, it would only find the value entered into the field in the most recent version of the item even if the field was left blank. For example, if you create a new list item with some text in the multiple lines of text field, the workflow will pick up the value as expected. If you then make a change to the item, but leave the appended text field blank this time, the version is incremented and the most recent version will not have a value for this field. The result in the workflow created using SharePoint Designer was that it would only see the value in the field of the most recent version. I needed all entries appended to the field, and not just the most recent by consolidating the text from each version. I achieved this using a workaround solution, as I was...

InfoPath provides a rich set of capabilities for integrating with SharePoint.  This includes the ability to easily configure data connections to retrieve or submit data to SharePoint without the use of code.  When the lists and libraries being queried from InfoPath become large, the InfoPath form can become slow when working with the results from data connections.  This is more apparent if the form is being displayed in a browser using InfoPath Form Services, at the results of the query must be rendered into HTML, sent to the client and updated in the browser. Many of the solutions that I have built in the past required variation to the process depending on if data exists in SharePoint, or if the data falls within specific ranges or explicit values.  To do this, code was used to loop through the results of the secondary data sources to find the required records.  This can become slow very quickly once there are a large number of documents of items in the Share...

Managing SharePoint site permissions can become difficult when the Site Collection expands to have many sites with different permission settings for each. This is especially true if the permissions are not inherited from a parent site, list or library, or item level permissions are used on items in a list or library. Some third party reporting tools provide an overview of the permission applied across a site collection, with the possibility to drill down to more detailed information about the configuration of groups and permissions applied to each site. This article explains how to use Excel to create a single report with  permissions of multiple sites in one site collection. This is achieved by using data connections and a "Web Query", by selecting the "world" option in Excel 2007 to create a data connection to configure. The address on the site permissions page for each site is added to a separate Web Query link, which retrieves the specified page from Share...