Show “Ratings” field in DVWP to a “Read” Permissions Audience

I recently created a filtered webpart page with a number of data view web parts (DVWP), that showed the Ratings field.  I wanted to show Ratings with the default star layout that shows natively in library and list views.  When attempting to view the resulting page with Read privileges, the page threw a permissions error although I had read permissions to all lists and libraries underlying my DVWPs.

After validating correct permission settings for my libraries and lists as well as for the webpart pages and styles libraries, I narrowed the problem down to the “Ratings” field.

Filtered Webpart Page with DVWPs showing Ratings

To render the “Ratings” field to the DVWP, I had changed the field format to List Form Field.  This appeared to be the only way to show the stars.  (see image below)

SharePoint Designer “Ratings” Field DVWP – show as “Stars”

Here is the resulting code:

Ratings field code – List Form Field

Unfortunately, showing the Stars in this way caused the page to be inaccessible because list form fields require contribute privileges.  To change this to a display field, I deleted the =”Edit” after controlmode (highlighted in code above) to =”Display”.

Controlmode Intellisense Selector

This allows users with Read permissions to view the page and still allows them to rate content.

Incorporate Ratings in your search results page

I wanted to enhance the search results of my support site to show the ratings field as well. I came upon this fantastic blog article by Steve Peschka. … worked very well.

Steve references an older name of the Ratings field.  Today this should be “ows_RatingsAverage”.

I didn’t see the Ratings Images, which are referenced in the article, in the default images provided by SharePoint.  I created them.  Feel free to copy them:

Here is what the end-result looks like:

Sample Search Results Page

Use SharePoint 2010 Organization Browser in another Web Application

The SharePoint Organizational browser natively works only in the web application where the Profiles are found (typically MySites).  I found this blog by TCSC that highlights how the organization browser might be added to another web application.  I have admittedly not tried this out, but thought this might come in very helpful in future …

Insert Document Icon into DVWP

I found this post on Marc D. Anderson’s Blog that illustrates how to insert the document icon into the DVWP before the name of a document.  Very simply, you just insert 

<img alt="Type" src="/_layouts/images/{ddwrt:MapToIcon('', ddwrt:GetFileExtension(string(@FileLeafRef)))}"/>

before the code of the document name.

… if all things could be that easy …

SharePoint 2010 – Create an Orderable List

I wanted to create a list I could order, that is where if I changed the 5th item to 1st place, the remaining items would automatically reorder themselves around it.  After much digging, I found the following solution (cobbled together from various posts …)

1. Create a Custom List and save it as a template (List Settings > Save List as template)
2. Go to the List Template Gallery of your Site Collection and download the template (.stp file) to your computer.
3. Rename the .stp file to a “cab” extension
4. Open the cab file
5. Extract the “Manifest.xml” file
6. Find the List element (it is the first element inside the UserLists element) and add OrderedList=TRUE” as an attribute. (Thanks Matthew Kendall).  Save the file
7. Repackage the manfest.xml into a .cab file (various tools exist for purchase or for free (I used CAB Explorer Freeware))
8. Change the file extension on the cab file back to .stp
9. Upload the modified Site Template file to site templates
10. Create a new list based on the template

As a final step, let’s add the Order Icon to the Ribbon UI (for detailed instructions please also see “Adding Custom Actions to the Ribbon UI in SharePoint 2010 Using SharePoint Designer 2010)

1. Open the list in SharePoint Designer (Lists and Libraries)
2. In the ribbon, in the New Group, select the “Custom Actions” drop-down and select “View Ribbon”
3. Provide a name (e.g. Custom Order)
4. Click on “Navigate to URL” and enter the following URL: YourSiteURL/_layouts/Reorder.aspx?List=YourListGUID.  (You can copy the list GUID by opening the list in the browser and clicking on List Settings in the Ribbon; copy the GUID after the “List=” in the URL)
5. Add the small and large icon (I opened a links list and copied the icon found there in the Ribbon).
   

   Link that allows you to access the list order page

   

   Page that allows you to order the list items

This should do it … enjoy

Related articles

• Compress and resize images when they are uploaded to SharePoint (bommail200.wordpress.com)

Sharing Themes for SharePoint 2007 – Enjoy!

I love SharePoint … I really do, but the designs leave something to be desired. Most of us know that. In an effort to improve this, I created new designs  that (IMHO) are cleaner and more beautiful than the OOTB SharePoint Themes. I  will load them here for you to deploy “as is” or to customize further.  They are yours to do with as you please.

Preview

Here are some screenshots of a demo site where I used the themes:

Urban Sky Theme

Urban Sky w/Chrome Theme

Southwest Theme

Approach

I was doing this on my own time and didn’t want to start from scratch, so I  began by selecting a theme that had good “bones”.  Good bones in this case doesn’t mean beautiful, but rather nice, simple and neutral background color that suited my design.

Two of my themes (which are really variations on a theme) (Urban Sky and  Urban Sky w/Chrome) started with the “Petal” theme (frankly one of the ugliest  themes out there – but the grey background is great!).  The other theme  (Southwest) started with the Vintage theme (lovely undertones of sage-green - perfect for something with a Southwestern theme).

For the two Petal-based Urban Sky themes I decided to replace almost all the  hideous pink with turquoise hues with similar values (similar depth of color).  I opened the Petal CSS and with SharePoint Designer 2007′s “Manage Styles” Task  Pane identified the varying pink hues.  I would select a corresponding  turquoise, and performed “find and replace” against that hue’s Hex code in the entire CSS  file.  I also removed almost all images referenced by the theme (searched  for .gif and replaced the image with “none”).  Please note, I did look at all classes referencing images to help ensure I didn’t delete something I really liked.  Finally I reviewed the resulting look and feel on a number of pages and made additional modifications (e.g. left-hand navigation) to get the result I wanted.

For the “Vintage”-based Southwest theme I took a similar but slightly faster approach.  The Vintage theme already incorporated some nice colors, which I kept.

Deployment

For months I “deployed” this by applying the Petal or Vintage theme to the site, replacing the CSS and placing and modifying the image links (where necessary).  I had created a library with the files and instructions, so others in the organization could do this too (there is really only one other resource – but at least it was there).  I was fully aware this wasn’t the MS supported way of doing this.  Well, the use of these “themes” grew (practically all new sites seem to use them now) and the fact that I might have to go into each one of the sites to replace the theme became a bit daunting (after all unsupported translates into “might be overwritten” w/upgrades, etc. (unlikely but possible)). It became clear I needed a more sound approach.

This blog post by SharePoint Solutions by HG concisely details how to deploy the themes to the 12-hive on the SharePoint server.  Obviously, wherever the writer references the “Granite” theme, you will want to replace that with either “Petal” (Urban Sky themes) or “Vintage” (Southwest Themes).  Replace the Theme.css file content with the CSS provided at the end of this post.  I placed the images for the “Urban Sky w/Chrome” and “Southwest” themes into the same folder as the .inf file.  Please note that the blog references the need to reset IIS.  In my experience this was not necessary (which is good, because I am not permitted to do that where I work ).

Appreciative shout-out to Dan Amaro from Klarinet Solutions who provided me with the link to the blog post above on how to deploy this!

Download Files

• Urban Sky
• Urban Sky w/Chrome
• Southwest

Related articles

• SharePoint 2010 Default Theme Colors (thechriskent.com)

Wonderful resource for icons

You must have been there before: you are designing a site. You want it to be easy-to-use, intuitive, and beautiful. If only you could add some icons to make things more usable … but, you don’t have the budget to come up with fancy graphical designs. Enter My Sites My Way icons. They are free and there are many of them in many different designs. Take a look and check it out. I love them!

Here are some small previews (go to the site to see them full size)

The wonders of the Drop-Off Library

The customer needed a site with a primary focus on document management.  Among other requirements, it was extremely important that the documents would be segregated based on security.  I was concerned document-loading consistently to the correct library or folder would be confusing and error-prone.  I had already planned on creating workflows to address this concern.

That’s when I found out about the Drop-Off Library.  The Drop-Off Library, once configured, will take your documents, regardless of which library they were loaded from, and based on a set of confiugred rules will place the documents into the appropriate library or folder.

This is a feature in SharePoint 2010 Enterprise sites.  You need to enable the Content Organizer feature.  Click on Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Administration

Content Organizer Site Settings

Configuring the Content Organizer is pretty straight forward.  Begin by clicking on Content Organizer Settings and make your selections:

Content Organizer Settings

Finally configure the rule set.  Note that this is based on Content Types.

Content Organizer Rules

For more details, view the following reference:

• Technet (first of multiple articles)

Please note these caveats:

• This library can impact the ability to move the site.
• This library is also extremely difficult to delete once enabled

Audiencing Redirects

I needed to redirect certain users from the homepage of my site to another page, but other users needed to see the homepage.

I thought audiencing a Content Editor webpart (CEWP) with a JavaScript redirect script would work, but couldn’t find any related blog entries.  I ended up trying it out and it did work.

Some (related) caveats:

• Audiencing is not security
• Because the redirect is to the homepage only, other pages that users have links to and that they have the rights to access would obviously not be affected
• Related to the above, links provided in alerts, workflows, etc. would still work.

Helpful links:

• How to target webparts to an audience
• Redirect JavaScript

Creating an “Aging Report” in MOSS

If you have any type of tasks list and would like to see an “aging report” on the items based on certain buckets, the post might help you …

Here are the steps:

1. Create an aging column (see Maurio Cardarelli’s blog for directions) (in our example the column is referenced as “Days Open”)
2. Create a new web-parts page
3. In SharePoint Designer, create as many side-by-side columns in the content area of the page as you have buckets (e.g. 4 aging buckets would be 4 columns)
4. Add a SharePoint Web Part Zone to each column
5. Place the same tasks list web-part into each column (group and render as meaningful in your scenario)
6. Place applicable filters in web part list views (e.g. “status” not equal to completed AND “Days Open” greater than or equal to 8 AND “Days Open” less than 15 (obviously this filter would show 7-14 days)).
7. Set View Totals to count list items
8. Label the chrome in to reflect buckets setup with filters (e.g. “8-14 Days” in example above)
9. Repeat steps 5-8 for each aging “bucket”

Here is an example aging bucket web part:

Below is what the content area looks like:

Aging Buckets on Page