Tuesday, July 7, 2009
5 Minute Screencast: SharePoint Web Services for Non-Developers
This screencast is a brief demonstration of how to connect to a SharePoint web service, using SharePoint Designer and the data view web part. The goal in this example is to display a list of all document libraries in the site. This method can be used as an alternate to displaying items in the Quick Launch or manually creating links in a link list.
The supporting document is a blog post that I wrote a few months ago, called I Love the SiteData.asmx Web Service.
If you are interested in the different uses of the Data View Web Part, register to receive an announcement of my next, live online session.
View all entries in this series: LauraRogers - Data View Web Part Basics»
Entries in this series:
- New Article Series: Laura Rogers on Data View Web Part Basics
- Data View Web Part, The Basics - Insert a DVWP on Your Page
- 6 Minute Screencast: Insert a Data View Web Part onto a SharePoint Page
- Data View Web Part, The Basics - Folders
- 3 Minute Screencast: Use DVWP to display all files, even those stored in folders!
- Data View Web Part, The Basics - Add a Hyperlink
- Data View Web Part, The Basics - Keep it Clean
- Data View Web Part, The Basics – Multiple Edit Forms
- 3 Minute Screencast: Data View Web Part, The Basics – Multiple Edit Forms
- Live Online Workshop - Data View Web Part Solutions: Part 2
- 5 Minute Screencast: SharePoint Web Services for Non-Developers
- 3 Minute Screencast: Merging SharePoint Document Libraries
- 2 Minute Screencast: Permissions Dashboard
- 4 Minute Screencast: Join View of SharePoint Lists
- Get it Together: Groups and Totals in the Data View Web Part (Screencast)
- SharePoint: Open Links in a New Browser Window (Screencast)
- How to Create a SharePoint Data View Web Part “Rollup” (Screencast)
- SharePoint: "New" Icon (Screencast)
- Display a SharePoint List on Another Site (Screencast)
- Customize the "no items" Display Text in SharePoint (Screencast)
- SharePoint: Displaying Calculated Column SUMS in a View (Screencast)
Great post, Thanks Laura. You’ve managed to demystify web services in 5 minutes!
Laura – Great stuff – thanks!!!
Followed your example exactly, but I get errors connecting to the web service. Does it matter if your site is a top-level site (of a site collection) vs. a sub or sub-sub-site? My test site is a sub-site withing a site collection. Connecting to sitedata.asmx at the top-level works, but not at sub-site level. Ideas?
Don
Hi Don,
I just tried it on a sub-site, and it did work correctly for me. Sorry I can’t help.
This is what I did:
Opened the sub-site in SPD
Created a blank web part page on the sub-site
Created the data source connection to the web service on that sub-site, successfully.
Laura –
I got this working on another test site that was a top-level site in the site collection. In our environment it doesn’t work on sub-sites.
Thanks for your help! :-)
Don,
That doesn’t make sense to me. I have successfully gotten this to work on sub-sites in several different farms. I recommend coming to our workshop on this subject to get a deeper dive, and learn tips and tricks and how to easily create this web part once and make it applicable to any site (or sub-site) that you choose.
Thanks for demystifying Web Services. Is there a way to categorize document libraries so they can be filtered in a Data View WP?
Laura -
I’ve found a lot of wierd stuff like that in our environment vs. what the books say we should be able to do. I will let you know what we find out as we dig deeper into this, just in case someone else runs into the same problem.
Don
I love sitedata.asmx, too! I like how you did the talking head in the corner, what software did you use to record that way?
Hey Tom, I used Camtasia Studio.
http://www.camtasia.com
Laura
Great post… although it sounds like your building a shed when you use your keyboard :-)
G. – I’m laughing because I was thinking the same thing as she was pounding away at the keyboard… sounds as if she needed a hard hat. — Mark
For those having problems getting your Data Source to connect properly try appending ?wsdl to the end of your url, for example:
http://sharepointserver/site/asite/_vti_bin/sitedata.asmx?wsdl
If you want to double check the URL is working just copy it into your browser if you get a WSDL definition XML document you are on the right path, if you get nothing (a blank page) something is wrong. When experimenting with this I sometimes get a blank page for the first few tries.
Nice one .For Display Purpose this is very Useful …..
Nice post. Though I’d like to know which is the least permission level I need in order to open a site and be able to use web services. Is it the same for database connections?
thanks
this will help with connection errors
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepointdesigner/HA101171541033.aspx
has to do with the web.config