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.
- 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