Guest Author: Marc D. Anderson
http://mdasblog.wordpress.com
So I’ve been going on about how wonderful this jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services stuff is, but you may have wondered if I ever actually use the library in real world situations. You bet I do, and it lets me build some pretty nice solutions [...]
What goes into a Document Workshop? Well, the first thing would be the raw materials. In the case of documents, that would be templates. Sure, you can tie templates to Content Types but that might be overkill – this is a workshop, not an assembly line. I like attaching templates to a Custom List item that explains the purpose of the template. The other thing we might put in that list is instructions to help a new person create this type of document. Then we put up a list of contacts but not just the people on the project team; we include the people the team might need to reach out to for advice and help. We are also finding that interactive parts like discussions and wikis are useful for exploring ideas and developing content.
In the previous article, I made use of the ‘Contacts’ list template, provided out-of-the-box by SharePoint, to create a list which will act as the backend for our mailing list. In this article, I will show you how to configure the ‘Contact’ content type, create a custom subscription form and do some sort of customization. The intention of these customizations is not only to make the subscription form look different from the out-of-the-box list forms but also to show you the power, simplicity, and efficiency of SharePoint Designer 2007.
With him being a novice to Sharepoint, I was able to really relay best practice decisions. Other more experienced Sharepoint users aren’t as open to these ideas in the collections they have built up. He appreciated and respected the guidelines I was offering. Not once did I mention the term metadata when referring to this column. That probably would have derailed the train and lost my user. Instead, I just stated this column will store information particular to the file being uploaded. The reality is that this bit of information is acting in the same way a folder does, without the physical structure that he was used to. He was a bit confused with this at first, but it became real clear, real fast when we uploaded 2 files with different metadata tags and they were grouped nicely.
When creating data view web parts in SharePoint Designer, and dealing with libraries or lists that contain folders, the Item and Folder Scope setting becomes pretty important. In SharePoint views, it’s always possible to create a new view of the list with no folders, by configuring the “Folders” section in your view settings. Unfortunately, the same functionality is not as obvious in SharePoint Designer. When you create a view with no folders, and then convert it to XSLT in SPD, the folders always reappear.
