Archive for Using MOSS

Creating Teaser Intros for Blog Posts

June 9, 2009 at 9:20 pm · Filed under Customizations, General, SharePoint, Using MOSS

One thing I have been wanting to do with blog posts is create teaser intros, show x amt of characters of the post followed by a link to read the rest of the post. Sadly, SP does not provide this functionality out of the box. So I Googled the problem and found a site with the solution. The problem is the solution is hard to understand and my eyes glazed over trying to understand what the author was asking me specifically to do. I eventually got the fix to work, and decided that I probably wasn’t the only person who didn’t speak code who might need this solution, so I decided to paraphrase the authors fix in designer-ese… I take ZERO credit for the fix, please visit the author below for the original post:

Original fix/code: http://zabistop.blogspot.com/2009/02/customizing-sharepoint-blog-posts-web.html

Step 1: Open SP Designer
Step 2: Open Blog site in Designer
Step 3: Open default.aspx
Step 4: Click at the very top of the List View Web Part for the posts and then right-click. Select Convert to XSLT Data View:

Step 5: Go into code view and do a find for: ms-postbody. It should bring you to the area of code that you need to swap out. Below is the code that needs to be replaced:

Replace this code...

Replace this code...

Replace with this:

with this code...

with this code...

(aside: I am trying in vain to upload a file that allows you to copy and paste the code, but the crappy WordPress interface wont do it! Can’t add code to the page or the stupid thing tries to execute it, even in code tags! Stupid app!)

The 250 in the last xsl: value snippet is the number of characters of text that is displayed-this number can be whatever you want. You can also change what the “more” link says, maybe to “Read Post” or whatever.

Step 6: Add new xsl template. Add the code below to the top of the page under an existing xsl:template snippet:
blog4

Now save and open the page in your browser.

Leave a Comment

Styling webpart data with the Data View Web Part

May 7, 2009 at 7:31 pm · Filed under Branding, Using MOSS ·Tagged ,

One of the things that as been driving me crazy is the inability to selectively style webparts. On the home page of my company’s intranet, I have several webparts pulling content in, and they all look the same. I primarily wanted to make the announcements web part look different. I tried every hack I could think of to find some kind of unique hook to attach some styling to. I would change the title style and then watch it change ever title on the page. I have been trying to find uses for the data view web part and so I thought, maybe I can use that to pull in the announcements and then style them…

Long story short, it worked. Using the dvwp I was able to pull in the announcements list, set what fields to display, and then individually style the display of those fields.

First, I created a page layout. You can’t add the dvwp to pages directly unless you create a page based off a page layout and then detach that page from the page layout in SPD before you work on it. On the page layout in Sharepoint Designer, I selected a web part zone, clicked on Data View in the toolbar, and then selected Insert Data View. I then pulled the announcements list onto the dvwp area. I clicked on the arrow to the right of the DVWP and the Common Data View Tasks box displayed.

Common Data View Tasks

Common Data View Tasks

First, I edited the columns. I removed all but Title and Body. Then I changed the layout to Repeating Form Style. I then set the paging to display items in sets of 4. Under Sort and Groups, I set it to sort by Created, descending.

Now it was time to style the content. First, I removed the word Body that displayed right over the body content. Then I moved the title xsl code to right above the body code. I created two styles, one to handle the title and one for the body. I wrapped the styles around the fields and then cleaned up the display a bit by removing the extra row, hr and br tags.

Wrapping styles around the fields.

Wrapping styles around the fields.

Once that was done, I saved the layout, checked it in and then created a new page based off that layout. The dvwp displayed on the page as a webpart. I exported the webpart and then added it to the Web Part Gallery. I went to the intranet home page, put it in edit mode, and then added the webpart to the page.

One note, I tested this on my dev server first and made sure it worked before I tried it on production ;)

Comments (4)

Standard SharePoint font makes marks tiny

December 30, 2008 at 2:04 pm · Filed under General, SharePoint, Using MOSS

My company has a ton of marks that they use in their company communications: copyrights, registration symbols, trademarks, etc. No matter what I did, they displayed so small as to be unreadable. Apparently, marks rendered in Calibri, the standard font for much of SharePoint, render too small, but if you change the font to something like tahoma, they show up fine. Since there is no way in css (or none that I know of) to target an html symbol, I wrap all marks in the sup tag, which raises them a little, like a mark should be anyway, and I changed the font-family attribute of the sup tag instead. Works!

Leave a Comment

Practical SharePoint: Creating Manuals

October 31, 2008 at 1:59 pm · Filed under SharePoint, Using MOSS, publishing ·Tagged , , ,

One of the main content sources on my intranet is manuals and guides: policy guides, managers guides, SOP guides, etc. Sinces manuals /guides is such an important content source, I set out to find an ideal SharePoint solution for creating them. The current way that manuals/guides are implemented on our existing intranet is pretty simple: Dreamweaver template for overall structure, library items for navigation, and manually created content pages.

My first thought was to try to use the Sharepoint blog functionality. I liked how you can set up categories and then easily assign posts to those categories. A few problems came up: one, posts display in the order they are input-I needed to control the exact order; two, posts have comments that can be added-I needed that functionality removed. I was able to overcome issue one, partly, by creating a bit of a hack. I created a column that allowed me to insert a number that I could filter by. The big problem here is if I want to change the order of the posts in the future, i need to change the number for each post individually. Also, I tried using the CQWP to filter by the number and it wouldnt pull correctly in the quicklaunch. So, I abandoned the blog idea.

The solution I came up with that I am actually using is to create a publishing subsite for each manual. I created a custom content type, custom site columns, and several custom page layouts to accommodate the different types of page content that the manuals would have. Many of the manuals on the intranet have contextual navigation depending on what section you are in. I created those navigation areas with the reusable content lists, pulling them into the custom page layouts with a RichHtml field control.

In the page layouts, I wrapped the content areas in a div id that I then used to target all of the html and custom css, allowing me to override the built in css for the pages. I created custom styles for tables, quotes, and images.

It still isn’t an easy task to create a manual. i have many steps I have to go through to set one up, but I think the long-term benefits will be worth it. Content types, site columns and page layouts are the foundation of the publishing features in SharePoint and are essential skills to master.

One final tip-Document everything!!!! It takes a lot of time, but once I figure out a process for doing something in SharePoint, I create a bunch of screenshots and i document everything i did to create it. I also have a project management SharePoint site where I catalog every element created for a site (content types, columns, page layouts, master pages, lookup lists, etc.), every site created, and all documentation created. There is so much stuff, you really can’t depend on your memory, so write it down!

Well, I have to get back to figuring out to build my company intranet-I’ll post more as I figure more out ;0)

Comments (1)

Reusable Content List

August 22, 2008 at 2:45 pm · Filed under General, SharePoint, Using MOSS ·Tagged ,

So I am working on the project plan for the first release of our new intranet, working on the IA and such, and saw the need to have content in more than one place. I saw that there was a list called Reusable Content so I looked it up and it acts much like how library items work in Dreamweaver. Instead of adding the copy to multiple locations directly, you add the reusable content into the list, and then when you go to add the content in the specific locations, you tell the page to use source from the reusable content list. I think that this is very cool. You update the page once and it updates across the board wherever it is used. You can also use the list to just store a link or a paragraph-anything that may be repeated. Here is a really good overview: http://blog.funknstyle.com/?p=577

Comments (1)

Making pages editable that aren’t officially editable….

August 5, 2008 at 2:37 pm · Filed under General, SharePoint, Using MOSS ·Tagged ,

Pages like NewForm.aspx, NewPost.aspx, etc. do not have the site actions > edit page link, which means you can’t edit the page or add webparts. There is a hack for this.

Workaround 2: The ToolPaneView hack, courtesy of: http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/2008/02/28/more-sharepoint-branding-customisation-using-javascript-part-3/

Comments (1)

Changing Welcome page

November 19, 2007 at 4:38 pm · Filed under General, SharePoint, Using MOSS ·Tagged ,

I am currently building a small internal site to store SOX documentation for the company Internal Audit group. Because they deal with outside contractors who need access to this data, we will be using something called ADAM to allow users outside of our network access to the site. They need it so that an outside user only sees the document library they have access to, with no way to go up to the top level of the site. I had initially created seperate document libraries for each year, but was told that ADAM couldnt be used to secure a library, only sites. great. So I had to make seperate sites for each library. I created each site as a blank site with no other content than a document library. I wanted to make the welcome page go directly into the library, but the Welcome page option did not display under look and Feel.

I am learning that you pretty much just NEED to turn publishing on-just do it. You won’t be able to specify the Welcome screen without it, and you gain a lot of functionality with it turned on. So I turned on publishing, set the site to open into the library, and now I am waiting to see what my technical admin has to say about how ADAM works with it.

I’m still not sure I believe him when he says you cant secure a library, but I’m just a designer, so…

Moral of story: turn Publishing features on.

Leave a Comment

How They Did It – Behind the Scenes of MOSS sites

November 2, 2007 at 7:29 pm · Filed under Branding, Resources, SharePoint, Using MOSS

The MSDN blogs have a series of posts called How We Did It, showcasing companies who have successfully branded and implemented their site using MOSS:

Leave a Comment

Add styles to page and save as web part

November 2, 2007 at 4:00 pm · Filed under Branding, SharePoint, Using MOSS

Background:
Use this technique to override an existing style on the page and then save the style as a webpart that can be inserted into other pages.

How To:
The easiest way to reveal what style is affecting an area on the page is to use the reveal javascript.

Once you know what style is being affected, site > edit page

- add a Content Editor Webpart to the page. Set it to “Hidden”
- modify webpart > source
- in the source, add the style declaration:

a:link {
color:#990000;

}

Replace the above with whatever style needs to be overridden.

- save the changes and exit editing mode.

To save the webpart so it is reusable, click the edit on the webpart, and choose Export from the dropdown.

- save the webpart with a name that is descriptive in a folder.
- site > edit site settings
- if not already at the top level site, click Go to top level site settings under Site Collection Administration
- under Galleries, click Webparts
- click Upload
- browse to the saved webpart. Create a group for it to go under

Once the webpart is saved, you can add it to any web part zone throughout the site.

Leave a Comment

Filter Calendar View

November 2, 2007 at 3:28 pm · Filed under SharePoint, Using MOSS ·Tagged , , ,

(Updated: 5/20/09)

Background:
So I am working on my pilot of the company intranet, and I created a corporate holidays calendar. I wanted to display on the home page only the title and date of the events that were upcoming within the next 60 days. I tried to filter by Start Date, but it doesnt display as a filterable column. I searched and found an old post with some syntax and tried it out and it worked.

How To:
If there is a calendar, and you want to create a view where only events from today up to the next 60 days (or how many days out), here is how you do it:

Add a column to your calendar. Name it “Date” and make it a calculated field. Add “Start date” to the formula, and select “add date only”. What this does is it creates a column that is filterable, because Start Date is not, and automatically populates the content of this column with the start date of the event.

Next, create a new view for the calendar, name it “Upcoming” (or whatever). Select whatever fields you would like to display. If you are creating a view to show on another page, like the home page, and you just want a quick list of upcoming events, you might want to just have title and date fields display.

Under “Filter”, select:
Date
is less than or equal to
[Today]+60

and

Date
is greater than or equal to
[Today]+60

What this does is tells SP to only display events with Date set to today or up to 60 days from now.

Make sure that wherever you want to see this view, you actually select this view in the View drop list.

(Update) Unless you add the second filter, the query will continue to show old posts.

Comments (24)