Microsoft has released a cool new extension for Pivot that integrates SSRS reports: PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services.
This extension, which does require SSRS 2008 R2, allows you to use SSRS to generate the collection of cards that the PivotViewer will display. There’s a fair amount of information out there to walk through the installation of the extension, but I found that there wasn’t quite as much robust information on actually using the extension for end-to-end creation of a collection. So, here’s an overview of what you’ll be doing!
Once the extension has been installed and the pivot site set up, the basic process is:
• Create a parameterized SSRS report
• Load the RDL for that report up to a SharePoint pivot gallery
• Set up a BI Collection definition
• Create a SharePoint page to host the BI Report Crawler
• Run the BI Report Crawler for your collection definition
• Create a SharePoint page to host the PivotViewer, add the PivotViewer web part and point it at your collection
Got all that? OK, let’s take a look at the details for each step:
• Create a parameterized SSRS report
o The SSRS report is used to create the tiles in the Pivot collection. It needs
to take a parameter (or parameters) that will create one unique card for every
parameter value – something like an employee ID, for example.
• Load the RDL for that report up to a SharePoint pivot gallery
o Since I was using a PowerPivot datasource, I put the RDL file and the datasource in the same folder for convenience, but you can put it wherever makes sense for you.
• Set up a collection definition
o The collection definition instructs Pivot to grab your report (specified in the Report Template field), run it with a specific list of parameters (Report Parameter Query), and associate a certain set of metadata (Dataset Query) for each instance of the report.
Report Template: The URL for the Report Template should specify an image format, and include a placeholder for the parameter value. Use the following format:
• http://[servername]/reportserver?http://[servername]/[folder]/[reportname].rdl&rs:Command=Render&rs:Format=image&RC:outputformat=PNG&[ParameterName]={0}
o Remember that the parameter name must be the INTERNAL name, not the friendly one displayed to users
Dataset Query needs to return data in a particular order.
• The very first field MUST be a unique ID; in general, this will be the same value used in the Report Parameter Query.
• The second field is the name; this is the value that will appear on the top-left of the pivot viewer when an individual card is selected. Consider using the field users are most likely to do a text search on, such as employee name.
• All subsequent records will be used as slicers on the left side of the pivot viewer.
To change the way data is displayed in slicers, you must change the Dataset Query. To get a slider bar that will let you select a range of numeric values, include a ‘dimension properties’ clause in the MDX of your Dataset Query, and pull the .key for that dimension. The crawler will automatically format the results so the slider can be created.
Report Parameter Query is a short query that will return the list of parameter values used to run each copy the report. It can include a WHERE clause to restrict the dataset.
• Create a SharePoint page to host the BI Report Crawlero The heart of this extension is a tool that will take snapshots of your SSRS report. It cycles through each parameter from the query you specified in the collection definition, runs the SSRS report for that parameter value, and stores the output of the report.
o The tool is packaged as a SharePoint web part, which means it needs a page to live on before it can be run. Create a page wherever you’d like on your sub-site, and drop the BI Report Crawler on the page. You will likely want to expand the height to view all the information returned by the tool.
• Run the BI Report Crawler for your collection definitiono Once the web part is all loaded up on the page, select the name of your collection definition from the Inventory drop-down, then click the ‘Crawl’ button on the right hand side.
o The bottom of the web part will now begin recording the results of each execution of the report.
• Create a SharePoint page to host the PivotViewer, insert the PivotViewer web part and point it at your collection
o The PivotViewer takes the form of a SharePoint web part, so we will again need some kind of page to host it on. Create a page in a suitable location, and add the PivotViewer BI DataBrowser (under the “Custom” folder). Edit the web part, and in the configuration section, enter the name of your collection definition under “Inventory”. Save the page and check in if needed.
Tips and tricks
o The dimensions of the SSRS report directly impact the shape and whitespace seen on the Pivot card. Whatever appears on page 1 of the report as it is printed will determine the Pivot card’s appearance. Use print preview to see where your report is at!
o I found very little in the way of troubleshooting help out there, so it was a struggle to figure out why my collection wasn’t rendering on the page. I finally broke out Fiddler to see where things were breaking, and spotted an error highlighted in red. Visiting that URL (http://[Server]/_vti_bin/BICollection/PivotCollectionService.svc/[Collection Name].cxml?q=
), I discovered that the Pivot service was telling me that I’d typed my MDX statement wrong. When in doubt, check the service for error messages!
o Keys MUST be unique within the first 20-25 characters! I could not find any documentation to support this, but my collection crawl kept failing with a unique key violation. I triple-checked and confirmed that the keys WERE unique. However, the original keys (concatenated from a series of columns) weren’t always unique until as late as the 28th character. We switched to a new key that was unique within the first 6-8 characters, and that worked like a charm.
o If the crawler does error out, results are cleared from the screen and only the error message is displayed. It’s often best to keep a close watch on the crawl so you can note which record prompted the error.
Troubleshooting
• If the Report Crawler crawls but nothing displays on the page...
--Close the browser and open the page in a new window
--Ensure the SQL Server Analysis Services service is running on the host machine
• If there is any kind of error…
--Check the strings for both the report (including parameter name) and the datasource
--Check the service at
http://[Server]/_vti_bin/BICollection/PivotCollectionService.svc/[Collection Name].cxml?q=
--Check the definition query; are you sure results are being returned?
--Run Fiddler on the crawler page to check for any errors
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
PivotViewer and Reporting Services
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Multi-Select Parameters in SSRS
When passing multiple values for a parameter in SQL Server Reporting Services to a stored procedure, I used to JOIN them all together into one long pipe-delimited string (JOIN(Parameters!Paramname.Value, "|")) which I'd then loop through with a cursor in the stored procedure, break all the values into a table, and join that to my dataset.
That worked, but it did involve a bit of setup, since I had to add that loop to every stored procedure I used. So I was pleased this week to stumble onto an even simpler way to handle parameters.
This method relies upon SSRS's ability to dynamically string together the values itself. SSRS can create dynamic SQL that will handle these multi-selects if you enter your dataset as a text query, but it can't get into your stored procedure to modify it to take the new string. All you have to do, however, is shape your WHERE clause like the following:
WHERE (@Param + ',' LIKE '%'+ table.value + ',%' OR @Param = '' OR @Param IS NULL)
Now your SP can handle the multi-select string just the way SSRS passes it. Nice and quick! =)
That worked, but it did involve a bit of setup, since I had to add that loop to every stored procedure I used. So I was pleased this week to stumble onto an even simpler way to handle parameters.
This method relies upon SSRS's ability to dynamically string together the values itself. SSRS can create dynamic SQL that will handle these multi-selects if you enter your dataset as a text query, but it can't get into your stored procedure to modify it to take the new string. All you have to do, however, is shape your WHERE clause like the following:
WHERE (@Param + ',' LIKE '%'+ table.value + ',%' OR @Param = '' OR @Param IS NULL)
Now your SP can handle the multi-select string just the way SSRS passes it. Nice and quick! =)
Using Sharepoint to Get the Current User ID
This was something I'd meant to post about a while back, but didn't get around to doing so until a co-worker asked me for more infomation. Here's what I shared!
As Sharepoint is used more and more as a BI platform, a lot of different solutions get hosted on SP pages. But how can you plug into SP's user identification and use it for your own code?
Here's a quick and dirty approach I unearthed while squeezing some Silverlight onto a SharePoint page.
The basic idea:
*In SharePoint Designer, open up the page you’ll be using
*Drop a list (any list) web part onto the page; convert the list to an XSL data view
*Add a system variable for the current user (I used LOGON_USER)
To do this, find the section of the page where “ParameterBinding”s are set. Add a new row that looks like this:
Next, look for the area where parameters are defined by searching for the string “XSL:Param name”, and add this line:
*Drop that variable in a cell within the data view which is named something you can recognize later, and hide it
Now you can reference the cell “MagicalUserPerson” in your code elsewhere.
Here's a bit more of a walkthrough, including an explanation of what other user variables you might choose to work with:
Getting the Current User Name or ID in SharePoint using SharePoint Designer (no code)
As Sharepoint is used more and more as a BI platform, a lot of different solutions get hosted on SP pages. But how can you plug into SP's user identification and use it for your own code?
Here's a quick and dirty approach I unearthed while squeezing some Silverlight onto a SharePoint page.
The basic idea:
*In SharePoint Designer, open up the page you’ll be using
*Drop a list (any list) web part onto the page; convert the list to an XSL data view
*Add a system variable for the current user (I used LOGON_USER)
To do this, find the section of the page where “ParameterBinding”s are set. Add a new row that looks like this:
<ParameterBinding> Name = “LogonUser” Location = “ServerVariable(LOGON_USER)” />
Next, look for the area where parameters are defined by searching for the string “XSL:Param name”, and add this line:
<xsl:param name="LogonUser"/>
*Drop that variable in a cell within the data view which is named something you can recognize later, and hide it
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr style="display:none">
<td id="MagicalUserPerson" width="400px" valign="top" class="ms-formbody">
<xsl:value-of select="$LogonUser"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Now you can reference the cell “MagicalUserPerson” in your code elsewhere.
Here's a bit more of a walkthrough, including an explanation of what other user variables you might choose to work with:
Getting the Current User Name or ID in SharePoint using SharePoint Designer (no code)
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Re-Direct With ID - REVAMP
Ended up re-working the process from my previous post!
RECAP: The goal is to allow users to enter a list item and associate a number of items in ANOTHER list with that original list item. In this case, we have a list of projects and we want to associate multiple notes with a single project.
My original approach was to use URL parameters wherever possible. That still works in a few cases, but I found that it works better to skip the URL hassle. Instead, I hid a data view web part on the child (the notes list) newform page.
The hidden data view web part is filtered to show only the ID of the project most recently modified by the current user. That ID is displayed in a cell with the ID "ProjectID".
On the same page, my add-a-new-note form has a hidden field that accepts that ID. That field is populated using the following Javascript:
NOTE: In this case, the ProjectID field in my child list is a lookup field. If you have a different type of field, you'll need to alter the javascript to some degree. The holy grail of info on setting values in SP forms with Javascript is here.
Once the data is ready, I wanted to send the user back to the display form for the project they were working on (I would have preferred to send them to the edit form, actually, but doing so can cause save conflict errors). To do that, I had to go back to the URL parameter, so I can specify what project I want to display.
It took a smidge of Javascript magic again to properly insert the project ID into the URL. Here's the code:
This is called in a custom submit button:
And there you have it!
RECAP: The goal is to allow users to enter a list item and associate a number of items in ANOTHER list with that original list item. In this case, we have a list of projects and we want to associate multiple notes with a single project.
My original approach was to use URL parameters wherever possible. That still works in a few cases, but I found that it works better to skip the URL hassle. Instead, I hid a data view web part on the child (the notes list) newform page.
The hidden data view web part is filtered to show only the ID of the project most recently modified by the current user. That ID is displayed in a cell with the ID "ProjectID".
On the same page, my add-a-new-note form has a hidden field that accepts that ID. That field is populated using the following Javascript:
NOTE: In this case, the ProjectID field in my child list is a lookup field. If you have a different type of field, you'll need to alter the javascript to some degree. The holy grail of info on setting values in SP forms with Javascript is here.
Once the data is ready, I wanted to send the user back to the display form for the project they were working on (I would have preferred to send them to the edit form, actually, but doing so can cause save conflict errors). To do that, I had to go back to the URL parameter, so I can specify what project I want to display.
It took a smidge of Javascript magic again to properly insert the project ID into the URL. Here's the code:
This is called in a custom submit button:
And there you have it!
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Sharepoint, Meet Database. Database, Sharepoint.
...And, Sharepoint? We'd like to ask you to be a bit more like Database.
I needed to associate multiple records from one list with a single item in another list. And boy, is that harder than you think!
Say, for example, that you have a list of projects. You want to be able to enter notes on each project as the weeks go by. If multiple users are working on a single project, then each should be able to add as many notes as they want. Versioning wouldn't be an option in this case, since the users want to be able to quickly and easily view all notes for a project at once.
So, that means you gotta do two lists: ProjectList and NotesList. Each Note will have some kind of ID tying it to a Project. Simple enough - databases do this all the time, right?
Well, the challenge is in NewForm.aspx!
We had started working on a custom New Item Form page for the Projects list, assuming that we could add a simple button that, when clicked, would let a user enter a new note. Specifically, we figured that the button would redirect the user to the New Item page for the Notes list, add an ID, and life would be good.
The problem? You don't HAVE an ID. The ID is only created when the form is submitted.
I started surfing for options. I tried a couple JQuery solutions, but I honestly couldn't get them to work right. The Redirect-with-ID option was very promising, but I could only get it to perform the redirect on 'submit' - and that doesn't help much when I want my users to click a special button for this.
Tried combining Jquery with a custom submit button, but that didn't work either. Only the built-in button seemed to work. I'm sure I was doing something dumb, but I was frustrated and moved on.
I considered writing up an event handler, but the pain of writing it (code isn't my strongest suit) combined with the pain of deploying it convinced me to discard that option as well.
Found a few examples with SPAPI, but wasn't successful in implementing them.
Finally, inspired by the SharePoint Hillbilly's post on passing parameters, I took a look at it from the SharePoint perspective.
Let's see - I know I can use those custom submit buttons to get a user onto a page. And once I actually get there, there WILL be an ID, 'cause the form was just submitted. I can't pass it via the URL parameter since it's just not ready when the user clicks the button....But what if I can pull the ID back as soon as they hit the page?
I tried the following:
--Re-added that custom submit button to my New Project form, and pointed the redirect paramete rto my New Note form
--Added a stripped-down display item form to the New Note page. This form just shows one item: the ID of the most recently modified Project for the current user. To make life easier, I identified the cell that contains the Project ID as "ProjectID", so I could nab the value in my javascript.
--Added javascript to pull that ID and write it to the form, so that the Note is associated with the right Project ID (code below)
--Added more javascript to append that ID onto another custom submit button - this one points the user at the Project list's EditItem form
Now a user can click to enter a new project, type stuff in, click to enter a note, go right back to their project page, and finish typing whatever they want. Magic!
---THE CODE----
*Custom button on New Project form:
<input type="button" value="Add a Note" name="btnSave"onclick="{ddwrt:GenFireServerEvent('__commit;__redirect={http://server/site/pages/newnote.aspx}')}; " />
*Javascript to add the ID from the New Note page onto my redirect URL:
<script type="text/javascript">
function GoToPage(url)
{
var TheCell = document.getElementById("ProjectID")
var TheID = TheCell.innerHTML;
location.href = url + "?ID=" + TheID;
return false;
}
</script>
*Button code that will send user from New Note page to Project Edit Form with correct ID appended:
<input type="button" value="Click me!" onClick="GoToPage('http://server/site/Lists/Projects/Item/editform.aspx');"></input>
*Javascript to pull the value from my ProjectID field and write it to the Notes form:
<script type="text/javascript">
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push("fillDefaultIDValues");
function fillDefaultIDValues() {
var temp = document.getElementById("ProjectID")
var RealId = temp.innerHTML;
setLookupFromFieldName("Project ID", RealId);
alert(temp);
}
function setLookupFromFieldName(fieldName, value) {
if (value == undefined) return;
var theSelect = getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle("select","Lookup",fieldName);
// if theSelect is null, it means that the target list has more than
// 20 items, and the Lookup is being rendered with an input element
if (theSelect == null) {
var theInput = getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle("input","",fieldName);
ShowDropdown(theInput.id); //this function is provided by SharePoint
var opt=document.getElementById(theInput.opt);
setSelectedOption(opt, value);
OptLoseFocus(opt); //this function is provided by SharePoint
} else {
setSelectedOption(theSelect, value);
}
}
function setSelectedOption(select, value) {
var opts = select.options;
var l = opts.length;
if (select == null) return;
for (var i=0; i < l; i++) {
if (opts[i].value == value) {
select.selectedIndex = i;
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
function getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle(tagName, identifier, title) {
var len = identifier.length;
var tags = document.getElementsByTagName(tagName);
for (var i=0; i < tags.length; i++) {
var tempString = tags[i].id;
if (tags[i].title == title && (identifier == "" || tempString.indexOf(identifier) == tempString.length - len)) {
return tags[i];
}
}
return null;
}
</script>
I needed to associate multiple records from one list with a single item in another list. And boy, is that harder than you think!
Say, for example, that you have a list of projects. You want to be able to enter notes on each project as the weeks go by. If multiple users are working on a single project, then each should be able to add as many notes as they want. Versioning wouldn't be an option in this case, since the users want to be able to quickly and easily view all notes for a project at once.
So, that means you gotta do two lists: ProjectList and NotesList. Each Note will have some kind of ID tying it to a Project. Simple enough - databases do this all the time, right?
Well, the challenge is in NewForm.aspx!
We had started working on a custom New Item Form page for the Projects list, assuming that we could add a simple button that, when clicked, would let a user enter a new note. Specifically, we figured that the button would redirect the user to the New Item page for the Notes list, add an ID, and life would be good.
The problem? You don't HAVE an ID. The ID is only created when the form is submitted.
I started surfing for options. I tried a couple JQuery solutions, but I honestly couldn't get them to work right. The Redirect-with-ID option was very promising, but I could only get it to perform the redirect on 'submit' - and that doesn't help much when I want my users to click a special button for this.
Tried combining Jquery with a custom submit button, but that didn't work either. Only the built-in button seemed to work. I'm sure I was doing something dumb, but I was frustrated and moved on.
I considered writing up an event handler, but the pain of writing it (code isn't my strongest suit) combined with the pain of deploying it convinced me to discard that option as well.
Found a few examples with SPAPI, but wasn't successful in implementing them.
Finally, inspired by the SharePoint Hillbilly's post on passing parameters, I took a look at it from the SharePoint perspective.
Let's see - I know I can use those custom submit buttons to get a user onto a page. And once I actually get there, there WILL be an ID, 'cause the form was just submitted. I can't pass it via the URL parameter since it's just not ready when the user clicks the button....But what if I can pull the ID back as soon as they hit the page?
I tried the following:
--Re-added that custom submit button to my New Project form, and pointed the redirect paramete rto my New Note form
--Added a stripped-down display item form to the New Note page. This form just shows one item: the ID of the most recently modified Project for the current user. To make life easier, I identified the cell that contains the Project ID as "ProjectID", so I could nab the value in my javascript.
--Added javascript to pull that ID and write it to the form, so that the Note is associated with the right Project ID (code below)
--Added more javascript to append that ID onto another custom submit button - this one points the user at the Project list's EditItem form
Now a user can click to enter a new project, type stuff in, click to enter a note, go right back to their project page, and finish typing whatever they want. Magic!
---THE CODE----
*Custom button on New Project form:
<input type="button" value="Add a Note" name="btnSave"onclick="{ddwrt:GenFireServerEvent('__commit;__redirect={http://server/site/pages/newnote.aspx}')}; " />
*Javascript to add the ID from the New Note page onto my redirect URL:
<script type="text/javascript">
function GoToPage(url)
{
var TheCell = document.getElementById("ProjectID")
var TheID = TheCell.innerHTML;
location.href = url + "?ID=" + TheID;
return false;
}
</script>
*Button code that will send user from New Note page to Project Edit Form with correct ID appended:
<input type="button" value="Click me!" onClick="GoToPage('http://server/site/Lists/Projects/Item/editform.aspx');"></input>
*Javascript to pull the value from my ProjectID field and write it to the Notes form:
<script type="text/javascript">
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push("fillDefaultIDValues");
function fillDefaultIDValues() {
var temp = document.getElementById("ProjectID")
var RealId = temp.innerHTML;
setLookupFromFieldName("Project ID", RealId);
alert(temp);
}
function setLookupFromFieldName(fieldName, value) {
if (value == undefined) return;
var theSelect = getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle("select","Lookup",fieldName);
// if theSelect is null, it means that the target list has more than
// 20 items, and the Lookup is being rendered with an input element
if (theSelect == null) {
var theInput = getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle("input","",fieldName);
ShowDropdown(theInput.id); //this function is provided by SharePoint
var opt=document.getElementById(theInput.opt);
setSelectedOption(opt, value);
OptLoseFocus(opt); //this function is provided by SharePoint
} else {
setSelectedOption(theSelect, value);
}
}
function setSelectedOption(select, value) {
var opts = select.options;
var l = opts.length;
if (select == null) return;
for (var i=0; i < l; i++) {
if (opts[i].value == value) {
select.selectedIndex = i;
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
function getTagFromIdentifierAndTitle(tagName, identifier, title) {
var len = identifier.length;
var tags = document.getElementsByTagName(tagName);
for (var i=0; i < tags.length; i++) {
var tempString = tags[i].id;
if (tags[i].title == title && (identifier == "" || tempString.indexOf(identifier) == tempString.length - len)) {
return tags[i];
}
}
return null;
}
</script>
Monday, April 12, 2010
Lookup Fields and XSL
Ahh, XSL...Cause of and solution to all of SharePoint's formatting woes.
I'm displaying a document library in an XSLT data view on my SharePoint page, and one of the fields I want to show is a lookup type.
Now, lookup type field values are stored with both the string value and the ID, like so:
...Which is fine, right up until you try to include that field in your data view, and get pages of 17#;Value, 18#;AnotherValue, etc.
Thankfully, XSL provides its own solution. Use the substring-after command to strip out those pesky IDs....Or, conversely, use substring-before if you just want the IDs!
Code sample:
I'm displaying a document library in an XSLT data view on my SharePoint page, and one of the fields I want to show is a lookup type.
Now, lookup type field values are stored with both the string value and the ID, like so:
17;#Value
...Which is fine, right up until you try to include that field in your data view, and get pages of 17#;Value, 18#;AnotherValue, etc.
Thankfully, XSL provides its own solution. Use the substring-after command to strip out those pesky IDs....Or, conversely, use substring-before if you just want the IDs!
Code sample:
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after(@Fieldname, ';#')" />
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Sharepoint Navigation: It Hurts So Good
Just when you think you've mastered navigation in SharePoint, something new gets tossed at you.
My own ego was deflated when a client requested a 3rd-level flyout on our top navigation, something like this:
Sure, I confidently asserted, I can definitely do that! No sweat.
Smugly, I set up a heading and a bunch of links beneath that on SubsiteA. Still brimming with confidence, I clicked 'OK', and moused over the navigation bar to admire my work.
But...it wasn't there. Just...nothing. Did I save it properly? I doublechecked, and yes, I saw the heading and all the subnav items still there in the admin page. Mocking me. I could almost hear their laughter.
I mucked around with different combinations of relative and absolute URLs, and replicated the issue on other sub-sites. Sure enough, headings just refused to show up on anything except the root site.
Annoyed, I turned to the web for help, and finally dug up a post by Millerw that addressed the problem. Millerw suggested changing the data source for the navigation to "CurrentNavSiteMapProvider". I checked, and found that my source was "CombinedNavSiteMapProvider". Well, OK - worth a try!
I swapped sources, and checked out my site. Um...Not quite what I was looking for. Yes, I could now see the flyout on that subsite, but navigation to all other subsites was messed up. Everything was oriented vertically, I wasn't seeing all the subsites I wanted to, etc., etc.
Beginning to despair, I searched around and ended up on the Microsoft Enterprise Content Management Team blog (there's a mouthful), where they have a VERY good deep-dive on MOSS navigation. They actually had a lot of useful information on CombinedNavSiteMapProvider...And in their sample code, they had the following line:
TrimNonCurrentTypes="Heading"
AH-HAH, they're turning off 'heading' in the navigation - that MUST mean that CombinedNavSiteMapProvider can show headings!
Sure enough, by tweaking settings I was able to get the code below to work. Now I see all my horizontal top nav items just as before, with the addition of headers on my sub-sites.
I'll tell ya, if SharePoint is good for anything, it's good for keeping your ego in check.
The code:
My own ego was deflated when a client requested a 3rd-level flyout on our top navigation, something like this:
HOME SUBSITEA SUBSITEB SUBSITEC
Nav 1
Nav 2
Heading->
Subnav 1
Subnav 2
Subnav 3
Sure, I confidently asserted, I can definitely do that! No sweat.
Smugly, I set up a heading and a bunch of links beneath that on SubsiteA. Still brimming with confidence, I clicked 'OK', and moused over the navigation bar to admire my work.
But...it wasn't there. Just...nothing. Did I save it properly? I doublechecked, and yes, I saw the heading and all the subnav items still there in the admin page. Mocking me. I could almost hear their laughter.
I mucked around with different combinations of relative and absolute URLs, and replicated the issue on other sub-sites. Sure enough, headings just refused to show up on anything except the root site.
Annoyed, I turned to the web for help, and finally dug up a post by Millerw that addressed the problem. Millerw suggested changing the data source for the navigation to "CurrentNavSiteMapProvider". I checked, and found that my source was "CombinedNavSiteMapProvider". Well, OK - worth a try!
I swapped sources, and checked out my site. Um...Not quite what I was looking for. Yes, I could now see the flyout on that subsite, but navigation to all other subsites was messed up. Everything was oriented vertically, I wasn't seeing all the subsites I wanted to, etc., etc.
Beginning to despair, I searched around and ended up on the Microsoft Enterprise Content Management Team blog (there's a mouthful), where they have a VERY good deep-dive on MOSS navigation. They actually had a lot of useful information on CombinedNavSiteMapProvider...And in their sample code, they had the following line:
TrimNonCurrentTypes="Heading"
AH-HAH, they're turning off 'heading' in the navigation - that MUST mean that CombinedNavSiteMapProvider can show headings!
Sure enough, by tweaking settings I was able to get the code below to work. Now I see all my horizontal top nav items just as before, with the addition of headers on my sub-sites.
I'll tell ya, if SharePoint is good for anything, it's good for keeping your ego in check.
The code:
<publishingnavigation><?xml:namespace prefix = publishingnavigation /><publishingnavigation:portalsitemapdatasource id="GlobalNavDataSource" treatstartingnodeascurrent="true" startingnodeoffset="0" startfromcurrentnode="true" showstartingnode="false" sitemapprovider="CombinedNavSiteMapProvider" runat="server"></publishingnavigation:portalsitemapdatasource>
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
With a Little Javascript From My Friends
Had an interesting problem with an XSLT data view today.
THE BACKGROUND: I needed to display a document library from another sub-site. I set up an XSLT data view to pull data from that document library. One of the fields I brought over was a multi-select lookup list. The values all came back in a semicolon-delimited format:
This;Is;What;The;Values;Looked;Like
Problem was, a number of rows had a very long list of tags in this column, and it wouldn't wrap on semi-colons...Although it WOULD wrap on hyphens. So sometimes you'd get:
A;Long;List;Of;Hypen-
Delimited-
Entries;That;Linebreak;Like;This
Massively ugly. I tried restricting the width of the column to try and force the data view to add line breaks, but that didn't work - the cells stayed very wide and wouldn't wrap where I wanted them to.
It took a bit of beating my head to my desk before I finally settled on the simplest solution. Convince CSS to wrap on a particular character? Count the number of chars, look for the next semicolon, and insert a page break after that? Rawrgh, too complicated!
Finally, I realized this could be tackled very simply. Word wrapping WAS working - just not on semicolons. What if we replaced them with a semicolon AND a space? This would keep things completely dynamic in case I wanted to change the column width in the future, too. But...how to make that happen?
In the end, I found two solutions. Some smart friends who know their way around Javascript helped put together the following:
Placed at the end of the page in the appropriate tag, this did take care of the problem.
In conjunction, I poked around for a solution on the XSL side. I finally found a suggestion from David Carlisle here on replacing characters in XSL. I pasted in his code, changed the from and to parameters, and pointed it at my data field. Voila!
I think it's neater to do this on the XSL side, but it was great to get another round of education on Javascript at the same time.
Back to the grind!
THE BACKGROUND: I needed to display a document library from another sub-site. I set up an XSLT data view to pull data from that document library. One of the fields I brought over was a multi-select lookup list. The values all came back in a semicolon-delimited format:
This;Is;What;The;Values;Looked;Like
Problem was, a number of rows had a very long list of tags in this column, and it wouldn't wrap on semi-colons...Although it WOULD wrap on hyphens. So sometimes you'd get:
A;Long;List;Of;Hypen-
Delimited-
Entries;That;Linebreak;Like;This
Massively ugly. I tried restricting the width of the column to try and force the data view to add line breaks, but that didn't work - the cells stayed very wide and wouldn't wrap where I wanted them to.
It took a bit of beating my head to my desk before I finally settled on the simplest solution. Convince CSS to wrap on a particular character? Count the number of chars, look for the next semicolon, and insert a page break after that? Rawrgh, too complicated!
Finally, I realized this could be tackled very simply. Word wrapping WAS working - just not on semicolons. What if we replaced them with a semicolon AND a space? This would keep things completely dynamic in case I wanted to change the column width in the future, too. But...how to make that happen?
In the end, I found two solutions. Some smart friends who know their way around Javascript helped put together the following:
function SeparateSemicolons( inStr )
{
var strArray = inStr.split(";");
return strArray.join("; ");
}
var clevervarname = document.getElementsByTagName("td");
var i = 0;
for (i=0; i < clevervarname.length; i++)
{
var place = clevervarname[i];
if( place.id == "TheTDWithSemicolons" )
{
place.innerHTML = SeparateSemicolons(place.innerHTML);
}
}
Placed at the end of the page in the appropriate tag, this did take care of the problem.
In conjunction, I poked around for a solution on the XSL side. I finally found a suggestion from David Carlisle here on replacing characters in XSL. I pasted in his code, changed the from and to parameters, and pointed it at my data field. Voila!
I think it's neater to do this on the XSL side, but it was great to get another round of education on Javascript at the same time.
Back to the grind!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Sharepoint Page Editing Quick Fix
Looking to customize a system page (the edit item page for a document library), I found a hint online to quickly set your page to edit mode within the browser. Add the following to the end of your page's URL:
?PageView=Shared&ToolPaneView=2
This will put even system pages into edit mode. Saves the trouble of having to open Designer for a quick fix!
?PageView=Shared&ToolPaneView=2
This will put even system pages into edit mode. Saves the trouble of having to open Designer for a quick fix!
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Oooh, you wascally job timer, you!
The SSP Timer Job Distribution List Import Job was not run.
Reason: Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password
...Every.
...Five.
...Minutes.
It's hard to think of a more often-discussed SP error than the SSP Timer Job failure message. This error shows up in the server's event log every five minutes, oftentimes in pairs. If you take a look at the security log, you should see an associated 529 error (or two) with the reason: Unknown user name or bad password, and the user name of the account used for your SP site's shared services provider.
It's an easy password change to miss, and it may be that you've just not gotten the new password into all the right places the last time it was changed. A number of forum posts advise that you run the following from the STSADM command line (at %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin):
stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials [-userlogin] [-password]
stsadm -o updateaccountpassword -userlogin -password
...Followed by an IISRESET. In a lot of cases, this will catch any password changes you didn't get to manually through Central Admin, and solve the problem.
I found that it wasn't clearing the problem on my server, however. Poking around some more, I found a post that suggested an additional step: in Central Admin, check to make sure you've added your Shared Services account to the "Process Accounts with access to this SSP" box in the configuration menu.
OHHHHHHH.
Sure enough, that took care of it! You just have to:
*Open Central Administration
*Click on the 'Shared Services Administration' link
*Click the drop-down menu for the name of your SSP, and select 'edit properties'
*Enter the new password in the 'SSP Service Credentials' section, for good measure
*Enter the SSP username in the 'Process Accounts with access to this SSP' section
*Click OK
*Perform an IISRESET
That did the trick!
Reason: Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password
...Every.
...Five.
...Minutes.
It's hard to think of a more often-discussed SP error than the SSP Timer Job failure message. This error shows up in the server's event log every five minutes, oftentimes in pairs. If you take a look at the security log, you should see an associated 529 error (or two) with the reason: Unknown user name or bad password, and the user name of the account used for your SP site's shared services provider.
It's an easy password change to miss, and it may be that you've just not gotten the new password into all the right places the last time it was changed. A number of forum posts advise that you run the following from the STSADM command line (at %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin):
stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials [-userlogin]
stsadm -o updateaccountpassword -userlogin
...Followed by an IISRESET. In a lot of cases, this will catch any password changes you didn't get to manually through Central Admin, and solve the problem.
I found that it wasn't clearing the problem on my server, however. Poking around some more, I found a post that suggested an additional step: in Central Admin, check to make sure you've added your Shared Services account to the "Process Accounts with access to this SSP" box in the configuration menu.
OHHHHHHH.
Sure enough, that took care of it! You just have to:
*Open Central Administration
*Click on the 'Shared Services Administration' link
*Click the drop-down menu for the name of your SSP, and select 'edit properties'
*Enter the new password in the 'SSP Service Credentials' section, for good measure
*Enter the SSP username in the 'Process Accounts with access to this SSP' section
*Click OK
*Perform an IISRESET
That did the trick!
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