Lookup columns in SharePoint

In this article, we are going to discuss a simple and useful feature of SharePoint which is called lookup columns.

What are Lookup columns in SharePoint?
Ø  In simple words, it is a referential integrity between the lists in SharePoint (It is something like relating the two columns in a table in the database using queries).
Ø  We will create lookup columns, when we need to create relationship between two lists.
Ø  To create a relationship between two lists, in the source list, you create a lookup column that retrieves one or more values from a target list if those values match the value in the lookup column in the source list.

Advantages of Lookup columns

Ø  Easily create relationships between the lists without using calculated fields

Ø  Creates multiple relations between the lists

Lookup columns in WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007
We have two custom lists created named Asset Details and Operating Systems
In Operating Systems list I have the following columns
ID                                   - Default column
Title                                - Single Line of Text
Release Version               - Number

The Operating System list is shown below

In Asset Details I have the following columns

Machine Name                - Number

Location                          - Single Line of Text

Operating System           - Lookup column

The below is the screenshot which shows how the lookup column is created for the Operating System column in the asset details list

Now, I will add a new item to the Asset details list

Hence, here for the operating system column, you will get the lookup values from the operating systems list as shown above.

Once created, when you click on the Windows 7 in the list, you will be navigated to the windows which shows the properties of the Windows 7 as shown below

Now I have added 3 values in the asset details list as shown below

Now, I will delete the Windows Vista data from the Operating Systems List as shown below

Now, we have deleted the Windows Vista item from this list, which is integrated or mapped in the Asset details list. Either, it should not allow us to delete or should show some warning about it. But it is deleted.

There’s no referential integrity between the two.

When we go and see the asset details list, the value is left empty as shown below

This disadvantage has been resolved in the SharePoint 2010. Read this article to know about lookup columns in SP 2010.

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Reading the Custom Properties of MS Office Word 2007 & 2010 documents

Earlier, we have discussed about reading the Summary and Custom Properties of Word 2003 using DSO DLL.

Here are the articles references

Basics of DSO DLL

Reading Summary Properties of Word 2003

Reading Custom Properties of Word 2003

As already mentioned in the above articles, DSO dll is a 32 bit and also it has OLE property reader class, which can read only the office 2003 documents.

The same DSO file cannot be used for reading the properties of 2007 & 2010. This is because, word 2003 stores the properties in OLE type and hence DSO has capabilities to read the properties. But word 2007 and 2010 stores in XML formats.

Want to know how the office 2007 & 2010 stores the properties in XML formats?

Change the extension of word 2007 or 2010 documents from .docx to .zip. Now extract the contents.

You will see many xml files inside that folder.

Now open the folder -> docProps folder -> 3 files will be there                     
 1.  App.xml – it stores the document’s summary properties

     2.   Core.xml – it stores the document’s summary properties

     3.   Custom.xml – it stores the document’s custom properties

The below snap shot shows the custom.xml file of a word 2007 document

It is possible to read the custom properties of word document using Office DLLs (which is deployed when you install a MS office in a machine).

But how to read the properties without using Office DLLs?

Hence, we will go for an open source dll provided by Microsoft called Open Office XML SDK 2.0.

The same can be downloaded from the below link

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5124

It has the capabilities to read the xml properties from the MS office documents.

Code snippet for reading custom the properties of word 2007 & 2010

public Dictionary<string, string> WDGetCustomProperties(string filename)
{
using (var package = WordprocessingDocument.Open(filename, false))
{
var properties = new Dictionary<string, string>();
var customProps = package.CustomFilePropertiesPart;
foreach (var property in package.CustomFilePropertiesPart.Properties.Elements<CustomDocumentProperty>())
{
                    if (property.Name == "Name")
                        Name = Convert.ToString(property.InnerText);
                    if (property.Name == "Expertise")
                        ExpertiseIn = Convert.ToString(property.InnerText);
                    if (property.Name == "Place")
                        Place = Convert.ToString(property.InnerText);
}
 return properties;
}
}

Note: Don’t forget to declare the 3 variables used for storing the values in theabove code.

Hence, this article shows you how to read the custom properties of the word 

2007 & 2010 documents.

To know how to create the custom properties in the Word 2007 & 2010 read 

this article.
Hope this helps You! Please free to comment.

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Creating and Deploying a Visual Web Part using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

To know about the Basics of Visual web part, read this article before knowing how to create and deploy the visual web part using visual studio 2010.

We will create a Visual web part for uploading the document to the SharePoint document library.

At the end of this article, we will learn

     1.How to create and deploy a Visual Web part

     2.How to programmatically upload a document to the SharePoint Document library

Open the Visual Studio and create a Visual Web Part project as shown below

When you click OK, you will see a pop-up window which will ask for the SharePoint site where the web part is going to be deployed as shown below. Hence give the proper URL of the SharePoint site. Also select the option Deploy as a farm solution because, visual web part is not a sandboxed solution

Once clicked Finish, you will see the project created with all the necessary files (assembly, .ascx files, feature to be deployed, .web part file) for a web part in the solution explorer as shown below

Click on the .ascx file and in the design mode, drag and drop the controls (FileUpload Control and Button) as shown below and complete the design part

I have added a JavaScript code which we used in this article for validating the file being uploaded is only .doc and .docx file.

Now, we will go for the coding the functionality of the web part. I have added a code in the Button1_Click event (Upload) of the web part as shown below

In the above code, give the proper name of the Document Library. I have used the default document library “Documents”.

Now Build the application and check for the errors. Once the build is successful, our web part is ready to be deployed in the SharePoint site.

It is very easy to deploy the visual web part. See the screenshot below.

That’s it. We have deployed our solution to the SharePoint site, which we have mentioned during creating the project.

Now, we will use the web part in our share point page.

Go to the SharePoint page -> Edit Page -> Insert web part -> Categories -> Custom -> Select the web part created (in our case I have named visualwebpart1)

Once added, we will see our web part designed in the SharePoint site page.

I will select a file and click upload. The file will get uploaded into the document library mentioned in the code.

Once Clicked Upload, the document is uploaded into the document library as shown below.

That’s it! We are done. We have learned to create and deploy the visual web part in SharePoint 2010.

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Basics of Visual WebPart in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

In this article, we are going to discuss about an interesting feature of Microsoft which is called Visual Webpart.

Web parts play an important role in the SharePoint design and development.

In the lower versions of SharePoint, we have to write the code for designing the webpart and then the custom code for its function.

But with the introduction of Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 improved the way of creating and deploying the web parts in SharePoint (which is drag & drop the controls and design easily).

What is Visual Webpart?

In simple words, visual webpart is the wrapping the web user control (.ascx page) within a web part. 

Hence, the Web Part class will load a User Control in the Web Parts CreateChildControls() method and this user control is what you can drag and drop your controls to design the webpart. The Visual Studio interface nicely makes these operations seamless and takes care of all the wiring for deployment.

I will diagrammatically represent the visual web part

Advantages

1. Design of the web part is very easy, since it involves only drag and drop of the controls

2. No need to use the STSADM commands for adding an deploying the solution to the SharePoint site, since it involves only single click to deploy the solution

3. When we want to alter the design or change the code due to some bugs, we can make the changes-> re-build the solution-> deploy from the development environment which will automatically make the changes in the SharePoint site and even in the web part added in any of the pages

See also, how to create and deploy a Visual Web Part using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 in this article.

See also, how to create a Visual Web Part and deploy the solution in SharePoint 2010 in this article.

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Implementing Federated Search Result (Twitter) in SharePoint 2010

In the previous article, we have discussed about the basics of Federated Search Results in SharePoint
In this article, we will discuss how to implement the Federated Search results in SharePoint 2010.
Steps
Go to Central Administration of the SharePoint Server -> Application Management -> Manage service applications

You will see a list of services. In that Select Search Service Application

Clicking on this, you will be re-directed to the Search Server Administration page. In the left navigation, you will see some menus as shown below. Select Federated Results in the left navigation menu.

You will see a page, where you will find options for creating a New Location for Federated search or you can import the FLD file through Import Location option.

Clicking on the New Location option you will see the following page, where we will configure your Federated Location as shown below

That’s it. I have added the FLD file at the end of the article, for download so that you can download and import the file and work on it.

Now, we have configured the New Location and hence we will use the created Federated Location in the Search Center.

I have created a Search Center as shown below. First give a search query and in the results page, we will add the Twitter Results federated location.

In the search result page, edit the page and you will see options for adding the web part as shown below

After adding the Federated Results webpart, configure the results as shown below.

That’s it. We are done. Save the webpart and give a search keyword and test. You will be able to see the results from the intranet and from the internet search results (here Twitter).

You can download the Twitter FLD file from here.

Enjoy SharePoint using!

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Federated Search Results in SharePoint

In this article, we are going to discuss about another interesting topic called Federated Search which came up with the MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server), when Microsoft updated the Infrastructure in SharePoint.

What is Federated Search?

Federate - Characterized by unity or being or joined into a single entity
Federation allows users to send the same query (search keyword) to multiple independent repositories, and display the results from each in its own region on a results page.

Advantages
1. It is helpful, when the search data is stored in the multiple repositories or to display results from various locations
2. We can bring the results from various social networking sites (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr etc.,) and search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.,) easily in our search results page
3. Displaying the results from various sites and search engines allows the user to view the results from different source in a single page
4. We can display different types of results like Sites, Images, Videos, etc., This allows the users to interact with the site more easily.

Disadvantages

1.If we are using this federated search results in a corporate intranet, then there will be security issue. This is because, all the search queries/keyword (which may be confidential to a company) will be sent to the search engines. This search engines will store the data for some time, even after querying the results.

2. We cannot crawl the results from the other sources (Search Servers) and store the index

Hope this helps you!


Also, read about Configuring a Federated Results for Twitter in SharePoint 2010 and using it in this article.

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How to Remove “+ Add document" from a SharePoint 2010 Document Library

In previous article, we have learned how to hide the Select/ Deselect Check Box from a view in the list/libraries.
In this post, we will see how to remove the “+ Add document” option from the document library in SharePoint 2010.
We will get some scenarios where, we will display the document library I different view and in that, we don’t want this option to be shown to the users. Because, it will allow the users to upload the documents.
Suppose the below is the document library where we want to hide the Add document option

 

We can achieve this by the following methods

1.   Editing the WebPart
2.   Using SharePoint Designer(CSS)
3.   Using J Query
4.   By Permission level(Default)

1. Editing the WebPart
Go to Edit WebPart -> Tool bar Type -> Select NoToolBar option which will hide the Add Document option

2. Using SharePoint Designer(CSS)
Go to the designer and edit the page/webpart where you want to hide. Search for class=”ms-addnew” and change the style to Style=”display:none”

3. Using J Query
Add a CEWP and link the following J-Query in it and hide the CEWP webpart
$(document).ready(function()
{
$(‘#WebPartWPQ2 .ms-addnew’).hide();
});
4. By Permission Level (Default)
We can set the permission level for the document library to read only and hence the user with read only option in the SharePoint site will not see this option
We will get the following result

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How to hide the Select and Deselect Check box in a List/Library in SharePoint 2010

We might have faced some situations where you want to hide the Select and Deselect Option Check Box in the SharePoint 2010.
This is required, when you create some views and want to display some items with out check box options.
Let’s discuss about this in this article.
Suppose this is the document library where I want to hide the checkbox

Go to the Modify view in the Ribbon

You will see all the options for customizing the list\library. Click On the Tabular View.

Here you will find that, “Allow Individual Item Checkboxes” option is selected.

Unselect the Check Box and you are done. Now, you won’t see the Check Boxes in the list\Library as shown below

We can do this in SharePoint Designer also.
Go to the List/Library and then to the view where you want to hide the checkbox. Find the below section (.ms-WPHeaderTdSelection) and make this property to display equal to none.

.ms-WPHeaderTdSelection
{
Display:none;
}

That’s it. We have learned to hide the checkbox in lists and libraries of SharePoint 2010 using default settings and also using SharePoint designer 2010.

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How to create a Tab using the labels in the blogger

In the previous article, we have discussed about increasing the traffic or the number of users to the blog. In this article, we will discuss how to create a tab using the labels which you have created for the posts in your blog.

If you have the older version of the blog, then in the design mode you will see an option for “Try the Updated Blogger Interface” and click to update to the new interface as shown below.

Don’t worry, at any time you can switch back to the older interface.

After updating to the new interface, go to the design and you will see a right navigation bar. In that, select Pages as shown below.

Once you click Pages, you will get a popup window allows you to create a blank page and the other is web address as shown below.

We will select web Address, as we are going to create a tab using the existing label URL.

Example: http://sharepoint-works.blogspot.com/search/label/LabelName

So, http://blogname/search/label/labelname

When you click the Web address (as shown in the above figure), you will re-direct to popup window, where you can enter the Tab title and the Label URL.

Now, save the Web Address.

That’s it. Now, we will see a tab with the particular label which will show all the posts in the label.

Happy Blogging! 

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How to hide the download a copy option (Context Menu) in the Document Library

In the document library we have an option of downloading the document as shown below.

If the user wants to hides or remove this option for all the users. The following steps will explain the same.

1. First locate the following path C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033

2. Find the file named “CORE.js”. This is the file which will run the scripts downloading option for the document library.

3. Open the core.js file in best .js file editor and search for the function 

        AddSendSubMenu(m,ctx)

        Where you can see

        menuOption=CAMOpt(sm, L_DownloadACopy_Text, strAction, "");
        menuOption.id="ID_DownloadACopy";

These lines of code which will display text "Download A Copy" and call the menu operation.

So, comment the code and save the file.

4. Now when you search the context menu (Download a copy) option will be hidden as shown in the following figure.

Disadvantage

The above solution will affect all the document libraries of the SharePoint Server.

So, how to do it a particular document library or one web collection?

Hence the solution is as follows:

1. Open the default.master page in the designer.

2. Locate the core.js in the master page

<SharePoint:ScriptLink language="javascript" name="core.js"                  Defer="true" runat="server"/>

3.   So we can create our own (with the modifications as shown above) .js file (example named customcore.js) and save it in the following location

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033

4.   Now we can add the reference as shown below.

<SharePoint:ScriptLink language="javascript" name="customcore.js" Defer="true" runat="server"/>

5.   Now it won’t affect all the document libraries in the SharePoint server.

Bingo. We are done. We have restricted users to download the documents from the SharePoint Document library.



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