I'm running into a situation for a specific deployment where the site has multiple ISV products as well as their own enhancements all to the same screen (In this case, Stock Item Maintenance)
All the items compile and function but the overall screen layout is correct. Fields are shown either with the incorrect column spans or in the wrong position on the screen or not shown at all. In this case, I'm referring to Form layouts, not grid based layouts.
Reordering the levels of the projects simply results in different screen layout issues.
Obviously one scenario is to merge the customization projects and clean up the resulting layout however with the ISV products being frequently updated that poses several other issues that we'd have to convince the customer and ISV to deal with.
While the "levels" allow the projects to publish and Extensions on Extensions allow fluent business logic flow, I have yet to see a good solution to stacking customizations. What I'm ultimately looking to see if it is possible to do something like this scenario:
Customization Project "A" published
Customization Project "B" rebased and modified post Project "A" layout
Customization Project "A" and "B" published
Repeated for Project "C" - "Z"
With the end result of the screen layouts looking exactly how we need based on all the above items. This would be almost a "virtual" merge.
The other question is, what is being done at other locations when multiple ISV's are involved all touching the same screens.
Related
One of my colleague left on vacation and left me with an Orchard project to work on.
I never worked with Orchard, so please excuse my ignorance and my possibly stupid questions.
I come to you for general advice on how to implement and structure the content of my site, as my research didn't give me the answers I'm looking for.
Here are the requirements:
The site must be divided into sections (section A, section A-1, section A-2, section B, etc...)
The navigation of the site must be based on the sections, each navigation item must also contain an image
Each section has a separate page with roughly 4 types of content that must be displayed:
Title of the page
Articles associated with this section, which represent the main content
FAQ content associated with the section which should be displayed in a specific zone
Miscellaneous content associated with the section which should also be displayed in a specific zone
I'm struggling at nearly every aspect of the requirements...
We started building a taxonomy, with as many terms as we have sections, allowing us to build the hierarchy we want, which is perfect. But this had 2 downsides:
The built-in taxonomy-based navigation is static, so the only thing displayed is the term, and we couldn't find a way to change it so the user would be able to add an image to the taxonomy term.
The generated pages based on the taxonomy display every content item based on the current term, that is, the articles, but also the FAQ content and the miscellaneous content, all in the Content zone.
Is there any way to work around these issues by using the built-in taxonomy? Or will I have to build content types from scratch in order to achieve what I'm trying?
The solution my colleague came up with was to add a layer for each section, and add in this layer 3 widgets, one for each specific content (title, FAQ, misc) in different zones. But I don't think this will me maintainable, as we currently have 4 main sections, each with 4-5 subsections, so that's rougly 60 layers, which will be a nightmare for the client to maintain.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated, I'm kind of lost.
Thanks in advance,
Mickaël
Taxonomies was a good start, but now you need to study projections. You'll be able to set-up filters about what you display.
For adding an image to your terms, one way to do it is to add a media library picker field to the type that was created for your taxonomy.
For our Xpages application stack we have to create cca. 100 controls that will cover our new UI parts/helpers and some additional services. These controls are meant to be very general and have to be used by many Xpages applications. Now question is how to share these controls among applications(databases). Controls need some managed beans to work, also some CSS, JS and images. To copy the whole stuff into each application and maintain it somehow is not the way (even design inheritance doesnt help here). What's more ... mixing these 100 controls among application specific controls is real hell as controls doesn't support any namespaces or some packages grouping (like java in Package Explorer), so at the end we have very long list of controls in DDE which is nightmare to navigate and work with.
We tried to use Extension Library approach and followed this tutorial
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/Master_Table_of_Contents_for_XPages_Extensibility_APIs_Developer_Guide
... but honestly I tried 3 times on my computer from scratch and even example project from tutorial didn't work properly and still caused some errors in update site project. My colleague also tried this on his computer with no luck. And entire process as described in the article above is set of many java classes, XML and configuration files even for small control (eclipse plugin project -> feature project -> updated site project and then you have to install this update site test it and when bug occurs you have to run another cycle ...). Comparing to e.g. this http://tapestry.apache.org/component-classes.html its extremely heavy weight approach in Xpages.
So my question is, is there any other approach that can help us in this area to share controls among applications? Or is there any update expected in this area for upcoming Notes release e.g. R9.1 ?
the most efficient way to share controls is an extension library. It does come with a learning curve. You could use Nathan's XSP Starter Kit to ease your pain. Alternatively you can use the import/export plug-in from OpenNTF to move controls (and their supporting files) around.
In any case: XPages custom controls do support name spaces and grouping -> just have a look at the property panel of a control. You can define:
the namespace (defaults to xc, but you are free to design your own)
the group it should appear in
icons
how it looks at design time (to hide the inner workings)
So step 1 is to group and clean and then think about the distribution. Extlib definitely would be best.
There is good ol' method for sharing design elements in NSF: templates. You can make your database a template, and then inherit just specific design elements by copy/pasting them at designer level. In design element's properties view, Design tab, look for "Inherit from the design template" property. It contains template name from which you copied the element. Watch out for the property "Prohibit design refresh or replace to modify", it should be off.
This has some consequences when deploying the application to production, though, so please, read the documentation/help about template inheritance. Especially combination with XPages/custom controls requires the template to be built and signed.
We use it to share custom controls like application layout and picklists with no problems.
The scenario - I am building a site to house a number of reports - thirty or so subsites under a main web for different report categories, and several libraries in each site, one for each separate report. In total, about 600 reports (libraries) across the thirty report categories (sites). This design has been decided on, and cannot change.
I plan/want to have a single advanced search page to search all the reports, using various custom metadata columns. That bit's easy, I can do that out of the box.
One of the most important search criteria is which report on which to search, of which, as I mentioned, there are many. The dictate is to make the report type added "invisibly" - they will select the report category, then the report type, and THEN get presented with the search page. The search should "know" which report is being searched on.
Scope selection is not a viable option, as there's too many libraries, and more will be added as new reports are created.
Now, I can get the results I want in the results if I add the "u" parameter to the URL as in;
results.aspx?k="RunDate=1/23/13"&U=http://site/report_type/library"
(address left unescaped for clarity)
My challenge is finding a way to feed that parameter TO the advanced search, and get it to tack it on to the end of its generated query.
I'm confident it can be done with only a little fidgeting to the webpart, but I need a bit of a shove in the right direction.
Or, as always, if y'all have a more brillianter idea, I could do that.
Now, I have a second issue where the different reports have their own varying set of metadata columns, and they only want the RIGHT ones to show up for each report, but one crisis at a time.
EDIT - upon further research, it seems I can't extend the advanced search webpart, as it's a sealed type. Has anyone either a way around that, or have a third-party advanced search page that I CAN crack into?
I was able to find a solution to this issue by overriding the JavaScript function NavigateTo(url) which is responsible for the redirect. My solution can be found here
What you are actually asking about is a contextual search box, as the u parameter resembles the contextual search scope.
I'm not sure that the standard search box can be configured the way you want it to, so it always adds the query string u=<current url>. I think you will have to resort to some (even if simple) code.
An example you can find here: Create a SharePoint Contextual Search Box in a Content Editor Web Part.
Of course you could do the same thing with server side code, but as you only want to add a querytring parameter, JavaScript should be enough.
I am kind of new to SharePoint. I am learning it on the go and learned about the concept of pagelayout and publishing features on the site. But I am not really 100% sure what is the difference between a WebPartPage, SitePage and PublishingPage. I kind of know what all these pages be used for, but what I not get is: why do they need to separate all these pages?
I think we can just get a publishing page and have all the feature there including webpart and everything else (with our choice of PageLayout). However I dont see a way to use a pagelayout on a particular SitePage.
Is there any particular reasons for using either one of them? Even though it seems like one of them can serve as all of them?
You should use page layout when ever you know the page structure. For example you are running an online news paper. You want to show the news to the users into three columns. First column is for menu, second column is for news content and third column is for advertisements. Now in your daily usage this layout is common. So you can use this page layout for entering the news. After creating the page layout you can make it as a default to your pages. Page layout is nothing but the structure of a page simply!!
A webpart page does not have a field for content directly on the page like a SitePage has. A Publishing Page is like a SitePage, but requires extra fields for dealing with the publishing extra features.
Using a single layout for all three risks being confused as to why one page does not work the same as another when it has the same layout (the difference would be the underlying features are different.).
I will make a comparison with cars. There are three type of cars, each is better suitable for a certain purpose: tractors for farming, buses for public transport, light cars for private transport. You could use a tractor for all the purposes above but it's not ideal.
"One of them can serve as all of them". This is not true in their current implementation. I'll give you one example: prefer Web part pages against Publishing pages to better control content added by contributors in an intranet. There are many other examples.
I've got a tricky situation I'm trying to determine the best way to solve. I'm a VS developer who is learning SharePoint so it's a little frustrating to me when what I am trying to accomplish could easily be done with code and a db.
I have three lists, a parent and two children list that are linked through lookup columns. The client actually wanted everything in one list but due to SharePoint column type limitations I had to split the data into the three lists, there are over 300 fields. The client wants to see all the lists together in one view and be able to filter and edit groups of items.
I have successfully created a new data source linking the lists and can display that on one of my pages to view. After some research however I have learned that I can't create a datasheet view from this linked view due to limitations in the Office componets that SP uses. Which makes sense.
The business need is for the client to filter the three lists based on criteria they select from either list A AND list B and list C to get a group of items, they make the updates and save the changes back to the 3 lists. They prefer to do this in datasheet view because this mimics the excel spreadsheet that they are currently using that this website will replace. They will potentially be updating between 1-30 items at a time using this, which is why they prefer the drag and copy functionality.
I was thinking of two options: trying to create some kind of custom web part that has a gridview of all the columns in edit mode that they can filter down to their items and make their changes. Then I would have to loop through the fields and make updates programmatically. I also saw on this site jQuery.sheet, that looks like it may be a good solution if I go this route instead of gridview.
Or have a modal window with the columns listed, have the user select what they want to filter to, then redirect to a page that shows the three lists in their own DSVs. The user would have to make updates in the three separate views. Then I would use workflows to synchronize the lists after they had made their changes.
I always end up trying to do things programmatically since I am still largely unfamiliar with SP and only seem to hit its limitations instead of its strengths. Has anyone tried to do something similar to this? Or do you have any suggestions as to the best way to accomplish this? Best practices? I appreciate all thoughts and comments! FYI I've also posted this on the MS SP forums as well to cast a wider net...
Thanks,
Sabrina
In this case, you are better off going with a custom solution. A webpart would be an excellent choice for delivering your custom interface.
A dataview webpart will do the job, but if you feel comfortable with the jQuery solution it would make for a nicer interface.
In your code, treat the lists as you would a database and isolate it from the logic and interface code within the webpart.