Event workflow in SharePoint - sharepoint

Clearly I need to edit my question.
If I'd like to create a process, a process for registering and handlig some kind of event inside an organisation, where you first register this event, by giving it a title, and some other properties (date, description etc), then this event should be handled in some ways, this will be done in several steps in order to resolve this event. What would be the best way to do this? I'm not looking for an answer in code, just a keyword for what this could be called, or a guide/tutorial, or a link to something similar.
All help is appriciated, if u don't understand my question please tell me, and I will try to elaborate.

Since you tagged this SharePoint, I assume you have a SharePoint site set up already. On that site, you want to create a list (either a calendar list or a custom list; try both and see which option has more columns you'll use, then add/remove columns until you're capturing all the data you need). Then you want to create a workflow (or workflows) that run on items created in that list. Workflows created in SharePoint Designer can do everything you're asking, from sending automatic emails to changing fields in your items. Googling "SharePoint workflows" will start you down the road to developing your solution.

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SharePoint 2013 KnockoutJS Lookup columns

I have a basic knockoutjs project loading data from a SharePoint 2013 list scenario. Getting data and displaying data is easy, the problem that I'm running into is on the edit mode displaying the proper control. Everything should not be a textbox. This means the people picker control to dropdownmenus to calendar controls.
MSFT has some pretty good documentation on using the client side people picker control here"http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj713593.aspx
The problem that I have is calling this control inside my viewmodel.
Setting the value of the control doesn't look difficult courtesy of this blog post: http://www.sharepointcolumn.com/sp2013-setting-people-picker-value-in-newform-aspx/
I attempted to looking into computed values, but that doesn't seem to work. Does anyone have a blog post that I skipped over? The closest related post that I can find: http://yetanothersharepointblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/working-with-sharepoint-lookup-columns-in-knockout-js/
Lastly since it seems that I'm the only one doing this, does anyone think that I should not be reinventing the wheel with my forms and should just link each item to the appropriate SharePoint list item in edit or display view? I suppose that would be easier.
From a SharePoint Professional to another, I would highly recommend you to do that.
Just redirect the user to the item edit/display item page an let SharePoint take the leash of how to handle UI form elements.
Because, assume that you implement your custom form, what if the user decides to add one more site column to the list? Will you update your code to support another field?
From my personal experience with the beast I've come to the conclusion that structural implementation over already existent functionality tends to go wrong.
Also, if you have some kind of listing of items custom made and you want to provide editing, try to do something opening a pretty SP.UI.ModalDialog, its elegant and you use the sharepoint to do the work for you.
But it's just an advise.

3 SharePoint HOWTO questions for the community

If I have a list containing NAME and EMAIL of approximately 10 rows, is there a workflow work-around allowing me to send an email to all recipients of the “selected view” of the list? The scenario involves simply browsing the list, opening a link (or clicking a button) that launches a new message in Outlook. If the above is possible, can I customize the (a) message body with a stored template, (b) carbon copy recipients and (c) message subject? Have any workarounds to accomplish this? Trying to do so without any extensions to SP with Visual Studio. Any links, tips, tricks to accomplishing this?
I intentionally created an SP site with external sharing enabled because I wanted any child sites beneath it to be externally accessible. I want to do so, however, without external users accessing the parent. Is this possible?
I’m exploring opportunity #2 above because I’d like teachers to collect documents from a “shared” read-only folder yet be permitted to create a personal (i.e. team) folder that is writable. In doing so, I’d like the modified document in their personal folder to be (a) numerically rated and (b) freely tagged with meta attributes. Thinking here is that team members can search for docs that are associated with the freely created meta data. Question is, is there a way to propagate all the meta data generated so that users can select/enter it in their subsequent searches?
Thanks
I'll only answer to your 1 (because I don't understand the 2, and the 3 seems too complex to help on a forum like that).
A workflow looks at only one row/item, so you cannot do what you want in that way. At my work I don't have access to the backend programming (C#) so I'm doing everything with JavaScript. In your case you could use JavaScript in this scenario :
The user goes to a page and click on a button
A JavaScript code is triggered and gets all the data from the list
The JavaScript code creates a new item into a special list with the collected data
There is a workflow tied to this special list that sends an email based on the different fields
The last step of the workflow is to delete the item from the special list
In this scenario you can use templates for the body, and do all the things you want.
To use JavaScript with Sharepoint you can look at my framework that is called SharepointPlus or at the popular SPServices.

Sharepoint 2010 - Datasheet view and 3 linked lists

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.

Export list of Sitecore items as Excel (or other formats)

I noticed that sitecore has the option of exporting users in an Excel format.
I need to have similar functionality for exporting 'participations', (a users can enlist to take part in an 'event', and if their entry is approved via a sitecore workflow, a 'participation' item is created in the content tree)
Since mostly everything in Sitecore is in essence based on items, and I want to export items to Excel, my question is - what are some of the best ways of doing this?
Questions:
Is there a way to re-use this functionality for regular items?
Would it be a good idea to create a custom admin page (any tips on doing this?) which has some custom code that reads the items from the database using the API?
are there sitecore plugins/shared source projects that can help me achieve this?
Or does anyone have a better idea? - would it be better to just store the participations in SQL? I'm mostly doing it this way because I want to make use of the 'free' functionality offers, for example workflow, but if that leads to me using anti-patterns please shoot me ;)
Link is different now: https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/Advanced_System_Reporter.aspx
P.S. Couldn't leave a comment to original answer as I don't have enough reputation. Oh well :)
Found a most excellent shared source module which does exactly this (and much more)!
Basically it allows you to configure (and easily extend, if you need to) any kind of table based report on 'items'.
The report module shows up as an application in the sitecore menu (like the user manager tool) and comes with features such as xml,csv, xls export. It's also really easy to set up, once you get the hang of it.
http://trac.sitecore.net/AdvancedSystemReporter

Change template html in sharepoint discussion reply box

I have a wss 3.0 install which needs an "anonymous" discussion board. I can modify the view so no usernames are displayed, however when I click on "reply", the message I'm replying to shows up in the rich text box with the username of the previous poster.
Is there a way to remove that username? or Remove the previous posted text altogether? I've found the schema.xml file with lots of relevant info under the ..12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\DiscussionsList\Discuss folder, but not sure if this is the easiest way to adjust this setting.
Any comments appreciated.
Best practice says that you should always create a custom list definition instead of trying to modify the OOB assets.
The easiest way to do this is take a copy of the 12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\DiscussionsList\Discuss folder, modify the feature Ids and names so that its unique. Then your free to change the schema render template (i.e view schema) and modify the edit and display forms.
If you need to modfify the actual entry form you may consider a custom control template : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543922.aspx
Custom list definition : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms466023.aspx
Agrothe,
I have a similar requirement (hide or mask the author inside the reply thread.). What exactly inside of schema.xml do you think will allow you to do accomplish that?
Not sure if the list forms are exposed to xslt. If so, then perhaps this is another approach.
FWIW, the other solutions I have investigated:
(1) A custom event handler. Unfortunately, I can't pinpoint which event fires when someone click reply.
(2) Anonymous blog comments (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/08/06/anonymous-comment-feature-for-sharepoint-blog-now-available-on-codeplex.aspx).
(3) the other thing I am considering, is to introduce a global anonymous active directory login, which users can use to post anonymously. Not ideal, but for the amount of time I have spent researching a solution, might be my last hope.

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