We have recently moved our project over to TFS 2010 for CM control and issue tracking. For the most part we have been happy with the move. However, we have found that we need a way to allow users (notably our help desk) to write dynamic queries against our Product Backlog. The Query Results Web Part works fine for displaying information like Outstanding Work Items and Recent Issues, but our users need the ability to query for specific information that can change from support call to support call. Is there a way to allow a user to create a custom, dynamic query in TFS? If not are there any 3rd party tools that integrate with SharePoint that would allow this?
Thanks.
TFS 2010 has a web based user interface called Web Access. Users can create and view their own queries from there with the queries part of te app; they can also search for work items by words contained in their titles
By default, there is typically a link on the upper-left to it from the SharePoint site that TFS 2010 creates. If the link is not there you can access it directly its (default) URL: [http://address-of-your-TFS-server:8080/tfs/web]
I decided to use the Page Viewer Web Part to embed the actual query form from the Team Web Access to the Project Portal. Everything seems to work great when doing that. The only downside is you get a 'Nag Dialog' whenever you leave the page.
Related
This could have been already discussed but in context of Dynamics CRM 2013, I am wondering what is the recommended and easiest approach (mine is a on-premise deployment) :
Problem :
May be a known pain point with 2013 - Users want to see 'All Activities' of a Company and related Contacts, Child Companies but
excluding few activities (like campaign emails).
Solution :
Thinking to create a custom form or a web resource which can use CRM web services to query for this data and make it part of the Company form.
Question is :
What is an easy way to do a custom page where I can use CRM web
services to query for all activities data and filter campaign
emails and display it like a grid ? I see two options :
Develop a separate aspx web application(using SDK binaries as references and crm web services) and host that outside of CRM (in IIS) and
use that url in an IFrame within company form.
Develop this as a html webresource (with a grid) and somehow make crm web services call from java script and display as a web resource (If so, is this
easy in CRM 2013, since web api is only present in 2016 ?)
Or something else ? (like a SSRS report may be but I think it will
be too slow)
Many thanks for your advise on this.
Thank you.
I work for an organization where most of the times requirements is like yours, so i have already done a separate aspx web application like your option 1.
Following are the few things to keep in mind:
If you go with Option 1 and develop a custom aspx web application and host it in IIS, it will be alot easier to maintain in future and easy to customize based on new requirements. If you have any new requirements like this in future, it will be easy to add a new aspx WebForm to the existing site and refer that new url. You can have common classes for Connection and authentication stuff in your web-application, which is almost re-usable.
I have used the same approach as described here: Best Practices for Working with Custom ASP.NET Pages and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
In case of Option 2, i have tried this once but it is a bit more complex than the Option 1 because it involves more JavaScript code than C#. It is difficult to maintain although will be a bit-fast than the Custom Web App, but not re-usable code in case new requirements. Also Queries in C# (QueryExpression) is way more easy to write than writing Odata Queries in JavaScript.
Thanks.
I'm attempting (futilely) to create a custom advanced search page for my department's SharePoint site. I've been using this article as a guide,
http://tqclarkson.com/2007/10/26/creating-a-custom-advanced-search-box-in-moss-2007/
I've had some success copying the code of the advanced search web part and modifying it to my needs. However, I'm having some struggles with scopes.
Some background...
We are currently running MOSS 2007
Our company houses all its intranet sites under one GIGANTIC site collection
I am a site owner, but not the site collection administrator (that is controlled by IT corporate). Therefore I don't have access to central administration which houses most of the search settings.
IT has not set up any custom scopes (and just trust me when I say asking them to do so would be completely impractical).
I need to scope the advanced search web part's queries to just our site or its libraries. In a perfect world, I would just create custom scopes for this purpose, but as I mentioned that's not an option here.
I've tried using the URL property to restrict the results. Problem is the search has to be executed on EVERY RECORD in the database (which I'm sure is unfathomably huge). I did a test query which took over 5 minutes to result! Definitely not a practical solution.
So that's where I'm stuck. I need to scope the queries but can't figure out how else to do it. Any advice is welcome. Thanks as always!
I need to get all the lists used in my site and render theire items. Since i'm not allowed to use code i have to rely on something like xlst. However after several days of searching i haven't come up with a solution yet. Any idea on how to do this?
Alex depending on what you are trying to do using the client object model may work. This allows you to access SharePoint objects without writing code on the server itself. This does require writing some code but usually a farm admin won't mind it since it doesn't affect SharePoint in any way.
The javascript object model may provide you with what you want.
Here is a link that gets all lists in a SharePoint site
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh185009
Then to get items from a list
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh185007
You can using *.asmx Sharepoint services SharePoint 2010 Web Services. Example from Visual Studio: Connecting to SharePoint Online Web Services
and
from Sharepoint Designer: Connect to another library in SharePoint Designer 2010
Good luck!
I am building a publicly facing website that does the following.
Users log in.
And then view a list of their customers.
They click on a customer to view their past purchases, order them, change them etc.
This is not a shopping site by the way.
It is a simple look up tool.
Note that none of the data accessed by the website is in anything other than a SQL database - no office documents. Also, the login does not use users Windows credentials on a VPN or something like that.
Typically I would build this using a standard ASP.NET MVC website.
However the client says they want to use Sharepoint.
As I understand it, Sharepoint is used for workflow and websites that are collaboration tools such as the components you can see here http://www.sharepointhosting.com/sharepoint-features.html
Here are my questions:
Would I be right in saying that WSS is completely inappropriate for this task as it comes with an overhead that provides no benefits?
If I had to use it, would I need WSS or MOSS?
If I had to use it, would I be right in saying the site would consist of :
List item
a) Web Parts
b) And a custom site layout. How do I create one of these?
Addendum:The book Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development looks like a good start
1.) I agree that SharePoint would be quite inappropriate for this task. A few reasons:
It costs thousands of dollars to license SharePoint for use on the open Internet
SharePoint will use a lot of resources (SQL Server, IIS, Active Directory...) that are unnecessarily demanding for your task
SP will give you very little flexibility to develop a solution in your way -- it sounds like you would need to create a database-connected Web Part in ASP.NET anyway (so that could be entirely independent of SP)
SharePoint has it's place--it can be remarkably helpful as a company's internal document management, intranet, and workflow/approval system--but it is not well suited for custom code nor Internet use.
2.) I believe MOSS would be required for the Internet license (as in the link above).
3.) SP development is not like typical relation database systems (for example, it uses flat, unnormalized tables). If your SQL matched the SharePoint way of thinking, you might be able to connect to your database as an external List using SharePoint Designer. More likely you would need to use Visual Studio to create a custom Web Part in ASP.NET.
Hopefully this'll be a few reasonable arguments you can use to help the customer see how SharePoint is inappropriate for the task... In fact, I expect just the first point (the cost of licensing) will turn them.
You can technically use WSS for this task but MOSS has more features aimed at building public facing websites. The publishing infrastructure comes to mind. It has has the CQWP which enables you to build custom interfaces which perform well in SharePoint. With SharePoint there are potentially challenges around scalability. If you know the platform well then doing something like what you have suggested would be a pretty quick task. If you don't know SharePoint and the underlying system well you could face challenges.
You do not want to approach building the final application with SharePoint Designer. It has behavior which can cause major problems with scalability. You want to create a SharePoint Solution comprising a number of features which can be easily deployed to SharePoint. Going this route does not alleviate performance problems but you are going to be closer to the right solution. You can package up the custom user interface elements as CQWPs or write Web Parts. I personally prefer to write Web Parts.
You do the overall site design in a Master Page. Pages within a site are then inheriting from this. If you have MOSS then you can create what are called publishing pages which contain your Web Parts. These are not available in WSS which is why people recommend against it for public websites.
To decide whether SharePoint (any version) is worth it, you need to find out if they are going to use any of the core features. If everything is going to be custom and you are not going to make use of any workflow or document management features in your deployment then I would stay away. To see whether you want to go further with SharePoint from a development perspective, take a look at the WSS developer labs. I recently ran an intro course at my employer using the materials from that site. They are dated, and need more info on best practices but they provide a quick way for you to dip a toe in the water and decide whether you want to go any further.
1) For the core functionality as you describe it SharePoint isn't going to add anything, BUT if you build it on SharePoints premisses it allows your client to add a lot of functionality outside the core for "free" like:
They can add Content Editor WebParts to pages where they can add descriptions, and messages
They can add lists where the customers can enter requests/comments/... and automatically have new entries mailed to anyone in the organisation subscribing to changes
The functionality you develop can be reused on their intranet
Any future small "web apps" can be included in the same site
...
So all in all unless you have a better framework to use then use SharePoint
2) WSS is all you need for now
3) Your main deliverable for now would be:
a feature with some Site Pages and a few Web Parts
a feature with a custom masterpage and corresponding css
True. Well not inappropriate but it doesn't add anything either.. but maybe in the future?
WSS is enough
You'd need web parts to expose your data, yes. The custom site layout is not necessary. If you want your own look and feel a SharePoint Theme may suffice. Even if you want some real custom layout tweaks you probably don't need a site template but you can get away with using just SharePoint Designer to edit the pages or master page.
I have a requirement to select some data from a table in a database (SQL Server) and display it on a page in a SharePoint site (MOSS 2007).
I have a little bit of experience of MOSS, so I know I have a couple of options:
BDC
SSRS
or possibily even a custom ASPX page.
I've never really worked with any of these. Can anyone advise on the +/-'s of each?
It all depends on what functionality is required once the table is displayed in SharePoint. Do you need extra bells and whistles or is a dump of the data adequate? (Think about the future as well.) Here's some thoughts...
Business Data Catalog (BDC)
If you want to nicely integrate the SharePoint look and feel with your data as well as get some cool functionality, BDC is a good solution. There is no need to program anything and these are the features you get. However if this data will only be used once in one way then it is probably overkill.
You would need to roll your own XML description of the data so SharePoint knows how to pull it from the database (or use something third party like Lightning Tools). As Colin mentioned it requires the Enterprise license of MOSS.
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
If Reporting Services is already available for use then this is the quickest and simplest solution. It works well but can get painful as more advanced features are required in your reports.
You should be able to use the Report Designer wizard to point to your table and set everything up for you. There are SSRS web parts that can be used within SharePoint, or indeed you can run SSRS inside SharePoint using SharePoint integration mode.
Application Page
This method Steven mentioned lets you integrate an ASP.NET application into SharePoint (such that it can be accessible by a URL within your SharePoint site). This allows anything that ASP.NET does, and the code-behind will be aware of SharePoint so you can tap into that if needed as well. The cons here are code access security and deployment.
See this webcast for how to do it.
Web Part
Similar to developing an application page but much more integrated with SharePoint. A custom web part is very powerful and allows you to integrate ASP.NET code on a SharePoint page. As you would know web parts can be dragged to whatever location and give a consistent properties pane. Again, code access security and deployment needs to be considered.
If you like designer view in Visual Studio then be aware this isn't the approach that Microsoft push. You can however use something like SmartPart where you would develop your custom app as a user control and the SmartPart wraps it into a web part. I'm used to doing it the MS way now and actually prefer the additional control this gives, however it can take more time.
Page Viewer Web Part
If you don't want to touch your SharePoint installation at all then have a look at this web part. It takes a URL as parameter and displays an IFrame containing the page that would be your report, either in SSRS or standard ASP.NET.
The downside from this lack of integration is problems with sizing the IFrame, and possible security warnings from the browser if accessing the URL in a different domain.
Don't forget the DataView Webpart. It has a pretty small developement footprint and works really well as a first "cut" if you are unsure as to how hardcore you need the final result to be.
It renders using XSLT, giving you full control of the final HTML, so it can do some pretty things with Javascript and co.
For a very simple example of charting.
Have you ever used the .NET Framework do develop webpages?
MOSS 2007 uses this framework for master / template files.
So your best choice would be to create an ASPX template file to display the results on the webpage.
BDC is the way to go if you want to keep it "strictly Sharepoint". The problem is, it is only included in the Enterprise edition of SharePoint. If you have the Standard edition, you could go for SSRS and the SSRS webpart, or, create your own webpart. That way you can use your data display anywhere in your site and it's also ASP.NET compatible.
As Nat said - if all that is needed is to display some data from a database on a page - the DVWP is a great solution. Just open your page in SharePoint Designer, add the database connection, and drop the web part on your page. You can use any of the several pre-formatted layouts, or design/tweak your own so the data is displayed as you need.
Relatively straightforward, lots of HowTos online, and far faster/easier to setup than something like BDC.