I want to build a custom content type that will be the basis of a list item that will have multiple states. The various states will determine which list will instantiate this item. It will move between the states, and therefore the lists, based on user actions.
I have a few choices to implement this:
Create workflows on each list that handle the specific functions related to that list. Move an item to another list when necessary (copy item to new list, delete orig item), and let that workflow kick off.
Create a workflow on the custom content type we will be using, and let that move the item between the various lists. Not sure if a workflow on a content type can move from list to list, let alone across site collections.
Use the event receivers on the custom content type to manage state. User acts on an item, changing its state, so the event receiver creates a copy of itself on the other list and then deletes itself on the current list. I know this works across site collections.
Which way is best, and why? Anything that absolutely will not work? Any method I've overlooked?
In my opinion, use event receivers, as these follow the item rather than the list. You still need to enable the content type for the receiving list, but this approach is a lot easier than updating and deleting workflows in lists based on the presence or absences of certain content types.
However, why not combine the approaches? Have the content type event receiver deal with the content type specific activities and let the lists handle any list specific activities. Event receivers are cheap and flexible.
.b
Generally speaking:
In SharePoint workflows and event-receivers are related (if you look at the events on a list with an attached workflow you will find a event-receiver starting the workflow..)
The advantage of workflows is the possibility for the user to check the log (given that you use the Log-Activity)
The advantage of event-receivers are the greater number of events; they are more flexible than workflows.
From what you describe i would probably choose workflows, so the users can check if their item was processed correct.
I use the workflow associated with each list approach because I need the workflow history as an audit trail for which user does what. I rather like the idea of a workflow on the content type however and in retrospect this would have been the cleaner solution to what I've done.
This is prefect flowchart to decide between workflows and event receivers :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648492.aspx
Related
If a user creates a new activity and wants all their followers to see it except 1, how can this be implemented? Do we simply push the activity, and then immediately delete it from the specific follower's timeline feed? This seems like a hack.
https://github.com/GetStream/stream-js/issues/210
this use case hasn't come up before. Why would someone want everyone except one person to see a post? Do they want that person to unfollow them? Are there "rings" or levels of people to choose from when posting? If that's the case, you can create separate feeds with follows to them for those levels (and will likely need to use the TO field as well since fanout only goes 1 level deep).
There's no built in mechanism to specify which feeds to fan out to or which not to. The fanout is intended to happen as fast as possible (milliseconds) so doing those kinds of checks wouldn't be optimal. Your solution to quickly delete from that feed will work.
I am developing Leave Management System in SharePoint 2013. Employees can apply for leaves and Manager can either approve or reject it.
I have accomplished this by creating a new list - "Leaves" and starting a workflow when a new item gets added. Workflow sends an email to Manager and creates a task item for him to be able to approve or reject it.
However, I would like to know if this approach is preferable in real time scenario. Suppose for organization of 500 employees, can a single list hold so many records for all employees. What are possible ways here to utilize the features in SharePoint and also create a scalable application.
Also, I am also planning to develop a new Add-in in SharePoint 2013 since for applying new leave, we need to display additional information such as available leaves and do some custom validations which are not provided by default SharePoint list. I will be adding the new item to the SharePoint list from the custom developed page so that the workflow still is intact and I am still utilizing out-of-box SharePoint features. Is this the way to go for enterprise level application or there are any other alternatives. Please suggest.
SharePoint Lists are capable of holding that much data. I don't see a problem if you use a single list to hold leave request of 500 employees.
Assume a worst case scenario that all of the 500 employee apply 25 leaves individually in a year, then the item count would be (500*25= 12500) which is not bad.
You will need to take care of the List Threshold error, because data is greater than 5000. For this you can create views which always bring out results less than 5000.
Now lets say you have plan for 5 years, so each year you will add 12500 items which at the end of 5 years will be 12500*5 = 62500 items
Here you can think of 2 options
You can create a list for each year, i.e. Leaves2016, Leaves2017 etc.
In a single list create folders of year, and inside them add all leave datas.
Note: The only major thing you need to take care of List view threshold problem. Which can be tackled with intelligently designing
views
For your second question.
I agree that the OOB SharePoint List form will not cater your requirements. So creating a custom page an add in or something else is a way to go. As far as your data is getting inserted into a list and eventually activating a workflow there is no harm in it.
I'm creating three approved software lists for my company with SharePoint. One is the general list for all associates the next is the restricted list which will contain software like wireshark that only certain people should have access to and the last is the master list which will be a combination of the other two lists.
What would be ideal is being able to add the software to the master list and have it update the other two lists automagically. The unique key will of course be the software title. The field that will determine which list the row will be added to is the the [group] field. (This is where the uncertainty comes in) There will be 4 values that can go into this [group] field they are: restricted, general, engineering, media.
I would like to have the rows with "restricted" go to the restricted list, obviously, and everything else go to the general list.
I'm very new to SharePoint (~1 week) and I'm trying to simplify this process as much as possible. I'm continuing to read and watch the videos to lean more however, I understand this is a complex application. I thought I'd pose this question to people with more experience than myself to find if it's even possible. If not I'll be able to change my train of thought sooner.
Thank you for your time
This is probably a question for https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/
But -- what I would do in your situation is only use 1 list and make multiple views.
Each view can be filtered by a different criteria (like your group column in this case) then instead of having 3 distinct lists, you can display or have a link for each view (they all get their own URI in SharePoint) seperately.
This way you only ever have to update 1 list, and you avoid the overhead/complexity of trying to copy into other lists with event recievers or workflows or something else.
If someone reading this needs instructions on views:
You can create/switch views from the 'List' or 'Library' tab when you're viewing the list. Then when you add the list to a web part page, you can select which view to use in the web part properties window.
I need certain custom entity fields to calculate and display values based on operations on the data in the system.
For example an a booking system implementation with contacts and custom entity: tickets. There is a one-many relationship between contact and tickets.I would like to create a field that calculates and displays in the contact form:
frequent flyers: more than 10 tickets bought.
a field that displays yes or no based on whether a first class ticket has ever been purchased. Ticket ref would start with say, FCxxx
If this isn't possible perhaps someone could suggest an alt method for displaying this info?
This is possible and you have some ways to do that: Workflow or Plug-in.
If you make a lot of calculations i think the best way is doing a plug-in. You can register in post create event of tickets entity and there you can make all this calculations and update the custom fields of contact entity.
You can check some tutorials about developing a plug-in:
http://mscrmshop.blogspot.pt/2010/10/crm-2011-plugin-tutorial.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg695782.aspx
http://crmconsultancy.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/plugins-in-crm-2011/
Specific information about registering a plug-in:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh237515.aspx
In SDK you can find more examples.
As far I'm aware, it's not possible to achieve without coding. So, if you're looking for a way to customize it by mousing, you might be just out of luck.
If you wish to display that information upon retrieval of the a customer, it's probably fastest to get it using JavaScript. You can add a custom script to onload event. However, that means that you'll have to write JavaScript so if you're not into coding you'll have problems.
If you do know how to code, perhaps creating a plugin with C# is the most preferred way (that's what I'd do at least). The advantage of that lies in extensibility, should you realize that you wish to perform more operations.
Also, if you wish to store the computed values, you'll have to go with a plugin. Otherwise, only GUI operations will perform the computations. If a program will enter/retrieve data in the background, you can't rely that the values will be computed, unless you listen to the messages of Retrieve, Create etc.
In the SharePoint publishing site I will have some banners that are Web Parts and can have any HTML content inside them. I have requirement to count clicks on that banners. Banners will have some links to external sites.
I am not sure where to store counters for individual banners. Custom List is the first thing that came to my mind but I am not sure how will it behave in concurrent access. Can I lock list (list item) and do the counter increment ? What will happen for other list access if it is in lock state ? Will it fail or just wait ?
Are there any alternatives to storing counters somewhere else ?
There are lots of places, here are the two most popular:
Property Bag (most likely on the Web) which is a number you increment
Inside a list
Of these, I have successfully done it with a list on our blogging solution, you can see it here: http://community.zevenseas.com/blogs, where I'm tracking views for each post. I took this approach because I like to see more than a number, eg. referrer, ip, etc.
Things to keep in mind:
You need to keep a close eye on the number of items you are storing. SharePoint doesn't like lots of items in a list. To manage them put them in folders, a folder for each banner, and then subfolders for each month.
I would keep a list with each of the banners (just their name or more) in it, then create a second list to store the views. In the list where you store the views have a lookup back to the list storing the banners. On the original banner list you can then create a new column which "Counts" the number of Views related to each banner item.
Again, be very careful about the number of items you are expecting, but this works pretty nicely for us.
Don't forget a small database will allow you to store page hits against whatever you want. You can then call a stored proc and that database "just takes care of it". You don't have to worry about access and concurrency (because you used a transaction riiiight!).
A SharePoint list is easy because they are there out of the box, but consider that they have a lot of overhead for adding values and even reading from. They are also editable by a site administrator, which may be find, depending on the number of administrators you have. A list is easier to provision than a new database, so in the end you do need to consider the two options carefully.
Just because SharePoint has a hammer does not mean everything is a nail :)