SharePoint world of ECM and Information Management : Tools

Cascaded Master-Details lookup that just WORKS!

Michael — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:35:35 GMT

Last several days I tried to find the solution that allows me to use “master-detail” field relationship based on the lookups. There are ton’s of controls for this, but I hardly found one that works for the lookup fields in the master list.

Scenario:

You have the master list of company’s projects and master list [Projects] of all possible projects’ stages [Stages]. For each new project you create the [Team Project] list where you JOIN the project with the stages from master lists, using lookup column.

Now, you need to create the [Team Staff] list, where you want to assign users to the different sections of your team projects in [Team Projects] list.

For example, we have the following structure of [Team Project] list

Project Name	Section
Build SharePoint Site	Gather Requirements; Deploy Farm; Configure Farm
Develop custom feature	Write code; Test Feature

You want to assign users to the specific sections, so, for example “John” is responsible for the “Deploy Farm” only in the “Build SharePoint site” project and “Mary” is responsible for “test feature” stuff in another project.

It’s easy to achieve if you use master lists, but not the parent list with lookups that aggregates all values for you and you need assign users for the subset only.

After inspecting number of commercial and free tools the only working component I found is “SharePoint Cascading Drop Down List”. It’s very amazing how it works. Check the following blog, describing how to configure the list correctly http://sharepointsircar.blogspot.com/2009/02/cascading-dropdownlist-custom-field.html. Take into account that their sample is based on several master lists, but you can achieve the same for the aggregated list, as I described before ([Team Projects]), where you use “ProjectName” as parent field, and “Sections” for the child.

Works as a charm! Really amazing work.

Zoho for SharePoint or Office replacement

Michael — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:54:00 GMT

Zoho.com has been provided the most comprehensive suite Productivity, Collaboration and Business online tools last 3 years. I started using Zoho from year 2007 and was impressed by the features they provided. I switched to Zoho to do all my publishing work there - articles, presentations, notes.

But that is not all. Zoho has really really killing feature - integration. You can integrate Zoho with Microsoft Office and other applications, that allows you to use Word, Excel locally, but collaborate via Zoho servers. Really great stuff.

Couple of weeks ago Zoho released "Zoho for SharePoint" feature, that allows you to use Zoho directly from SharePoint - you can edit document libraries in Zoho, or create new documents via Zoho that will be uploaded to libraries automatically and etc. This is really powerful feature when you don't have Offlice client application installed, or you have collaborative site, when uses work on document together.

Just check screencast on their site for quick overview of all functionality http://www.zoho.com/sharepoint/

SharePoint Tip #3. Do you know “that Visual Studio Extension can be installed on XP/Vista”

Michael — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:29:00 GMT

To have Visual Studio Extensions for WSS 3.0 to be installed on Windows XP or Vista (but only with limited set of capabilities, such as creating a Web Part project) add the string registry entry at

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0]
SharePoint=Installed

Current "SharePoint Tips and Tricks" series has been moved to its own "SharePoint SandBox" site, to leave the place for others SharePoint posts on this blog

SharePoint Managers Tools overview

Michael — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:18:47 GMT

In this post I’d like to review existed tools for the SharePoint management. The idea to create this overview appeared after I read that Bamboo solution shipped their own SharePoint analyzer. The first I thought was - “Why do we need another tool, if we already have SharePointSpy and SharePointManager?!”

So, let’s start comparing of three tools, which exist on market

1) SharePoint Analyzer from Bamboo Solutions

2) SharePoint Manager from CodePlex

3) SharePointSpy from EchoTechnology

and how those tools functionality differs.

Items	SharePoint Analyzer	SharePoint Manager	SharePointSpy
Farm setting	yes	yes	no
Farm servers	yes	yes	no
Logs for each sever in farm (IIS/SharePoint)	yes	no	no
Web App overview	yes	yes	yes
Web App on server	yes	yes	no
Central admin options	no	yes	no
Content DB site location	yes	no	no
AAM	yes	no	no
IIS settings	yes	no	no
Service instances	yes	no	no
Definitions export (list, content type)	no	yes	yes
Web Parts Gallery	yes	no	no
Account Security overview	yes	yes	yes
SharePoint DB overview	yes	no	no
Best Practices Analyzer	yes	no	no

Rating	(4 from 5)	(3 from 5)	(2 from 5)

Results: analyzing those tools I found that SharePoint Analyzer and SharePoint Manager provide you the richest functionality to manage your SharePoint environment. I can’t name the best tool, because those tools have different target audience and must be used together.

SharePoint Analyzer from Bamboo solutions provides rich and good, structured overview of your SharePoint farm for administrator/infrastructure perspective – detailed info about servers, web applications, logs, and etc. Good usability, grouping and detailed information across all your farm servers, but there are few useful info for developers.

SharePointSpy is absolutely different tool – it stays away from infrastructure, providing your deep info about sites, features, site definitions and etc., allowing your to export different schemas xml. Really powerful tool for developers, who need deep dive inside SharePoint stuff.

SharePoint Manager locates between administrator vs developer poles. It provides you almost the same functionality as SharePointSpy, but has a lot of information for infrastructure guys/administrators as well.

My choice: combination of SharePoint Analyzer for maintenance and SharePoint Manager for development. But, if those three tools were shareware, then I’d chose SharePoint manager for its balance between admin and developer functionality.

Mirror: SharePoint Managers Tools overview

Sharepoint Tools Overview for Windows 2008 and Visual Studio 2008

Michael — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:48:37 GMT

I used to use a couple of tools in WSS/MOSS development which covered 90% of all functionality. These tools are

Sharepoint Spy
WSS Extensions for Visual Studio 2005

but when I switched on Windows 2008 Server + Visual Studio 2008 I noted that these tools are not supported there. Sharepoint Spy can't be installed on Windows 2008 (actually I can, but u need to use ORCA and change MSI); WSS Extensions works with VS 2005 only, and you can't use them with TFS builds.

Well... there is another reality, where you can survive without these tools :)

There I'd like to post the list of other tools which help you to substitute the Sharepoint Spy and WSS Extensions

Imtech Fields Explorer
Imtech StsAdm Commands to export List definitions
Sharepoint Inspector to browse your SharePoint 2007 farm
Sharepoint Logging Spy to allow real time diagnostics of multiple servers
SharePoint Visual Studio Project and Deployment Templates to package SharePoint solution properly for deployment
Visual Studio SharePoint Project Utility Tool Window to customize Sharepoint content creation

I welcome if you post in comments other tools which help you in Sharepoint development, deployment and debugging

Mirror: Sharepoint Tools Overview for Windows 2008 and Visual Studio 2008