Can’t find Per-location view setting?

This is because you need to activate the site feature:  Metadata Navigation and Filtering.  This feature is a Site feature but it is already activated on Site Collection level sites. You will need to activate the feature on blank and team site templates (subsites). Activate the feature and you will see the Per-location views setting in the site library settings.

I am not going to explain what per-location views are here, there are plenty of good blogs describing the feature. I will give you a breif example of how they could be used though- Consider a Contracts library that has one level of folders- one for each contract. These folders have the high level properties you would expect of a contract – Contract Name, Number, Owner, maybe a Supplier.. Now inside these contact folders there are a whole bunch of documents that “inherit” some of the contract folder properties (I use the word inherit carefully because properties do not propagate to child documents OOTB but you can set folder level defaults which help with picking up the values of the parent folder- this is a whole other story). These contract document also have many more properties that are relevant just to the documents e.g. Document Type, Topic, Related Discipline, etc. Per-location views can be used in this case to display a default view at the library level i.e. for the first level of folders, to display the contract folder level properties. Views can then be created for the document levels and set on the folders so a document property focus view is displayed within folders. It basically just stops you from needing to display 10+ columns in you default view even if many of the columns don’t apply to all levels (like in this provided example). Gee, I hope that made sense.

 

Removing Recently Modified Pages section on Quick Launch

It is a pain when you create a new wiki page and you just want it to look like the default page, but it doesn’t because its got this Recently Modified section on the top of the Quick Launch. Here is how you get rid of that eyesaw:

Add a CEWP to the page and switch to the HTML/source view of the web part

Paste in this style override:

<style>

.s4-recentchanges {

DISPLAY:none; }

</style>

Save the page and navigate away, then back to see the section gone.

 

1 Year Salute to Jarred

Thinking of Jarred this weekend as it has been one year since he passed. Thanks for making nerdiness cool Jarred. You had a knack for explaining things in such a clear and kind way, even when I was looking at you blankly

 

String Functions in SPD 2010… NOT!

So I had a few frustrations with the lack of string manipulation functions/activities in SharePoint Designer 2010. To put it bluntly, trying simply, to get the workflow item (document) library URL was like going to Ikea for for a loaf of bread. It was time consuming, confusing and most importantly fuitless. You can not do it! Well, you can’t do it using the workflow activities. The available string functions are laughable and so far as I can see, pretty useless. Anyway, enough digging at SPD and more soltuions please-

I ended up creating a custom HTML and JS page that I stored in the Site Assets library of my site collection. In my task email I added a link to point to this page and also passed it some workflow variables in the form of  querystring parameters. Ultimately I passed in the item ID and the URL of the item/document. My custom page did the string manipulation and redirction to the resulting URL- which in fact was just a view on the document library. The view just displayed all documents under this workflow. After I got this working nicely I ended up adding another link in the email to actually open the document properties page. This was useful as actioning the task meant downloading and then deleting the document. The properties page is the best place for doing this really. If anyone is interested I can post my custom page source and the link setup for the worklfow email. Works well

 

Errors were found when compiling the workflow. Activity validation failed: Property has invalid value

This is a SharePoint Designer 2010 error I came across afterI copied the OOTB Feedback workflow and butchered it to within an inch on its life. Understandable really. I had removed all the Initiation Form Parameters and had created some of my own. The workflow was not highlighting any activties in red so I could not locate where this error was coming from.

I thought I had set all the necessary OOTB workflow variables with blank or reasonable values but somehow I missed one- DurationUnit. Actually, I think I had set it in a workflow activity to: Days. It didn’t complain unfortunately but it was actually expecting: Day(s).

Anyway, the point of the story is that the Advanced Properties button on the workflow ribbon saved the day. Click him and you will see all the core workflow avriables layed out for you.

I found the DurationUnit variable which had not been set correctly, set it using the vairbale value drop down and saved the workflow. Then it deployed and I released my frankenstein workflow creation to do its evil job! Muwahahaha

 

Reordering Links in a List

One small feature I found quite cool in 2010 was on the Links list. The order of links in a links list is generally just the order you add them in. You can create views to sort and filter the items but if you want to just swap a few items around in no particular order you can click the list or list web part, select the Items tab and then click Change Item Order. 

 Its much like reordering columns in a list view. Choose you order and away you go.

 

List and Library Permissions Visibility

With SharePoint allowing security to be managed all the way down to the item/document level, it can easily become quite a mystery to users- just who has access to what exactly? The best way to avoid this confusion is to avoid item level security and only break permission inheritance at the libray level when really necessary. Below is a neat little way (I think) to show users who has access to the library they are currently working within, just in case they want to think twice about sharing.

Create a new document library view called Library Permissions. Open the new view and edit the view page. Minimise the document library web part and above it either add a CEWP to describe the level of access and add links to the relevant groups OR a Site User web part configured to show the Contributors group on the library. This view is a quick and easy way  for users to access this security information but be aware that the library tabs will not function on this view page (unless the user clicks the minimised library web part). The view breacrumbs can be used to navigate back to the library. There is a small maintenance overhead as well. If extra groups are added to the library permissions then this view would need to be updated to reflect this. The best thing about linking to the Contributor group though is that the members will likely change but not the group itself.

Alternatively you can add a description and link in the list/library descritpion field (settings). This isn’t quite as pretty as links in the description field can not be entered as HTML so the link is displayed in full.

I have implemented some sites with “security folders” because of the need for fine-grained permissions. In thoses cases I have created a custom folder content type : Secure Folder and added a mandatory people/groups field. This can then at least be displayed against the folder in all views. Again, there is a maintenece overhead here but it worth it if you are breaking permissions at that level.

 

Unable to access web scoped feature because it references a non-existent or broken web

If you are getting this error when trying to deactivate a site template solution in the solutions gallery, then there is not a heck of a lot you can do until December.  Apparently this is a known issue that is to be remedied in the December 2010 Cumulative Update. The problem occurs when you have either uploaded and activated a site template solution from another site collection or farm and you attempt to deactivate it OR when you create a template solution from a site in the current site collection and then you delete that site, prior to deactivating the template solution. As far as I know Power Shell or STSADM scripts are not going to help to force a deactivation either. The only way out is to restore the original template site. Then you should be able to deactivate the solution. 

 I have read some forums claiming a similiar error message which was fixed by cleaning out the site collection recycle bin. This is not a fix for this error as far as I know though. I think that those posts were reffering to an old template living in the recycle bin, causing a problem when trying to deactivate and delete a current template with the same name.

I think a good way to manage this issue, while you are waiting for the CU, is to maintain a “template site” which you only update and use to retemplate. You can restrict access to the site to adminsitrators so no one else even need know it exists. As long as you don’t delete the site, you should be able to deactivate the old solution and re-template the site as many times as you like.

One other “workaround” which may ease your frustration at seeing the old site template show up in the list of available templates every time you want to create a new site, is blocking the sandbox solution at the farm level. I haven’t tried it myself I have just had a breif read of this article and I don’t see why it wouldn’t apply to site template soltuions also: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff535782.aspx#section1

 

SharePoint 2010

Well it has taken me a while but I am finally going to start blogging about SharePoint 2010′s cool stuff and workarounds. Watch this space- I have a back log of issues I have been working on during a build of a rather large SharePoint 2010 team collaboration and WIP DM portal. I will share these points soon.

 

Missing Metadata in Document Copy / Move

Have you ever used the Send To function in a document libray to send a copy of the document to another library? Maybe you have used explorer view to copy or move a document between libraries.  If you have set up the same site columns in the destination site and library then you should see those metadata values set on the source document, brought across on the document copy. If some values are missing and you are scratching your head wondering why, then think back to when you first created those site columns. Did you change the name or one at some point? Even if you changed it back to what it was, or to match the site column name in another site, SharePoint still sees the column with its original title. You need to delete the column that was renamed and recreate it with the matching title. Make sure that the site columns also have the same metadata values on each site/library and then all metadata selections should come across with the copy/move.

I hope you caught it early enough to avoid some serious document metadata updates Goodluck