SharePoint 2010 - Documents Tab

while trying to make the transition from sharepoint 2007 to 2010, I've found that the default view of the ribon is confusing. What is the point of the browse tab? Especially if you're in a document library/list? In 07, useres have quick access to upload a document or create a new list item. In 2010, they must click a tab on the ribbon to be able to see that button.
To solve that problem, I want the documents or list items tab to be automatically selected for them.

I found two blogs that talk about this issue. I found that neither one really did what I want.

This site talks about how to set it as the default using the query string. Thought this might work for some, I can't change every link on every page to pass this as a parameter.
http://www.iotap.com/Blog/tabid/673/entryid/149/Displaying-default-tab-in-Sharepoint-2010-Ribbon.aspx
This second page talks about using javascript to set it to a custom tab based on some rules you setup in the javascript. I simplified this code for my use:
http://code.bkwdesign.com/2011/01/11/using-jquery-to-activate-default-sharepoint-tab/

There is probably a better way to do this using some built in sharepoint javascript funciton. I found one blog post that mentioned something like that, but I was unable to get it to work.

The following code will automatically select the Documents tab in a document library and the List Item tab in a list. In any other case it should not do anything, so it's safe to put on every page. You could also add in other options to handle pages librarys or some other case I haven't run into yet.
I added this code to my master page, but you could easily add it to a javascript file and add a reference to your master page or page layout or whatever, even put it in a Content Editor for one particular page.



Here's the code:


<script type="text/javascript">

function setTabDefault(tabid){
$("li[id=" + tabid + "] a span.ms-cui-tt-span").trigger('click');
}
$(document).ready(function () {

setTimeout("setTabDefault('Ribbon.Document-title');",150);
setTimeout("setTabDefault('Ribbon.ListItem-title');",150);

});

</script>

Installing SharePoint 2010 Without Internet Access

Recently, I was forced to install SharePoint 2010 on a network without internet access. Due to the fact that SP2010 requires about a dozen prerequisites, this is much more difficult than it should be.
There is a way to set up the installer to not attempt to access the internet to download the prerequisites.
First, You'll need a computer that has internet access so that you can download the prerequisites.
Fortunately, someone did the work for me to do this part.
The SharePoint PowerShell script to download all the prerequisite files

SharePoint can be downloaded as an ISO from Microsoft. You'll need to get this and copy all the files into a directory somewhere. Put all the prerequisite files in the ""PrerequisiteInstallerFiles" folder.
This list assumes you are installing on Server 2008 R2. Server 2008 has some slightly different items and hotfixes

Next, create a file called: "PrerequisiteInstaller.Arguments.txt". Open it up in notepad and add:

/SQLNCli:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\sqlncli.msi /ChartControl:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\MSChart.exe /IDFXR2:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu /Sync:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Synchronization.msi /FilterPack:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\FilterPack\FilterPack.msi /KB976462:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.1-KB976462-v2-x64.msu /KB976394:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\Windows6.0-KB976394-x64.msu /ADOMD:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\SQLSERVER2008_ASADOMD10.msi /Speech:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\SpeechPlatformRuntime.msi /SpeechLPK:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\MSSpeech_SR_en-US_TELE.msi /ReportingServices:PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\rsSharePoint.msi


NOTE: This should all be on one line! No New lines!


When you run the SharePoint setup.exe, it'll run the PrerequisiteInstaller.exe which will read the arguments file, and load the files from the prerequisites installer directory instead of trying to go to the internet!

Mapping Office Shared Template Location to a SharePoint Library

A user asked if you can create a new word document from a template that is stored in SharePoint.
Normally, i'd say sure, lets make it a content type, add it to the doc library and just click new! But of course this doesn't work. how many users really do that anyway? None of mine.

So, i found out there is a Word Workgroup Templates folder that you can set. When you click new, my templates, it will show you all the templates from that folder. It even creates tabs for the sub folders. Very nice.

To set the folder in Word 2007

1. Word Options
2. General -> File Locations
3. Set the folder for Workgroup Template.

Unfortunatly, you can't just enter a sharepoint URL, or even the Shared folder path (\\portal\somesite\templates\). It will give you an error saying "You cannot use an internet address here. Enter a path that points to a location on your computer or on the network".

Solution:
Trick Word.

Map a drive to the SharePoint folder path. Then tell word to point to that folder.

I chose to map T:\ to \\portal\somesite\templates\ and then told word that my templates folder is t:\

Problem solved!

Programtically hiding SharePoint Document Information Panel in an Office Document

Using the Document Information Panel in SharePoint to show document information in Office can be very useful for users. I've used it to show information from a custom database inside of word so that users can find out what a document is about without having to visit the SharePoint site. This is very useful for when a user gets assigned a document from a sharepoint workflow.

The problem with this was that documents that did not connect to our Document Management system would not show any data. In a perfect world, the *special* documents would use a different content type so that using a different Document Information Panel would be easy. This was not the case in our system.

SO! How do you tell Word to hide the DIP when there is no data to show?

Microsoft has put together a nice post on how to do it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc500578.aspx

The problem is that this does not work. This requires you to have access to the Word API. When using a SharePoint DIP you only have the InfoPath API.

When the document loads, it attempts to get data from the database. The specific key to look-up data from the database is stored as a custom column on the document. Getting this is relatively easy, and many other blogs have written about it.

When the data key is blank(a document that someone uploaded to the Doc Library, not a System generated file), we are unable to get any data. I would like to hide the DIP in this case, but we can't!

Instead, I created a blank view. Then, in the OnLoad event, when the data can't be loaded, I set the default view to be the blank view. You could also do this the other way. Set the blank view as the default and then if data loads OK, set it to be your nice, pretty, data filled view.



The code to set the default view is simple:
e.SetDefaultView("Blank") ;

Where e is passed to you in the FormEvents_Loading parameter: LoadingEventArgs e


Problem Solved!
I also put a nice note on the data filled view that says the data was unable to load, just in case someone switches over to that view.

Getting Rows of data as a single column in a SQL query

Recently, I've been working on a Sharepoint Based document workflow solution that uses a custom SQL database. I ran into an issue where I needed to join a database table and get many rows of data back as one column in a query.

For example:
Table A:
ID, Name,

Table B:
childName, ParentID

where parent ID is table A.ID


I needed my results to be in the format:
A.ID, name, (childName1, ChildName2,ChildName3,....)


I found a few options,
One: http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/concatenating-row-values-in-transact-sql/

Provided about a dozen different ways to do it. All of them looked overly complex.

Then i stumbled upon:
http://johnnycoder.com/blog/2006/09/05/concatenate-multiple-rows-into-a-single-string/

which provided a simple Scalar function to return the results. I took that method and put together a SQL Scalar function to do it:

CREATE FUNCTION GetChildrenFromParent
(


@ParentID varchar(15)
)
RETURNS varchar(5000)
AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @ChildList varchar(5000)

SET @ChildList = ''

select @ChildList = coalesce(@ChildList + ', ', '') + childName from B where ParentID=@ParentID



-- Return the result of the function
RETURN @ChildList
END
GO


Then my SQL to get the data looks something like:
select *,GetChildrenFromParent(id) as ChildNames from A

This returns results like:

1|Jeff| andy,mark,shannon

so, the one column is a comma separated list of rows of data from another table.

How to make a film strip the default view for a Picture Library

Recently, I was trying to make a picture library for a customer to store their pictures in. I would prefer to use the film strip view as the default view because I think it is nicer looking.

The problem is that the details/filmstrip/thumbnails views are controlled via javascript, they do not change the URL when you visit the page and they cannot be set as the default view.

I found:

http://jyhuh.com/blog/2009/11/how-to-make-a-filmstrip-a-default-view-for-a-picture-library/

which has a pretty good description of how to fix this issue. Only problem is that the most important part, the javascript, is not visible!

I've decided to post it here so that it's easy to find.

<script>SwitchViewStyle('filmstrip');</script >

You'll need to add a content editor to the page, and add this javascript to it.

Make sure you add the content editor web part after the Picture Library View Web part. Otherwise, as the page loads, it runs the javascript before the Picture library exists and does nothing.

SharePoint 2010

After days of messing around with the installer, it's finally installed.
Here's what I've learned:
Don't try to pre-install any pre-requisites. Chances are you'll install the wrong version, or something that will prevent it from installing. IE. visual studio 2010, powershell, etc.

Don't bother trying to install SQL server and setup a development environment. If your server isn't part of a domain the SharePoint 2010 won't let you install it using full SQL Server.

The other thing I learned is that Windows Server 2008's default security settings are annoying. It would be awesome if the installer asked if it was a development or Production installation. If development, turn off all the security restrictions.

More to come...