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Clare Stone Profile |
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Free HTML Calculated Column for SharePoint
Clare Stone
A free calculated column for SharePoint 2007 and 2010 that allows you to display HTML: SharePoint HTML Calculated Column
Why did you make this?
I spent a long time working on SharePoint Highlighter, and then later unsuccessfully trying to make a [Today] Calculated Column. During both these projects we kept coming back to this glaring hole in SharePoint: You can’t use HTML in a calculated column.
After unsuccessfully looking for open source projects (or even commercial alternatives) for some t [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 11th '12 |
Date Range filtering with the new version of FilterPoint, PivotPoint and Planner.
Clare Stone
FilterPoint has had the ability to send Date Filters but a common request has been Date Ranges – like showing everything this month, last year or between two arbitrary dates.
The good news is that we’ve added this in to FilterPoint as of version 1.2
The bad news is that this will only work with our other SharePoint products – Planner and PivotPoint – it won’t work with SharePoints built in List View web part (LVWP).
That’s disappointing!
Yes it is – it’s just a limit [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 13th '11 |
SharePoint TeamTime is out now!
Clare Stone
Track and analyze your team’s time with our newest product: SharePoint TeamTime! A ready-to-use timesheet site template for SharePoint 2007 and 2010.
What’s so great about TeamTime you ask? Well let me tell you:
Log your time your way
Want to log your time as you work? Then simply punch in on your personal dashboard to begin the timer:
Want to write up your timesheets when it’s convenient for you? Your dashboard has this covered too:
Make those numbers work for you
Logging the tim [read].
Posted: Mon, Dec 12th '11 |
SharePoint TeamTime: It’s Time for Beta!
Clare Stone
We have started beta testing our newest product SharePoint TeamTime and we expect it to be finished in the next couple of weeks!
Sign me up! Wait… what is it again?
TeamTime is a time tracking site template for SharePoint. Users track their time by entering it into a timesheet (a.k.a. timecard) or by punching in and out of tasks.
You can then get an overview of everyone’s time logged using our custom reporting tool and embedded versions of PivotPoint and FilterPoint that come preconfigured [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 16th '11 |
SharePoint Timesheets – What are your options? Part 3: Free Solutions
Clare Stone
Following on from Clare’s previous two posts on Native SharePoint Timesheets and Plug-in one, I’ll be running you through the options for creating SharePoint Timesheets for free.
During the early development of SharePoint TeamTime we looked at our potential competition, including the free alternatives. Of those we found, the following three were the most notable:
Fab 40 – Timecard Management: One of the famous Fab 40 templates (2007 only)
Built-in Timecard List: A little known built-in Ti [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 10th '11 |
SharePoint TimeSheets – What are Your Options? Part 2: Plug-in Commercial Solutions
Clare Stone
This is the second part in our series covering the options available for anyone looking to implement a timesheet or time tracking system within SharePoint.
Those of you who are regular readers of this blog will know that we have been doing some work with SharePoint Timesheets recently. As a part of that we have spent quite a bit of time looking at what’s currently available. In the spirit of social sharing we thought we would give you a rundown of what we have found.
I want to stress here that [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 3rd '11 |
SharePoint Timesheets – What are your options? Part 1: Native Commercial Solutions
Clare Stone
Regular readers of this blog will know that over the past few months we have been doing some work on SharePoint Timesheets.
As a part of this we have spent quite a bit of time looking at what the available options are for people wanting manage timesheets in SharePoint, and in the spirit of social sharing we thought we would give you a run down on what we have found.
I want to stress here that we haven’t tested all of these timesheet applications. We’re not aiming to offer any kind of recomme [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 24th '11 |
SharePoint Questions: MSDN versus Stack Exchange
Clare Stone
SharePoint is an enormous heaving behemoth of machinery; full of spinning cogs, churning engines, and peculiar dials. We’ve all worked with parts of it, but not even those that created it understand all of its inner workings.
So where do we go when the wheel that goes ‘whir’ is going ‘squeakity’? Or when we’re having trouble bolting on some shiny new levers? What we need is an expert in that area.
Two likely candidates for finding yourself an expert are:
The MSDN SharePoint forums ( [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 17th '11 |
New-SharePoint TeamTime: SharePoint Timesheets to go
Clare Stone
So here’s a new one for you.
SharePoint TeamTime: a nice and easy, ready to use timesheet and time tracking application for SharePoint.
We have been busy working on TeamTime all summer and now it’s very nearly ready to go.
TeamTime is a native SharePoint application pre-built for you to simply add to your SharePoint site and start using with your team.
It offers you two methods of time entry:
either a punch card, to let your record time as its happening by stopping and starting a timer,
o [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 22nd '11 |
Thinking Sideways About Highlighter
Clare Stone
You may have caught Clare’s post earlier about Highlighter’s recent performance enhancements, that were mostly due to some of the surprising ways we’ve seen it being used in the wild. To illustrate this sideways thinking (lateral and literal) we’ll take a look at exploding a humble status column into an Approval Progress Overview:
As you can see, we now have a quick at-a-glance idea of how the projects are doing. To create this view, a Highlighter column has been added for each [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 16th '11 |
How to Create a SharePoint “Does Not Begin With” Filtered List View
Clare Stone
Wonderful though SharePoint is most of the time, occasionally it just lets you down at the most unexpected moment.
So, last week, I wanted to look at a list of all of our sales that were not made to organizations in the USA.
Simple I thought, since all our sale reference numbers start with a 3 letter country code I shall just create a view for all records where Reference Number does not begin with “USA”
So, create a new view, off we go:
Oh dear, we have an option for “begins with” and & [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 9th '11 |
SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner Update – dealing with Public Holidays
Clare Stone
Customers who use our SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner Toolkit often ask about the best way to deal with public holidays. Public Holidays tend to affect the whole team. So you want them clearly marked on your Vacation Planner dashboard, but you certainly don’t want to have to enter each public holiday for each team member as a separate event. And you probably also don’t want to be firing off absence approval requests for each holiday either.
So here are our suggestions on the [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 1st '11 |
PivotPoint for SharePoint – New version Released v2.1.5
Clare Stone
Only last month we launched PivotPoint v2, which added charting and drill down to this popular SharePoint tool.
Now we are releasing v2.1.5 which has some pretty nifty new features added as a result of your feedback on v2.
Axis Minimum
You pointed out that when looking at a chart, if all of your values are bunched between say 90 and 100, viewing them on an axis that runs from 1 to 100 doesn’t make things all that easy to read.
So the new Axis Minimum option lets you choose where your axis sta [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 31st '11 |
SharePoint Planner – New Version Release, every minute counts!
Clare Stone
We were recently contacted by a customer who was going to be responsible for organizing a visit from a Very, Very important person. The visit would only last a couple of hours, but would involve many people and needed to be planned down to the minute.
The client wanted an easy to use graphical representation of the project, in SharePoint, for everyone to refer to and update as the event progressed.
Let’s take a look at how the project might have looked in an out of the box calendar view: [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 25th '11 |
How not to develop a SharePoint [Today] Calculated column
Clare Stone
After developing SharePoint Highlighter, we seriously considered expanding on this area with a Calculated Column that would allow you to use [Today] in the formula. If you’re thinking “But you can already!” I suggest looking at Ryan’s article about the [Today] column trick.
Needless to say, this would be a very useful tool for almost any SharePoint user. After much researching and prototyping we came to an unfortunate conclusion: Although it was possible to make a Custom Field Type to do [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 22nd '11 |
SharePoint Highlighter – color coding date ranges based on [Today]
Clare Stone
It is sooo much easier to keep on top of your tasks if you can see at a glance what is due when.
It’s easy to add this color coding to your SharePoint lists with SharePoint Highlighter in just a few clicks, but setting up the rules correctly is a bit of a mind-bender, so in this post we are going to show you how.
So above you can see:
Tasks due in less than 7 days highlighted in orange
Tasks due in 7-14 days highlighted in yellow.
Tasks due in more than 14 days highlighted in green.
S [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 17th '11 |
Show Actual v Target Performance in SharePoint with PivotPoint web part.
Clare Stone
So we all like to know how we are doing – hitting our targets, meeting our KPI’s, staying within our budgets, running out of vacation days.
If you record things like this in SharePoint lists you would hope it would be easy enough to see how your actual performance compares to your targets, budgets or KPI’s.
Well for those of you who have Enterprise and PerformancePoint it is possible – if not exactly a walk in the park – but for the rest of us this can be a tricky task. [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 3rd '11 |
SharePoint Pivot Charts and Tables – Quick and Easy Video Demo
Clare Stone
It’s all too easy to say that a piece of software is “intuitive” or “Quick and Easy” to use. But what’s quick and easy for me could quite possibly be mind bogglingly slow and tricky for you.
So to show you just how quick and easy it really is to set up dynamic Pivot charts and tables in SharePoint using PivotPoint web part we have produced a 4 minute video demo which walks you through the set up.
The video:
walks you through setting up a pivot chart from Sha [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 15th '11 |
SharePoint Pivot Charts and Pivot Tables with New PivotPoint v2
Clare Stone
Eagerly awaited v2 of PivotPoint web part for SharePoint is now available for you to try, or buy.
We think you’re going to like this one.
Some of you will be familiar with PivotPoint already; it lets you summarize complex SharePoint list data by creating Pivot Tables. These update dynamically, as your list data changes. So they are great to use in dashboards for things like keeping an eye on how sales are going, keeping tabs on how your helpdesk is performing, seeing who’s taking w [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 8th '11 |
SharePoint Highlighter New Version Release with improved Performance
Clare Stone
We have just released v1.3.8 of SharePoint Highlighter.
As well as fixing a couple of little bugs, the main advantage of the new version is improved speed and performance.
When we released Highlighter we had looked at its performance on very long lists, ensuring even with number of Highlighter’s visual enhancements applied long lists still loaded and refreshed quickly.
But when we thought about how people would use Highlighter we envisaged them using maybe 2 or 3 Highlighter columns on a l [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 1st '11 |
Word wrapping SharePoint list column headers
Clare Stone
A customer for our Highlighter product recently asked us how you could modify SharePoints List View Web Part (LVWP) to word wrap column headers. He had found that as he had replaced lengthy text with status icons he could fit a lot more columns on the page – if only he could shrink the column headers down.
To be clear – this isn’t unique to lists using our Highlighter product, this example shows a basic SharePoint list with a long title that is causing a horizontal toolbar as it won’t wo [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 23rd '11 |
Simple SharePoint workflow use case with SharePoint Reminder – Invoice Approvals
Clare Stone
SharePoint Workflows are one of the magic parts of the solution – the bits when even the most cynical and sceptical end user gets to see the benefit.
Instead of emails and bits of paper flying round your organization, getting lost, forgotten and falling between the cracks, everything is managed and driven centrally by SharePoint.
There are a whole load of scenarios where you could use workflows:
Vacation approvals
Expense claims
Purchase order Authorisation
Timesheet approvals
Invoice pay [read].
Posted: Thu, May 19th '11 |
sign up form test
Clare Stone
Testing testing 1…2…..3….
For people used to setting up Outlook Reminders for their tasks and appointments SharePoint’s built in Alerts – which simply notify users of changes to lists – can seem very limited.
Pentalogic SharePoint Reminder web part overcomes those limitations by allowing users to customize SharePoint Alerts, set up time/date based Reminders for tasks and events in SharePoint Lists.
Pentalogic Reminder web part is the longest-established produc [read].
Posted: Tue, May 17th '11 |
How to create a Countdown in a SharePoint list
Clare Stone
If you’ve got a list containing important dates (such as the above example), it’s very useful to be able to easily see how long is left before that date, or how long since it has passed. Unfortunately basing a calculated column on the current date isn’t supported by SharePoint natively, as discussed in my previous article: How to use [Today] in a SharePoint list
So how can we work around this shortcoming without having to wave signs and shout outside Microsoft’s offices? The are a few op [read].
Posted: Tue, May 17th '11 |
How to create a SharePoint KPI column
Clare Stone
Whether you call it a KPI, an Indicator, or a Data Visualization Asset, the chances are that you immediately understand the purpose of the icons in the picture above. The beauty of adding icons to a list is harnessing this instant recognition to make your users work more efficiently with their data.
So how do we add icons to our list? This depends very much on how complex and configurable you want he results to be, so let me give you a run down of the options:
Do It Yourself
JavaScript: Do the [read].
Posted: Fri, May 13th '11 |
How use [Today] in a SharePoint list
Clare Stone
Quite frequently we see questions about using the current date to display messages on a list when a date or time is (or will soon be) overdue. Most of these queries are from frustrated users who are trying to use [Today] in a calculated column, but find it missing.
I’ll quickly outline why this option is missing from calculated columns, and hence why the notorious [Today] trick is quite so controversial. But most importantly, I’ll run you through ways to actually display the information you [read].
Posted: Thu, May 12th '11 |
How to do list highlighting in SharePoint
Clare Stone
Lists can often look a little bland, and attempting to impatiently skim read them can often lead to missing important information. This is why a bit of well-placed color can really help users with their day-to-day work.
In my last post How to create a progress bar in SharePoint I covered the various methods of displaying a progress bar on your SharePoint list view. For this article I’m going to do the same for row and cell highlighting, as I’ve spent a rather considerable time wrestling with [read].
Posted: Wed, May 11th '11 |
How to create progress bar in SharePoint
Clare Stone
Progress bars are a great addition to any list; making percentage values, target achievement, and progress between dates much clearer. Having included this functionality in SharePoint Highlighter, I’ve tried and tested the various ways this can be achieved and thought I’d share my conclusions.
The main methods for getting a progress bar on your list are:
Client based
JavaScript: Put some JavaScript code into a Content Editor Web Part
Designer: Use SharePoint Designer to create a custom view [read].
Posted: Tue, May 10th '11 |
SharePoint Highlighter Released for Sale – See it, Try it, Buy it!
Clare Stone
At last we are there!
After months of heated debate, midnight-oil-burning and general blood, sweat and tears, our latest new product, SharePoint Highlighter is released for sale today!
So come on, what are you waiting for? Get those credit cards out! You know you can’t do without the ultimate tool-kit for brightening up your SharePoint lists!
We realise that although Highlighter has been the centre of our universe for the last few months, some of you may have had other things to think about. [read].
Posted: Fri, May 6th '11 |
SharePoint Highlighter – Beta Testers Needed!
Clare Stone
We’re very nearly there – a couple more weeks and with a fair wind and a bit of luck SharePoint Highlighter should be ready for full public release (i.e. the bit where we actually get to charge people for using it!). But first we need some Beta Testers.
Public Beta testing is the last and maybe the most important stage of the product testing process. This is where we get to find out how people are really going to use the software. Whether we have got it right – or not, ner [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 15th '11 |
SharePoint Charting in PivotPoint – Coming Soon!
Clare Stone
I am sure you have noticed that there is a lot going on here at Pentalogic lately. Just a couple of months ago we launched FilterPoint, which brings fast, flexible filtering to SharePoint lists and web parts. Then we unveiled SharePoint Highlighter which gives you a whole range of color coding, icons and effects to brighten up your lists. And our new free tool View Rescue sorts out an annoying niggle for SharePoint 2010 users.
But we haven’t forgotten our existing products. Feature req [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 13th '11 |
SharePoint Reminder and Upgrading to 2010
Clare Stone
We have noticed that lots of you seem to be upgrading to SharePoint 2010 now. And lots of you are asking what you need to do to upgrade Reminder.
We know the whole process of upgrading your whole SharePoint installation to a new SharePoint version can be quite stressful. So we have put some work in to trying to make the bit of that upgrade that relates to Reminder as simple and painless as possible.
We have put together a step-by-step guide to painless Reminder upgrading, which you can s [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 11th '11 |
Use SharePoint Reminder to Email Your Customers
Clare Stone
We all know how great SharePoint Reminder for sending internal reminders and driving simple workflow. But have you tried it yet for managing the bits of your processes that happen outside of your organization? Sending emails to customers, suppliers or other contacts who are not members of your SharePoint deployment, or even members of your organization.
This is really easy to do and there are lots of places you might use this. Lets look at some of the issues you’ll need to bear in mind.
Ge [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 4th '11 |
ViewRescue for SharePoint 2010 – Updated!
Clare Stone
We’ve recently updated our free ViewRescue tool for ShraePoint 2010 to version 1.1.2
This latest version will now work with customized Master Page templates, as long as you have an “AdditionalPageHead” control in your template.
See our website for the latest version (you can install this over the top of the existing version to upgrade) and details about this free tool that fixes a common annoyance in SharePoint 2010.
Related posts:SharePoint 2010 and the mystery of the disa [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 30th '11 |
SharePoint Highlighter – new product, coming soon.
Clare Stone
We are delighted to be able to let you know that we are about to add a new member to our family of SharePoint products.
Highlighter will let you bring your SharePoint lists to life with:
Highlighting – duh!
Color coding
Icons
Progress bars
Countdowns
And more …
Why did we feel the world needed SharePoint Highlighter you may ask? Well, SharePoint lists can be a little dull on the visual side. As people get more are more into dasboarding, finding ways of picking out different b [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 17th '11 |
SharePoint 2010 and the mystery of the disappearing view selector menu
Clare Stone
In previous versions of SharePoint a dropdown on the top right of a List View Web Part (LVWP) allowed you to select different views. In SharePoint 2010 this is no longer in the lists title bar but in the Breadcrumb on the title bar (which is part of the Ribbon, at the top of the page).
However, all is not well. Kerri from one of our partners – LookOut Software who develop CRM software for SharePoint – pointed out to me that that it disappears if you
Add another list view web part
Add any [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 8th '11 |
Your SharePoint community needs you!
Clare Stone
As many of you may know, SharePoint Overflow is site where anyone can find out anything about any version of SharePoint. Unlike other expert answer sites, it’s solely dedicated to solving SharePoint problems in all their forms.
In order for the community to continue to grow and thrive, SharePoint Overflow being melded into the enormous and varied Stack Exchange community.
Stack Exchange?
A shopping mall of different expert answer sites, based on the three original sites: Stack Overflow for dev [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 7th '11 |
What is SharePoint?
Clare Stone
What is SharePoint?
How often do we get asked this question?
And how difficult is it to find a sensible answer?
There are really helpful diagrams like this one:
Are you any the wiser after looking at that?
Then suddenly we find ourselves spouting all manner of pompous business waffle: “extensible collaboration platform”, “business process automation solution”, “enterprise search capabilities” – oh dear!
And Mr Ballmer from Microsoft is prone to get lost in just the same quagmire of [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 23rd '11 |
SharePoint and Access: Power to the People
Clare Stone
SharePoint and Access cater for an essential part of every organisation: the Power User. Whether it’s a full-time SharePoint Architect, or Jeff who’s “Good With Spreadsheets”; both can make use of these tools to help bridge the gap between custom developed systems and bought-in solutions.
The Family
From my (reasonably short) time using SharePoint, it seems there is a family tree of products that favour the Power User. Right at the top we have the grandfather (or Godfather) Excel, who pr [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 2nd '11 |
FilterPoint Web Part – on sale now!
Clare Stone
After many months of work we are delighted to announce that FilterPoint is now available to purchase.
Filtering is one of the things that any serious SharePoint user is going to need to do at some point. As you put more data into SharePoint lists become longer and you will need a quick and easy way to get to the items you are looking for.
When you create applications and dashboards, bringing together information from different data sources and displaying it in different ways with Web Parts addin [read].
Posted: Thu, Jan 27th '11 |
Reminder Web Part updated – support for Host-named site collections
Clare Stone
Our Reminder Web Part – which adds advanced email alerting features to SharePoint – has recently been updated.
The main new feature in version 1.7.9 is support for host-named site collections (aka host header based site collections).
A host header is the main part of a url – such as www.pentalogic.net or sharepoint.yourcompany.com
Normally SharePoint uses separate Web Applications for different host headers and whilst you can use Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) to map two different urls to [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 26th '11 |
FilterPoint Update
Clare Stone
We have spent a lot of time over the past month working on the beta version of FilterPoint. Our team of professional testers have been working hard to check for compatibility with all versions of SharePoint 2007 and 2010 and a wide range of browsers, as well as looking for bugs and challenging us on some aspects of the usability of the UI.
And we also owe a huge vote of thanks to our beta volunteers who have been testing out the product in the real world. Our volunteers and not only uncovered [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 1st '10 |
Editing The SharePoint List Item Menu (Part 3: Other Uses)
Clare Stone
In previous posts I’ve used the “Open in new window” function to illustrate the two different methods of adding to the List Item menu, or Edit Control Block (ECB) to use its catchier name.
Part 1 covered the CustomAction element; the developer-leaning Visual Studio method. Part 2 avoided any kind of dedicated program by doing the same directly in SharePoint using Javascript in a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP); for power users or those with software commitment issues.
In this section I’l [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 18th '10 |
Microsoft Office 365 – possibly the worst website design in the world – ever!
Clare Stone
So, as many of you know I work in marketing. Since we are largely a web-based business I spend a lot of my time looking at and tinkering with websites.
And when I see really bad website design, it offends me.
I’m not so much talking aesthetics here. Color schemes, layouts, text styles are after all pretty much a matter of personal taste. Something that I view as hideous may be quite appealing to other people.
For example the big, bold fonts that I love send my boss almost apoplectic [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 17th '10 |
SharePoint in the Cloud – Pie in the Sky?
Clare Stone
Yes, we’re wading into the SharePoint in the cloud debate! With major changes to SharePoint Online on the horizon, now may be a good time for us to re-examine the possible benefits that cloud computing could bring to you and your business.
I can’t describe cloud computing as the latest revolutionary breakthrough in software services; in fact, it seems as if the phrase has been around for a long time. But how many of you actually use the cloud to deliver your SharePoint software?
Pigs might f [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 16th '10 |
Editing The SharePoint List Item Menu (Part 1: Using Elements)
Clare Stone
While copying my rapidly lengthening scribbled to do list into a SharePoint Tasks list, my unconscious habit of middle-clicking items to come back to was being constantly foiled. Instead of opening a new tab the modal box kept popping up in the middle of my screen (new to 2010 I hear).
The drop-down menu options did exactly the same, leaving no alternative but to right-click the item, copy the link, manually open a new tab, paste it in, and switch back; much too much like hard work. So I decided [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 4th '10 |
Meet the New Boy–or how to Hire a SharePoint Developer
Clare Stone
After a long and rather painful summer of searching for a new developer to join our team, this week we are delighted to welcome Stuart Pegg on board.
First let me tell you a bit about the pain. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We wanted someone who was going to be happy to immerse themselves in deep coding. We made no secret of this.
We knew that tucked away as we are in a a little backwater of rural England we weren’t likely to get an experienced SharePoint developer. If we could f [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 3rd '10 |
New SharePoint FilterPoint Webpart – public beta released
Clare Stone
Well finally, after months of hard work we are delighted to be able to let you know that we have just released our new FilterPoint webpart for SharePoint in beta.
FilterPoint has been a long time coming so we hope you are going to like it. It’s a tool that we always knew we wanted to develop. Dynamic filtering – the ability to flip between filter values at the click of a mouse – is one of the building blocks for the kinds of rich applications that our customers like to buil [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 1st '10 |
Sharepoint Governance #1 – aim for the sky
Clare Stone
So you’ve got your hands on SharePoint and you’re excited. Some might say we’re biased over here at the Pentalogic blog, but we definitely wouldn’t blame you for itching to deploy this user friendly and incredibly powerful server side software across your whole organization super quickly.
But wait a moment! Have you set out who will be in charge of migrating your shared drives to SharePoint, authorising new sites to be created and setting out an information lifecycle to m [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 18th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 – the Wikis are Everywhere!
Clare Stone
Sometimes opening up SharePoint 2010 makes me come over all Star Trek: I feel like I’m on a mission, to explore strange new worlds: to seek out new life . . . . . OK someone slap me now!
But seriously, there are some funky new features in 2010 and wikis seem to have come on quite a long way. Last week we looked at working with Sharepoint wikis and explored the functionality that is common to 2007 and 2010.
This week we are going to look at the new 2010 features – most of which look [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 29th '10 |
Working With SharePoint Wikis
Clare Stone
SharePoint wikis get quite a bit of flack from Wiki enthusiasts – who think they are way too basic and rather a lame example of a wiki. We disagree: we quite like SharePoint wiki’s – yes they are very simple and easy to use, but isn’t this kind of the point? That they should allow you to add and share content quickly and easily?
So we have 2 articles for you here. This first one is Wiki basics – why and how you would use a SharePoint wiki – and these a [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 23rd '10 |
SharePoint and Visual Studio 2010 – Adding ClassResources to a Web Part
Clare Stone
I’ve been working on moving all our products over to Visual Studio 2010. Whilst Microsoft still has some way to go to make SharePoint totally developer friendly (I mean 47 1/2 steps to install SharePoint 2010 on a Windows 7 desktop for development? And shake a double 6 to start? Really?) they have made huge advances and the SharePoint tools built into Visual Studio 2010 are a big improvement on hand crafting or using VSeWSS or WSPBuilder.
I’ve learnt a few things along the way and th [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 20th '10 |
Why Tooltips are cool tips in PivotPoint Webpart for SharePoint
Clare Stone
Tooltips – those little boxes that pop up when you hover over something – can be a blessing or a bit of a nightmare. It drives me nuts when people enable those snapshot tooltips on every hyperlink on a page. the resulting pop ups are huge, usually contain info I don’t want to see, and seem to hang around on the screen for ever.
But imagine a tooltip where you choose exactly what information is displayed? How cool would that be? Well that’s exactly what you get w [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 9th '10 |
SharePoint Case Study – Websense Pivot Through Their Marketing Dashboards
Clare Stone
Hi everyone.
We wanted to share this new SharePoint case study with you. It shows how online security specialists Websense are using our PivotPoint webapart to slice and dice their marketing list data, and create some awesome, dynamic dashboards.
Websense were moving Excel spreadsheets into SharePoint lists. In moving the data into SharePoint the marketing department didn’t want to lose the Pivot Table view that they had found so useful in Excel.
But nothing in SharePoint out of the b [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 6th '10 |
Using [Today] in SharePoint calculated default values
Clare Stone
Despite the infamous “fake today column trick” still appearing in new blog posts on a monthly basis you can’t use Today in calculated columns in SharePoint.
I’ve seen people assume (not unreasonably) that the same rule must apply with calculated default values used in columns that are not calculated columns as well – but strangely, you actually can use Today in calculated default values, so I am going to explain why it works and how you might use this.
What is the difference betw [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 2nd '10 |
SharePoint Planner Webpart – new version released
Clare Stone
Just a quick note to let you all know that we have just released a new version of SharePoint Planner web part - v2.6.4.
The new version includes a couple of handy new features that might be useful for you.
The new Split Multiple Values option will be useful in resource planning in circumstances where you want to enter multiple category values into one list item, but still view each individual category’s activity as a separate line in your Planner view. For example you might want to cre [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 1st '10 |
SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner – DIY Guide part 5 – the system in action and Out of the box options.
Clare Stone
This is Part 5 of the SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner – DIY Guide
See the System In Action
So, now let’s reap the rewards for all of our hard work and see the system in action.
I need to book a day off for a hospital appointment on Friday 9th of July. I can see all the absence bookings for my department and the number of days I have had off this year on the absence dashboards above. I’ve only had 1 day off for Medical Appointments so far this year and I am allowed 3 so thatR [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 9th '10 |
We’re looking for new SharePoint Developers to Join the Team
Clare Stone
We’re Hiring!
We’re looking for new developers to join our team.
As you will know if you are a regular here, we are a small, specialist ISV, based in Cheltenham, England.
We are purely focused on the development of webparts and tools for use with Microsoft SharePoint. We have been growing steadily over the past couople of years, and now we some new talent for the team.
So, if you are a really talented developer, who has the ability to think creatively, put yourself in the shoes of [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 5th '10 |
SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner part 4 – create an absence approval workflow
Clare Stone
This is Part 4 of the SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner – DIY Guide
In parts 1 through 3 of this series we have laid the foundations for our tailor made Staff Vacation and absence planning system. We have set up the basic SharePoint list, defined a number of list views, and set up dashboards using SharePoint Planner and PivotPoint webparts.
Now we are going to add the “moving parts” to the system and set up a simple approval email workflow using SharePoint Reminder webpart.
We a [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 5th '10 |
SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner – DIY Guide part 3 – set up an Absences to Date Dashboard
Clare Stone
This is Part 3 of the SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner – DIY Guide
So having set up our basic SharePoint list with filtered views, and our “Wall Chart” dashboard, using SharePoint Planner webpart, we are now ready to get up our “Staff Absences to date” and “My Absences” dashboards. This is the bit that allows managers to monitor the amount of absence each of their team members has had:
Or for individual staff members to monitor their own absences:
For th [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 4th '10 |
SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner – DIY Guide part 2 – set up a “Wall Chart” Dashboard
Clare Stone
This is Part II of the SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner – DIY Guide
So having set up our Vacation and Absence list yesterday, we can now apply Planner webpart, to create a vacation and absence dashboard like this:
So staff and managers can easily see who is off when, and when it will be possible to request leave.
If you don’t already have our Planner webpart you can download the free trial version here.
You will find all the installation instructions you need here.
Now we are rea [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 3rd '10 |
SharePoint Staff Vacation Planner – DIY Guide – Part 1
Clare Stone
SharePoint offers a great foundation for non-programming business people to build applications around our business processes, just the way we want them. This guide will show you how to build your own SharePoint staff vacation and absence planning system.
Staff vacation and absence planning can cause trouble and strife in any organization. The good old wall planner can work for staff who are all in the same physical locations . . .
. . . . until you approve an absence then forget to enter it [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 2nd '10 |
How to edit List forms in SharePoint 2010
Clare Stone
In SharePoint 2007 there is a well known trick for opening up a list’s forms (New/View/Edit) in design mode – append ?ToolpaneView=2 onto the url – this is often used to add instructions or javascript using a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) e.g.
Showing a records ID on the View and Edit forms
Setting a default duration for new SharePoint calendar events
However when I first tried to use my tried and tested shortcut in SharePoint 2010 I came a little unstuck as now the New/View [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 29th '10 |
TEST
Clare Stone
[sourcecode language="css"]
fucnction x(var y)
{
return
}
[/sourcecode]
No related posts. [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 23rd '10 |
5 Things you never knew you couldn’t do with SharePoint Alerts
Clare Stone
We often hear that communication is key to the success of any enterprise or organization. Making people aware of “what’s going on” is an essential. So for a collaboration platform like SharePoint tools for telling people what’s happening are a central part of the setup.
SharePoint has it’s built in “Alert Me” feature. New users seeing this often expect it to deliver functionality similar to that which comes as standard in MS Outlook. But that isn&# [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 19th '10 |
SharePoint List Superpowers
Clare Stone
Now we all know that SharePoint Lists are pretty amazing things: easy to use, searchable, customizable… Where would we be without them?
But did you know that each list type comes with its own special “Superpower”?
If you understand the different superpowers of each list type it makes choosing which list to use on any given occasion much easier.
Calendar Lists – Repeating Events
For the meeting every Monday, or the staff Birthday list, or the equipment that needs to be serviced every [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 9th '10 |
SharePoint Terminology – Farms, Web Front Ends, Web Application and Sites
Clare Stone
There is a great deal of confusion around some terms related to the different levels of SharePoint hierarchy. Some of this is buzword overload and some has been brought about by inconsistent usage from Microsoft (and to be fair actually most of us in this industry).
So if you’ve ever wondered what things like Farm, WFE, NLB, Web Application, Site Collection and Top Level Site mean I am going to try and clarify the different terms without getting too technical as some of this stuff ne [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 8th '10 |
We’ve Moved
Clare Stone
Just over a year after moving to Kingshold buildings we are having to move yet again, due to planned expansion. Not a huge deal though as we are only moving about 2 miles down the road.
Our new offices are based in Cheltenham Film Studios, on the outskirts of the town. We don’t plan to take up acting, but we think we will benefit from being one of a range of tech and creative companies on this site.
We have plenty of room to grow as a business here, so hopefully we will be able to stay [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 1st '10 |
SharePoint Feature Receivers – the hidden details
Clare Stone
Warning - this post is somewhat techie so if you’re not a developer you may want to go find something more interesting to do!
I’ve been doing some work with SharePoint Feature Receivers recently and found the official documentation to be somewhat … lacking.
SharePoint Feature Receivers allow you to run code when a Feature such as a web part or template is installed, activated, deactivated and removed. They are often used for installation/setup tasks that can’t be don [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 15th '10 |
SharePoint Reminder Webpart – version 1.7.8 now available
Clare Stone
How annoying is it when you get reminded about something you have already done? A little email saying:
“Can you please submit your expenses claim form by 12.00 noon today”
is just sooo annoying when actually you have been a good girl and done your expenses yesterday.
We get lots of support calls from SharePoint Reminder webpart users who have annoyed their team members in just this way – by sending our Reminder emails for tasks that have already been completed.
This is easy [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 14th '10 |
Moving to Feedburner
Clare Stone
Just a quick note to let you know we are moving to Feedburner.
No related posts. [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 7th '10 |
How To setup a SharePoint view filter to compare 2 list fields
Clare Stone
There are many instances where you might want to view a set of SharePoint list records which have been filtered on a comparison between values in 2 columns. You might want to view a list of all sales reps who have failed to hit their targets: Actual SalesCredit Limit, or employees who have not used their full vacation entitlement: Vacation Entitlement>Days taken.
A customer recently contacted me with just this type of question :-
They use a SharePoint list to keep track of orders waiting t [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 1st '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Resources
Clare Stone
Last week we had an email from a customer who was confused about his options for SharePoint 2010.
He was planning to move his 5 WSS site to SharePoint 2010 Foundation – but had found this document from Microsoft:
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Licensing-Details.aspx
which seems to suggest that sites and Workspaces were not available in Foundation, only in SharePoint 2010 standard edition or above. Well we knew this wasn’t right; but that wasn’t what th [read].
Posted: Thu, May 27th '10 |
The Truth about Tech Support
Clare Stone
You know how satisfying it is when you read something, instinctively know it’s right, then have something happen that gives you concrete proof? Well we had one of those moments this week – and I wanted to share.
We read quite a few business blogs and for down to earth, quality advice Jason Cohen is our man – Joel Spolsky sometimes comes up with the goods, but he can be a bit full of himself, we don’t get Seth Godin at all – seems to have made a great career out of sta [read].
Posted: Mon, May 24th '10 |
Calculated columns – Adding hours onto a date field
Clare Stone
A customer recently contacted me with an interesting question.
They were using a SharePoint task list to help schedule jobs for field engineers but rather than have a Start Date and End Date field they wanted to have a Start Date and Duration field and automatically work out the End Date.
So End Date = Start Date + Duration
They were then planning to display this using Planner in the By Category view which is idea for resource booking as it makes it easy to see when a resource is booked or free [read].
Posted: Wed, May 19th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 gets into the Groove
Clare Stone
With all the furore surrounding the business release of SharePoint 2010 it would have been easy to miss the launch (or relaunch) of another little Microsoft product in the SharePoint space which quite neatly addresses two of my personal SharePoint bug bears.
Wonderful though SharePoint is there are always a few things we wish it would do better. Personally I have always been a little frustrated by the limitations on sharing with people outside of your own organization, the difficulties arou [read].
Posted: Mon, May 17th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Ready – PHEW!
Clare Stone
Well, OK so it probably hasn’t been quite as much effort as climbing Everest – but sometimes it’s felt that way!
Last week Microsoft made the “final” release version of SharePoint 2010 available to developers and large corporates. So we have been able to get on with our “final” set of compatibility tests and we can now announce that all of our products are SharePoint 2010 Compatible.
When you make software that works on a particular platform ̵ [read].
Posted: Tue, May 4th '10 |
SharePoint Site Templates: KISS guide to creating, saving and using
Clare Stone
A site is the key place within SharePoint to bring together all the people, content and activities associated with a particular process, project or group. And if the process or project is regularly repeated within your organization having a site template for it saves a lot of time and helps to ensure consistency and facilitate continuous improvement.
There are any number of scenarios where you might use a SharePoint site template, for this example we are using a recruitment process, but you co [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 27th '10 |
Use SharePoint Filtered Views to Stop Sending Alerts to Yourself
Clare Stone
How annoying is it when you have just created or amended an item in SharePoint, and you immediately get an Alert email about it?
You know the kind of situation: you might be working in a team list, you have the list set up to alert you when an item assigned to you is added or amended, so as soon as you add or amend an item yourself an alert email pings through to your inbox. Completely unnecessary inbox clutter.
So, lets switch off those annoying “alerts to myself” – has to be [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 19th '10 |
New SharePoint Partnership – Pentalogic and LookOut Software
Clare Stone
We are really pleased to let you know about our latest Strategic Partnership with a SharePoint relationship management development company, LookOut Software of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
LookOut has been in the CRM software business since 1994. In 2007 they were introduced to SharePoint and made the decision to change development platforms and haven’t looked back since.
LookOut’s CRM Template builds upon the the best of SharePoint adding relationship capability with [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 9th '10 |
SharePoint Partner Perspective: Veronique Palmer
Clare Stone
This is the first in a series of interviews with our partners – giving insights into what’s happening in their part of the world and in their part of the world of SharePoint.
And our first interviewee is Veronique Palmer.
We first met Veronique in discussions on the SharePoint Experts Group on LinkedIn, which she co-manages and moderates. Veronique is based in Johannesburg, South Africa and is owner and founder of Lets Collaborate.
So, tell us what’s good about living [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 1st '10 |
SharePoint 2010: What’s Hot and What’s Not – #3 Social Networking
Clare Stone
This is the final part in our occasional series on what’s hot and what’s not for the end user in SP 2010.
A couple of weeks ago we focused on our favorite new feature for end users: FAST Search, which we think is going to make a huge impact on how people store and search for content in SharePoint 2010. Last week we took at pop at Business Connectivity Services – which we feel could cause more problems than it solves.
Today we are throwing stones at SharePoint 2010 Social Networking – [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 22nd '10 |
SharePoint 2010 What’s Hot and What’s Not? #2 NOT!
Clare Stone
So here we are with the second instalment in our occasional series on SharePoint 2010 features for the end user.
In part 1 we looked at the new features in SharePoint 2010 that we thought would be most welcomed by end users. Our vote went to FAST Search, because it’s going to make search within SharePoint much more like search in Google – which has to be a good thing.
This provoked a lot of debate and whilst some of you agreed with us, others had different candidates for the top spot.
A lo [read].
Posted: Fri, Mar 19th '10 |
And the Winner Is . . . !
Clare Stone
No, it’s not more about the Oscars, it’s our Case Study Competition – just as important to us, but maybe Jeff Bridges wouldn’t share our view.
Random aside: Did you know that this is (allegedly) the first year in over 20 years that award presenters at the Oscar’s have used the phrase “and the winner is”? “And the winner is” was banned at the 60th Oscars, for fear of offending the “non-winners” (didn’t they used to be called losers??). Presenters have been saying “an [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 10th '10 |
Case Study – Bowerman and Brooke Choose Pentalogic SharePoint Reminder for Job Tracking System
Clare Stone
So here we are on track with at least one of our SharePoint 2010 New Year’s Resolutions – and its only March!
We wanted to get some more insight into how people use our products out there in the real world, and so we asked you to send in case studies. In fact we launched a little competition to encourage you – winner to be announced in the next blog post.
We have been delighted with the response, and here is the first in what we hope will be a long running series.
Wade Peterson is Di [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 8th '10 |
SharePoint 2010: What’s Hot and What’s Not for End Users — #1: Hot
Clare Stone
Along with many others in our part of the technology industry, we’ve spent the past few months with our heads firmly buried in SharePoint 2010, getting our products compatible, and along the way getting really familiar with the wealth of new features on offer.
So as we’re now at the “been there, done that” stage with SP 2010 we thought it might be useful to share our thoughts on what the killer features are, and where to watch out for the white elephants!
This week — killer fea [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 4th '10 |
Tell Us Your SharePont Story and Win a Flip Video
Clare Stone
One of our New Years Resolutions for 2010 was to: “find out how people really use our stuff”.
We really want to understand how people use our Planner, Reminder and Pivot Point in the real world. We know we have clients from a huge range of industry sectors, so it will be great to see how our software helps with the special challenges of your area. And we know that some of you use 2 or 3 of our products together: we would love to know what you are doing there.
So this year we want t [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 16th '10 |
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