<Category Title="Aging" Description="Aging groups for items based on the submission date"
  Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator"
  MetadataThreshold="3" NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="5"
  MaxNumberOfFilters="0" SortBy="Custom" ShowMoreLink="True"
  MappedProperty="SubmitDate" MoreLinkText="show more"
  LessLinkText="show fewer">
    <CustomFilters MappingType="RangeMapping" DataType="Date"
    ValueReference="Relative" ShowAllInMore="False">
      <CustomFilter CustomValue="0-30 Days">
        <OriginalValue>-30..0</OriginalValue>
      </CustomFilter>
      <CustomFilter CustomValue="30-60 Days">
        <OriginalValue>-60..-30</OriginalValue>
      </CustomFilter>
      <CustomFilter CustomValue="60-90 Days">
        <OriginalValue>-90..-60</OriginalValue>
      </CustomFilter>
      <CustomFilter CustomValue="60-90 Days">
        <OriginalValue>-120..-90</OriginalValue>
      </CustomFilter>
      <CustomFilter CustomValue="120+ Days">
        <OriginalValue>..-120</OriginalValue>
      </CustomFilter>
    </CustomFilters>
  </Category>

If you want more details on custom refiners, check out Michal Prisarek’s Custom Refinement Filters in SharePoint 2010 Overview. This is a great overview of custom refiners and was one of my jumping off points for this project.

function send-notification($subject, $detail) {
    $message = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage
    $message.Subject = $subject
    $message.Body = $detail
    $message.To.Add("recipient@domain.com")
    $message.From = "sender@domain.com"
    
    $client = New-Object System.Net.Mail.SMTPClient -ArgumentList "smtp.domain.com"
    $client.Send($message)
}

To make use of the function, just simply call it with the necessary parameters:

send-notification -subject "$dbname Attached" -detail "The content database $dbname has completed the database attach upgrade. Please review the logs in Central Administration as soon as possible."

Edit 12/8/2011: If you would like to send to multiple users, you can do the following:

$message.To.Add("nextemail@domain.com")
$message.To.Add("anotherperson@domain.com")
#You can also CC and BCC
$message.Cc.Add("firstcc@domain.com")
$message.Bcc.Add("firstbcc@domain.com")

    function getCurrentUserRole() {
        $().SPServices({
            operation: "GetRolesAndPermissionsForCurrentUser",
            async: false,
            completefunc: function (xData, Status) {
                if( Status == "success") {
                    $(xData.responseXML).find("[nodeName=Role]").each(function () {
                        if($(this).attr("Name") == "Full Control") {
                            // THE USER IS ASSIGNED THE FULL CONTROL ROLE
                        }
                        if($(this).attr("Name") == "Approver") {
                            // THE USER IS ASSIGNED THE APPROVER ROLE
                        }
                    });
                }
            }
        });
    }

You can check for any role that is defined in SharePoint (this includes roles you might create, i.e. Contribute No Delete). Using this, you could provide UI cues or change the UI for certain users. Remember, this does not “secure” a site. It only responds to the roles the user is assigned.

The Client Object Model in SharePoint 2010 is accessible using JavaScript, so I decided that I would make use of this, coupled with jQuery, to provide the necessary details for each author returned in a set of search results. The search results page is configured to show 10 results at a time, so I know there will only be ten calls to get the information needed. Also, this search center is looking for items already contained within the specified site, so making use of the user information list is possible because the authors will have entries in the list due to their activity on the site.

First, I use jQuery to get my custom container that contains the author information. I have already modified the core results XSLT and I know the markup for the container I will be using.

function loadUserData() {
     $(".authordetails").each(function () {
          var authorName = $(this).text();
          updateAuthorDetails(authorname, this);
     });
}

The updateAuthorDetails method makes use of the SharePoint 2010 client object model to retrieve the user details. This method is passed two arguments, the name of the author (this is the display name) and the target container to update with additional details.

	function updateAuthorDetails(userName, target){
		// Use the client context to get the user.
		var clientContext = new SP.ClientContext.get_current();
		var web = clientContext.get_web();
		
		// Get the user information list for the current site
		var userInfoList = web.get_siteUserInfoList();
		
		// Define the query to get the user by the display name of the user.
		var camlQuery = new SP.CamlQuery();
		camlQuery.set_viewXml("<View><Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name=\'Title\'/><Value Type=\'Text\'>" + userName + "</Value></Eq></Where></Query><RowLimit>1</RowLimit></View>");
		
		// Load the items into a variable
		var colListItem = userInfoList.getItems(camlQuery);
		clientContext.load(colListItem);
		
		// Execute the query and set up the profile information
		clientContext.executeQueryAsync(
			function (sender, args) {
		             var item = colListItem.itemAt(0);
                             /*
                               use the list item to perform my updates 
                               to the container using jQuery
                             */
			},
			function (sender, args) {
				return null;
			});
	}

The final result of my efforts looks a little like the following:

Scenario

Our organization has grown and we have several new employees. There is a need to help these new employees find a central place to obtain news. We also have existing employees that have expressed a desire to know more about what other teams are doing, since we all like to celebrate the successes of our company. Much of this information has been centralized within our SharePoint portal, but this is not always a convenient place to view since many of our consultants are highly mobile and may only have a few minutes to review email and news between flights or meetings with clients. However, all of our consultants are making use of some type of smartphone, so if there were a way to present this information on those devices a quick update can happen almost anywhere. Even though our consultants use smartphones, we’ve found that our smartphone preference is as diverse as our skillsets, so developing a single native application for each platform (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, etc.) would just be too expensive.

Assumptions

It is assumed that your SharePoint environment is available outside any corporate firewalls and can be navigated directly from your mobile device. I am also assuming that you have an understanding of how to use the technologies described in this document and I have provided links at the end of this post to these tools where you can discover more information. I will provide brief description for jQuery mobile, but I refer you to their documentation for full details on how to use the framework.

Goals

The goals for this project are quite simple, to centralize news and provide it on as many devices as possible. We also want to reuse as much of our existing skill sets as possible – we have a lot of experience working with web technologies including HTML and SharePoint.

Technologies Available

The first step is to identify the available ways to retrieve our news feeds. SharePoint can provide our feeds via RSS or we can make use of the SPServices library by Marc Anderson to work with SharePoint’s web services.

The most difficult portion of the project will be retrieving external newsfeeds via RSS. This is because I will have to make cross-domain calls — something that is considered a security risk. For this, Google provides a way for us to use their Feed API and return our feed as JSON.

Finally to support mobile devices, we will make use of the jQuery Mobile plug-in. This plug-in is still in beta, but it looks very promising and supports a very large number of devices.

Solution

The final solution is made up of four HTML pages hosted in a SharePoint document library and a shared JavaScript file referenced on all of the pages.

default.htm

First, the entry point into the solution is default.htm and begins the end-user experience. Using HTML pages instead of ASPX pages allows full control of the markup produced by the solution. I did some initial experiments with data view web parts hosted on ASPX pages, but the data view web parts prefers to be wrapped in a form element. This would occasionally break the markup required for jQuery mobile. It also insured page-to-page navigation would require non-ajax navigation.

This page acts as a menu for each of the various news areas, allowing the employee the choice to review each section of content.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Tribridge News</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../Scripts/jquerymobile/jquery.mobile-1.0b2.min.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="news.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi?key=<PROVIDE YOUR GOOGLE API KEY>"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
google.load("feeds", "1");
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Scripts/jquery/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Scripts/jquery.SPServices-0.6.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Scripts/jquerymobile/jquery.mobile-1.0b2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.jgfeed-min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="news.js"></script>
</head>

<body>

<div data-role="page" id="Main" class="tribridge-page">
	<div data-role="header" class="tribridge-header">
		<h1>News</h1>
	</div>
	<div data-role="content" class="tribridge-content">
		<div class="page-logo">
		</div>
		<ul data-role="listview" data-inset="true" class="tribridge-listview" data-dividertheme="a">
			<li data-role="list-divider">Internal News</li>
			<li><a href="golive.htm">Go Live Announcements</a></li>
			<li><a href="tribridgenews.htm">Tribridge News</a></li>
			<li data-role="list-divider">Public News</li>
			<li><a href="public.htm">Press Releases</a></li>
		</ul>
	</div>
	<div data-role="footer" class="tribridge-footer"><h1>&copy;2011 Tribridge</h1></div>
</div>

</body>

</html>

jQuery Mobile makes use of specific markup for a page. This is usually an external div tag with several internal div tags for headers, footer, content and navigational elements. According to the documentation, you can also use HTML 5 tags such as header, footer, etc.

jQuery Mobile also makes use of attributes to help the framework know what to do with each element. These attributes are outlined in the documentation for the framework, but they all begin with data-. The final markup of this page is very clean and remains very simple so the employee can very clearly see the available options.

news.js

Next, because jQuery mobile makes use of ajax for default navigation, any script located on a secondary page will not execute, however, jQuery mobile does handle this by providing a few new events. In a typical jQuery scenario, you will make use of $(document).ready(…) to initialize your functions. This will change in jQuery mobile to $(“#PageID”).live(“pagecreate”,function (event) {…}). Once you get used to this, you are pretty much dealing with jQuery syntax.

I have three pages where content will be dynamically retrieved and placed into the page, so I need to create three page creation events in the jQuery Mobile framework.

$("#GoLiveNews").live("pagecreate",function (event) {
	loadGoLiveNews();
});

$("#PublicNews").live("pagecreate",function (event) {
	loadPublicNews();
});

$("#TribridgeNews").live("pagecreate",function (event) {
	loadTribridgeNews();
});

You can see here that I’m executing different functions depending upon which page is loaded. Each individual HTML page has a jQuery page with the cooresponding ID indicated in the jQuery selector.

Both loadGoLiveNews and loadPublicNews are making use of SPServices to retrieve the data from SharePoint. Because these pages are hosted in SharePoint, the employee is already authenticated so there are no issues with SPServices (as long as you are working within the same domain).

function loadGoLiveNews() {
	$().SPServices({
		operation: "GetListItems",
		CAMLQuery: "<Query>...</Query>",
		CAMLViewFields: "<ViewFields>...</ViewFields>",
		listName: "Pages",
		CAMLRowLimit: 10,
		webURL: "https://...",
		completefunc: function (xData, Status) {
			if(Status == "success") {
				$(xData.responseXML).find("[nodeName='z:row']").each(function () {
					html = "<li><a href=\"#\"><h2>" + $(this).attr("ows_Title") + "</h2><p>" + $(this).attr("ows_...") + "</p></a></li>";
					$("#NewsItems").append(html);
				});
				$("#NewsItems").listview("refresh")
			}
		}
	});
}

There are a few things to notice concerning the SPServices call, mainly as it relates to jQuery mobile. Since I am attaching new items to an existing list view, I will have to refresh the list view after all of the new items are added, ($(“#NewsItems”).listview(“refresh”). This notifies the jQuery mobile framework to work its magic on the new html markup added to the DOM.

Remember, the public news poses a different issue because it is hosted on a site outside of SharePoint. Because of this, in order to retrieve the RSS feed, I would have to make a cross-domain call. This is frowned on heavily in JavaScript since it is considered a security risk. This is where I make use of Google’s Feed API.

In the default.htm page, there is a call to Google’s API:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi?key=<PROVIDE YOUR GOOGLE API KEY>"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
google.load("feeds", "1");
</script>

This will insure the Feed API is ready to use when it is called by the page being loaded. The Feed API returns the RSS feed as JSON, so I can make use of this easily to generate my list of news.

function loadPublicNews() {
	$.jGFeed("http://www.tribridge.com/News.rss.ashx",
	function (feeds) {
		if(!feeds){
			alert("Unable to load news...");
		}
		for(var i=0; i<feeds.entries.length; i++){
			var entry = feeds.entries[i];
			html = "<li><a href=\"" + entry.link + "\" rel=\"external\"><h2>" + entry.title + "</h2><p>" + entry.author + "</p></a></li>";
			$("#NewsItems").append(html);
		}
		$("#NewsItems").listview("refresh");
	},50);
}

Notice that the HTML being generated in the function has the rel attribute set to external. This tells the jQuery Mobile Framework to break out of the AJAX navigation. Since I am sending the employees to the official site, there is no need to keep them in my mobile application.

golives.htm, tribridgenews.htm and publicnews.htm

Apart from unique ID’s for each jQuery Mobile Page, these pages are identical.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Tribridge News</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../Scripts/jquerymobile/jquery.mobile-1.0b2.min.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="news.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi?key=<YOUR GOOGLE API KEY>"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
google.load("feeds", "1");
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Scripts/jquery/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Scripts/jquery.SPServices-0.6.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Scripts/jquerymobile/jquery.mobile-1.0b2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.jgfeed-min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="news.js"></script>
</head>

<body>
<div data-role="page" class="tribridge-page" id="PublicNews">
	<div data-role="header" class="tribridge-header">
		<a href="default.htm" data-role="button" data-inline="true" data-icon="back" data-theme="c" data-direction="reverse">Main</a>
		<h1>Public News</h1>
	</div>
	<div class="tribridge-content" data-role="content">
		<div class="page-logo"></div>
		<ul data-role="listview" class="tribridge-listview" id="NewsItems" data-inset="true">
		</ul>
	</div>
	<div class="tribridge-footer" data-role="footer">
		<h1>&copy;2011 Tribridge</h1>
	</div>
</div>

</body>

</html>

I don’t see jQuery Mobile being the best way to present your entire SharePoint environment to an employee, but this example should demonstrate there may business scenarios where a solution similar to this would be beneficial — perhaps things as simple as sharing team contacts to as complex as a issue logging system used by service technicians deployed to the field.

If you develop something using jQuery mobile and SharePoint, I would love to hear about it!

Links

1. jQuery 1.6.2
2. jQuery Mobile 1.0 Beta 2
3. SPServices 0.6.2
4. Google Feed API
5. Sign-up for a Google API Key

First, I wanted to know what PowerShell commands were available to me, so I located a blog post by Adam Preston detailing how to dump all of the commands to a text file. Once you have the commands, you can make use of PowerShell’s Get-Help command to get the syntax and description of the command.

Armed with this, I discovered the Get-SPContentDatabase commandlet that iterates over all the available content databases in the farm. Executing Get-SPContentDatabase without any parameters will return every content database in the farm. However, the list format was not the desired format.

Further research lead me to create my own table format:

$a = @{Expression={$_.Name};Label=”Database Name”;width=70},@{Expression={$_.CurrentSiteCount};Label=”Sites”;width=10}

This format makes sure there is plenty of room for a long database name and then gives the ability to show how many site collections are in the database. Now, my command is:

Get-SPContentDatabase -WebApplication http://mycoolintranet.mycompany.com | format-table $a > ContentDatabases.txt

When the command completes, I can simply open up the text file and begin my documentation.

My first task was to create a data macro that would add a new user to the database when the published web database is visited the first time. Additionally, each return I would like to capture the number of times the user visited and when they visited the site last.

In order to capture this information I created a table named Users that included the columns UserLogin, UserWebID, UserDisplayName, UserEmailAddress, FirstVisitDate, LastVisitDate, TotalVisits. I created a data macro that would handle the add/update procedure (more in a later blog post) and then set my default form to update the user when the form is loaded.

I needed a way to get the information about the user — and Access did not disappoint. Making use of the CurrentWebUser method, I can obtain information about the user; however, the method requires a parameter — this is an enumeration that took some time to locate, so here is a link to the documentation on MSDN.

Knowing the enumeration helps when I need to use this information to create a new user in my database — and I can use the user’s email address with another data macro to send them a welcome email when they first visit the site!

In this short video, an Access solution is quickly demonstrated that made me wonder, how was this done? After sharing with my co-worker Ben McMann, we set off to find some ideas on how Access is being used. My first one lead me to the Access Team Blog:

Social Media Done Easy (Access Blog)

After a little more discovery, Ben gave me this link with some exceptional information:

The Access Show – Making Beautiful Access Web Applications

It looks like there are some real good examples of where Access can be used by Information Workers to create ad-hoc business solutions to solve some of their common day-to-day tasks. Now, it’s time to get Access Services configured on my Development Virtual Machine and start playing with some ideas!

Option 1; Option 2; Option 3;

All of the data is being presented using a Content Query Web Part that makes use of the new dynamic filtering feature of the new CQWP in SharePoint 2010. I needed a way to iterate through the available options on a single item and generate a hyperlink with the appropriate filter added to the query string.

Splitting these up really is fairly easy using a recursive template (begins on line 33, called from line 20):

<!-- CUSTOM ITEM STYLE FOR CQWP -->
  <?xml:namespace prefix = xsl />
<xsl:template mode="itemstyle" match="Row[@Style='IdeaStyle']" name="IdeaStyle">
  <DIV class=Idea>
     <DIV class=LeftContainer>
        <DIV class=Points>
           <H2><xsl:value-of select="@Point_x005F_x0020_Value"></xsl:value-of></H2>
           <H4>POINTS</H4>
        </DIV>
     </DIV>
     <DIV class=RightContainer>
        <DIV class=IdeaBody>
           <H1><xsl:value-of select="@Title"></xsl:value-of></H1>
           <DIV class=IdeaBodyContent>
              <xsl:value-of select="@Idea_x005F_x0020_Text" disable-output-escaping="yes"></xsl:value-of>
           </DIV>
           <DIV class=Tags>
              <STRONG>Filed Under: </STRONG>
                        <!-- TIME TO SPLIT UP THE METADATA FIELD -->
              <xsl:call-template name="outputLinks">
                                <!-- Aircraft contains my metadata -->
                 <xsl:with-param name="list" select="@Aircraft"></xsl:with-param>
              </xsl:call-template>
           </DIV>
        </DIV>
     </DIV>
     <DIV style="CLEAR: both"></DIV>
  </DIV>
  </xsl:template>

<!-- RECURSIVE TEMPLATE, KEEPS CALLING ITSELF
     UNTIL ALL ITEMS ARE PROCESSED -->
  <xsl:template name="outputLinks">
     <xsl:param name="list"></xsl:param>
        <!-- GET EVERYTHING IN FRONT OF THE FIRST DELIMETER -->
     <xsl:variable name="first" select="substring-before($list,';')"></xsl:variable>

        <!-- STORE ANYTHING LEFT IN ANOTHER VARIABLE -->
     <xsl:variable name="remaining" select="substring-after($list,';')"></xsl:variable>
     <A>
        <xsl:attribute name="href">
           ./IdeasFiltered.aspx?System=<xsl:value-of select="$first"></xsl:value-of>
        </xsl:attribute>
        <xsl:value-of select="$first"></xsl:value-of>
     </A>;

        <!-- CHECK TO SEE IF ANYTHING IS LEFT -->
     <xsl:if test="$remaining">
                <!-- CALL THE TEMPLATE AGAIN USING THE NEW VARIABLE
                     FOR THE PARAMETER -->
        <xsl:call-template name="outputLinks">
           <xsl:with-param name="list" select="$remaining"></xsl:with-param>
        </xsl:call-template>
     </xsl:if>
  </xsl:template>

Be careful with this because you can bring a web-front end to a halt if it gets caught in a recursive loop that never ends. You could potentially pass another parameter in to store the number of iterations and increment that each time the function is called, backing out if you reach a maximum number of iterations.

To start, create a new javascript function to handle opening the dialog. In the function, an options class will need to be created with the appropriate options for using SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options) method. These include the url, dimensions and any callback operations. There is also a querystring parameter that needs to be added to have SharePoint automatically turn off the “chrome” that is not necessary for a dialog. You can simply add “&IsDlg=1″ to any SharePoint URL and the chrome will be turned off.

Here’s a script I’m using for my current project to open a form allowing users to add comments to an item.

<script type="text/javascript">
function OpenEditDialog(item_title, item_id){
        var options = {
            url:"http://sp2010dev/SitePages/NewComment.aspx?ItemID=" + item_id + "&title=" + item_title + "&IsDlg=1",
            width: 500,
            height: 300,
            dialogReturnValueCallback: DialogCallback
            };

        SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);
    }

    function DialogCallback(dialogResult, returnValue){               }
</script>

The final step is to simply create a hyperlink or some other method of calling this function.

<a href="#" onclick="OpenEditDialog('Title',14);">Add A Comment</a>

From either the data source view or the form designer, right click on the field that needs to either be a positive or a negative value and select rules. This will bring up the rules designer that will be used for the remaining steps. Add a new rule and give the rule a name (I prefer to name my rules according to the expected outcome).

A condition needs to be created so that the field is only modified if the value entered is a negative value. The formula should be something like the following: [FIELD] is less than 0. This will check the value of the field and if a value less than zero (a negative value) is provided execute the actions of the rule.

Next, add an action to set a field’s value.

Click on the button to the right of the text box to select the field to set. This should be the field that should be a positive value. Next, click on the formula button (fx) for the value text box. The formula should be -1 * [FIELD]. You can easily insert the field by clicking on Insert Field or Group and selecting the field you need changed.

Since any negative number multiplied by -1 is the positive of the same value, you get the positive value of the value entered. This same benefit plays out for places the form must have negative numbers. Now, when entering data into the form as a negative value where a positive value is expected, InfoPath will execute the rule and change the value accordingly.

    public class SchemeConverter
    {
        static void ConvertTheme(String inFileName, String outFileName)
        {
            XElement doc = XElement.Load(inFileName);

            var colorsets = (from set in doc.Descendants(XName.Get("colorset"))
                             select new ColorSet
                                 {
                                     Title = set.Attribute(XName.Get("title")).Value,
                                     Colors = (from color in set.Descendants(XName.Get("color"))
                                               select new Color
                                               {
                                                   Title = color.Attribute(XName.Get("id")).Value,
                                                   RGB = color.Attribute(XName.Get("rgb")).Value
                                               }).ToList()
                                 }).ToList();

            XNamespace defaultNamespace = XNamespace.Get("http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation");
            XNamespace x = XNamespace.Get("http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml");

            XElement silverDoc = new XElement(defaultNamespace + "ResourceDictionary",
                                new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "x", x));

            foreach (ColorSet CS in colorsets)
            {
                foreach(Color C in CS.Colors)
                {
                    XElement FullColor = new XElement("Color", new XAttribute(x + "Key", C.Title.ToUpper() + "-FULL"), "#FF" + C.RGB.ToUpper());
                    XElement ThreeQuarterColor = new XElement("Color", new XAttribute(x + "Key", C.Title.ToUpper() + "-THREEQUARTER"), "#BF" + C.RGB.ToUpper());
                    XElement HalfColor = new XElement("Color", new XAttribute(x + "Key", C.Title.ToUpper() + "-HALF"), "#80" + C.RGB.ToUpper());
                    XElement OneQuarterColor = new XElement("Color", new XAttribute(x + "Key", C.Title.ToUpper() + "-ONEQUARTER"), "#40" + C.RGB.ToUpper());
                    XElement ClearColor = new XElement("Color", new XAttribute(x + "Key", C.Title.ToUpper() + "-CLEAR"), "#00" + C.RGB.ToUpper());

                    silverDoc.Add(FullColor);
                    silverDoc.Add(ThreeQuarterColor);
                    silverDoc.Add(HalfColor);
                    silverDoc.Add(OneQuarterColor);
                    silverDoc.Add(ClearColor);
                }
            }

            silverDoc.Save(outFileName);
        }
    }

For example, the question might read “Who needs to sign-off on this project?” and include “Information Technology, Public Relations, Marketing, Executive Leadership and No Sign-off Required” as possible answers. The person completing the survey could select any combination of the first four options. However; if the person completing the survey selected No Sign-off Required, all of the other answers become irrelevant so they should be cleared.

We looked at several options for presenting this in a graphically friendly way while allowing the data to be stored in SharePoint. We also needed a way to allow a high degree of customization of the survey without the site owner being required to open up Visual Studio or start hacking through a bunch of JavaScript code. Technologies that we explored included:

1. Adobe Flash
2. Microsoft Silverlight
3. SharePoint Web-Part(s)
4. jQuery / jQuery UI
5. InfoPath

Flash was discarded pretty quickly due to the lack of available programmers and a client policy that discourages the use of Flash for internal business applications. Silverlight was discarded after some debate since the client is not yet ready to support on-going development of Silverlight Business RIA’s (they have an extensive .Net developer pool, but have not yet moved into Silverlight or WPF). SharePoint Web-Part(s) were eventually discarded due to the necessity of including a solution file for a one-off requirement. The team just couldn’t find any other business needs that justified custom web-parts, especially since this is a SharePoint 2007 implementation that is being migrated at some point before the project could be completed. This left jQuery and InfoPath as the most likely candidates.

InfoPath was initially discarded because the site owner wanted to emulate a Flash survey as closely as possible. We started down the path using jQuery with jQuery UI. Three custom lists were created in SharePoint: one to hold all of the questions, one to hold all of the possible answers to each question and one to hold the results of the survey. A form was dynamically created from the questions and answers stored in the SharePoint lists using SPServices. The person completing the survey would navigate through a wizard presenting each of the questions. When completed, the survey was then submitted back to SharePoint using SPServices and stored in a list where further actions could be taken at a later time.

It took us over two weeks to build the solution and almost 900 lines of  JavaScript had been written and tested. After successfully completing the requirements, we were discouraged because the end result did not meet our performance requirements (we suspected this might be the case as the solution was becoming more complex).  We even changed our web service calls from synchronous to asynchronous to try to solve the problem, but we still hit a performance barrier. So, we had to turn back to the only other technology available — InfoPath.

It took us less than an hour to create the InfoPath form using the questions required for the survey. By placing the questions and answers directly into InfoPath, this reduced our dependence upon maintaining questions and answers in two different lists. The site owner now had a familiar interface for modifying questions and answers in the same location — by simply editing the InfoPath template.

We began creating rules for each of the questions in the survey to perform the exclusive selection operation defined in the business case.  Setting up conditions and actions was much easier and ultimately more maintainable for the site owner if the structure of the question needed to change. Once the form was completed, it was published directly to a form library on the SharePoint site and set to use browser rendering. Key properties from the survey were promoted into columns within SharePoint that could be analyzed by workflow or exposed using views. The entire time from the initial design of the form to deployment in a production environment was about 8 hours.

The point of this case study is to help us consider how to tackle the business challenges we face in SharePoint. We must consider all of the tools available to us and match that with the goals of our client. We must also measure the requirements against the business problem we are attempting to solve. Our client was happy with the appearance of the jQuery solution, but the performance was not what they expected and the ability to change the presentation was not as easy as they desired. Conversely, InfoPath exceeded our expectations to solve the business problem. The rules and validation logic dialogs accelerated the development of the required business logic and the site owner had a much easier way to modify the verbiage of the survey as needed.

We demonstrated in this exercise that meeting the business requirement with out of the box tools requires much less effort and a can provide a more maintainable solution for site owners. As an added bonus, this form can be replicated to other sites quickly by simply changing the publishing location or saving the form library as a list template. Having a reusable solution like this increases the value to the client because it reduces the overhead of recreating the tool if it is ever needed again. Also, by using out of the box capabilities we have reduced the risks involved with migration to SharePoint 2010.

Suddenly, queries that were working would no longer work and users were getting error messages. Once the investigation was underway, we discovered the following error in the XML parsing using Firebug:

I began working with Marc Anderson and the supporters of the SPServices library to troubleshoot the error. After some great suggestions, I opened up the U2U CAML builder and executed my query again. I received the tell-tale error message that proved this error was occurring on the server:

Example XML Parsing Error using U2U CAML Builder

It appears this causes a server side parsing error that cannot be mitigated since the MetaInfo field is automatically included with all web-service results from the GetListItems method of the Lists web service. The resolution was to change the Title field and remove the offending character.