SharePoint Development & Administration + InfoPath

Low-code vs pro-code in Microsoft 365: why the conversation has changed

2026-03-20T03:07:15.840+11:00

For a long time, Microsoft's pitch was straightforward: not every business problem needed traditional software development. With Power Apps and Power Automate, teams could build forms, workflows and internal tools faster, with less reliance on professional developers and more control in the hands of business users.

That shift made sense. SharePoint Online had moved away from many of the old customisation models that once gave developers broad freedom, and organisations still needed ways to extend Microsoft 365. Power Platform stepped into that gap and became the default answer for a huge range of "build it quickly" scenarios.

But in 2026, the old trade-off looks different.

AI coding agents are reducing the cost and friction of pro-code development. At the same time, many organisations are discovering that low-code does not remove complexity - it relocates it. Governance, environments, licensing, maintainability and long-term solution design still matter. So the real question is no longer whether low-code can replace coding. It is where you want your complexity to live.

Why Power Platform took off

Power Platform rose because it solved a real problem: demand for internal apps and automations was outpacing the supply of engineering time.

For business teams, the appeal was obvious:

build forms and approval flows quickly
connect Microsoft 365 services without heavy custom development
let power users solve local problems directly
reduce pressure on IT backlogs

In the cloud-first SharePoint era, this became even more important. As older customisation approaches became less viable or were gradually retired, Power Apps and Power Automate gave organisations a supported path forward inside Microsoft's ecosystem.

For many use cases, that worked well.

Where the low-code promise gets harder

The challenge is that "easy to start" is not the same as "easy to run well at scale".

As low-code solutions become business-critical, organisations start running into familiar engineering issues in a different form:

environment management
deployment and ALM overhead
hidden dependencies between flows, apps and connectors
governance and ownership problems
licensing surprises
difficulty reviewing and maintaining browser-built solutions cleanly over time

So while low-code reduced the need to write code, it did not eliminate architecture or operational discipline. It simply wrapped them in platform rules and admin controls.

What AI changes for pro-code

This is where AI coding tools shift the picture.

One of the biggest reasons organisations favoured low-code was that building custom solutions the traditional way felt too slow or expensive for many small and mid-sized needs. But that assumption is weakening fast.

With modern coding agents, developers can now scaffold a SharePoint Framework web part, build UI components, wire up APIs, generate tests, and prepare clean, reviewable code much faster than before. The coding itself is becoming less of the bottleneck.

That does not mean architecture, review, security and business understanding stop mattering. They still do. But the effort required to get a solid custom solution off the ground is dropping.

Why this matters in SharePoint and Microsoft 365

For Microsoft 365 teams, this reopens an important option.

Instead of defaulting to Power Platform for every app-like requirement, teams can now more seriously consider whether an SPFx solution or other pro-code approach might be better for:

richer user experiences
cleaner source control and testing
stronger reuse and maintainability
more predictable lifecycle management
better alignment with standard engineering practices

In other words, pro-code is becoming more accessible again - not because the platform changed, but because the economics of development changed.

So is low-code still useful?

Absolutely.

Power Platform still makes strong sense for lightweight forms, approvals, orchestration, quick internal tools and scenarios where speed and platform integration matter more than deep custom engineering.

But it is no longer as convincing to frame low-code as the obvious replacement for code.

AI is strengthening both sides: Microsoft is adding more AI assistance into Power Platform, while coding agents are making traditional development faster and easier. That means the decision is less about ideology and more about fit.

The real decision now

The debate today is not "low-code or pro-code?" in the abstract.

It is:

Do you want your long-term complexity to sit inside a managed low-code platform, or inside versioned, testable, reviewable code?

For some teams, Power Platform will still be the right answer. For others, especially where the solution needs durability, flexibility and cleaner engineering lifecycle management, pro-code deserves a fresh look.

AI has not killed low-code.

It has just made custom development competitive again.

Read the full article here: Low-code versus pro-code in Microsoft 365: how Power Platform rose, and how AI coding agents are reshaping the trade-offs

Low-code versus pro-code in Microsoft 365: how Power Platform rose, and how AI coding agents are reshaping the trade-offs

2026-03-20T02:18:00.002+11:00

The low-code wave and the "citizen developer" promise

Low-code/no-code platforms rose on a simple thesis: the demand for business software (forms, workflows, lightweight apps, departmental tools) outstripped the supply of professional engineering time, so organisations needed a way to deliver "good enough" solutions faster, with guardrails, and with more direct involvement from business users.
This wasn't only a Microsoft story. Industry research and commentary in the late 2010s framed low-code as a major shift in how enterprises build software, often citing predictions that low-code would become a large share of application development activity. In parallel, analysts consistently described low-code as a speed lever that can "empower citizen developers", while also warning that hype and mismatched expectations can cause disappointment if governance, suitability, and long-term costs are ignored.
Within Microsoft 365, the "citizen developer" narrative became central to how Microsoft positioned its Power Platform era: visual tooling, templates, connectors, and shared services were meant to enable non-developers ("makers") to build and automate, while allowing pro developers and IT to supervise, extend, and govern. Microsoft's own definition of low-code emphasises visual tools and "less coding than traditional code-first development", explicitly claiming that people beyond professional developers can build apps. Microsoft also explicitly links low-code platforms to citizen developers, presenting low-code as suitable because it "doesn't require deep coding experience."
The key point is that "replacement for coding" was never purely about removing code. It was about shifting where complexity sits: away from bespoke codebases and towards platform-managed components (identity, data connectors, hosting, runtime, governance), so teams could focus on business logic and user experience rather than infrastructure and plumbing. That promise is visible in how Microsoft describes Power Platform capabilities in enterprise terms: large connector ecosystems, governance/compliance framing, and speed of solution delivery.

Why SharePoint Online discouraged server-side custom code

To understand why Power Apps and Power Automate were pushed as "the new way", you have to look at the constraints and transitions in SharePoint extensibility-especially as organisations moved from on-premises SharePoint to multi-tenant SharePoint Online.

From "farm solutions" to sandboxing to modern client-side extensibility

Historically, SharePoint on-premises supported farm solutions: trusted extensions running on SharePoint servers with "full trust" and server object model access. But these were inherently high-privilege, operationally risky, and required farm-level deployment and administration-which clashes with the security and operational model of a shared cloud service.
Microsoft's documentation and guidance describe sandbox solutions as a more restricted model: site collection admins could install them without tenant admin involvement, but the model limited what could be deployed and what code could execute because it had to protect the service and other tenants. Sandbox execution was separated and resource-governed; SharePoint monitored "user code" and could disable solutions exceeding resource limits, reflecting the platform's bias toward stability over unlimited customisation.
Over time, Microsoft moved further away from server-side code in SharePoint Online. A pivotal change was the removal of code-based sandbox solutions in SharePoint Online; Microsoft announced that activating new code-based sandbox solutions and updating existing ones would no longer be available, with code execution subsequently disabled. Microsoft's SharePoint development guidance also states that code-based sandbox solutions were deprecated in 2014 and "completely removed" in SharePoint Online, and warns that they can become a roadblock when migrating to SharePoint Online.
This is one of the underappreciated drivers behind the "low-code era" inside Microsoft 365: as server-side customisation paths closed in the cloud, Microsoft needed alternative ways for customers to build business applications and automate processes without deploying managed code into the SharePoint Online service.

Script lockdown and the "no-script" default

Another major pressure point was ad-hoc client-side scripting. SharePoint's Script Editor/Content Editor web parts historically enabled teams to drop JavaScript into pages. Microsoft's development guidance notes that this pattern created "security challenges" because scripts could be deployed without coordination, and therefore SharePoint Online (modern and classic) defaults to blocking scripts via the "no-script" setting.
The current SharePoint admin guidance illustrates that this is not merely historical: tenant admins can explicitly allow or block custom scripts, reinforcing that script execution is treated as a security decision rather than a default capability. The combined effect was a narrowing of the "quick hacks" that departments used to build lightweight solutions inside SharePoint, pushing teams to more governed models.

Workflow retirements and toolchain churn

SharePoint's older workflow engines became another driver:
SharePoint 2010 workflows were retired in SharePoint Online in 2020 (turned off for new tenants and removed from existing tenants later the same year), and Microsoft recommended migrating to Power Automate (or other supported solutions).
SharePoint 2013 workflows followed a similar path: Microsoft states they were turned off for new tenants as of April 2, 2024 and will be removed from existing tenants and fully retired on April 2, 2026-again recommending migration to Power Automate or other supported orchestration solutions.
Separately, the tool many organisations used to build and manage those workflows-SharePoint Designer 2013-has an extended end date of July 14, 2026 under Microsoft's lifecycle documentation.

Add-ins retirement: another decisive breakpoint

SharePoint's Add-In model (SharePoint-hosted and provider-hosted add-ins) was a key extensibility approach during the SharePoint 2013 / early SharePoint Online era, but Microsoft has formally announced its retirement in Microsoft 365. The retirement announcement states that SharePoint Add-Ins stop working for all tenants as of April 2, 2026, and explicitly positions SharePoint Framework (SPFx) as the "primary replacement technology."
Taken together-sandbox deprecation, script lockdown, workflow retirements, Add-In retirement-the cloud version of SharePoint steadily removed or constrained many historical extension techniques, while simultaneously encouraging modern, controlled models (SPFx) and externalised automation/app layers (Power Platform).

How Power Apps and Power Automate were positioned as the new extension layer

A product story that explicitly de-emphasised coding

Microsoft introduced Microsoft Flow (later Power Automate) and PowerApps (later Power Apps) in public preview in 2016 as SaaS offerings aimed at business users: Flow for workflow automation across apps and services, and PowerApps for quickly building business apps. By October 2016, Microsoft announced general availability and framed the value proposition in "no coding" terms: PowerApps lets customers "rapidly build web and mobile business applications without coding", and Flow lets customers "automate business processes through simple configuration".
This messaging matters because it wasn't subtle. It told customers that many scenarios which once required developer time (forms, simple apps, notifications, approvals, integrations) could be handled through configuration and visual design-aligned with the broader low-code trend.
Flow's renaming to Power Automate (announced at Ignite 2019) reinforced the framing: not merely "flow charts" but end-to-end automation, including RPA.

Tight integration with SharePoint lists and pages

Power Platform's strategy was tightly coupled to SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 surface area:
SharePoint "welcomed" PowerApps and Flow, emphasising that people can automate workflows and build custom apps suited to their needs, including creating and launching flows directly from SharePoint lists.
Power Automate documentation highlights deep integration with SharePoint and points to templates and common SharePoint workflow scenarios.
SharePoint and Lists documentation explains how to create flows directly from lists and libraries, reinforcing the in-context automation experience.
For apps and forms, Microsoft provides explicit guidance for customising SharePoint list forms with Power Apps and for creating full apps based on SharePoint lists.
The Power Apps web part allows makers to embed a Power Apps application directly into a SharePoint page by entering the app's web link or ID, again emphasising "no coding experience required".

Governance and environments as the "enterprise answer" to shadow IT

Citizen development at scale creates risk: uncontrolled sharing, data exposure, inconsistent quality, and duplicated solutions. Academic research on citizen development warns explicitly about shadow IT, security issues, and technical debt when novice development proliferates without appropriate governance.
Microsoft's Power Platform adoption guidance reflects the reality that governance is required, not optional. The Power Platform Centre of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit is positioned as a set of components and tools to help organisations "drive innovation" and "establish governance" while accelerating adoption. The governance components explicitly automate auditing/compliance scenarios, such as requiring justification for heavily shared apps.
Even early PowerApps-era platform concepts such as environments were framed as a way to separate apps by role, security requirements, and audience-essentially providing a structural unit for governance and lifecycle management.

The "business case" framing: speed, labour constraints, and measured ROI

Low-code platforms were often justified through ROI narratives: faster delivery, reduced dependence on scarce professional developers, and greater automation coverage.
A widely cited example is a commissioned Total Economic Impact study on Microsoft Power Platform, which interviewed organisations using Power Platform at scale and produced a composite model. The executive summary reports ROI figures and describes reduced development time and the ability to build apps and workflow automations more efficiently. While commissioned studies are not independent competitive analyses, they reflect how Power Platform was sold internally: business + IT collaboration, citizen development, and time savings.
In short, Power Apps and Power Automate were pushed as a practical replacement for a class of coding-heavy SharePoint customisations at exactly the time when SharePoint Online was constraining or retiring many traditional extension mechanisms.

The hidden costs: governance, ALM friction, licensing, and platform constraints

As Power Platform moved from departmental experimentation to enterprise-critical workloads, the hard problems shifted from "can we build it?" to "can we operate it, govern it, and evolve it cleanly?"

Citizen development creates real governance and quality risks

Research on governing citizen development identifies recurring risk categories: shadow IT behaviours, substandard quality, lack of transparency, and accumulating technical debt-especially when business-led development proceeds without consistent architecture, testing, and lifecycle controls. Other work emphasises that LCNC governance requires balancing flexibility (so makers can move quickly) and standardisation (so the organisation can maintain, secure, and evolve what gets built).
Microsoft's own response is visible in the emphasis placed on governance toolkits and reference implementations (such as the CoE Starter Kit), implying that unmanaged citizen development is a known failure mode and that "platform adoption" is inseparable from governance maturity.

ALM exists, but it is opinionated and often Dataverse-centric

Power Platform has steadily improved its ALM story-solutions, pipelines, DevOps integration-but these mechanisms come with constraints that can feel "closed ecosystem" to engineering teams used to code-first workflows.
Microsoft's ALM overview explicitly states that to use many Power Platform ALM features and tools, all environments that participate in ALM must include a Dataverse database.
Solutions are positioned as the mechanism for ALM in Power Apps and Power Automate, with concepts like managed vs unmanaged solutions and dependency tracking.
Pipelines in Power Platform are framed as a way to "democratize" CI/CD and ALM automation for makers, admins, and developers by bringing deployment automation into the service.
This is real progress-but it still differs materially from code-first engineering norms. Even Microsoft's DevOps tooling documentation includes explicit prerequisites and platform assumptions; for example, Power Platform Build Tools for Azure DevOps are supported only for Dataverse environments with a database.
So while "ALM is available", it is not simply "use Git and go"; it is "use Git through solutions metadata, Dataverse environments, and platform tooling." For some organisations this is acceptable; for others it is a new kind of lock-in and operational complexity.

Licensing complexity becomes part of the architecture decision

Power Platform's value is partly its connector ecosystem-yet connectors are exactly where licensing and cost surprises often emerge.
A standalone Power Apps or Power Automate plan is required to access Premium, on-premises, and custom connectors.
Microsoft maintains a broad catalogue of Premium connectors, which can significantly influence solution cost.
Power Automate licensing spans user-based and capacity-based options; "per flow" licensing is tied to top-level flows and minimum purchase quantities, and trigger patterns can affect licensing obligations.
This matters for the "replacement for coding" narrative: low-code platforms reduce engineering effort but can increase recurring platform costs and introduce licensing-driven architecture, which is rarely a concern when building custom web apps or SPFx components atop existing Microsoft 365 licences and standard APIs.

The browser-builder experience can be fast, but not always "clean"

Power Platform makers often build in web designers: Flow designer, Power Apps Studio in the browser, and solution management in the platform UI. Microsoft continues to position this as faster and more accessible than traditional development.
But the long-term maintainability question is never only "how quickly can we build version 1?" It is also:
Can we review changes as diffs?
Can we confidently refactor without breaking hidden dependencies?
Can we enforce consistent patterns across dozens or hundreds of flows and apps?
Can we test automatically and gate releases?
These are precisely the areas where both research and practice report that citizen development needs strong governance and where platforms can accumulate hidden complexity unless ALM discipline and guardrails are enforced.

AI coding agents change the "coding is the hard part" assumption

The core argument hinges on a real shift: if AI coding agents make "coding the easy part", the balance of costs between low-code and pro-code changes.

What "coding agents" actually do now

Modern AI coding tools aren't just autocomplete. They increasingly behave like agents that can take tasks, execute changes, and propose results for review.
For example, OpenAI describes Codex as a cloud-based software engineering agent that can work on tasks in parallel, including writing features, fixing bugs, and proposing pull requests-each task running in its own sandbox environment with your repository preloaded. GitHub describes GitHub Copilot as an AI coding assistant to help developers write code faster with less effort, and its Copilot coding agent as an autonomous mode operating in a GitHub Actions-powered environment that completes tasks assigned via issues or prompts, and creates pull requests.
This agentic framing matters because it maps closely to what teams already do in software engineering: create a ticket, implement, open a PR, review, merge, release. If an agent can handle much of the implementation step, pro-code becomes less about typing and more about steering, reviewing, and maintaining architecture.
OpenAI's own engineering narrative reinforces this: it uses Codex agents to generate not only product code, but also tests, CI configuration, documentation, and repo management scripts-the scaffolding that makes codebases maintainable.

Evidence: productivity gains are real, but uneven

Empirical results on AI coding productivity vary sharply by task type, developer experience, and measurement approach.
Some controlled experiments report that developers with access to tools like GitHub Copilot complete certain coding tasks substantially faster. Newer research on experienced open-source developers working on their own repositories has also highlighted mixed effects, including cases where developers using AI tools took longer overall despite believing the tools helped.
The implication is not "AI makes all coding trivial." It is more nuanced: AI can dramatically reduce the cost of boilerplate, initial scaffolding, and routine refactoring, but can also introduce coordination overhead, misplaced confidence, and review burden-especially for complex systems where hidden constraints matter.

The shift that matters for SharePoint solutions

Even with mixed productivity results, AI changes the economics of small-to-medium bespoke solutions-exactly the class of work low-code targeted.
If you can ask an agent to:
scaffold a SharePoint Framework web part,
wire up Microsoft Graph or REST calls,
generate unit tests and lint configs,
propose a pull request that passes CI,
then the barrier to a clean, versioned, testable custom solution drops.
At the same time, Microsoft has also injected AI into the low-code experience: Copilot in Power Apps aims to let makers quickly build apps using natural language and generate an app and data model without coding; Copilot in Power Automate can create automations through natural language conversation.
So AI doesn't exclusively advantage pro-code; it compresses effort in both worlds. The question becomes: where do you want the long-term complexity to live-inside a proprietary solution/connector/runtime model, or inside code you can version, test, and evolve with mainstream software engineering practices?

Re-evaluating Power Platform versus SPFx in an AI-assisted world

SPFx matured into the default "modern SharePoint customisation" model

Microsoft's SPFx documentation describes SharePoint Framework as a page and web part model providing "full support for client-side SharePoint development", integration with SharePoint data, and the ability to extend Teams and Viva using modern web technologies in your preferred development environment.
SPFx's roadmap page states that the first release of SPFx (February 2017) initially supported client-side web parts, and frames SPFx as the modern customisation journey within Microsoft 365.
Crucially, Microsoft's Add-In retirement announcement makes SPFx's role explicit: Add-Ins stop working for all tenants on April 2, 2026, and Microsoft recommends migrating custom-developed Add-Ins to SPFx-based solutions.
Microsoft's development models guidance also frames SPFx as a governed alternative to ad-hoc script injection: scripts in Script Editor web parts have poor maintenance and governance characteristics, and Microsoft introduces SPFx as a model that works in the modern UI and supports the no-script flag with centralised governance and control.

Why AI tilts some organisations back toward "build it in code"

Against that backdrop, it becomes more plausible to claim that custom apps and web parts can now be built and managed cleanly using SPFx, in less time than it would take to make a functionally equivalent app or workflow purely through browser-based builders.
Key reasons include:
Source control and code review are first-class. Agentic tools such as Codex and Copilot coding agent align naturally with pull request-centric workflows and can generate changes as reviewable diffs.
Maintainability artefacts are easier to generate. AI tools can generate tests, CI/CD configuration, documentation, and scripts, not just feature code, which lifts the maintainability baseline for pro-code solutions.
Platform licensing can dominate operational cost. Premium connector requirements and per-flow licensing models can make "cheap to build" become "expensive to run", which shifts the calculus towards code that uses existing Microsoft 365 primitives and standard APIs.
However, SPFx is still primarily a UX and client-side extensibility model. If your solution needs a durable data layer, complex business processes, tightly integrated identity-bound actions across multiple systems, or fast iteration by non-developer business teams, Power Platform's managed services and connectors can still be the right constraint.

Power Platform isn't "no code"; it increasingly expects hybrid teams

Another nuance is that Microsoft has already evolved Power Platform toward a hybrid "low-code plus pro-code" model:
Power Apps has a real programming language at its core: Power Fx, a general-purpose, strongly typed, declarative low-code language used across Power Platform.
Microsoft has open-sourced Power Fx and positions it as enabling the spectrum from "no code" to "pro code" without cliffs.
Power Apps offers pro-dev extensibility via the Power Apps component framework (PCF), where professional developers create and package code components (using Power Platform CLI) for use in canvas apps.
In an AI-assisted era, this means Power Platform may also become more code-friendly: pro developers can generate PCF components quickly, and makers can assemble them, blurring the boundary between SPFx "full control" and Power Apps "visual builder".

A practical synthesis: where the new boundary lines tend to land

A defensible way to restate the modern trade-off is:
Power Platform is strongest when the value is in rapid assembly of business capabilities and when you want Microsoft to own the runtime, connectors, identity integration, and a large part of governance mechanics. That is the core promise Microsoft continues to sell: low-code solution development, automated business processes, integrated governance, and broad connectors.
SPFx (and pro-code generally) is strongest when the value is in control, portability of engineering practices, and frictionless lifecycle management via mainstream tools-especially now that agentic coding tools can shrink the "time-to-first-solution" and handle boilerplate that used to make bespoke development feel "not worth it" for smaller internal needs.
In practice (and increasingly in Microsoft's own guidance), many organisations land on a hybrid pattern:
Use Power Automate for orchestration where it is deeply integrated with SharePoint and provides fast wins and templates.
Use Power Apps for SharePoint list forms and lightweight apps embedded directly in SharePoint pages.
Use SPFx for richer SharePoint-native UX, reusable components, or scenarios affected by Add-In retirement timelines-because SPFx is explicitly positioned as the modern replacement model.
Apply AI in both worlds: Copilot in Power Apps/Power Automate for maker acceleration, and coding agents for SPFx scaffolding, testing, and PR workflows.
The deeper shift since roughly 2023-2026 is not that low-code is obsolete or that coding is trivial. It is that the marginal cost of high-quality custom code has dropped enough that the old default-"use Power Platform because custom development is too slow to justify"-needs re-evaluation, particularly for SharePoint-centric experiences where SPFx is now the durable extensibility model and where older SharePoint extension models are reaching hard retirement cutoffs.

Web Service Response Cache using VB Script (VBS) and SharePoint

2012-07-07T11:22:00.000+10:00

I recently wanted to display data from a Web Service on a page in SharePoint using XSL. The Web Service was external to SharePoint, which resulted in the Data View web Part being unable to obtain a valid result required to allow the XSL template to be built using features of SharePoint Designer. A separate issue was that the method used to query the web service hosted on my external server consumed resources on the external application and took around 5 seconds to receive a response from the query. Using a Data View web part connected directly to the Web Service to display the result would require that the data is obtained every time the page loads, impacting on server performance.

A solution was to create a process outside of SharePoint that consumes the web Service and saves the output to an XML file on the SharePoint Site. This file was then included as an XML Data Source in the Data View Web Part, allowing the XSL template to be built and the results to remain dynamic. The script runs periodically to consume the web Service and update the XML file on the SharePoint Site with the new data.

The Process Broken Down:

Consume the Web Service:
The fist component of the VB Script connects to the Web Service using SOAP and obtains the result (as XML). A script written by Ken Hughes was used to consume the Web Service.

Some minor modifications were made to the script to configure it for my scenario, such as updating the URL to the Web Service and the query XML to be sent as part of the request.

Save the Result to an XML File:
I included an additional function to save the output to an XML file (below). This function is called from the script after obtaining a result from the Web Service in the result is valid. The result is saved locally to an XML file, which can then be uploaded to SharePoint for use as an XML data source.

    Function saveXML(byval fileName, byval XMLOutput)
        'create the File System Object
        Set myFSObject = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

        'Open the text File for Writing (existing text is overritten if the file exists)
        Set txtFile = myFSObject.OpenTextFile(fileName, 2, True)

        'Write the output to the file
        txtFile.WriteLine(XMLOutput)

        'Close the file
        txtFile.Close

        'Release the File System Object from memory
        SET myFSObject = NOTHING
    End Function

Publish the XML file to a SharePoint site using Frontpage RPC:
The next part of the script then publishes the file to the SharePoint site using FrontPage RPC. Publishing using this method allows an account to be specified in the script to access the SharePoint Site and also allows the file to be added to SharePoint without relying on using the UNC path to the site/library in SharePoint which is not always available from a server.

The following response to a thread on Stack Overflow (posted by user457338) includes VB Script functions that allows a file to be published to a SharePoint site using the Frontpage RPC service.

This allowed the result from the web Service (which had been saved to an XML file), to be uploaded/published to the SharePoint Site, overwriting the existing file it is has been published previously. Each the script is run, the results are updated and re-published to SharePoint allowing the data displayed by the Data View web Part to remain dynamic. The script is set to run on the server periodically as a scheduled task allowing the data displayed in SharePoint to be updated dynamically each time the script runs.

References:
VBScript Web Services / SOAP
A reference sheet with various tutorials, examples, threads and other resources relating to consuming a SOAP web service using VBScript (VBS).

Extend SharePoint 2010 User Interface for Lists - Ribbon, Menus & Toolbars

2011-11-13T18:26:00.000+11:00

In my previous post, I demonstrated how to customise the User Interface for Libraries in SharePoint 2010 by adding links / custom actions in existing Menus, the Ribbon and Document Library Settings pages.
This post follows on by demonstrating how to customise the interface for different types of lists built into SharePoint 2010 by adding new custom actions to the menus and existing groups in the Ribbon.

Contents:

1. Extending the User Interface for Items

1.1 Add a custom link to the List Item Menu (ECB / LIM) for an Announcements list
1.2 Add a Custom Action to the “Manage” group in the Events tab of a Calendar / Events List

2. Customise the “New” menu and “New” Group on Ribbon for a Task List in SharePoint 2010

2.1 Add a Link to the New menu for a Task List
2.2 Add a Custom Control to the existing New Group in the Items tab on the Ribbon for a Task List

3. Add a link to the Custom Actions Group for a Links List in SharePoint 2010

3.1 Add a Custom Action to the Actions Menu and “Custom Actions” tab for a Links list in SharePoint 2010
3.2 Add A Custom Link to the existing “Share & Track” group on the List tab of the Ribbon for a Links List
3.3 Add A Custom Link to the Manage Views Group on the List tab of the Ribbon

4. Add a link to the Settings Groups for a Calendar / Events List in SharePoint 2010

4.1 Add a custom link to the Settings menu for a Calendar list in SharePoint 2010
4.2 Add a Custom Action to the Settings Group on the Ribbon for a Calendar in SharePoint 2010
4.3 Add a Custom Button / Link to the “Customize List” group in the Calendar tab on the Ribbon

5. Add custom links to the Settings page for a Discussion Board in SharePoint 2010

5.1 Add a custom link to an existing group/heading on the Settings page for a Discussion Board in SharePoint 2010

RegistrationId’s for built-in List types in SharePoint 2010
Below is a list of the Registration ID’s for some of the common built-in List types used in SharePoint. The List Registration IDs can be used when creating custom actions to target a specific list type such as an Announcements, Links or Task list.

RegistrationId	List Template / Description
100	Generic List, Custom List
103	Links List
104	Announcements List
105	Contacts List
106	Calendar / Events List
107	Task List
108	Discussion Board
112	User Information List (List of Users on each site)
120	Custom List
600	External List
1100	Issue Tracking List

A reference to a comprehensive list of Registration IDs for List Templates in SharePoint is provided later in the post, which includes code to retrieve a list of Registration IDs for each list templates included in the SPListTemplateType enumeration.

The examples in this tutorial will use a range of Registration IDs from the table above to add Custom Actions to the Ribbon and List Menus for different types of lists in SharePoint 2010.

1. Extending the User Interface for Items
There are a number of components of the User Interface in SharePoint 2010 that contain actions that can be performed on items in a list as opposed to the List itself. These actions are accessible from the “Items” tab on the Ribbon and the dropdown menu for items known as the Edit Control Block (ECB), or List Item Menu (LIM) in SharePoint 2010. Many actions available on the Items tab for list items are only enabled when there are items selected from the list below. Similar functionality can also be achieved when adding custom actions to the Ribbon for list items to test if there are items selected. The examples below require that one or more items in selected for the control to be enabled.

1.1 Add a custom link to the List Item Menu (ECB / LIM) for an Announcements list
The following CustomAction is added to the Edit Control Block (List Item Dropdown Menu) for Announcement items in Announcement Lists.

<!-- EditControlBlock Item Dropdown (Announcements List) : Example 1.1 -->    

  <CustomAction 

   Id="Announcements.EditControlBlock.CustomLink"

    RegistrationType="List"

    RegistrationId="104"

    Location="EditControlBlock"

    Sequence="1101"

    Title="EditControlBlock : Custom Link"

    Description="Custom link on item dropdown menu (LIM / ECB) for an Announcement">

      <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/> 

   </CustomAction>

List Type / Template: Announcements List
CustomAction Registration ID: 104
CustomAction Location: EditControlBlock

1.2 Add a Custom Action to the “Manage” group in the Events tab of a Calendar / Events List
This Action is added to the Manage Group in the Events tab on the Ribbon, and is available from a standard view (not included on the Ribbon when the Ribbon when the calendar view is displayed). When the calendar view is displayed, the Manage group on the events tab has a different location (Ribbon.Calendar.Events.Manage).

  <!-- Ribbon - Manage Group (Events List / Calendar) : Example 1.2 -->

    <CustomAction

     Id="Ribbon.ListItem.Manage.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"

    RegistrationId="106"

    RegistrationType="List" 

   Title="Add to Existing Group">

      <CommandUIExtension>

        <CommandUIDefinitions> 

         <CommandUIDefinition 

           Location="Ribbon.ListItem.Manage.Controls._children">

            <Button

              Id="Ribbon.ListItem.Manage.Controls.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95"

              Command="ListItem.Manage.OpenCustomLink"

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"

              LabelText="Manage Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Manage Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a custom link from a button in the Manage Group for an Events List if one event is selected."

              TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition> 

       </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers>

          <CommandUIHandler 

           Command="ListItem.Manage.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            EnabledScript="javascript:

           function hasSelectedEvents(){

           var selectedEvents = SP.ListOperation.Selection.getSelectedItems();

           var selectedEventCount = CountDictionary(selectedEvents);

                      //Enable the button if one event item is selected.

           if(selectedEventCount == 1)

             return true;

           else

             return false;

           };

           // Check if Event Items are selected on the page

           hasSelectedEvents();

           "/>

        </CommandUIHandlers> 

     </CommandUIExtension> 

   </CustomAction>

List Type / Template: Events List
CustomAction Registration ID: 106
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.ListItem.Manage.Controls._children

2. Customise the “New” menu and “New” Group on Ribbon for a Task List in SharePoint 2010
In this section as well as the ones to follow, I demonstrate how to add Custom Actions to existing groups and menus in the SharePoint 2010 User Interface for lists.

In SharePoint 2007 (MOSS), the list toolbar containing the New, Actions and Settings menus is displayed by default when viewing a list on a page. In SharePoint 2010 the functionality from these menus is available from the Custom Commands tab on the Server Ribbon as well as the toolbar menus, but the toolbar is not displayed for lists by default.

2.1 Add a Link to the New menu for a Task List
This custom action is added to the New menu on the toolbar if the toolbar is visible on the list view of a Task List. If the toolbar is not visible (default), the action is included in a “Custom Commands” tab and group on the Ribbon. When the toolbar is enabled that contains the New menu and custom action, the Custom Commands tab on the Ribbon is not displayed.

  <!-- New Menu (Task List) : Example 2.1 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu.TaskList.NewMenu.CustomLink"

      RegistrationType="List"

      RegistrationId="107"

      GroupId="NewMenu"

      Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"

      Sequence="1101"

      Description="Custom Action in New Menu for Task Lists"

      Title="New Menu : Custom Link">

      <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/>

    </CustomAction>

[New menu action in Custom Commands group when list toolbar is not enabled]

[New menu custom action when toolbar is visible]

List Type / Template: Task List
CustomAction Registration ID: 107
CustomAction Location: Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu
CustomAction Group ID: NewMenu

2.2 Add a Custom Control to the existing New Group in the Items tab on the Ribbon for a Task List
This custom control is included in the New Group on the Server Ribbon in the Items tab for Task Lists.

  <!-- Ribbon - New Group (Task List) : Example 2.2 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.ListItem.New.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"

    RegistrationId="107"

    RegistrationType="List"

    Title="Add to Existing New Group on the Ribbon">

      <CommandUIExtension> 

       <CommandUIDefinitions> 

         <CommandUIDefinition 

           Location="Ribbon.ListItem.New.Controls._children"> 

           <Button 

             Id="Ribbon.ListItem.New.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95" 

             Command="ListItem.New.OpenCustomLink"

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png" 

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"

              LabelText="New Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in New Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a link from a control added to the New group on the Ribbon (Items tab) for a Task list" 

             TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition>

        </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers>

          <CommandUIHandler

            Command="ListItem.New.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            />

        </CommandUIHandlers>

      </CommandUIExtension> 

   </CustomAction>

List Type / Template: Task List
CustomAction Registration ID: 107
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.ListItem.New.Controls._children

3. Add a link to the Custom Actions Group for a Links List in SharePoint 2010

3.1 Add a Custom Action to the Actions Menu and “Custom Actions” tab for a Links list in SharePoint 2010
When creating a Custom Action to be included in the Actions menu of a links list, this will also add a control to the Ribbon in a “Custom Commands” group on the Ribbon if the toolbar is not visible. The same Location and Group ID in MOSS 2007 and (SharePoint 2010) are used to include the custom action in the Actions menu as well.

  <!-- Actions Menu (Links List) : Example 3.1 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu.LinksList.ActionsMenu.CustomLink" 

     RegistrationType="List"

      RegistrationId="103"

      GroupId="ActionsMenu"

      Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"

      Sequence="1101"

      Title="Actions Menu : Custom Link" 

     Description="Adds a custom control to a Custom Actions group on the Ribbon and the Actions menu for Links Lists">

      <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/>

    </CustomAction>

[Actions Menu of Links List when the list toolbar is visible]

[Custom commands group displaying "Actions" menu item when toolbar not enabled]

List Type / Template: Links List
CustomAction Registration ID: 103
CustomAction Location: Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu
CustomAction Group ID: ActionsMenu

3.2 Add A Custom Link to the existing “Share & Track” group on the List tab of the Ribbon for a Links List
This will add a new control to the Share & Track group on the List tab of the Ribbon for Links lists.

  <!-- Ribbon - Share & Track Group (Links List) : Example 3.2 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.List.Share.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon" 

   RegistrationId="103" 

   RegistrationType="List" 

   Title="Add to Existing Group"> 

     <CommandUIExtension> 

       <CommandUIDefinitions> 

         <CommandUIDefinition

            Location="Ribbon.List.Share.Controls._children">

            <Button

              Id="Ribbon.List.Share.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95" 

             Command="List.Share.OpenCustomLink"

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"

              LabelText="Share &amp; Track Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Share &amp; Track Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a link via a button in the Share &amp; Track group (List tab) for Links lists"

              TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition> 

       </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers> 

         <CommandUIHandler

            Command="List.Share.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            />

        </CommandUIHandlers> 

     </CommandUIExtension> 

   </CustomAction>

List Type / Template: Links List
CustomAction Registration ID: 103
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.List.Share.Controls._children

3.3 Add A Custom Link to the Manage Views Group on the List tab of the Ribbon
This will add a new Custom Action control to the Manage Views group on the List tab of the Ribbon for Links Lists.

  <!-- Ribbon - Manage Views Group (Links List) : Example 3.3 --> 

   <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.List.CustomViews.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"

    RegistrationId="103"

    RegistrationType="List" 

   Title="Add to Existing Group"> 

     <CommandUIExtension>

        <CommandUIDefinitions>

          <CommandUIDefinition

            Location="Ribbon.List.CustomViews.Controls._children"> 

           <Button

              Id="Ribbon.List.CustomViews.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95" 

             Command="List.CustomViews.OpenCustomLink"

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png" 

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448" 

             LabelText="Manage Views Group : Custom Link" 

             Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Manage Views Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a link from a button in the Manage Views group (List tab) on the Ribbon for Links Lists"

              TemplateAlias="o1" /> 

         </CommandUIDefinition> 

       </CommandUIDefinitions> 

       <CommandUIHandlers>

          <CommandUIHandler

            Command="List.CustomViews.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            />

        </CommandUIHandlers>

      </CommandUIExtension> 

   </CustomAction>

List Type / Template: Links List
CustomAction Registration ID: 103
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.List.CustomViews.Controls._children

4. Add a link to the Settings Groups for a Calendar / Events List in SharePoint 2010

4.1 Add a custom link to the Settings menu for a Calendar list in SharePoint 2010
The following Custom Action is included in the Settings Menu of a calendar list when the toolbar is enabled. If the list toolbar is not visible, the Action is included in a Custom Commands tab and group on the Ribbon.

  <!-- Settings Menu (Events List / Calendar) : Example 4.1 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu.Events.SettingsMenu.CustomLink"

      RegistrationType="List"

      RegistrationId="106" 

     GroupId="SettingsMenu"

      Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"

      Sequence="1101"

      Title="Settings Menu : Custom Link" 

     Description="Custom link in the Settings menu for Events Lists">

      <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/>

    </CustomAction>

[Events List Settings Menu item displayed in Custom Commands group on Ribbon when Toolbar not enabled]

[Events list / Calendar Settings menu item when the list toolbar is visible]

List Type / Template: Events List
CustomAction Registration ID: 106
CustomAction Location: Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu
CustomAction Group ID: SettingsMenu

4.2 Add a Custom Action to the Settings Group on the Ribbon for a Calendar in SharePoint 2010
This Custom Action is included in the Settings group on the List tab for an Events list when viewing a list of the event item in the list. When the Calendar is displayed using the Calendar View, the custom actions are not included in the Settings group. Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.CustomizeList would need to be used for the location to include in the Settings group in Calendar Views.

  <!-- Ribbon - Settings Group (Events List / Calendar) : Example 4.2 --> 

   <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.List.Settings.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon" 

   RegistrationId="106"

    RegistrationType="List"

    Title="Add to Existing Group">

      <CommandUIExtension>

        <CommandUIDefinitions> 

         <CommandUIDefinition 

           Location="Ribbon.List.Settings.Controls._children">

            <Button

              Id="Ribbon.List.Settings.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95" 

              Command="List.Settings.OpenCustomLink"

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88" 

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"

              LabelText="Settings Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Settings Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a link from a button in the Settings Group (Calendar tab) for Events lists."

              TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition> 

       </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers> 

         <CommandUIHandler 

           Command="List.Settings.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            />

        </CommandUIHandlers>

      </CommandUIExtension>

    </CustomAction>

List Type / Template: Events List
CustomAction Registration ID: 106
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.List.Settings.Controls._children

4.3 Add a Custom Button / Link to the “Customize List” group in the Calendar tab on the Ribbon
Ads a new control to the Ribbon for Events list when viewing a list of events. Similar to the examples above, the location for this custom action results in the Customize List group on the List tab being targeted so the control is not included in the Customize List tab on the calendar tab when the Calendar view is displayed. The location would need to be set to Ribbon.Calendar.Calendar.CustomizeList to include in the Customize List group on the Calendar tab.

  <!-- Ribbon - Customize List Group (Events List / Calendar) : Example 4.3 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.List.CustomizeList.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"

    RegistrationId="106"

    RegistrationType="List"

    Title="Add to Existing Group"> 

     <CommandUIExtension> 

       <CommandUIDefinitions>

          <CommandUIDefinition

            Location="Ribbon.List.CustomizeList.Controls._children"> 

           <Button 

             Id="Ribbon.List.CustomizeList.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95"

              Command="List.CustomizeList.OpenCustomLink" 

             Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png" 

             Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88" 

             Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

             Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"

              LabelText="Customize LIst Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Customize List Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a link from a button included in the Customize List group (Calendar tab) on the Ribbon for Events Lists"

              TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition> 

       </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers>

          <CommandUIHandler

            Command="List.CustomizeList.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            />

        </CommandUIHandlers> 

     </CommandUIExtension>

    </CustomAction>

List Type / Template: Events List
CustomAction Registration ID: 106
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.List.CustomizeList.Controls._children

5. Add custom links to the Settings page for a Discussion Board in SharePoint 2010

5.1 Add a custom link to an existing group/heading on the Settings page for a Discussion Board in SharePoint 2010
This custom action will add a new link to the Settings page for Discussion Board lists under the Permissions Heading. “Permissions” is set as the GroupId for the Custom Action to target the Permissions and Management group on the page. Supplying “GeneralSettings” for the Group ID would include the link under the General Settings heading. “Communications” should be used to include a custom action under the Communication heading on the List settings page.

  <!-- Settings Page - Permissions & Management Heading (Discussion Board) : Example 5.1 -->

    <CustomAction 

    Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.ListEdit.Discussions.Permissions.CustomLink" 

    RegistrationType="List"

    RegistrationId="108"

    GroupId="Permissions"

    Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.ListEdit"

    Sequence="1000" 

   Title="List Settings Page - Permissions and Management : Custom Link"

    Description="Adds a new link under the Permissions and Management heading on the Settings Page for a Discussions List / Discussion Board."> 

     <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/>

    </CustomAction>

List Type / Template: Discussion Board / Discussions List
CustomAction Registration ID: 108
CustomAction Location: Microsoft.SharePoint.ListEdit
CustomAction Group ID: Permissions

More information on Customising / Extending the User Interface and Ribbon for Lists:

Add Custom Actions to the Interface for Document Libraries in SharePoint 2010
This is the previous post in this series, which focuses on customising the interface for different types of Document Libraries in SharePoint 2010. A range of examples are included to add links to existing menus and groups on the Ribbon.

Apply Permissions to Custom UI Links / Actions in SharePoint Menus and Settings Pages
This post explains how to integrate permissions into Custom Actions to restrict who has access to specific Custom Actions added to the interface. The Rights attribute of the CustomAction element is used, which contains one or more values from the SPBasePermissions enum.

Tutorial: Add Custom List actions using SharePoint Designer 2010
In SharePoint 2010, the Ribbon and toolbars for Lists can be customised using functionality provided by SharePoint Designer 2010. This tutorial provides information about these feayures, and explains the process of adding custom actions to lists in SharePoint 2010 using SharePoint Designer instead of using a Feature.

Add Custom Links to the SharePoint 2010 UI as a Feature with or without using Visual Studio
This tutorial demonstrates two methods for implementing customisations to the User Interface as a feature by either incorporating into a solution in Visual Studio, or by manually creating the Feature XML and installing using STSADM or PowerShell.

RegistrationId’s for List Types in SharePoint
This is a reference article by Mike Smith that includes a list of Registration Ids for different types of built-in list templates for SharePoint. Code is also included to list the values from the SPListTemplateType enum.

How to: Modify the User Interface Using Custom Actions
This is a “How To” article on MSDN that demonstrates how to use Custom Actions to Modify the User Interface, including customisations to the Ribbon, lists and sites.

SharePoint 2010: Extend the Document Library Menus, Ribbon and Settings Interface

2011-11-07T00:29:00.004+11:00

In this tutorial I demonstrate how to customise the interface for Document Libraries in SharePoint 2010 using Custom Actions. I explain how to target specific types of Libraries built-in to SharePoint, and how to include additional links/actions to menus, the Server Ribbon and settings pages associated with Document Libraries.

This tutorial covers the following:

RegistrationId’s for Document Library types in SharePoint 2010

A list of Registration ID used to target specific types of Document Libraries built-in to SharePoint 2010 when adding new links / controls to the built in Interface.

1. Customise the Interface for the New Menu and Ribbon Group

1.1 Add a link to the New Menu for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010
1.2 Add a control to the “New” Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010

2. Customise the Interface for the Actions Menu and Library Action Groups on the Ribbon

2.1 Add a link to the Actions menu for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010
2.2 Add a Control to the View Format Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library
2.3 Add a Control to the “Connect & Export” group on the Ribbon for a Document Library (Document Library Actions)
2.4 Customise the Share & Track Group

3. Customise the Settings Menu and Library Management / Settings Groups on the Ribbon

3.1 Add a link to the Settings Menu for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010
3.2 Add A Control to the Customise Library Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library
3.3 Add A Control to the Settings Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library

4. Item Level Customisations to the Interface and Ribbon

4.1 Add a link to the Edit Control Block (item drop-down) menu for a Document
4.2 Add a Control to the “Manage” group on the Ribbon for Documents
4.3 Add a Control to the “Share & Track” (Share) Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library
4.4 Add a Control to the “Workflows” Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library

5. Customise the Document Library Settings Page

5.1 Add a link to the Settings Page for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010

RegistrationId’s for Document Library types in SharePoint 2010

Each type of Document Library that ships with SharePoint 2010 has a unique Registration ID that can be used to target a specific type of Library when extending the user interface. The table below provides a list of the Registrations ID’s for common types of Libraries in SharePoint 2010.

RegistrationId	Type / Description
101	Document Library: inc. Shared Documents, Site Assets, Style Library, Templates, Reporting Templates
109	Picture Library
110	Data Source Library
111	Site Template Gallery
113	Web Part Gallery
114	List Template Gallery
115	Form Library
116	Master Page Gallery
117	Workflows (site folder / library where workflows are located)
119	Site Pages, Wiki Library
212	Workspace Pages
851	Images (Publishing Images, Site Collection Images), Asset Library

The Registration ID “101” is used in each example included in this tutorial, which is for a standard Document Library. To include new custom actions / links in the Ribbon or menus for other types of Libraries in SharePoint, you should use the Registration ID from the table above that corresponds to the type of library.

You can find the Registration ID’s of features such as Document Libraries from the “Type” attribute of the ListTemplate element found in the Element Manifest (XML) file for each type in the /TEMPLATES/FEATURES/ directory of the 14 (or 12) hive, or SPListTemplateType enum.

(eg. Type=”101” for the standard Document Library: /14/TEMPLATE/FEATURES/DocumentLibrary/ListTemplates/DocumentLibrary.xml). An example of how to obtain a list of RegistrationIds from the SPListTemplate enumeration is provided later in the part.

1. Customise the Interface for the New Menu and Ribbon Group

1.1 Add a link to the New Menu for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010

The following CustomAction will be added to the New Menu for Document Libraries. As this menu is often not displayed by default for Libraries in SharePoint 2010, you may want to include the Custom Action in the “New” group on the Documents Tab instead which is demonstrated in the example (1.2).

  <!-- New Menu : Example 1.1 -->    
<CustomAction  
  Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu.NewMenu.CustomLink" 
  RegistrationType="List"      
  RegistrationId="101"      
  GroupId="NewMenu"      
  Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"      
  Sequence="1101"      
  Description="Adds a new Custom Action (link) to the New Menu of Document Libraries" 
  Title="New Menu : Custom Link"> 
  <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/> 
 </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101 (Document Library)

CustomAction Location: Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu

CustomAction Group ID: NewMenu

1.2 Add a control to the “New” Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010

This will add a new control to the New group on the Server Ribbon for Document Libraries. as the Ribbon is more accessible in SharePoint 2010 to the New Menu as explained in example 1.1, I would recommend using this method (or both) to include a custom link or action in the New section for Document Libraries.

<!-- Ribbon - New Group : Example 1.2 --> 

<CustomAction 

  Id="Ribbon.Documents.New.Controls.CustomLink" 

  Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"    

  RegistrationId="101"    

  RegistrationType="List"    

  Title="Add to Existing New Group on the Ribbon"> 

  <CommandUIExtension>        

    <CommandUIDefinitions>          

      <CommandUIDefinition 

        Location="Ribbon.Documents.New.Controls._children"> 

        <Button 

             Id="Ribbon.Documents.New.CustomLink" 

             Sequence="95" 

             Command="Documents.New.OpenCustomLink"

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

                  Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

                  Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"

              LabelText="New Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in New Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a Custom Link via a control added to the existing New group on the Ribbon under the Documents tab" 

             TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition>

        </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers>

          <CommandUIHandler 

           Command="Documents.New.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            />

        </CommandUIHandlers>

      </CommandUIExtension>

    </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Documents.New.Controls._children

2. Customise the Interface for the Actions Menu and Library Action Groups on the Ribbon
2.1 Add a link to the Actions menu for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010
The CustomAction below is added to the Actions dropdown menu on the toolbar. Similar to in example 1.1 the Actions menu for Document Libraries is often not displayed by default, so I would recommend adding a control to the relevant group on the Ribbon instead using one of the examples below.

  <!-- Actions Menu : Example 2.1 -->
    <CustomAction Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu.ActionsMenu.CustomLink"
      RegistrationType="List"
      RegistrationId="101"
      GroupId="ActionsMenu" 
     Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
      Sequence="1101" 
     Title="Actions Menu : Custom Link"
      Description="Adds a new Custom Action to the Actions menu for Document Libraries"> 
     <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/> 
   </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu
CustomAction Group ID: ActionsMenu

2.2 Add a Control to the View Format Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library
This will add a new control to the View Format group under the Library tab on the Ribbon when viewing a document library in SharePoint 2010.

  <!-- Ribbon - View Format Group : Example 2.2 --> 
   <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.Library.ViewFormat.Controls.CustomLink" 
   Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"
    RegistrationId="101"
    RegistrationType="List"
    Title="Add to the Existing View Format Group on the Ribbon">
      <CommandUIExtension>
        <CommandUIDefinitions> 
         <CommandUIDefinition
            Location="Ribbon.Library.ViewFormat.Controls._children">
            <Button 
             Id="Ribbon.Library.ViewFormat.CustomLink"
              Sequence="95" 
             Command="Library.ViewFormat.OpenCustomLink" 
             Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"
             Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"
             Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"
             Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"
              LabelText="View Format Group : Custom Link"
              Description="Open Custom Link"
              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in View Format Group"
              ToolTipDescription="Opens a Custom Link via a control added to the existing View Format group on the Ribbon under the Library tab"
              TemplateAlias="o1" />
          </CommandUIDefinition>
        </CommandUIDefinitions>
        <CommandUIHandlers>
          <CommandUIHandler
            Command="Library.ViewFormat.OpenCustomLink"
            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"
            /> 
       </CommandUIHandlers>
      </CommandUIExtension> 
   </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Library.ViewFormat.Controls._children

2.3 Add a Control to the “Connect & Export” group on the Ribbon for a Document Library (Document Library Actions)
This adds a new action to the Connect & Export group in the Library Tab for Document Libraries.

  <!-- Ribbon - Connect & Export Group : Example 2.3 --> 

   <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.Library.Actions.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon" 

   RegistrationId="101"

    RegistrationType="List" 

   Title="Add to Existing Group">

      <CommandUIExtension>

        <CommandUIDefinitions> 

         <CommandUIDefinition

            Location="Ribbon.Library.Actions.Controls._children">

            <Button 

             Id="Ribbon.Library.Actions.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95"

              Command="Library.Actions.OpenCustomLink"

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448" 

              LabelText="Connect &amp; Export Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Connect &amp; Export Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a Custom Link via a control added to the existing Connect &amp; Export group on the Ribbon in the Library tab"

              TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition>

        </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers>

          <CommandUIHandler 

           Command="Library.Actions.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            />

        </CommandUIHandlers>

      </CommandUIExtension>

    </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Library.Actions.Controls._children

2.4 Customise the Share & Track Group
See example 4.3 for information about the Share & Track Group on the Library tab. To add or replace a control on this group on the Library Tab the Location attribute of the CommandUIDefinition would be Ribbon.Library.Share.Controls._children.

To maintain consistency with the built in commands on the Ribbon, actions in this group should be executed at the Library level and not the item level. Share & Track Actions for specific items should be included in the Documents -> Share & Track group instead (example 4.3).

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon

CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Library.Share.Controls._children

3. Customise the Settings Menu and Library Management / Settings Groups on the Ribbon
3.1 Add a link to the Settings Menu for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010
This CustomAction is added to the Settings dropdown menu for Document Libraries. As explained in examples 1.1 and 2.1, the Settings menu is not always displayed for libraries in SharePoint 2010 as the equivelant functionality (and more) is included in the Ribbon. The examples below (3.2 and 3.3) can be used to include a custom action as a new control on the Ribbon instead if required.

  <!-- Settings Menu : Example 3.1 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu.SettingsMenu.CustomLink" 

     RegistrationType="List"

      RegistrationId="101"

      GroupId="SettingsMenu"

      Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu" 

     Sequence="1101" 

     Title="Settings Menu : Custom Link" 

     Description="Adds a new Custom Action (link) to the Settings Menu of Document Libraries"> 

     <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/> 

   </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu
CustomAction Group ID: SettingsMenu

3.2 Add A Control to the Customise Library Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library
The example below will include a new control in the existing “Customize Library” group under the Library tab on the Ribbon.

  <!-- Ribbon - Customize Library Group : Example 3.2 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.Library.CustomizeLibrary.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"

    RegistrationId="101"

    RegistrationType="List" 

   Title="Add to Existing Group">

      <CommandUIExtension> 

       <CommandUIDefinitions> 

         <CommandUIDefinition

            Location="Ribbon.Library.CustomizeLibrary.Controls._children">

            <Button 

             Id="Ribbon.Library.CustomizeLibrary.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95" 

              Command="Library.CustomizeLibrary.OpenCustomLink"

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"

              LabelText="Customize Library Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Customize Library Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a Custom Link via a control added to the existing Customize Library group on the Ribbon in the Library tab"

              TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition>

        </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers>

          <CommandUIHandler 

           Command="Library.CustomizeLibrary.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            /> 

       </CommandUIHandlers>

      </CommandUIExtension> 

   </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Library.CustomizeLibrary.Controls._children

3.3 Add A Control to the Settings Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library
This will add a new control to the Settings group on the Library tab for Document Libraries in SharePoint.

  <!-- Ribbon - Settings Group : Example 3.3 --> 

   <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.Library.Settings.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"

    RegistrationId="101"

    RegistrationType="List"

    Title="Add to Existing Group">

      <CommandUIExtension>

        <CommandUIDefinitions>

          <CommandUIDefinition

            Location="Ribbon.Library.Settings.Controls._children">

            <Button

              Id="Ribbon.Library.Settings.CustomLink" 

              Sequence="95"

              Command="Library.Settings.OpenCustomLink" 

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448" 

              LabelText="Settings Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

             ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Settings Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a Custom Link via a control added to the existing Settings group on the Ribbon under the Library tab"

              TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition>

        </CommandUIDefinitions> 

       <CommandUIHandlers> 

         <CommandUIHandler 

           Command="Library.Settings.OpenCustomLink" 

           CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/" 

           /> 

       </CommandUIHandlers>

      </CommandUIExtension>

    </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Library.Settings.Controls._children

4. Item Level Customisations to the Interface and Ribbon
The examples in this section relate to item level actions executed from the Edit Control Block (item dropdown menu) or from the Ribbon. The controls added to the Ribbon in the examples below are configured to be enabled only when one or more documents are selected.

4.1 Add a link to the Edit Control Block (item drop-down) menu for a Document
This will add a new link/action to the Edit Control Block (document edit dropdown menu) for documents in a Library.

  <!-- EditControlBlock Item Dropdown : Example 4.1 -->

    <CustomAction

    Id="Documents.EditControlBlock.CustomLink"

    RegistrationType="List"

    RegistrationId="101"

    Location="EditControlBlock"

    Sequence="1101"

    Title="EditControlBlock : Custom Link"

    Description="Adds a new Custom Action (link) to the Edit Control Block of Documents in Document Libraries">     <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/>

    </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: EditControlBlock

4.2 Add a Control to the “Manage” group on the Ribbon for Documents
This control is included in the Manage group from the Documents tag on the Ribbon, and is enabled when one document is selected from the library on the page. This is achieved by including an EnabledScript attribute in the CommandUIHandler element, which includes JavaScript that determines if and how many documents have been selected from the list on the page. The JavaScript returns true to enable the control in the Ribbon, or false to disable the control. In this case, one document must be selected for the control to be enabled. If no documents are selected, or more than one document, the control will be disabled.

  <!-- Ribbon - Manage Group : Example 4.2 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.Documents.Manage.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"

    RegistrationId="101" 

   RegistrationType="List" 

   Title="Add to Existing Group">

      <CommandUIExtension> 

       <CommandUIDefinitions>

          <CommandUIDefinition

            Location="Ribbon.Documents.Manage.Controls._children">

            <Button

              Id="Ribbon.Documents.Manage.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95"

              Command="Documents.Manage.OpenCustomLink" 

             Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

             Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

             Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

             Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448"

              LabelText="Manage Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Manage Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a Custom Link via a control added to the existing Manage group on the Ribbon in the Documents tab, if a single document is selected on the page." 

             TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition>

        </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers>

          <CommandUIHandler

            Command="Documents.Manage.OpenCustomLink"

            CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"

            EnabledScript="javascript:

           function hasDocsSelected(){

           var selectedDocuments = SP.ListOperation.Selection.getSelectedItems();

           var selectedDocumentCount = CountDictionary(selectedDocuments);

           if(selectedDocumentCount == 1)

             return true;

           else

             return false;

           };

           // Check if documents are selected on the page

           hasDocsSelected();

           "/>

        </CommandUIHandlers> 

     </CommandUIExtension>

    </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Documents.Manage.Controls._children

4.3 Add a Control to the “Share & Track” (Share) Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library
This will add a new control to the Share & Track group on the Document tab. The “Share & Track” group is also available from the Library tab on the Ribbon, but has different functionality. From the Documents tab, one or more Documents generally need be selected before the built in commands are available, which will run on the selected document(s) only. Controls in the “Share & Track” group on the Library Tab are run on the Library and not specific items/documents.

Similar to example 4.2, the EnabledScript attribute in the CommandUIHandler element that corresponds to this action is used to disable the control if there are no documents selected, or more than one.

  <!-- Ribbon - Share & Track Group : Example 4.3 -->

    <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.Documents.Share.Controls.CustomLink"

    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon" 

   RegistrationId="101"

    RegistrationType="List" 

   Title="Add to Existing Group">

      <CommandUIExtension>

        <CommandUIDefinitions> 

         <CommandUIDefinition

            Location="Ribbon.Documents.Share.Controls._children">

            <Button

              Id="Ribbon.Documents.Share.CustomLink"

              Sequence="95"

              Command="Documents.Share.OpenCustomLink" 

              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"

              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"

              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"

              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448" 

              LabelText="Share &amp; Track Group : Custom Link"

              Description="Open Custom Link"

              ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Share &amp; Track Group"

              ToolTipDescription="Opens a Custom Link via a control added to the existing Share &amp; Track group on the Ribbon in the Documents tab, if a single document is selected on the page."

              TemplateAlias="o1" />

          </CommandUIDefinition> 

       </CommandUIDefinitions>

        <CommandUIHandlers> 

         <CommandUIHandler 

           Command="Documents.Share.OpenCustomLink" 

           CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/" 

           EnabledScript="javascript:

           function hasDocsSelected(){

           var selectedDocuments = SP.ListOperation.Selection.getSelectedItems();

           var selectedDocumentCount = CountDictionary(selectedDocuments);

           if(selectedDocumentCount == 1)

             return true;

           else

             return false;

           };

           // Check if documents are selected on the page

           hasDocsSelected();

           "/>

        </CommandUIHandlers>

      </CommandUIExtension>

    </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Documents.Share.Controls._children

4.4 Add a Control to the “Workflows” Group on the Ribbon for a Document Library
This includes a new control in the Workflows group on the Documents tab. The EnabledScript attribute similar to Examples 4.2 and 4.3 in the CommandUIHandler element is used to disable the control if there are no documents selected. In this example, the Control will be enabled if one or more documents are selected on the page. The control will only be disabled when there are no documents selected on the page.

  <!-- Ribbon - Workflows Group : Example 4.4 -->
    <CustomAction Id="Ribbon.Documents.Workflow.Controls.CustomLink"
    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon" 
   RegistrationId="101" 
   RegistrationType="List"
    Title="Add to Existing Group">
      <CommandUIExtension>
        <CommandUIDefinitions> 
         <CommandUIDefinition
            Location="Ribbon.Documents.Workflow.Controls._children"> 
           <Button             Id="Ribbon.Documents.Workflow.CustomLink"
              Sequence="95"
              Command="Documents.Workflow.OpenCustomLink"
              Image16by16="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap16x16.png"
              Image16by16Top="-32" Image16by16Left="-88"
              Image32by32="/_layouts/$Resources:core,Language;/images/formatmap32x32.png"
              Image32by32Top="-160" Image32by32Left="-448" 
              LabelText="Workflows Group : Custom Link"
              Description="Open Custom Link" 
             ToolTipTitle="Custom Action in Workflows Group"
              ToolTipDescription="Opens a Custom Link via a control added to the existing Workflows group on the Ribbon in the Documents tab, if a single document is selected on the page."
              TemplateAlias="o1" /> 
         </CommandUIDefinition>
        </CommandUIDefinitions>
        <CommandUIHandlers>
          <CommandUIHandler 
           Command="Documents.Workflow.OpenCustomLink" 
           CommandAction="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"
            EnabledScript="javascript:
           function hasDocsSelected(){
           var selectedDocuments = SP.ListOperation.Selection.getSelectedItems();
           var selectedDocumentCount = CountDictionary(selectedDocuments);
           if(selectedDocumentCount > 0)
             return true;
           else
             return false;
           };
           // Check if documents are selected on the page
           hasDocsSelected();
           "/>
        </CommandUIHandlers>
      </CommandUIExtension>
    </CustomAction>

CustomAction Registration ID: 101
CustomAction Location: CommandUI.Ribbon
CommandUIDefinition Location: Ribbon.Documents.Workflow.Controls._children

5. Customise the Document Library Settings Page
5.1 Add a link to the Settings Page for a Document Library in SharePoint 2010
This example includes a new link on the Document Library Settings page. The Location and Group ID used in this example will add a new custom link under the General Settings heading on the page.

  <!-- Settings Page - General Settings Heading : Example 5.1 -->

    <CustomAction   Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.ListEdit.DocumentLibrary.GeneralSettings.CustomLink"

    RegistrationType="List"

    RegistrationId="101"

    GroupId="GeneralSettings"

    Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.ListEdit.DocumentLibrary"

    Sequence="1000"

    Title="Library Settings Page - General Settings : Custom Link"

    Description="Adds a new Custom Action (link) to the General Settings component of the Document Library Settings Page">

      <UrlAction Url="http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/"/> 

   </CustomAction>

CustomAction RegistrationId: 101
CustomAction Location: Microsoft.SharePoint.ListEdit.DocumentLibrary
CustomAction Group ID: GeneralSettings

The Group IDs that correspond to other headings on the settings page are below. The location should be set to Microsoft.SharePoint.ListEdit in each case, but the GroupId attribute is change to one of the following values that correspond to each of the available headings. Adding a new group/heading and links to the settings page is also possible, but not covered in this tutorial.

GroupId	Heading
GeneralSettings	General Settings
Permissions	Permissions and Management
Communications	Communications

Next Post in the series: Customise the menu and settings page User Interface for built-in List types in SharePoint 2010
In the next post, I will be covering how to customise the interface and Server Ribbon for standard Lists in SharePoint 2010, such as Task lists, Links Lists, Calendars, etc. The examples will include custom actions for a range of different list types, and will cover adding new controls to groups that differ from the examples in this tutorial.

References and Related Resources:

Apply Permissions to Custom UI Links / Actions in SharePoint Menus and Settings Pages
This tutorial demonstrates how to restrict custom actions based on user permissions from the SPBasePermissions enumeration in the Rights attribute as well as other properties from the CustomAction class.

Add Custom Links to the SharePoint 2010 UI as a Feature with or without using Visual Studio
This article demonstrates how to implement Custom Actions in SharePoint as a feature:

Using Visual Studio (incorporating into a SharePoint project), or
Without Visual Studio(manually creating feature XML files and installing using PowerShell or STSADM).

Tutorial: Add Custom List actions using SharePoint Designer 2010
This article demonstrates how to add Custom Actions to lists and libraries using OOB functionality in SharePoint Designer 2010.

List of RegistrationId’s for List Template Types (WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010)
This article by Mike Smith provides an extensive list of the built-in list templates and corresponding RegistrationIds. Sample code is also included to list the values from the SPListTemplateType enum.

Customizing and Extending the SharePoint 2010 Server Ribbon
This article by Andrew Connell provides a very detailed step by step tutorial for extending the SharePoint 2010 Ribbon using examples. A download of code for the sample Ribbon customisations is also provided.

Tutorial: Add Custom List actions using SharePoint Designer 2010

2011-10-26T00:34:00.000+11:00

One of the new features of SharePoint 2010 is the ability to easily add Custom Actions buttons to the Ribbon, List item menu and the built-in forms (Display, Edit and New). This can be done with SharePoint Designer 2010 and the “Custom Actions” functionality. In this tutorial I explain how to use this feature to add custom action buttons to various parts of the UI for lists and libraries in SharePoint 2010.

There are a number of ways which you can access this functionality, which all require SharePoint Designer 2010. Depending on the method used to add a Custom Action to a list, certain options may or may not be available to customise what the Custom Action does when clicked, or where it appears in the Interface for the list.

For example, when you are viewing a list or library in your web browser, there is a “New Quick Step” button on the Ribbon in the “Customize List” group.

(Add a Quick Step to start a Workflow)
Using this option will add a Custom Action to the list, but limits the functionality to starting an existing or new Workflow associated with the list. Once the Custom Actions has been configured, it will be added to the Ribbon on the “Items” tab in a group called “Quick Steps” (Button Location = View Ribbon).

When viewing the list using SharePoint Designer 2010, there are two places that can be used to add Custom actions to the list. One is using the “Custom Action” drop-down option on the Ribbon, and the other is by pressing the “New...” button on the Custom Actions Section on the List Settings page.

(Add a Custom Action to the List Item Menu)
When you use the “New...” button from the Custom Actions section on the settings page, this will add the Custom Action to the List Item Menu / LIM (The List Item Menu in SharePoint 2010 was known as the ECB menu (Edit Control Block) in earlier versions of SharePoint). Once the Custom Action has been created, it will be accessible from the drop-down menu of items in the list or library. When using this option to add a Custom Action, there are additional fields included to specify the “Rights Mask” and “Sequence Number” for the action.

Add a Custom Action from the settings page:

Using the “New...” button, the Custom Action is able to navigate to one of the Forms associated with the list, Start a new or existing Workflow or Navigate to a URL.

Custom Action Rights Mask (Display a Custom Action to users based on their Permissions):
The Rights Mask accepts one or more base (built-in) permissions for SharePoint which are used to control which users will see the Custom Action. For example, entering “EditListItems” into the Rights Mask field will result in the Custom Action being displayed to only users with access to edit items in the lust. A full list of the accepted values for the Rights Mask can be viewed here: SPBasePermissions.

Sequence Number Field for Custom Actions
The sequence number field is a little more self explanatory, where it accepts a whole number (integer) which is used to determine the order in which the action will be displayed on the List Item Menu.

Adding a Custom Action to New, Edit and Display Forms, the View Menu or List Item Menu
Using the “Custom Action” drop-down on the Ribbon when viewing the settings of a list in SharePoint Designer 2010 gives much greater control over where the action will be displayed on the interface for the list or list items, as well as the what the action itself can do.

Add Custom Action From the Ribbon

On the Custom Action Dropdown, there are additional areas listed for where the action will be displayed, which include adding to the LIM and View Ribbon, but are not limited to one of these similar the previous methods explained:

List Item Menu - Adds a Custom Action to the item menu similar to using the “New...” button.
Display Form Ribbon - Adds the custom action to the Ribbon for the display form when viewing the properties of a list item or document.
Edit Form Ribbon - Adds the Custom Action to the Ribbon when editing the properties of a list item or document
New Form Ribbon - Adds the Custom Action to the Ribbon when adding a new item to the list.
View Ribbon - Adds the Custom Action to the Ribbon when viewing the list if items in the List or Library, similar to using the “Add a Quick Step” option explained earlier.

When adding a Custom Action to a list or library using this drop-down menu on the SharePoint Designer Ribbon, the functions available for the action is the same as using the “New...’ button (navigate to one of the Forms associated with the list, Start a new or existing Workflow or Navigate to a URL). Using this method to create a Custom Action, there is also an additional field called “Ribbon Location (Tab.Group ID)” available, which is used to specify where in the Interface the button or link will appear. The value in this field is set automatically based on selection of the where the action is to be added. The “Rights Mask” and “Sequence Number” fields explained earlier are also included when using this method.

Related:
Add Custom Links to the Interface as a Site Feature with or without using Visual Studio - This post explains how to add custom actions to the interface in SharePoint 2010 using a Feature added to a project in Visual Studio 2010, or by manually creating the feature xml file using a text editor and enabling using PowerShell or STSADM.

Restrict Custom Links in the User Interface based on Permissions - This post explains how to apply restrictions to Custom Actions based on user permissions. The custom links are the displayed only to users with the specified permission level on the site, list or item.

Add User Control to Master Page Using SharePoint Designer 2010 - This article explains how to add a custom User Control to pages in SharePoint 2010 such as a Master Page or, Page Layout or Application page.

SharePoint Master Page: Include Title of a Site as a link to the Site’s Homepage - This article explains how to add a link to a Master Page or page in SharePoint 2010 that points to the Homepage of the current site with the title of the site as the link/anchor text. This can be done using SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio when editing the source of the page.

Add Custom Links to the SharePoint 2010 UI as a Feature with or without using Visual Studio

2011-10-24T20:04:00.002+11:00

In this article, I demonstrate the process of adding a custom link and group to the UI in SharePoint as a Site Feature without using Visual Studio, as well as using Visual Studio.

In some cases you may not have Visual Studio installed on a Server running SharePoint, or may just want to quickly add a custom link in the interface such as on the Site Settings page, or the Actions or Settings menu for a Document Library or List. In other cases you may have a project in Visual Studio containing new functionality to be deployed to a SharePoint environment, that needs to be accessed through adding custom links to the UI. It makes sense to deploy the custom links as part of the solution feature, so I also explain how to achieve this from a Visual Studio Project.

The purpose of this article is primarily to demonstrate the two methods of adding custom links to the UI in SharePoint 2010 with or without using Visual Studio. I therefore don’t go into detail about the links themselves. Please refer to other articles on this site for more specific information and examples for adding links to specific pages and menus in the SharePoint UI. References to some of these examples are provided later in this post.

Adding a custom link to the User Interface without Visual Studio:
First up, I explain the steps required to include a custom action link on the Site Settings page of SharePoint sites without incorporating into a Visual Studio project or solution.

On the Frontend Server, browse to the FEATURES directory using Windows Explorer ( C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES )
Create a new Folder in the FEATURES directory with a name that describes the type of feature / link that you are adding (eg. “CustomSiteSettingsLinks”).
Inside the new folder, create a text file, and name it “Feature.xml”
Open Feature.xml in a text editor and paste the following XML into the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Feature
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
Id="E2974DBC-79E1-4B5D-9A98-C32BFFB1FFE1"
Description="Adds custom links to the Site Settings page"
Hidden="FALSE"
Scope="Site"
Title="Custom Site Settings Links">
<ElementManifests>
<ElementManifest Location="CustomLinkElements.xml" />
</ElementManifests>
</Feature>

Create a second text file named “CustomLinkElements.xml”
Open CustomLinkElements.xml in a text editor and paste the following XML into the file:

Install the feature using STSADM or PowerShell

PowerShell:
Install-SPFeature CustomSiteSettingsLinks
Enable-SPFeature CustomSiteSettingsLinks -Url http://sharepoint2010

STSADM:
stsadm -o installfeature -filename CustomSiteSettingsLinks\Feature.xml
stsadm -o activatefeature -name CustomSiteSettingsLinks -url http://sp2010

Add a custom link to the UI (Site Settings Page) from a Visual Studio 2010 Solution
The process below will achieve the same result, but the custom links are added to a Feature using Visual Studio 2010, which when deployed to a SharePoint farm and activated on a site will display the custom link on the Site Settings page.

Create a new empty SharePoint Project, or Use an existing project in Visual Studio
Add an “Empty Element” from the list of SharePoint 2010 item templates to the solution with the name “CustomSiteSettingsLinks”.
Open Elements.xml and paste the following XML into the file:

Add a new Feature to the Project
Set the Title of the feature to “Custom Site Settings Links”
Set the scope of the feature to “Site”
Add the CustomSiteSettingsLinks component to the feature.
Add the feature to the solution package if required
Build the solution package
Install and deploy the solution using PowerShell or STSADM:

PowerShell:
Add-SPSolution –LiteralPath “c:\path_to_wsp\ProjectName.wsp”
Install-SPSolution -Identity ProjectName.wsp -GACDeployment

STSADM:
stsadm –o addsolution –name ProjectName.wsp
stsadm –o deploysolution –name ProjectName.wsp –immediate -allowgacdeployment

Using either method to create the feature, after installing and activating it on a site you should see the new custom link under the “Look and Feel” heading of the Site Settings page titled “Online Help with SharePoint 2010”.

Related:
Apply Permissions to Custom UI Links / Actions in SharePoint Menus and Settings Pages - This post explains how to add Custom Actions to the built-in User Interface that are restricted / visible to users based on permissions. Examples for various scenarios are included in the post.

Tutorial: Add Custom List actions using SharePoint Designer 2010 - This article explains how to use the Custom Actions functionality of SharePoint Designer 2010 to add list action links or buttons to the interface for lists and items in SharePoint 2010. The multiple areas within SharePoint Designer where this can be done from are explained, including the differences in where the actions are placed and the available functionality of the Custom Action for each method.

Apply Permissions to Custom UI Links / Actions in SharePoint Menus and Settings Pages

2011-10-24T20:00:00.002+11:00

This post explains how to incorporate permissions into custom links and actions added to the UI on menus, toolbars and default layout pages such as the Site Settings page in SharePoint 2010.

Examples included in the post are:

Restricting custom links on list settings pages to only site collection administrators
Adding custom actions to the Document Library dropdown menu (ECB - Edit Control Block) that are displayed only to users with edit permissions on the document.
Displaying a link on the Site Actions menu only to users with access to manage permissions for the current site.
Displaying a custom link on the List Actions menu for users with access to manage the list.
Display a link on the Site Settings page of a site to users with access to add and customise pages on the site, as well as apply themes and stylesheets to the site (Site Designers).

The attributes used to control custom links are included in the CustomAction element when configuring the link or action. The RequireSiteAdministrator attribute accepts a boolean value that specifies if a user needs to be a Site Collection Administrator to see the link. The Rights attribute accepts one or more base permissions in a comma separated list, which a user must have for the link to be displayed. If multiple permissions are specified in the Role attribute, the user must have all of the permissions listed to see the link.

Customising the User Interface by adding links and actions based on user permissions can enhance usability of the site for some, but without cluttering or adding links to irrelevant resources for other users. For example, displaying links to specific help content or branding guidelines to site designers may help maintain consistency and elements/themes required to maintain a acceptable look and feel when modifying themes and styles used across sites in a SharePoint environment.

For help with creating a feature that includes the customised links and actions for the User Interface in SharePoint, please see my post: Add Custom Links to the SharePoint 2010 UI as a Feature with or without using Visual Studio.

Examples:
Restricting custom links on list settings pages to only Site Collection Administrators.
This is done using the RequireSiteAdministrator attribute, which should be set to TRUE. If you want to display a link to only Administrators of the current web, you should use the “Rights” attribute with the “ManageWeb” permission.

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction
Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings.OnlineHelp"
GroupId="SiteAdministration"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings"
Sequence="1000"
Title="Online Help with SharePoint 2010 (Site Admin)"
RequireSiteAdministrator="TRUE"
>
<UrlAction Url="http://www.master-sharepoint.com/"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>

This will add a new link to the “Site Administration” group on the site settings page.

Adding custom actions to the Document Library dropdown menu (ECB - Edit Control Block) that are displayed only to users with edit permissions on the document.
This is achieved using the “Rights” attribute with “EditListItems” as the value (SPBasePermissions.EditListItems). The RegistrationType is set to “List”, and the RegistrationId set to “101” which corresponds to a Document Library in SharePoint.

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction
Id="EditControlBlock.Library.OnlineHelp"
RegistrationType="List"
RegistrationId="101"
Location="EditControlBlock"
Sequence="1000"
Title="Online Help with SharePoint 2010"
Rights="EditListItems"
>
<UrlAction Url="http://www.master-sharepoint.com/"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>

This will add a new link to the List Item dropdown menu (ECB) for files in Document Libraries.

Displaying a link on the Site Actions menu only to users with access to manage permissions for the current site.
Adding a link visible only to users who can manage permission is done using the “Rights” attribute with “ManagePermisisons” as the value (SPBasePermissions.ManagePermissions).

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction
Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu.SiteActions.OnlineHelp"
GroupId="SiteActions"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
Sequence="1000"
Title="Online Help with SharePoint 2010"
Rights="ManagePermissions"
>
<UrlAction Url="http://www.master-sharepoint.com/"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>

This will add a new link to the bottom of the “Site Actions” menu for users who can manage permission on the site.

Displaying a custom link on the List Actions menu for users with access to manage the list (“Links” list).
This is achieved by setting the “Rights” attribute to “ManageLists”, the RegistrationType attribute to “List” and “RegistrationId” to “103” to specify the “Links” list type.

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction
Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu.ActionsMenu.OnlineHelp"
GroupId="ActionsMenu"
RegistrationType="List"
RegistrationId="103"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
Sequence="1000"
Title="List Actions: Online Help with SharePoint 2010"
Rights="ManageLists"
>
<UrlAction Url="http://www.master-sharepoint.com/"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>

This will add a new link to a “Custom Actions” tab for a “Links” list.

Display a link on the Site Settings page of a site to users with access to add and customise pages on the site, as well as apply themes and stylesheets to the site (Site Designers).
This is achieved by including multiple comma separated SPBasePermisisons for the “Rights” attribute, where the user must have each of the permissions listed to be able to see the link.

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction
Id="Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings.OnlineHelp2"
GroupId="Customization"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings"
Sequence="1001"
Title="Online Help with SharePoint 2010 (Site Designer)"
Rights="AddAndCustomizePages, ApplyThemeAndBorder, ApplyStyleSheets"
>
<UrlAction Url="http://www.master-sharepoint.com/"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>

This will add a link to the Site Settings page under the “Look and Feel” group.

Additional Resources:

CustomAction Element Documentation

SharePoint 2010 Base Permisisons (SPBasePermissions) - The full list of base permissions available for use when applying restrictions to custom actions through user permissions.

SPBasePermissions Usage With (Programmatic) and Without Code

SharePoint: Show or Hide Content based on Permissions - Restrict content using permissions on a page or Master Page with the SPSecurityTrimmedControl class.

Examples of implementing permission based content in SharePoint

Hide SharePoint Global / Top Navigation Settings from Sites - Hide the Global Navigation settings on sub-sites in a site collection to ensure that the top navigation remains consistent accross all sites in a site collection.

SharePoint Application Page Security

Add Custom Links to the SharePoint 2010 UI as a Feature with or without using Visual Studio

Tutorial: Add Custom List actions using SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint Application Page Security

2011-10-22T12:47:00.000+11:00

This article covers information relating to security for Application pages and page components in SharePoint:

Selecting the correct base class to inherit from when developing Application Pages in SharePoint
Securing Application pages with user permissions
Specifying when the CheckRights method is called to determine if a user has access to the page.
Programmatically check if the user has permission to access the page
Code Access Security (CAS) Policy for SharePoint Components

A number of other useful resources relating to security of Application Pages and page components such as Web Parts are also referenced throughout this post, with a description of the main points covered in each to help you understand the requirements and implications of developing Application pages that need to be secured or unrestricted.

Choosing the correct class to inherit from when developing an Application Page

When developing an Application Page for Sharepoint, there are two base classes that can be inherited from which include a number of properties and methods that can be used to help control access to the page. In some cases you may want a page to be accessible to any user, include anonymous users, but in most cases you will probably want to restrict the page and functionality to authenticated users with specific permissions on the site in which they access the page from. The base page classes to help control this are the LayoutPageBase and UnsecuredLayoutPageBase.

LayoutPageBase Class
The LayoutPageBase class Includes various properties and methods to help control security for the page to restrict the page or content on the page to users. This class should be inherited from in the code behind file ( .aspx.cs ) when creating a secured application page. You can the override certain properties or methods to restrict the page based on permisisons.

To restrict based on specific built-in permisisons from the SPBasePermissions Enumeration, the RightsRequired property can be overridden. The SPBasePermissions that a user requires to access the page should be returned by the property.

In the example below, only a user who has access to manage lists and create subwebs on a site will be able to access the page.
protected override SPBasePermissions RightsRequired {

get {

return SPBasePermissions.ManageLists |

SPBasePermissions.ManageSubwebs;

}

}

To restrict a page to users with full access to the current site, the ManageWeb permission should be returned:
protected override SPBasePermissions RightsRequired {

get {

return SPBasePermissions.ManageWebs;

}

}

To restrict a page to only site collection administrators, the RequireSiteAdministrator property can be overridden to return true:
protected override bool RequireSiteAdministrator {
get {

return true;

}

}

The RequireDefaultLayoutsRights property can be used to control when the CheckRights method is called to determine if the current user should be able to access the page:
Check if the user has rights when the page if first initialising - OnInit()
protected override RightsCheckModes RightsCheckMode {
get {

return RightsCheckModes.OnPreInit;

}

}

Check if the user has rights when the page has finished loading - OnLoadComplete()
protected override RightsCheckModes RightsCheckMode {
get {

return RightsCheckModes.OnLoadComplete;

}

}

UnsecuredLayoutPageBase Class
The UnsecuredLayoutsPageBase class should be used when developing Application pages that are unrestricted and accessible to all users including those who are anonymous such as a login page or the access denied page.

Validating a page request:

FormDigest can be used to pass security validation from a form page to teh page that processes the request to help prevent the form from being submitted from another page. The following tag should be included in the form page:

<SharePoint:FormDigest runat="server"/>

On the page that processes the request, the ValidateFormDigest() method should be called to validate the request, especially in cases where you use RunWithElevatedPrivileges() to perform actions that the current user may not have explicit permission to do themselves.

protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) {
SPUtility.ValidateFormDigest();
//page logic
}

Programmatic Validation of User Permissions:

Base Permissions in SharePoint - Checks if the current user has specific permissions on the current web using the SPBasePermissions Enumeration. The example below requires that the current user has permission to manage lists (SPBasePermissions.ManageLists) on the current site to be able to access the application page. View the Complete list of SPBasePermissions (MSDN).

protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) {

SPWeb currentSite = this.Web;

//Validate the request

if (Request.HttpMethod == "POST")

SPUtility.ValidateFormDigest();

if(currentSite.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPBasePermissions.ManageLists )){

//Use has the required permissions, execute page logic here

}

else {

//Current user does not have the permissions required to access the page
}
}

For a more detailed example, please see the Validating User Permissions section of the MSDN article for Securing application pages in SharePoint. Other examples of restricting an Application Page with permissions included in the article are:

Restricting a page based on “Role Definitions”, which are the permission levels associated with a site or site collection. Basing application page security on Role Definitions may not work in all cases as it is possible to alter the names of permission levels on a site.
Restricting a page to members of a specific group. Using this method also has limitations as the names of groups in SharePoint may change.

Related External Resources

SPBase Permissions Enumeration
The SPBasePermissions Enumeration provides a range of built-in permissions that can be used to manage security on pages and content in SharePoint. Many components that are part of teh SharePoint object model use the SPBasePermissions class to restrict features at different levels such as a Site / Web, Page (eg. Application Page) or content. The SPBasePermisisons enum is also used by some controls that can be incorporated into a Master Page, Application Page or .aspx page in SharePoint using SPSecurityTrimmedControl.

Securing Application Pages in SharePoint
MSDN Article: Securing Application Pages in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
This article (also referenced earlier) covers what is required to secure an Application Page in WSS 3.0, but is also applicable to MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010. It is highly recommended that you read and become familiar with the contents of this article when developing Application Pages in SharePoint. It first explains some benefits and reasons for using Application Pages, then provides information and example code on how to secure Application Pages. Details include Validate page requests using FormDigest which ensures that the ValidateFormDigest method is called to validate the page requests and user, Validating User Permissions to restrict the Application page to only users with certain permission levels using SPBasePermissions (built-in permissions), Role Definitions (customisable permission levels applied to sites and content in SharePoint) and Group Memberships (groups that a user is a member of).

Article: How to secure Application Pages
This article covers the basics of implementing security for Application Pages, which takes from some of the main points described on the MSDN article above: Validating Page Requests using FormDigest, Validating User Permissions with SPBasePermissions and Hiding Application Pages.

Security in SharePoint application pages: Choose the right base class for your pages
This post explains an important implication of developing an application page without taking caution as to the class that the page is derived from. It notes that when creating a new WebForm, the default class that is inherited is the System.Web.UI, which can result in even anonymous users having access to the page and functionality. The UnsecuredLayoutsPageBase or LayoutsPageBase classes should be used to help control who has access to the page.

Code Access Security (CAS) Policy
Code access security comes into play when a custom solution in SharePoint has code that needs to be executed. There are a number of ways to manage solutions with custom code, including installing an assembly in the GAC and altering the trust level of the SharePoint web application in Web.Config to the “Full” trust level. The articles below provide some insite into different methods to manage CAS and when they are appropriate in different scenarios to help ensure that your SharePoint environment remains secure.

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Code Access Security
This detailed article talks about implementing Code Access Security policies for SharePoint as well as customising the default security settings to suit different needs.

Creating a Custom CAS Policy File For SharePoint
This article explains how to create and implement a custom CAS Policy file in a SharePoint environment.

Code Access Security policy template for Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools
Implementing CAS Policy Files into SharePoint solutions created using Visual Studio 2010.

Deploying a Web Part with Code Access Security in Visual Studio 2010 (SP2010)
Implementing a CAS Policy in custom Web Part solutions using Visual Studio.

SPBasePermissions Usage With (Programmatic) and Without Code

2011-10-18T23:09:00.000+11:00

In this post, I list some of the properties and methods that return a SPBasePermissions enum, and some methods that take SPBasePermissions as a parameter when checking if a user has certain rights on an object in SharePoint. Later in the post I also explain how the permission masks with SPBasePermissions can be used to customise (show / hide ) content and custom UI actions / links without using code.

Programmatic uses of SPBasePermissions to check for or set permissions on various objects in SharePoint

The following are some of the more common components in SharePoint that can be used to get or set permissions, or check if certain permissions are effective for a user on the object.

Get or set the Base Permissions for a Role Definition in a Web
SPWeb.RoleDefinitions.BasePermissions

Get the current or specified user’s effective SPBasePermissions on an object (SPWeb, SPList, SPListItem, etc.) Username passed as String to GetUserEffectivePermissions():
SPSite
SPSite.EffectiveBasePermissions
SPSite.GetEffectiveRightsForAcl(SPReusableAcl)

SPWeb
SPWeb.EffectiveBasePermissions
SPWeb.GetUserEffectivePermissions(String)

SPList
SPList.EffectiveBasePermissions
SPList.EffectiveFolderPermissions
SPList.GetUserEffectivePermissions(String)

SPFolder
SPFolder.EffectiveRawPermissions

SPFile
SPFile.EffectiveRawPermissions

SPListItem
SPListItem.EffectiveBasePermissions
SPListItem.GetUserEffectivePermissions(String)

Check if the current or specified user has the specified permissions and throws UnauthorizedAccessException if not:
SPSite.CheckForPermissions(SPReusableAcl, SPBasePermissions)
SPWeb.CheckPermissions(SPBasePermissions)
SPList.CheckPermissions(SPBasePermissions)
SPListItem.CheckPermissions(SPBasePermissions)

Returns true/false indicating if the user has the specified permission(s)
SPSite
SPSite.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPReusableAcl, SPBasePermissions)
SPSite.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPReusableAcl, SPBasePermissions, SPWeb)

SPWeb
SPWeb.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPBasePermissions)
SPWeb.DoesUserHavePermissions(String, SPBasePermissions)

SPList
SPList.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPBasePermissions)
SPList.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPUser, SPBasePermissions)

SPListItem
SPListItem.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPBasePermissions)
SPListItem.DoesUserHavePermissions(SPUser, SPBasePermissions)

Layout Page Base - Permissions required to access a LayoutPageBase
LayoutsPageBase.RightsRequired
LayoutsPageBase.DefaultLayoutsRights

Trimmed Content on a Page (Get or set permissions)
SPSecurityTrimmedControl.Permissions

Base permissions associated with a SPPermission object
SPPermission.BasePermissions

Get base permissions required to use a ConsoleAction object or ConsoleNode
ConsoleAction.UserRights
ConsoleNode.UserRights

Get permissions required to see the developer dashboard
SPDeveloperDashboardSettings.RequiredPermissions

Get or set the permissions for a web application
SPWebApplication.RightsMask
SPSite.ApplicationRightsMask

Permissions required to access a Mobile Page
SPMobilePage.RightsRequired

Toolbar Menu Button
ToolBarMenuButton.CallbackVisibilityPermission

Others:
SPSecurableObject.GetUserEffectivePermissions(String UserName)
SPRibbon.Permissions
MenuItemTemplate.Permissions
SPUserCustomAction.Rights

Show / Hide content in SharePoint based on the built-in permissions in SharePoint without code.

The SPBasePermissions Enum contains a number of built-in permissions that can be used in a number of ways, including showing or hiding content for a user based on their access level to a site, list or item, restricting custom links and actions added to the UI, securing application pages and much more. When creating a .aspx page or Master Page in SharePoint SPSecurityTrimmedControl class has a PermissionsString parameter that accepts a comma separated list of SPBasePermissions which a user must have for the child content or controls to be displayed to the user.

SharePoint: Show or Hide Content based on Permissions provides an example usage of the SPSecurityTrimmedControl class with various permissions from the SPBasePermissions enum to include content on a Master Page that is visible to users with full access to a site, or a user with access to manage lists on the site. The example includes a “View All Site Content: link as content near the top of the page, which is visible only to users with the matching permissions. References to the relevant documentation

For additional examples for a number of specific scenarios, the article Permission Based Content in SharePoint (With Examples) provides configuration of the SPSecurityTrimmedControl class and various SPBasePermissions to achieve each. Some of the examples include displaying content or controls only to users with full access to a site, showing content for users with access to manage permissions on a site and displaying content to uses with add, edit and modify permissions on list items in a list. The article also demonstrates usage of the SPSecurityTrimmedControl class and the AuthenticationRestrictions attribute to show or hide content to users who are authenticated or anonymous.

SPBasePermissions are also used when adding custom links and actions to the User Interface in SharePoint such as the Site or List Settings page, the Actions or Settings menu on lists and libraries and the list item dropdown (ECB Edit Control Block) menu. Associating one or more of the built-in permissions with these custom actions will mean that a user much have each of the permissions on the item, list or site for the Custom action to be displayed.

Permission Based Content in SharePoint (With Examples)

2011-10-11T18:30:00.000+11:00

The examples in this tutorial demonstrate how to restrict certain content or controls on a page in SharePoint to specific users based on their permissions. It can be applied to a Master Page, or directly to a .aspx page in SharePoint using SharePoint Designer. Many options are available to configure exactly how and when the content should be displayed using the base permissions available in SharePoint with the SPSecurityTrimmedControl class.

The complete list of base permissions that can be used with the class can be viewed on this page: SPBasePermissions. It is also possible to show or hide content based on user authentication using the AuthenticationRestrictions property of the class, which may be useful if you want to display a different set of links depending on if a user has been authenticated or is anonymous.

Below are some examples of base permissions that are more likely to be used to restrict content to specific users with the associated permission.

Show content to only a user with full permissions on the site:
<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl
    ID="ShowContent1"
    PermissionsString="ManageWeb"
    runat="server">

ASP Controls or HTML included here will be visible only to users with full permission on the site.

</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

Show content to only users who can manage lists
<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl
    ID="ShowContent2"
    PermissionsString="ManageLists"
    runat="server">

ASP Users Controls or HTML included here will be visible only to users who have the Manage Lists permission.

</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

Show Content to users with access to manage permissions
<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl
    ID="ShowContent3"
    PermissionsString="ManagePermissions"
    runat="server">

ASP Users Controls or HTML included here will be visible only to users who can manage permissions.

</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

Show Content to users who can Add, Edit or Delete List Items in the Current List
Multiple permission levels are separated by a comma. To allow the content to be displayed if a user has any one of the listed base permissions, the PermissionMode property should be included with the mode as “Any” (used in example below). The user must have all permissions listed if PermissionMode=”All” or is not specified. The Context is also set to restrict the permission mask to the current list (PermissionContext=”CurrentList”).

<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl
    ID="ShowContent4"
    PermissionsString="AddListItems, EditListItems, DeleteListItems"
    PermissionMode=”Any”
    PermissionContext=”CurrentList”
    runat="server">

Content here will be displayed if a user has access to Add Edit or Delete list items.

</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

Show a link to Anonymous (not authenticated) users only
<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl
    ID="ShowContent5"
    AuthenticationRestrictions=”AnonymousUsersOnly”
    runat="server">

<a href=”/” >Link displayed for Anonymous Users Only</a>

</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

Show a link to Authenticated users only
<SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl
    ID="ShowContent6"
    AuthenticationRestrictions=”AuthenticatedUsersOnly”
    runat="server">

<a href=”/” >Link displayed for Authenticated Users Only</a>

</SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>

Some of the properties used in the examples above to customise use of the SPSecurityTrimmedControl class when restricting content for specific users are below:

PermissionsString - A comma separated list of the base permissions that a user requires for the content to be displayed.
AuthenticationRestrictions - Displays content based on the authentication status.
PermissionContext - Sets the context of the permission mask (CurrentFolder, CurrentItem, CurrentList, CurrentSite, RootSite)
PermissionMode - When multiple base permissions are provided, this property is used to specifies if all of the permissions are required, or any one similar to the use of “&&” (AND) or “||” (OR).
Full list of SPSecurityTrimmedControl Members.

Related:
SharePoint: Show or Hide Content based on Permissions - This article demonstrates how to show a “View All Site Content” link to users with full permission on a site, or with access to Manage Lists on a site using SPSecurityTrimmedControl. It is placed in a Master Page using SharePoint Designer.

SharePoint 2010: Add User Control to Master Page Using SharePoint Designer 2010

2011-10-11T01:21:00.000+11:00

In this article I explain the steps to include a custom User Control in a Master Page in SharePoint 2010 using SharePoint Designer.

In my case, the example User Control I am adding to the Master Page in this tutorial is in the following location which would vary depending on the name and of the Control and the folder it is saved in: “~/_controltemplates/SP2010_UserControl_Example/DynamicSiteTitle.ascx file”

SharePoint Designer 2010 Master Page User Control
Using SharePoint Designer 2010, open the Site and Master Page Library where the Master Page will be stored containing the User Control. In this example, I am creating a copy of the default v4.master used in SharePoint 2010 in the root site Master Page Library and calling it v4b.master.

Open the Master Page you wish to modify by right clicking the and selecting the “Edit File in Advanced Mode” option.

Close to the top of the markup below the existing @Register / @Import tags, add the following line to register the User Control for use in the page. Change the reference to the User Control file (.ascx) to point to your User Control if required:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="custom" TagName="DynamicTitle" src="~/_controltemplates/SP2010_UserControl_Example/DynamicSiteTitle.ascx" %>

Now that the User Control is registered, it can be included in the page by adding an element with the tag prefix and tag name specified when registering the control. As the example User Control displays a dynamic title the tag and prefix have been named to suit, but can be something else if required. The element in this case will look like:

<custom:DynamicTitle id="DynamicTitle1" runat="server"/>

The value of the id attribute can also vary, which should be unique for each instance that the control is included on the page if more than once.

I have added the control to the Site Name placeholder (PlaceHolderSiteName) replacing the existing Property used to display only the title of the current site, as the custom control performs a similar function.

The resulting code looks like:

<h1 name="onetidProjectPropertyTitle">

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderSiteName" runat="server">

<custom:DynamicTitle id="DynamicTitle1" runat="server"/>

</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

</h1>

Save the Master Page, and enable it if required on a SharePoint Site.

The Custom Control should be displayed where you placed it on the Master Page. In this case, the Site title (Team Site), List/Library (Site Pages) and page title (Home) are displayed in the banner of the site.

For assistance with creating a User Control, please see the following tutorial which contains instruction on how to create the example User Control used in this article that displays a dynamic title of the current site, list and page / list item if applicable for demonstration purposes:

Developing a custom User Control for SharePoint 2010

The tutorial covers building a basic User Control from scratch using Visual Studio, and also includes instructions to include the control on an Application page or Master Page. A User Control can be add directly to any .aspx page in SharePoint as well by following the same steps described in this tutorial.

It is also possible to complete these steps in a Master Page included in a solution developed using Visual Studio 2010, which can then be activated on specific sites as a feature, but is not covered in this article. See this article by Mirjam: Deploying a custom master page in SharePoint 2010 for instructions on how to add a Master Page to a Feature using Visual Studio, which also include an event receiver to use the new Master Page when the Feature is activated on a SharePoint site.

Related:

SharePoint Master Page: Include Title of a Site as a link to the Site’s Homepage
Add the title of the current site as a link to the homepage using the "Title" Project Property and ~site token to construct the url to the homepage of the current site.

Hide / Disable Global Navigation Settings on SharePoint Site (MOSS 2007)

2011-09-22T01:39:00.001+10:00

The following is a reference to an article which explains a simple solution to hide the Global Navigation settings from the Navigation Settings page on a SharePoint site. If you need to allow site owners to manage the navigation links on their site, but want to control the global navigation to prevent them from changing or breaking the inheritance you can modify the Navigation Settings page ( AreaNavigationSettings.aspx ) so that the Global Navigation section is not displayed on the page.

Example customised Navigation Settings page without the Global Navigation section (from the article).

The OOB AreaNavigationSettings.aspx page is customised using inline styles, and by removing the elements used to display the global navigation settings. Once modified, the global navigation can still be managed from the top level site in the site collection.

For details, including step by step instructions on how to implement the solution, please see:
Hide SharePoint Global / Top Navigation Settings from Sites

Visual Studio 2010 Installation Errors & SharePoint 2010 "Service Unavailable" after VS 2010 Install

2011-09-17T10:13:00.000+10:00

Last night I set up a fresh development environment for SharePoint 2010, but ran into a few issues when I came to install Visual Studio 2010 on the server, and also SharePoint 2010 once Visual Studio was installed, although there were a number of possible causes of SharePoint stopping working during the process. In this article, I explain the steps taken to resolve issues with the Visual Studio 2010 installation and the SharePoint 2010 environment.

Server Configuration
The server is configured with Windows Server 2008 Standard as the operating System, which was created from a snapshot taken from the base install some months ago. In the “base install”, I had installed MS SQL Server 2008, and SharePoint 2010 which were both working fine at the time the snapshot was created.

The problems and steps taken to resolve:
After creating a new VM from the snapshot and testing SharePoint, I was able to load the root SharePoint site as expected. No other sites existed in the environment at this point as it was a fresh install of SharePoint when the snapshot was taken.

My first attempt at installing Visual Studio 2010 failed before it even started, as the Windows Installer was in use, or a reboot was required. Due to the time between making the snapshot and creating this VM, a number of updates had been released by Microsoft that were applicable to the server. Rebooting the server resulted in many updates being installed. I also activated the Windows Server 2008 installation after the reboot as the previous product key had expired. My second attempt at installing Visual Studio also failed when attempting to install the first of the long list of required components. I rebooted again to find that there were still some updates that needed to be configured on the server even though there was no notification of this requirements after the initial reboot.

A number of updates relating to the SharePoint Environment and dependent components had been installed for the .NET Framework (KB958484), Office 2010 one for SharePoint Foundation 2010 (KB2553014: Update for Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010), Silverlight, SQL Server Service Packs, a bunch of security updates for Windows and SharePoint Server 2010, and the list goes on).

Once the updates had installed, I then ran the SharePoint Configuration Wizard which included steps to complete updates to the SharePoint installation as a result of the Windows updates relating to the SharePoint Foundation 2010 components.

The Visual Studio 2010 Installation also proceeded at this point without error, but when I attempted to load the SharePoint 2010 environment in the browser after completing the installation, I was greeted with a “Service Unavailable” error (500). A quick look at the services for IIS, SharePoint and the SQL server indicated that they were running, and restarting the services and the server didn’t resolve the issue.

An IIS Reset also didn’t help with the situation, as the main SharePoint site appeared to be running in IIS. My next step was to check the Application Pools used by the SharePoint environment, which I found that they were all in the “stopped” state.

Starting the Application Pools allowed the SharePoint environment to become responsive again when accessed in the browser, but when it finally loaded, I received the “An unexpected error has occurred” message. Turns out that I was probably just a little impatient after restarting the Application Pools, as a simple refresh of the page after waiting for a few seconds allowed the root SharePoint 2010 site to load successfully again.

SharePoint Document Library Opening as Web Folder

2011-08-20T12:31:00.000+10:00

Today I needed to work with a document library in SharePoint by opening it via it’s UNC path using Windows Explorer. The issue that I faced, was that the library would be opened in Explorer as a Web Folder using the URL of the library ( via http/https ) and not using the UNC as I required.

I needed to work with files in bulk, including opening and saving using their native client software/application. When I attempted to load a selection of files, instead of the files opening in the client, each file would be opened in a new browser tab/window before prompting to open or save the file. Not useful to me at all..

Solution:
The solution was simple in my case, was simply to adjust the network provider order for the connection that was being used so that the “Microsoft Windows Network” provider takes precedence over the “Web Client Network” provider.

Adjust the Network Provider order:

Network Provider Order on Windows 7:

Start -> type “view network connections”

OR: Start -> Control Panel -> Network and Sharing -> Change Adapter Settings (Left column)

Network Provider Order on Windows XP:

Start -> Settings -> Network Connections

Select the network connection you with to modify (likely the one active and connected)
Press F10, or ALT to show the menu if required.
From the “Advanced” dropdown, open the “Advanced Settings” dialog.
Select the “Provider Order” tab.
Adjust the order as required. (“Web Client Network” should be below the Microsoft Windows Network to help prevent a library from always opening as a Web Folder.)
Restart your computer

After adjusting the provider order, you will most likely need to restart before the changes will be active. After making the adjustment myself, I was no longer able to access the library at all using Windows Explorer (not even using Web Folders), until I restarted.

After restarting, I was able to access the same Document Library via it’s UNC path “\\server\site\library\” and work with the contents as I required.

How To Add column to all content types and lists in SharePoint

2011-03-21T19:24:00.000+11:00

Adding a column to all content types and list in SharePoint is simple, but there are implications that first need to be considered before doing so. Once completed, the new column will be available in all existing content types in the Site Collection, as well as lists and libraries that exist on SharePoint sites.

Implication:
The implication of this change, is that the process to reverse is not nearly as simple as the process to implement. Removing the column from the content type(s) will not remove the association of the column with lists that previously had the global column. A custom solution could be developed to automate removal of the column from content types and lists, but the alternative would be to manually remove each instance which could be time consuming in larger, more complex environments.

Process:
Content Types in SharePoint inherit from the Item content type. If a column is added to this content type (with the “Update all content types inheriting from this type?” option selected), the column will also be added to all existing content types in the site collection.

Navigate to the Content Type Gallery at the root of the site collection, via the site settings page
From under the List Content Types heading, select the “Item” content type.
Press the “Add from new site column”, link to add a new global column, or the add from existing option to add an existing column to all content types.
(If adding a new column) Complete the information about the new column, ensure that the “Update all content types inheriting from this type?” option is selected, and press OK to add the column.

Dynamic List Filter Menu Using Data View Grouping

2011-03-19T14:55:00.000+11:00

This article explains how to create a dynamic filter menu for content in SharePoint. Methods from the article SharePoint: List Distinct (unique) values from a specific column in a list are used to obtain unique values from a specific column in a SharePoint list to be displayed as each menu item. When an filter option from the menu is selected, content on the page will be filtered based on the selection.

For a single menu displaying filter options dynamically, you only need to associate the menu with one column from the main list. When an option is selected, the browser is redirected to the same page with a query string parameter set to the selected filter parameter using JavaScript. The main list on the page is then configured to filter contents based on the parameter.

Components:

Document Library with custom column "Heading"
One Web Part page with the following components:

Data View Web Part displaying the actual documents in the library
Data View web Part displaying the possible filter options (from the Heading column)

Usage:

When a filter option is selected from the menu Data View, the browser will be sent to the current page with the selected option included as a Query String Parameter (using link or JS).
The main Data View web part would be configured with a custom parameter obtained from the Query String. The custom parameter would be used as filter criteria for the Data View. The result is that when an option from the dynamic menu is selected, the documents listed in the main Data View will be dynamically filtered based on the selected option.

JavaScript Reference:
The “How To” instructions below refer to JavaScript functions used for Query String Manipulation. To view details about the functions referred to below, as well as other functions for hyperlink/query string manipulation, see:

Query String Manipulation using JavaScript
- Add Query String Parameter using JavaScript - addParameter()

How To:

Create a new Document Library, or use and existing one if required.
Add a custom column to the library (or content type if using custom content types). In this example the column will have the title “Heading”, and will be used to list menu options, but it can have any title as required.
From the view menu of the document library or the setting page, select the “Create view” option to add a new view.
When viewing the newly created View page, select the “Edit in SharePoint Designer” from the file menu, or manually open the site and page for editing in SharePoint Designer.
Add a second instance of the same Document Library Web Part to the page above the existing. Set the crome state to None in the Appearance section if required.
Right click on the new Web Part and select Convert to Data View option.
Once a Data View Web Part, open the Sort and Group dialog, and add criteria to group the list by the “Heading” column.
In the design pane of the page, right click on one of the listed items (documents) and remove the row from the table. This will remove all list items resulting in only the groups remaining. Remove additional functionality from the groups, such as the expand, contract button/link or css styles.
Format the group value as a hyperlink, with “#” as the value for the href attribute.
Add an “onclick” attribute, with a call to the addParameter() JavaScript function. The value of the selected filter option and the parameter name is passed to the JavaScript function which adds the parameter to the current url using a redirect.

If there are no existing parameters on the current page url, the easiest method to configure a hyperlink to add a Query String Parameter to the current page is to set the href attribute to the following:

<a href="?main={$fieldvalue}"><xsl:value-of select="$fieldvalue" /></a>

Using the above (simple) method will replace any existing parameters in the current url with the new parameter and value. For a single dimensional menu, using this method to add Query String parameter and value to use as filter criteria on other Web Part s on the page would be fine. For multi dimensional menus (main and sub menu), you may need to retain the parameter in the Query String that determines which main/primary heading when adding the sub-heading filter parameter. In this case, JavaScript can be used to add the new parameter to the existing Query String. Using JavaScript to manipulate the query string is a better method to use in either case as existing parameters will always be retain, but would obviously require that JavaScript be enabled on client browsers.

More Resources for SharePoint Development & Customisation:

SharePoint: List Distinct (unique) values from a specific column in a list

2011-03-14T00:57:00.001+11:00

The following describes two methods to list distinct/unique values from a specific column in a SharePoint list. An example where this may be useful is a menu system providing filter options for items in a list, using only values that are being used at the time.

Display Unique Values using Data View Grouping (No Code):
Obtaining a distinct/unique list of values from a specific column in a SharePoint list can be achieved easily using a Data View Web Part, and by applying sort and group criteria to group items. When grouping (group by) criteria of a Data View web part has been provided, the result is a distinct (unique) list of values from the particular column in the list that will be displayed as group headings. Once the Data View is listing items grouped by the specified column, you can manually modify (remove cells/rows) the XSL template used to display the table to remove the actual list items from under each group (use Design mode in SPD to easily manipulate the default table layout).

The resulting Data View will list the group names (no items listed), which will be each unique value found in the specified column across all list items in the list. Using the grouping functionality will ensure that only unique values are returned, as long as you sort by the same field to ensure that items are grouped correctly. Once you have the list of group headings you can then modify the values displayed to be formatted as hyperlink or another control. I typically use hyperlinks or buttons with calls to JavaScript functions that add Query String parameters to the current url.

Display Unique Values using XSL:
Selecting a list of unique values in a column that contains multiple instances of the same value can also be achieved using an XSL template and the “following” operator. The following was achieved with the help of this article: http://www.bernzilla.com/item.php?id=333 , and displays a unique list of values from the Title column of items in the list.

<xsl:template match="/" xmlns:SharePoint="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" xmlns:__designer="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/designer" xmlns:asp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ASPNET/20">

        <xsl:variable name="unique-list" select="/dsQueryResponse/Rows/Row[not(@Title=following::Row/@Title)]" />

        <xsl:for-each select="$unique-list">

        <xsl:value-of select="@Title" />

        </xsl:for-each>        

    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Implementation Examples:
There are numerous circumstances where you need a distinct list of values from a specific column in a list, across all items. A common scenario may be a dynamic menu system, that provides filter options for content on a page based on existing values in a particular column.

Implementing a dynamic menu system using this technique would involve selecting one or more columns from the main list in SharePoint to be used when listing filter options dynamically. The menu should list all unique values from a specific field in the list, and be formatted in a way that allows the page to respond to a selection by filtering content.

The simplest form of this would be a dynamic filter menu displaying options from one field in a list. When an option is selected, the content on the page (from the associated list) is filtered based on the selected option. Creating a multi-dimension menu to filter using multiple columns is also achievable using this technique, where a sub-menu would also exist on the page. In this case, when an option is selected from the main menu, the sub-menu options are changed (filtered) to show options relevant to the main menu selection. Once an option is then selected from the sub-menu, the list or library on the page is then filtered using both fields.

More SharePoint Designer Training & Tutorials at SPDTraining.com

2011-02-19T17:29:00.009+11:00

Not Found.

MOSS: Multiple Line Text Field - Consolidate appended text from versions for use in SharePoint Workflow

2011-01-23T16:44:00.000+11:00

When playing around with "Multiple Lines of text" fields that were configured to append changes to the previous versions. I found that when trying to use the value in the field in a workflow created using SharePoint Designer, it would only find the value entered into the field in the most recent version of the item even if the field was left blank. For example, if you create a new list item with some text in the multiple lines of text field, the workflow will pick up the value as expected. If you then make a change to the item, but leave the appended text field blank this time, the version is incremented and the most recent version will not have a value for this field. The result in the workflow created using SharePoint Designer was that it would only see the value in the field of the most recent version. I needed all entries appended to the field, and not just the most recent by consolidating the text from each version.

I achieved this using a workaround solution, as I was not able to access data from past versions of a list item without writing or installing custom workflow extensions for SharePoint Designer. My solution was to create a hidden text field in the list, which was updated using a separate workflow each time a change is made to the list item to replicate the "Append Text" functionality.

I left the original multiple line text field configured to append text to previous versions so that the historic entries of the text field could still be displayed in the standard display or edit form (the hidden field is not visible on edit/display fields as it should be manually edited by a user). The process of the workflow to append the new text to the hidden field was quite simple. I first used the "build a dynamic string" action to create a workflow variable that contained the past entries as well as the newly updated entry, including the modify date and modified by user for reference purposes. The next and final step is to update the hidden field with the value in the workflow variable only of the value in the two are not already equal. If they are equal when the worklow is initiated, the workflow will do nothing (stop). This is to help prevent the workflow from entering an indefinate loop for environments with SP1 or no service packs installed. This is because the process of updating the hidden field in the current list item can trigger a new instance of the workflow creating an endless loop. Incorporating a simple test into the logic to only update the hidden field if the new value is not equal to the existing value will prevent this from happening.

Now, when I need to use the the contents of the appended text field in a workflow, I can use the contents of the hidden field, which will contain the equivalent to the historic appended text field entries and not just the value from the most recent version.

Related:

InfoPath SharePoint Performance - Web Service Data Connections

2010-11-19T22:59:00.000+11:00

InfoPath provides a rich set of capabilities for integrating with SharePoint. This includes the ability to easily configure data connections to retrieve or submit data to SharePoint without the use of code. When the lists and libraries being queried from InfoPath become large, the InfoPath form can become slow when working with the results from data connections. This is more apparent if the form is being displayed in a browser using InfoPath Form Services, at the results of the query must be rendered into HTML, sent to the client and updated in the browser.

Many of the solutions that I have built in the past required variation to the process depending on if data exists in SharePoint, or if the data falls within specific ranges or explicit values. To do this, code was used to loop through the results of the secondary data sources to find the required records. This can become slow very quickly once there are a large number of documents of items in the SharePoint lists and libraries.

There are a number of methods that can be used to improve the performance of InfoPath forms that are integrated with SharePoint. If using the data connection wizard to create connections to SharePoint, the results of the selected lists will include items displayed in the default view of the list in SharePoint. This means that filtering, an appropriate sort order and item limit can be applied to reduce the number of items that are retrieved by the data connection from InfoPath, but you need to ensure that the criteria applied will always display the correct items from the list. If a SharePoint list item that is required by an InfoPath form is not displayed in the default view of the list, the items won’t be included in the result set when the data connection is executed.

An alternative approach may be to configure specific queries to the Lists web service on a SharePoint site. This allows for much greater functionality and control over the manipulation of data and the configuration of lists, sites, permissions, groups and much more. In terms of performance, configuring a query to the Lists Web Service can be done by including specific criteria that is then used to return a specific result set will take less time than returning and looping through results to find the relevant items. For a list or library with many items (1000+), retrieving all items, the looping through the results to find one specific item will slow the process considerably as it takes time to retrieve the large result set, as well as to iterate through it. If instead, a query is constructed with the same criteria used to find the list item when looping through the data source, then passed to the GetListItems method of the Lists Web Service, only the one item will be returned (if exists) in much less time. As there is only one record in the result set containing the required list item, the loop is no longer required which will further increase the performance of the InfoPath form.

Related:

Multiple Site Permissions Report Using Excel

2010-09-19T01:18:00.001+10:00

Managing SharePoint site permissions can become difficult when the Site Collection expands to have many sites with different permission settings for each. This is especially true if the permissions are not inherited from a parent site, list or library, or item level permissions are used on items in a list or library.

Some third party reporting tools provide an overview of the permission applied across a site collection, with the possibility to drill down to more detailed information about the configuration of groups and permissions applied to each site. This article explains how to use Excel to create a single report with permissions of multiple sites in one site collection.

This is achieved by using data connections and a "Web Query", by selecting the "world" option in Excel 2007 to create a data connection to configure. The address on the site permissions page for each site is added to a separate Web Query link, which retrieves the specified page from SharePoint, it retrieves data from these regions on the page when configuring the data connection. If the table that all users / groups and their assigned permission levels is selected as the region to use, the spreadsheet can retrieve this data from SharePoint and display on the Excel sheet.

Once a connection is configured for each of the sites, the spreadsheet will list permissions from each of the sites as dynamic data sources / connections are renewed. You may need to configure a data connection to insert additional rows if there is not enough space in the current spreadsheet to fit the updated information. Configuring data connections on a periodic background refresh time frame, or to download the data when the spreadsheet loads will help to ensure that the report will remain up-refresh to implement to date.

The report can be useful tool for SharePoint Administration, as it allows for permissions from multiple sites to be listed on an Excel spreadsheet, making it easy to see how the environment is configured. In some cases, specific permissions are required to view permission levels on a site or list so the user that the report must have access permissions for each of the sites included in the report.

Procedure:

Note the urls of the Permissions page on any site you want to display data in the report
Using Excel, select the "world" option from the Data Connections tab.
Enter the URL of the page permissions for one of the locations in the "Address" field
Select the region of the page you would like to draw data from
Press "Import" to import data. You asked where the location data
In the data connection properties, select "Refresh data when opening the file" if you want the data to be updated whenever the spreadsheet report opens.
On the "External Data Range Properties" dialog (right click on the data, or select the"Properties"option on the Connections tab), select the option to insert new rows for data to make ensure that data from the different connections doesn’t overlap.

A further improvement could be to dynamically configure data connections from a list of sites found either directly from the SQL database, or by scraping the list of sites on the "site hierarchy" page on the site collection root. This can obviously lead to a very large number of connections needed to generate a report with permissions of all sites, so an interim step should be possible to include data from a small selection of the sites each time. Since the permissions page for each SharePoint site has the same layout, a macro or similar should be written to run the Web Query using the dynamic list of URLs, and by automatically providing the region the page that contains the information required.

More about SharePoint Permissions:

Managing content using permissions - Show or hide ASP / SharePoint controls or HTML using OOB functionality provided by the SPSecurityTrimmedControl class, which can be included in a .aspx Page or Master page using SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio. SharePoint: Show or Hide Content based on Permissions provides further examples of using SPSecurityTrimmedControl to restrict content to users based on their permission on the current site, list or item.

A list of Programmatic uses of the SPBasePermissions Enumeration, which is used by many components of the SharePoint Object Model. SPBasePermissions can also be used without requiring code with SPSecurityTrimmedControlas in the reference above.

Another SharePoint Reporting tip:

SharePoint Designer allows you to run a range of different reports on a site and content in a SharePoint environment. Using a Macro that is run in SharePoint Designer, it is possible to automate the process of running reports across multiple sites. The article SharePoint Designer (2007) - Run reports for all sites programmatically explains how to do this, and includes the macro code to run the process. All you need to do is supply you list of sites to run the reports on, select the type of report to run and the save location for the files generated for teh reports and off you go...

2010-09-14T02:40:00.002+10:00

Not Found.

User Information List not Synchronised with User Profiles

2010-08-26T21:27:00.001+10:00

This evening I ran into a profile synchronisation issue, where fields available in the User Information List were showing outdated personal information for each account, even when the equivalent field on the user profile had been updated. A field in the User Profiles was previously mapped to a field in Active Directory, and successfully pulled the corresponding data from AD during profile imports.

I wanted to allow the field to be edited in SharePoint, so AD mapping for this field was then removed. Data that was previously pulled from AD remained in the field, and at this point was in sync with data in User Information Lists accross the site collection. After making changes to the information via the My Profile area on the MySite Host, the changes were not reflected in User Information Lists.

Both full and incremental profile imports had run after the changes were made, but this didn't seem to have any effect on User Information Lists. I also used the sync operation in stsadm to force synchronisation of the User Information List (Both Profile Synchronization & Quick Profile Synchronization jobs), but this also had no effect. I also thought that the issue may have been due to the fact that this environment is used only for development purposes, and has had a small number of local service accounts as well as accounts imported from AD over time, some of which no longer exist. I tested this by modifying profile information for both a local and AD account, then forced a profile sync using stsadm. I was able to update information in the “My Profile” for both accounts, but neither of the changes were applied to User Information Lists after the sync jobs were completed.

After running the "stsadm -o sync -listolddatabases <num days>" command, I found that there were two databases with out of date sync information. I then ran the "stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases <num days>" command to remove the outdated sync information. The article Syncing WSS and MOSS User profile properties with Active Directory by Christian Dam provided me with information about User Profile Synchronisation, as well as the stsadm sync operation, which assisted with the process.

Once the old sync information databases were removed, I then retried forcing the sync operation for both the Profile Sync. & Quick profile Sync. Jobs. After checking that the Timer Job Status for the sync jobs had completed successfully via Central Administration, I then compared the information in User Information Lists on the site, which had also been successfully updated.

Other Related Resources:

Set SharePoint List Form Web Part field values using JavaScript when Creating New Item

2010-08-19T23:35:00.001+10:00

How to set values of form fields generated by the SharePoint List Form Web Part when adding a new item to the list using JavaScript.

Using a custom metadata field in a SharePoint list to set categorisation & filter criteria that is later used by List and Data View Web Parts to arrange & filter content for specific audiences. Depending on the audience that a user is in, I wish to set alternate default values for specific fields rendered by the List Form Web Part.

In most cases, a custom multiple choice field in the list will be set to a value which corresponds to the current user’s audience, but will sometimes need to be manually adjusted. To improve the experience for end users, the appropriate checkbox option from the multiple choice field that corresponds to the current user’s audience will be selected when the form loads, and the default value for the field un-checked if required.

The custom field is used in multiple content types across the primary site collection. I found that when the field is included in a form rendered by the List View Web Part for a particular list, the HTML element name and id is not the equal to the same field rendered by a List Form Web Part on another list. For this reason, I included the javascript on the NewForm.aspx page only on the list i wish to implement the feature using a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP).

A separate CEWP containing the JavaScript for each audience was added to the page under the List View Web Part, then targeted to the corresponding audience.

The JavaScript used to update the field values is quite simple. As the field i wish to update is a multiple choice field (check boxes), I needed two lines of code in the script; the first unsellects the original default value for the field (set via the column settings), then selects the checkbox option that corresponds to the current user’s audience. As all CEWPs are targeted to each audience, only one should display and execute the JavaScript for each user. If a user is a member of more than one audience, the value set by the bottom most CEWP will be applied to the field rendered by the List Form Web Part.

Depending on the type of field being updated, you will need to update the JavaScript to set the field value with the appropriate data type and data. The steps below apply to a multiple choice field displayed as check boxes.

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" >

</script>

1. To find the Id of the fields that are being updated, view the source of the NewForm.aspx page and search for the internal name for the field. The field will be directly after a html comment containing information about the field:

<!--

FieldName="fieldname"

FieldType="SPFieldMultiChoice"

-->

2. Once you have found the position in the source containing the form input you with to update, first copy the id of the checkbox field that is selected by default.

3. In the first line of the above JavaScript, replace the text 'checkbox default value id' with the required Id of the form element.

4. Repeat step 2 to obtain the Id of the check box option you wish to select.

5. Replace (in the second line of the JS) the text 'checkbox required value id' with the required Id.

When the page loads, the CEWP corresponding to the current user’s audience will be displayed, resulting in the JavaScript updating the field values/selections in the above form generated by the List Form Web Part. The checkbox field specified in the second line of JavaScript will be selected, and the original default option unchecked.

Related:

Split List View web part labels (javascript) - The following is a javascript function created to split long questions / column titles on a SharePoint survey or list when editing (EditForm.aspx / DispForm.aspx).