The Content by Search web part (CSWP) is a new web part available to SharePoint 2013 Enterprise edition. In previous versions of SharePoint, you could rollup your SharePoint content using the Content by Query Web Part (CQWP) from within the current site collection. The CSWP does not replace the CQWP but is an additional web part that enables you to display rolled up SharePoint content from across the farm using the search results.

The CSWP can be added to a web part page and then configured from scratch, or you can add pre-configured web parts such as the ‘Recently Changed Items’ or ‘Popular Items’ web parts which can then be further refined.

Firstly, in order for the CSWP to return aggregated SharePoint content, you must first make sure that you have a successful crawl of your SharePoint content since the CSWP relies on the search crawl being completed.

Adding the Content by Search Web Part

Before we being, you must first add a CSWP to your SharePoint page.

1. Click Edit on the Page ribbon.

2. Click the Insert ribbon and then click Web Part.

3. From the Content Rollup category, select ‘Content Search’ and then click Add.

4. Choose the drop down arrow of the Content by Search web part and click Edit web part.

Configuring the Query

Now that you have added the CSWP to the page, we can configure the query to return the desired results. The CSWP can aggregate content from any list or library from within the SharePoint farm and then filtered based upon the type of content or by meta data. Once the query has been built, you will be able to configure the display options.

To configure the query:

1. From the toolpane of the content by search web part, click the ‘change query’ button.

2. The CSWP dialog displays allowing you to configure the query using four different tabs.

3. The Basics tab displays some configuration options on the left hand side pane and preview results in the right hand pane. This is useful allowing you to see what content your web part will display prior to completing the configuration.

4. The first field in the Basics tab is the ‘Select a query’ field. The queries that you can select from are ‘Result Sources’ which are configured within the Search Service application through SharePoint Central Administration or via the Site Settings.

5. The example I will give is a configuration to rollup Tasks from Task lists. One thing we know about Tasks is that they are created using the Task content type of a content type that derives from Tasks. Therefore, I will select ‘Items matching a content type’ as my result source.

6. You can then choose your scope using the ‘Restrict by app’.

7. Although, the field is not in the correct order, the next field to set would be the ‘Restrict by content type’. Note that this field will change depending on your Result Source. Set the option to Task to rollup tasks. The preview pane should show the tasks that you will be aggregating.

8. You can then further restrict the results using the Restrict by tag or Add addition filter options.

9. You can further refine the results using the Refiners tab. An example would be filtering by Author or Assigned To.

10. The Settings tab allows you to set certain settings that affect the load behaviour of the web part among others.

11. The first setting it whether to use Query Rules. The Query Rules are set within the Site Settings and can be used to fine tune the search results.

12. Finally the Test tab provides you with the query text which can be used to test the search results.

Configuring the Display of your results

Now that the scope and the query is set, we need to make the results look better. The CSWP toolpane contains Display Templates depending on how you want to display the results. There are three types of control. List, List with Paging or Slideshow. The Item will field will then show variations of the displays using the display templates.

Once you have selected the display template, expand the Property Mappings and populate the managed property fields with the columns that you wish to display. In my example I have configured the display settings for a Task List.

The results are now shown within the Web Part.

Clicking the hyperlink for each result will navigate you to the item itself.

<Brett/>

The post Content by Search Web Part appeared first on Lightning Tools.

1. Prerequisites:
   • SharePoint Server 2013
   • Meta Man (it doesn’t necessarily need to be installed on the SharePoint server but it requires .net Framework 4.5 installed on the machine where you are going to run Meta Man from)
   • MS SQL server with any sample database (for this walk through we are going to use the NorthWind sample database )
   • Two related (“one-to-many”) tables in the external data source

    

2. Open Meta Man and choose to connect to a SQL Server data source. Select or enter the database name you wish to work with and press arrow in order to connect to selected database.

    

3. Upon successfully connecting to SQL Server you’ll see another window. In order to get a list of tables click “Tables” item in the list on the left pane. Now we can see listed all the tables for this particular database.

    

4. We will be working with two related tables “Territories” and “Region”, to add them to the Model, at first just drag “Territories” onto the “Diagram”

    

5. When you drop the table you will be shown the following dialog, which allows to configure the external content type before creation.  In this example we’ll accept all default values and click “Create” button.

    

6. You should have the following External Content Type on your Diagram

    

7. Now drag and drop another table “Region” onto the diagram. And the same way add it to the Model. You should now have 2 External Content Types on the diagram

    

8. Now we are going to add the association. Move mouse over “Region” External Content Type and click on any square point appeared around External Content Type

    

9. and drag to the square point appeared around “Territories” External Content Type

    

10. When you release the “Association Properties” dialog will show. Select the fields from combo boxes that provide Primary Key->Foreign Key functionality, tick “Use BCS Picker for foreign keys” check box and click “Create”

     

11. The diagram will update to show an arrow indicating we have an association between the two External Content Types. Now simply click “Generate” button and your BDC model file will get generated.

     

12. Now we need to import our BDC model file. Open up SharePoint 2013 Central Administration. Navigate to Manage Service Application->Business Data Connectivity Service. Click “Import” button on the ribbon.

     

13. Use the browser button to locate our BDC model file, or type in the path and filename yourself. Leave all the other options as they are for the time being, and click “Import”

     

14. SharePoint 2013 will now go through and validate your BDC model file is correct, once it is done you will get a success page.

     

15. Browse to the SharePoint page where you want to add the 2 Business Data web parts. Add a new Business Data List Web Part to this SharePoint page.

     

16. Click on the “Open the tool pane” link

     

17. Click on the icon to show the available External Content Types

     

18. Select our “Northwind_MetaMan.Region” External Content Type, click “OK”. Click “OK” on the tool pane then.

     

19. The external data from Region table is now displayed in the SharePoint Web Part

     

20. Next, Add a new “Business Data Related List” Web Part to the page

     

21. Configure the Web Part to use the “Northwind_MetaMan.Territories” External Content Type. The Web Part will display a message saying the following

     

22. Now we should set up the connection using the small arrow from the top right of our Web Part

     

23. Once this is done we can click on the arrows next to an item in our “Region” web part and the territories related to this region will display in our “Territories” web part 

     

We hope this walkthrough will be useful for you. If you have any questions feel free to email them to support@lightningtools.com

<Dmitry Kaloshin/>

The post Creating association between External Content Types in SharePoint 2013 using Meta Man appeared first on Lightning Tools.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/you-cant-do-records-management-in-sharepoint-020380.php

Export to Archive

Allows a user to export SharePoint documents (and document sets) to file system storage complete with their versions and associated metadata – such as:

· Document Properties

· Custom Properties

· Active Directory Group and User information, and

· Audit Details

Import Files Tool

Allows a user to select files and documents at a granular level for import to SharePoint from an external repository. For those documents which you may have previously exported using the Export to Archive Tool you will be able to restore those documents, versions and all their associated metadata.

Delete Item Tool

This tool provides a little more functionality over and above the native Delete function.

· It challenges a user to provide a reason for deleting the document before moving it to the recycle bin

·

Business benefit – SharePoint items can be tagged as deleted and cannot be viewed by the user but can be “undeleted”. This supports MoREQ requirements for 2 stage deletion.

Destroy Item Tool

Destroys a document from a list and destroys the Metadata stub. A scenario where this tool would be used could be where sensitive data has inadvertently been put on the system and needs to be positively removed e.g. Government protectively marked information at say Secret has been created/stored and managed inadvertently by a user and the system is only approved for Restricted use.

Business benefit – Some records must be expunged from existence so they can never be retrieved – criminal records etc

Stub Retrieval Tool

Allow a user to retrieve the metadata stub for all deleted items in a list.

Business benefit – This feature supports the two stage deletion process by enabling retrieval of records marked for deletion.

Attend a live product demonstration of this tool on the 9th May 2013: http://lightningtools.com/webcasts/

<Brett/>

The post Compliance Extender–Records Management tool appeared first on Lightning Tools.

1. Prerequisites:
   • SharePoint Server 2013
   • Meta Man (it doesn’t necessarily need to be installed on the SharePoint server but it requires .net Framework 4.5 installed on the machine where you are going to run Meta Man from)
   • MS SQL server with any sample database (for this walk through we are going to use the NorthWind sample database )

2. To connect to SQL Server click appropriate data source item on the left pane on the initial screen.

   

3. Enter the name of your MS SQL server and select the authentication mode in the appeared connection settings area on the right side . If you are using SQL Authentication you will also have to enter your SQL user account details. Press arrow near “database name” combo box in order to retrieve list of available databases.

   

4. The combo box will now be populated with your database server names.

   

5. Select one database server name and press arrow in order to connect to selected data source

   

6. Upon successfully connecting to SQL Server you’ll see another window. In order to get a list of tables click “Tables” item in the list on the left pane.

   

7. Now we can see listed all the tables for this particular database.

   

8. We create an external content type by dragging and dropping a table onto our design surface which is the large area on the right side. We will be working with the “Territories” table, to add it to the model , just drag it onto the “Diagram”.

   

9. When you drop the table you will be shown the following dialog, which allows to configure the external content type before creation. You may modify the external content type name, change identifier and add the methods to the external content type. In this example we’ll accept all default values and click “Create” button.

   

10. You can see created external content type on the design surface with the listed methods and identifier.

    

11. Now all we need to do is generate our application definition file. First we need to set the path to save the file. We set this location by going “Settings” from the titlebar.

    

12. In the model file name textbox you should manually type the output file name and select model file path using the browse button. Click “Save” button.

    

13. Once you have saved the filename and path to create your BDC model file to simply click “Generate” button and your BDC model file will get generated.

    

14. Now we need to import our BDC model file. Open up SharePoint 2013 Central Administration. Navigate to Manage Service Application->Business Data Connectivity Service. Click “Import” button on the ribbon.

    

15. Use the browser button to locate our BDC model file, or type in the path and filename yourself. Leave all the other options as they are for the time being, and click “Import”

    

16. SharePoint 2013 will now go through and validate your BDC model file is correct, once it is done you will get a success page.

    

17. Browse to the site where you want to add the External List. Click “Site Contents”->”add an app”.

    

18. Select “External List”

    

19. Enter a name for External list and click on the icon to show the available External Content Types

    

20. Select our generated Northwind_MetaMan.Territories External Content Type, click “OK”

    

21. Click “Create”

    

22. Your external data from MS SQL database is now displayed in the SharePoint External List

    

We hope this walkthrough will be useful for you. If you have any questions feel free to email them to support@lightningtools.com

<Dmitry Kaloshin/>

The post Meta Man – Getting Started appeared first on Lightning Tools.

Ever since SharePoint 2003 (Yes 2003, not 2013), I have always been a huge fan of the Data View Web Part (DVWP). The Data View Web Part was the Swiss army knife of web parts allowing you to do all sorts of cool stuff with external data sources and SharePoint Lists. Here is a link to a blog showing the Data View Web Part in use with Microsoft Frontpage 2003. http://flylib.com/books/en/2.138.1.313/1/

The DVWP could take a SharePoint list from one Team Site and display it in another with additional styling. You could connect to Web Services, XML Files, RSS Feeds, Oracle and SQL databases with ease and display the data with conditional formatting, aggregate functions, pre-set styles etc. Of course using the web part left you with ghosted pages! But that was really cool, as you could give somebody the official role in your organization of being Chief Ghost Hunter.

The DVWP improved in SharePoint Designer 2007 offering more styling options and was also available in SharePoint Designer 2010 offering the capabilities of connecting to even more external data sources through REST.

Many of the out-of-the-box web parts in SharePoint were based upon the Data View Web Part. Below is a screenshot of a Business Data List web part from Business Connectivity Services open in SharePoint Designer providing the capability to perform formatting of the data, complete control of the display of the data and in addition conditional formatting. You could insert images such as traffic light icons and then hide them based upon a condition meaning that you now had KPI’s on your external data! It was so easy and powerful.

Unfortunately, the Design view has gone! Yes.. GONE! Along with vinyl, cassette tapes, and VHS! But, we do have the memories and will be able to tell our grandchildren the story of how easy it was in the olden days when we used to be able to display data so easily without having to write any code! If you think that story would be a bit dull. You could always inject a personality into it such as “Wonderlaura” who was a Data View Web Part Superhero.

So this is what SharePoint Designer looks like today:

This means we won’t have a tool out-of-the-box whereby we can so easily modify the display of Search Result web parts, BCS web parts, SharePoint Lists and Libraries, XML files, RSS feeds, SQL database tables and more.

But, you will have the Lightning Tools Data Viewer Web Part!

This is version 1.0.0.0 of the Data Viewer Web Part which will work with SQL, Oracle, and SharePoint List/Library data sources and here are its capabilities:

· Connect to Data Sources without code or even leaving the browser

· Display SQL Tables, Views, Stored Procedures

· Display Oracle data

· Display SharePoint List or Libraries from any site collection in any web application

· Full Insert, Update and Delete options

· Sorting, Grouping, and Filtering

· Number/String Formatting

· Aggregate Functions such as Min, Max, Count, AVG

· Conditional Formatting

· Pagination

· Caching

· Connect to other Data View Web Parts for Parent/Child or Summary/Detail relationships.

You can do all of the above without customizing your page or even entering SharePoint Designer allowing you to connect to your external data in just minutes.

There is also an extensive roadmap which includes more data sources such as OData, BCS External Content Types, REST, XML, ODBC and more.

You can download a trial or watch a video of the web part today: http://lightningtools.com/products/data-viewer-web-part/

<Brett/>

The post SharePoint 2013 Data View Web Part appeared first on Lightning Tools.

The webinar will include:

Lightning Tools provides two web parts that will help you improve communication within your business whilst also cutting down on the endless flow of emails. Rather than keeping vast amounts of useful information locked in individuals inboxes, Social Squared and Lightning Chat encourage users to share discussions and useful information whilst becoming more efficient in their inter-company communication. Brett Lonsdale will be demonstrating the Lightning Tools Social Squared forum web part and the instant messaging tool ‘Lightning Chat’.

To attend the webinar live on Tuesday 19th March 5pm GMT  giving you the opportunity to ask questions, register here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/381607390

<Brett/>

The post Social Squared and Lightning Chat webinar appeared first on Lightning Tools.

Now Available: Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012
Woot – the RTM (or whatever you want to call it) release of the Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 have made it.

Building global navigation in SharePoint 2013
Cross site collection navigation in SharePoint has always been painful. Waldek shows us how things are easier (although a little code still needs to be written) with Managed Meta Data and SharePoint 2013.

Durandal meets SharePoint 2013.
With Provider Hosted Apps (and Auto-Hosted to a certain degree) in SharePoint 2013 we can use whatever crazy technology and implementation we want to build our solutions! Rainer Wittmann shows how to Durandal to build a Single Page Application SharePoint 2013 App.

<nickswan/>

The post SharePoint Weekly #22 appeared first on Lightning Tools.

· Content Query Web Part

· Data View Web Part

· Relevant Documents

· Search Core Results

· Calendar Overlays

Brett will complete the presentation with a small demo of the Lightning Conductor Web Part and what benefits it can bring over the out-of-the-box web parts.

To register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/940342638

<Lightning Tools Team/>

The post Content Aggregation Webinar (SharePoint 2010) appeared first on Lightning Tools.

Creating SharePoint lists with Excel data using Access 2013
Want to get data from Excel into a list? Access 2013 offers up another way of doing it.

Antivirus and SharePoint 2013
If you are deploying SharePoint 2013 you will want to know what your Antivirus options are.

Customising the Content Search Web Part – Part 1 – What you get in the box
There’s going to be a lot written about the Content Search Web Part as it is such a bit part of SharePoint 2013. Martin Hatch gets us going with his first of 4 articles.

Building your first Provider-Hosted App for SharePoint using Windows Azure
Part 1
Part 2
The last 2 links are actually from the same series. Well worth a read if you are building SharePoint Apps. If you want to try out a Provider Hosted App – check out our Social Squared Beta App.

At some point I’m hoping to get around to writing about how we handle the multi-tenancy issues with our Social Squared Beta App.

<nickswan/>

The post SharePoint Weekly #21 appeared first on Lightning Tools.

1. Prerequisites:

• Server machine with Microsoft SharePoint 2013 installed
• Client machine with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional or higher

2. Create an External Content Type (follow along with our blog post here : Creating an External Content Type with SharePoint Designer 2013) on the SharePoint server. In my example I have one External Content Type called Territory.

3. Click on the External Content Type in Central Administration and remember the column names. We’ll use them later. I have “RegionID”, “TerritoryDescription”, “TerritoryID”

4. Create an External List on the SharePoint page based on the External Content Type.

5. Your data from external datasource is now displayed in the SharePoint External List

6. In order to retrieve items within the external list check this URL in the browser http://<your site>/_api/web/lists/getbytitle(‘<your external list name>’)/items (in my case it looks like http://lyra/_api/web/lists/getbytitle(‘Territory’)/items)

Now let’s create a WPF application that will pull the data from the External List via REST. On a client machine open Visual Studio

7. Add a New Projecy

8. Expand the “Visual C#/Windows” node, select “WPF Application” project type

9. Give your project a name i.e “RESTfulBCSDemo” and click “OK”

10. In order to display the Line of Business data from the External Content Type in our WPF client application we will add a ListBox control to our main window from the Toolbox. Give ListBox a name i.e. externalDataListBox.

11. Set the properties of the ListBox in xaml file as follows

<ListBox Margin=”12″ Name=”externalDataListBox” FontFamily=”Courier New” FontSize=”14″ ItemsSource=”{Binding ExternalData}”/>

12. Now add several “using” directives in the code-behind class file MainWindow.xaml.cs :

using System.Net;
using System.Xml.Linq;

13. Add following members to MainWindow class and initialize them properly:

private string userName = “<your user name>”;

private string pwd = “<your password>”;

private string domain = “<your domain>”;

private string requestUrl = “<URL endpoint to retrieve items within the external list>”;

private List<string> columnNames = new List<string>(new string[] { “<your column1>”, “<your column2>”, “<etc>” });

14. Add a method that will pull data from external list:

private void PullDataFromExternalList()
{
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(requestUrl);
request.Credentials = new CredentialCache { { new Uri(requestUrl), “NTLM”, new NetworkCredential(userName, pwd, domain) } };
request.Accept = “application/atom+xml”;
using (HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse)
{
if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK)
throw new Exception(String.Format(
“Server error (HTTP {0}: {1}).”,
response.StatusCode,
response.StatusDescription));
XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(response.GetResponseStream());
XNamespace d = “http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices”;
XNamespace m = “http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata”;
XNamespace atom = “http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom”;

var columnNamesWithNamespace = columnNames.Select(c => d + c);

foreach (var entity in doc.Descendants(atom + “entry”))
{
string s = string.Empty;
foreach (var property in entity.Element(atom + “content”).Element(m + “properties”).Elements().Where(p =>
columnNamesWithNamespace.Contains(p.Name)))
{
s += property.Value.Trim().PadRight(20) + “\t”;
}
externalData.Add(s);
}
}
}

15. In order to display the data in the list box add the following code:

public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
DataContext = this;
externalData = new List<string>();
PullDataFromExternalList();
}

private List<string> externalData;
public List<string> ExternalData
{
get { return externalData; }
}

16. Your code-behind class file should look like this

17. Run the application and voila, we can now see the Line of Business Data from the External List “Territory” in our client WPF application

In SharePoint 2013 we have multiple ways of accessing our BCS data programmatically. Using the C# client side object model as described in our post here:

http://lightningtools.com/blog/business-connectivity-services-in-sharepoint-2013-using-the-client-object-model/

Or using REST as we described above. One of the downsides of Client Side Object Model is it can only be used in .NET applications – so if you want to use a non .NET programming language the REST api is the way to go.

We hope this walkthrough will be useful for you. If you have any questions feel free to email them to support@lightningtools.com

<Dmitry Kaloshin/>

The post Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2013 – Access an External List via REST appeared first on Lightning Tools.