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- Business Connectivity Services In SharePoint 2013 and MySQL using Meta Man
- 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)
- MySQL database server with any sample database
- Windows 64-bit, Connector/ODBC 5.1.12 must be installed on the machine where SharePoint 2013 is running and on the machine where you are going to run Meta Man from.
- Open Meta Man. To connect to My SQL server click ODBC data source item on the left pane on the initial screen.
- Select MySQL as data source type. Enter ODBC connection string (for example it can be “Driver={MySQL ODBC 5.1 Driver};Server=canopus;Port=3306;Database=world;Uid=root;Pwd=12345;Trusted_Connection=yes;”). Press arrow in order to connect to MySQL data source.
- Upon successfully connecting to MySQL 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.
- 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 “country” table, to add it to the model , just drag it onto the “Diagram”.
- 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.
- You can see created external content type on the design surface with the listed methods and identifier.
- Now all we need to do is to deploy our BDC model. First we need to set URL of where you want to deploy your model. We set this URL by going “Settings” from the title bar.
- In the model deployment URL textbox you should manually type URL of SharePoint 2013 Central Administration . Click “Save” button.
- Once you have saved the URL to deploy your BDC model file to simply click “Deploy” button and your BDC model file will get deployed.
- SharePoint 2013 will now go through and validate your BDC model file is correct, once it is done you will get a success dialog.
- Browse to the site where you want to add the External List. Click “Site Contents”->”add an app”.
- Select “External List”
- Enter a name for External list and click on the icon to show the available External Content Types
- Select our generated world_MetaMan.country External Content Type, click “OK”
- Click “Create”
- Your external data from MySQL database is now displayed in the SharePoint External List
- Business Connectivity Services In SharePoint 2013 and Oracle using Meta Man
- 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)
- Oracle server with any sample database (for this walk through we are going to use the Oracle Database Express Edition 11g Release 2 with included sample database)
- Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Client (11.2.0.1.0) for Microsoft Windows (x64) must be installed on the machine where SharePoint 2013 is running and on the machine where you are going to run Meta Man from. Please ensure you select the “Administrator” type of installation when you install Oracle client.
- Open Meta Man. To connect to Oracle server click appropriate data source item on the left pane on the initial screen.
- Enter the name of your Oracle server and your user account details(you may also use tnsnames.ora file in order to connect to Oracle server). Press arrow in order to connect to Oracle data source
- Upon successfully connecting to Oracle 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.
- 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 “DEPARTMENTS” table, to add it to the model , just drag it onto the “Diagram”.
- 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.
- You can see created external content type on the design surface with the listed methods and identifier. Now simply click “Generate” button and your BDC model file will get generated.
- 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.
- 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”
- SharePoint 2013 will now go through and validate your BDC model file is correct, once it is done you will get a success page.
- Browse to the site where you want to add the External List. Click “Site Contents”->”add an app”.
- Select “External List”
- Enter a name for External list and click on the icon to show the available External Content Types
- Select our generated xe_MetaMan.DEPARTMENTS External Content Type, click “OK”
- Click “Create”
- Your external data from Oracle database is now displayed in the SharePoint External List
- Creating Comparison and Wildcard Filters for BCS in SharePoint 2013 using Meta Man
- 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 )
- 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.
- 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.
- We will be working with table “Territories”, to add it to the Model just drag “Territories” onto the “Diagram”
- 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.
- You should have the following External Content Type on your Diagram
- Right click on the created external content type and choose “Configure Entity” menu item.
- In the entity configuration dialog go to Methods tab.
- Make sure that “Finder” method is selected and click on “Add” button in the “Filters” section
- Configure a wildcard filter for “Territories” table’s Finder method. In order to get by default all records where “TerritoryDescription” start with letter ‘B’ we’ll set default value “B%”. Click on “Save” button.
- Using the above mentioned steps, define a comparison filter for the “Territories” table. In order to get by default all records where “RegionID” is equal 1 we’ll select comparison operator “Equals” and set default value to one. Click on “Save” button.
- We’ll combine created filters using “And” logical operator and click “Update”
- Now simply click “Generate” button and your BDC model file will get generated.
- 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.
- 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”
- SharePoint 2013 will now go through and validate your BDC model file is correct, once it is done you will get a success page.
- Browse to the site where you want to add the External List. Click “Site Contents”->”add an app”.
- Select “External List”
- Enter a name for External list and click on the icon to show the available External Content Types
- Select our generated Northwind_MetaMan.Territories External Content Type, click “OK”
- Click “Create”
- Your filtered external data from MS SQL database is now displayed in the SharePoint External List
- You can change default filter values by going “Modify View” on the ribbon
- Go to “Data Source Filters” and set new values. Click “OK”
- External list now shows another filtered records from MS SQL database
- We are ready for SharePoint 2013! Are you?
- Content by Search Web Part
- Creating association between External Content Types in SharePoint 2013 using Meta Man
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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”
- 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.
- You should have the following External Content Type on your Diagram
- 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
- 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
- and drag to the square point appeared around “Territories” External Content Type
- 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”
- 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.
- 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.
- 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”
- SharePoint 2013 will now go through and validate your BDC model file is correct, once it is done you will get a success page.
- 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.
- Click on the “Open the tool pane” link
- Click on the icon to show the available External Content Types
- Select our “Northwind_MetaMan.Region” External Content Type, click “OK”. Click “OK” on the tool pane then.
- The external data from Region table is now displayed in the SharePoint Web Part
- Next, Add a new “Business Data Related List” Web Part to the page
- Configure the Web Part to use the “Northwind_MetaMan.Territories” External Content Type. The Web Part will display a message saying the following
- Now we should set up the connection using the small arrow from the top right of our Web Part
- 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
- Compliance Extender–Records Management tool
- Meta Man – Getting Started
- 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 )
- To connect to SQL Server click appropriate data source item on the left pane on the initial screen.
- 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.
- The combo box will now be populated with your database server names.
- Select one database server name and press arrow in order to connect to selected data source
- 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.
- 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”.
- 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.
- You can see created external content type on the design surface with the listed methods and identifier.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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”
- SharePoint 2013 will now go through and validate your BDC model file is correct, once it is done you will get a success page.
- Browse to the site where you want to add the External List. Click “Site Contents”->”add an app”.
- Select “External List”
- Enter a name for External list and click on the icon to show the available External Content Types
- Select our generated Northwind_MetaMan.Territories External Content Type, click “OK”
- Click “Create”
- Your external data from MS SQL database is now displayed in the SharePoint External List
- SharePoint 2013 Data View Web Part
- Social Squared and Lightning Chat webinar
- SharePoint Weekly #22
- Content Aggregation Webinar (SharePoint 2010)
- SharePoint Weekly #21
- Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2013 – Access an External List via REST
- Server machine with Microsoft SharePoint 2013 installed
- Client machine with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional or higher
- SharePoint Evolutions 2013
In this walkthrough we will demonstrate how to integrate MySQL database with Microsoft SharePoint 2013 through ODBC and display the data on SharePoint 2013 page. In order to do that we will describe how to create a new external content type for MySQL by means of Meta Man.
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/>
In this walkthrough we will demonstrate how to integrate Oracle database with Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and display the data on SharePoint 2013 page. In order to do that we will describe how to create a new external content type for Oracle by means of Meta Man.
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/>
In this walk through we are going to show you how to create by Meta Man comparison and wildcard filters for External Content Type in SharePoint 2013. These filters will let you narrow down the amount of records being returned by your back end data source which will not only improve performance, but also make your users lives easier as they have less data to work with and process. We will consider an example for MS SQL but the same way you may work with any other data source supported by Meta Man.
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/>
Lightning Tools has a full suite of products available for SharePoint 2013. The good news is that they are still very much required even with the SharePoint 2013 improvements. The even better news is that if you buy a product for SharePoint 2010, you get the SharePoint 2013 version free of charge with your support and maintenance contract.
So, what’s available and why do you still need it?
Lightning Conductor Web Part
The Lightning Conductor Web Part is a cross site collection/cross web application rollup web part that can be easily configured by an end user. With SharePoint 2013, you now have the Content by Search Web Part. Although the Content by Search Web Part is a powerful product, it really needs the help of an administrator and developer to create the result sources and the view templates. The Lightning Conductor is configured without these requirements allowing any Site Administrator to configure their own rollup and build their own views without writing code or configuring search result sources. Below is a screenshot of how the Lightning Conductor can be configured in SharePoint 2013.
Download the free trial of the Lightning Conductor from: http://lightningtools.com/lightning-conductor-web-part-2013/
Meta Man 2013
Meta Man is a Business Connectivity Services connectivity tool for SharePoint 2013. SharePoint Designer 2013 can be used to create external content types in SharePoint 2013 but only for Microsoft SQL, WCF, or .NET Assemblies. Meta Man 2013 is a standalone executable tool that can be used to connect to Microsoft SQL, Oracle, OData, and ODBC data sources without the need to write any code. The BDC model file is created within minutes saving endless amounts of development time or SharePoint Designer frustration.
Download a free trial of Meta Man from: http://lightningtools.com/products/meta-man-2013/
Data Viewer Web Part
Since SharePoint 2003, we have enjoyed the Data View Web Part from Frontpage or now SharePoint Designer. The Data View Web Part is now virtually impossible to use in SharePoint Designer 2013 as the Design view and Split View have been removed. If you simply want to add styling or conditional formatting to a SharePoint list/library or external data source, you now cannot do so without code. Lightning Tools have developed the Data Viewer Web Part for SharePoint 2013 that now empowers you to connect to external data sources and SharePoint lists to provide this functionality. Below is a screenshot of applying conditional formatting from within the browser.
Download a free trial of the Data Viewer Web Part from: http://lightningtools.com/products/data-viewer-web-part/
Social Squared
Social Squared is a SharePoint 2013 discussion board replacement. The out-of-the-box SharePoint Discussion Board is much improved in SharePoint 2013 compared with its predecessor. It provides badges, featured posts, Like, and Questions which is a vast improvement. However, there is still a lot of functionality that Social Squared provides that users would expect from a discussion forum. This functionality includes:
· Forum Groups
· Moderation
· Abuse Reporting
· Reply with Quote
· Forum Reporting
· Sticky Topics
· Lock Topics
· Terms and Conditions acceptance
· + Much More
To download a free trial of Social Squared: http://lightningtools.com/products/social-squared/
DeliverPoint 2013
DeliverPoint 2013 is on its way! SharePoint 2013 permissions management has not changed a great deal. With the new ability to ‘Share’ content, it is more likely that permissions are going to be broken in many more places in SharePoint 2013 making it even more of a challenge to manage permissions. DeliverPoint 2013 provides end users with an in-context way of not just reporting, but managing permissions. Users can see who has permissions to sites, lists/libraries and items even if the permission is granted via an Active Directory group. DeliverPoint is not just for SharePoint farm administrators, but Site Owners and Site Collection Administrators too.
To download a free trial of DeliverPoint: http://lightningtools.com/products/deliverpoint-2010/
Lightning Tools also offers an app version of Social Squared and Lightning Chat which can be found in the SharePoint App Store: http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/sharepoint-help/buy-an-app-from-the-sharepoint-store-HA102897470.aspx
Remember! Buy a SharePoint 2010 product and get the 2013 version Free within your annual support and maintenance contract.
<Brett/>
Content by Search Web Part
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/>
In this walkthrough we will show how to create by Meta Man association between External Content Types. We will consider an example for MS SQL but the same way you may work with any other data source supported by Meta Man.
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/>
Designing and building business solutions has identified customer challenges in the areas of compliance and day-to-day management of unstructured data when using the vanilla capabilities of SharePoint 2010. When working in a regulated environment or have to comply with records management best practise Bramble.cc have developed a set of tools in response to the shortfall in functionality between SharePoint 2010 and MoREQ best practise as identified by The National Archives. To help close down this gap our SharePoint Practice has developed a suite of easy-to-use administrative tools, which reduces administrative time for Records Managers. The solution depends upon the implementation of SharePoint document sets.
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/>
In this tutorial we will go through how to connect to your External System using Meta Man, we won’t be doing any configuration of our model, we will just be looking at the quickest way to get your External Systems data into SharePoint as easily as possible.
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/>
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/>
Brett Lonsdale (co-founder of Lightning Tools) will be discussing the social features of SharePoint 2010 and how the Lightning Tools products “Social Squared” and “Lightning Chat” help provide the extra social functionality that companies require today.
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/>
Relatively quite week in Google Reader this week – still managed to pull out a few good things for you all…
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/>
Tuesday the 5th of March at 5pm UK time (12 noon EST), Brett Lonsdale (co-founder of Lightning Tools) will be providing a free to attend webinar on SharePoint Content Aggregation. During the webinar, Brett will be demonstrating the different ways that you can roll up content in SharePoint and which tool to use depending on your requirements. The following methods to rollup content will be shown:
· 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/>
Some good links for you this week:
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/>
One of the new things about the External List in SharePoint 2013 is the ability to interact with the External List via REST (the Representational State Transfer). In this blog post we’ll demonstrate how to pull the external data from an External List in a WPF client application.
1. Prerequisites:
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:
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/>
It’s nearly that time of year already! Each year the Combined Knowledge team put on a fabulous conference in London bang opposite Westminster Abbey. Each year has a different theme based on whereabouts in the SharePoint cycle we all are. When a new release of SharePoint is launched, there will be a SharePoint Evolutions conference that concentrates on what is new in the latest release as well as providing sessions on how we did things in the previous version. The following year is usually a “Best Practice” event, and then finally a general European SharePoint Conference.
Three years ago I was lucky enough to be selected along with Spence Harbar and Eric Shupps to provide part of the keynote. Steve Smith asked me to present on how we developed in SharePoint 2003 and how that had evolved to 2007 and 2010 which was presented by Spence and Eric.
This year I will be presenting two sessions. The first will be entitled “Building Business Data Dashboards in SharePoint 2010 with Business Connectivity Services”. Within the session we will be using the Out-of-the-Box Business Data web parts to build a Business Data Dashboard, along with some XSLT and SharePoint Designer to customise the look and feel of the web parts and to provide key performance information. My second session will be “What is new in Business Connectivity Services for SharePoint 2013”. Within the second session I will be presenting on the new features within the External List, How to connect to a published OData external data source, deploy an External Content Type as an app, and explain the new event listeners.
Lightning Tools has sponsored these events since they began and is proud to yet again be a gold sponsor. This year, Lightning Tools will be demonstrating its new products and launching its new Data Viewer Web Part product that overcomes the lack of Design view in SharePoint Designer 2013.
As always we will also be giving out signed copies of our Business Connectivity Services 2010 book at the booth, and giving away a cool radio controlled car.
This week, Lightning Tools will also be providing a prize to a lucky winner who registers this week. http://www.sharepointevolutionconference.com/index.html
<Brett/>