Late 2007 Lightning Tools developed a cross site collection rollup web part called the Lightning Conductor Web Part. The Lightning Conductor Web Part is similar to that of the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) but with three major benefits!
- The web part can roll up from across site collections
- You don’t have to manipulate XSL and XML to display multiple columns from your lists.
- It can be used in a Windows SharePoint Services (WSS v3.0) or SharePoint Foundations 2010 (SPF2010) environment.
It is considered a best practice to use multiple site collections instead of one big site collection since you then have the opportunity to have more than one content database per site collection. This means that your content databases are smaller, and are therefore more easily manageable especially when it comes to backup and restore.
Lightning Tools also developed the Lightning Conductor Web Part for SharePoint 2010 since the same limitations still exist in the Content Query Web Part 2010.
Over the past three years, customers have told us that they want more! They also want to aggregate from lists and libraries that exist in other web applications. At first we thought that this would be too much of a performance impact on SharePoint. We have continued to work on the concept however and believe we have a product now that will enable you to aggregate any list or library from any site within your Farm whilst offering good performance.
Before releasing this product, we want your opinion. If you use SharePoint 2010, and you need to aggregate from lists across multiple web applications, why not give it a go?
Below you can see the easy to use interface allowing the cross web application rollup from the web part placed in http://sp2010 and yet it is aggregating from http://portal:
You have multiple options when it comes to configuring the scope for you rollup. You can rollup from the entire farm, selected web applications, selected site collections, selected sites or lists. You can then choose the list type as well as choosing the content types to filter the results.
Ever had to modify XSL to display multiple columns? With the Lightning Conductor Web Part you don’t need to! Simple select the columns (including custom columns) that you wish to rollup.
Users can then see all of the items of interest in one place saving valuable time searching or navigating for content. The list items returned are also security trimmed so nobody will see aggregated data that they do not have permissions to.
You can download the trial of this web part by navigating to: https://lightningtools.com//downloads/lcwp2010farm.zip
Please remember that this is not a release version and that we encourage your feedback. Please let us know what you think by emailing support@lightningtools.com
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