Workstation Converter

Here is an interesting tool to convert the Windows 2008 server into a work station so that we can develop on it easier…

http://www.win2008workstation.com/win2008/windows-server-2008-workstation-converter Please make sure you run it as an administrator…

PivotPoint is an interesting web part for BI SP Solutions

As my customers are always eager to have a better understanding of the data they have in the SharePoint lists, I am always on the look out for web parts which help me deliver the functionality with minimum coding from my side. Thus is was interesting to find the PivotPoint product. Please check it out in case you have a need to summarize data, create dashboards etc

http://www.pentalogic.net/sharepoint-products/pivotpoint

SharePoint 2010 Rocks

Having worked with SharePoint and delivered a number of projects in the last few years using this technology, I am excited to see the advances in this new version. Please check out this blog to see more of my experiences with SP2010

SharePoint : Cascading Form fields

Here was my problem:
- From a screen which shows the list of Ideas, the user could click on a link to add feedback. This opens a popu window with the Feedback Entry screen
- In the feedback entry screen, the title of the idea needs to be prepopulated

Here was my solutions:

- Use SharePoint Data View control – DataView DropDownList. Configuire it so that it is connected to the regular Feedback form Idea Title field
- Pass the ID of the Idea through a query string variable. Collect it and store it in a parameter

- User the selectedvalue = “{$IdeaID}” to make the drop down box show the Idea title passed on to it

It worked like a charm. Contact me if you need more details or if you know of a better way of doing this

Display recurring calendar events in SharePoint

My users are very specific. They wanted to have the events from the Calendar in a sub site to be listed on the main site home page. Easy right? Nope. They wanted to have a list of all the events and they wanted to have recurring events broken into individual events ! As you know, when you drag and drop the Calendar data source, the DataView displays only the parent recurring event. For those with similar problems, here is how I achieved the look and feel shown below :

Here is the trick I used. I created a page with the view on the sub site. Made sure I added all the style sheets for the look and feel. In the main site, I used a Page View web part to display the page. The user loved it since it had the scroll bar and all other features they wanted. A work around if you need one !