How to alternate row color using DVWP’s

I was on twitter the other day (like that is a surprise to anyone) and came across a question.  How do you alternate color for each row within a DVWP.  This is very easy when configuring the webpart within the list view and as it turns out, painless as well within the DVWP’s too.

Assuming you already have been schooled in making DVWP’s, let’s hop right into it.  After adding you DVWP to the page, put your cursor in the first row of the data that is displayed.  Make sure you do *NOT* put your cursor in the Column Title row…

Next you’ll want to right click within that cell and hover over the Select option, then pick Row.  This will highlight the entire row for you.  Now we can setup conditional formatting on our DVWP to display a color for every row.  By clicking on the chevron off to the right of the DVWP, you’ll get a fly-out menu with a lot of different options:

Click on Conditional Formatting from this menu, so we can setup the formatting for each row.  Click on Create and select Apply Formatting from this menu:

What we need to do is tell the DVWP a condition that we will expect to occur within our DVWP.  This could be a pretty much anything and it’s not bound to just what I’m showing.  Since we want each row to have a different color, choose [Row Number] is Odd from the Condition Criteria.

After clicking on OK, we’ll be prompted for the formatting we’d like to see when the condition is met.  We need to set the background to a certain color.  Select background from the left side and click on the drop down for background-color.

I’ve selected a very light grey because it’s easy on the eyes and looks good with my color scheme.  Feel free to play around with all of these options.  Conditional formatting is a very powerful tool when displaying data and I’ve only scratched the surface myself…

Here is my end result:

Feel free to ask questions!  P.S. I’ve also tested this with joins and merges and it works just fine.

C’mon, Really?

 

I’m using IE 8 fully updated BTW…

Crawl log error: Access is Denied

The error I’m receiving is: Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository. If the repository being crawled is a SharePoint repository, verify that the account you are using has "Full Read" permissions on the SharePoint Web Application being crawled. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.)

I believe this had something to do with changing the Alternate Access Mappings. This error and the change to the mappings happened around the same time. Of course I tried to change the mapping back to what it was previously, with no luck. Googled the morning away and then I found a regedit from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/896861

After a reboot, I reset all crawled content and now I’m able to crawl my Sharepoint site. Was very strange problem to me because I didn’t get this error when crawling my fileshares. With that info, I knew the credentials were fine, so I had to move on to another cause. The fix seems to be working great. It’s been running good for about 48 hours with multi-reboots for good measure. Please read carefully and make sure that this applies to you before implementing this fix.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/ ) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

Sorry, Windows Live Spaces doesn't support file uploads
Please:
1) Change to a different blog provider, then;
2) Save the draft
3) Change to HTML view, then back to the view you were on.
Your files will be ready to upload then.

Technorati Tags: MSSX 2008,MSS 2008,Search Server Express 2008,Crawl log error,Sharepoint

Sharepoint - Prompting for user credentials

At first this seemed to be an easy fix but after my first few trials and errors, I had to dig a bit deeper.  Let me set up the scenario:

User had just changed her password upon logging into Remote Desktop (Terminal Services for you hard core people).  After the login process, her credentials were out of sync on the original PC she was using to login to Remote Desktop.  That’s when the fun started.  So, I get a call and the user explains the issue: “I cannot see the intranet, what’s wrong?”  A quick jump over to the client and now I’m in the thick of it…  If you have been using Sharepoint enough, then you have seen this prompt before:

I simply typed the credentials in and WHAM!?!..  I get prompted again for credentials.  Curious, this time, I try my credentials.  Same thing is happening over and over again.  This user cannot see the intranet!!!  After finding out about the password change, I logged out and logged back in.  Now the page actually loaded, but after a few clicks, I’m prompted for credentials again… WTF?!?  Thinking on the fly, I just was curious to see what the event viewer would tell me.  I found these two error messages:

 

I initially thought the user account was being hammered via Remote Desktop by someone out in the world.  I pull up Active Directory to check the status of the account.  That didn’t go over, because the account wasn’t disabled.  At that point, I wanted to make sure the account was enabled, so I just disabled/enabled the account.  After doing that, the problem persisted, however, I did get a nugget of love in the Event Viewer this time!!!

Now we are on to something…  (WARNING!!! XP Instructions, so modify accordingly to your O.S.) Crack open the control panel, click on user accounts, click the Advanced tab, and finally onto the magic Manage Passwords button.  Buried in here was the user’s cached credentials that windows was pulling from and thus prompting us for the updated credentials.  I simply deleted it, as this functionality isn’t required for my environment.  I hope this helps!!!

Customize a NewForm.aspx to accept Query Parameters

Works on WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007

This post will show you to create a hyperlink in a Data View Web Part (DVWP) that open’s a customized NewForm.aspx. When the NewForm.aspx opens, it’ll have some of the required inputs already filled out for you. We’ll set this magic up by using DVWP and parameters passed from the DVWP to the NewForm.aspx.

I need to show you how I have my lists setup first, so let’s dive into that for a minute. I have two lists setup: 1. Calendar with two custom columns. These two columns are Job # and Job Name. The rest is default or whatever you’d like to have. The next list I have is a Tasks list that has these two custom columns as well. Here are some screen shots:

You should take notice that I’ve required Job # to be inputted on each form. This is a must because it’s our primary key, if you will. This is going to be used for filtering later on, so it’s important.

Now that we have those lists setup we can now create our custom dashboard that allows hyperlink filtering and our magical custom newform.aspx. Fire up sharepoint designer and create a new aspx page. Add a webpart zone to your page, so we’ll have a spot to place our DVWP. Now we’ll want to click on Data View, Insert Data View. Inside our Data Source Library, we’ll highlight the Calendar. Then you’ll select show data. This will allow us to select the rows we’d like to appear in our DVWP. I usually only select one row and then click the Insert Selected Fields As: Multiple Item View. After I get the DVWP to show up on my page, then I’ll choose to edit the columns as they seem fit. SAVE YOUR WORK! We’ll call this page: Dashboard Right now, we want to see only the Job # and Job Name fields from the calendar list. Now we need to add a column to the DVWP. This will provide us a place for an additional hyperlink to our Custom NewForm.aspx. In the new column, pick any row that has a job # and then type “Add Task…”. If you have done it right, it’ll populate your entire DVWP.

Here’s a quick glance at what it should look like:

Once you get this setup how you like it, we’ll need to add two parameters to our DVWP. When you highlight the DVWP, you’ll see a chevron on the right of it. That is a menu for Common Data View Tasks. Listed inside this menu is our parameters section. Open that and add two Query Strings. Here is a photo to guide you along:

We’ll need these in order to carry information from our Dashboard to our CustomNewForm.

We now need to create another new aspx page and customize it. This will be our custom NewForm.aspx. I called it AddTask.aspx, but you certainly can make it whatever you like. I saved my page in the same place where the NewForm.aspx is for the Tasks list that I’m using. Once we have added a new web part zone to our page, we can now add a custom form. If you follow the same steps as above to add a new DVWP, you’ll be fine. There are a few differences from what we did before though. You will add the DVWP as a New Item Form instead of Multiple Item View. Also you’ll want to make sure the DVWP is for the Tasks list and not the Calendar. You’ll also want to customize the inputs as you seem fit. Be sure to include any required fields on your Tasks list on your AddTask.aspx page. Also make sure that Job # and Job Name are inputs on your AddTask.aspx page. Ok once that has been setup, now we can get down to the magic.

We’ll now delete both of the text boxes for Job # and Job Name. We are going to replace them with our own. Highlight the form where you’d like for them to show up, and then select Insert, ASP.Net Controls, Text Box. We have to do that because when using the DVWP for a new item form, it wouldn’t allow me to alter the Value property. When I do it this way with our own ASP.Net control, I’m able to. Now we need to make these text boxes reference our Tasks list. There will be a little chevron on each text box. Clicking that will give us the options we need. Change the data field for both to relate to the field you need. i.e. Job # = Job #, you get the idea. Now switch to code view and drop a few custom lines of magic. First we need to add our Query Strings as a parameter for our page to use. This is the code we need to add:

<ParameterBinding Name="JobNum" Location="QueryString(JobNum)" DefaultValue="Please Type a Job Num" />
<ParameterBinding Name="JobName" Location="QueryString(JobName)" DefaultValue="Please Type a Job Name" />

 

You’ll need to search the code view using:

<ParameterBinding Name

Just paste the code provided above in the <ParameterBinding Name section. I usually just search the code view for <ParameterBinding Name using ctrl+f. Put these two lines of code below everything else in this section. Now we need to add these two lines in the <xsl:stylesheet section as a parameter. Using the same logic as above, I searched the code view for <xsl:param This can be a bit convoluted because there are many <xsl:param under many other xsl:template names. I added mine directly under the xsl:stylesheet. You’ll find a few parameters there, so add them accordingly. Here is the code that you need to add:

<xsl:param name="JobNum" />
<xsl:param name="JobName" />

 

Now we need to add a value to our customized text boxes. Again search the code for Job Name. Below that is the text box code. It begins with:

<asp:TextBox runat="server"

 

We need to modify this line and add one attribute:

value=”{$JobName}”

Your text box code should look like this… I suggest only to add the line of code above and not copy what is listed below!

 

<asp:TextBox runat="server" id="ff10{$Pos}" value="{$JobName}" text="{@Job_x0020_Name}" __designer:bind="{ddwrt:DataBind('i',concat('ff10',$Pos),'Text','TextChanged','ID',ddwrt:EscapeDelims(string(@ID)),'@Job_x0020_Name')}" />

 

Now change the Job # text box the same way except we’ll add this line of code instead:

value=”{$JobNum}”

 

SAVE YOUR WORK! We need to add one last thing to our Dashboard page and that’s our magic hyperlink! With that page open in Design View, highlight the “Add Task…” text that we added above. Right click and select hyperlink. We have to link this page to our AddTask form and add our parameters. Our link should look like this:

http://addtasks.aspxurl/?JobNum={@Job_x0020__x0023_}&JobName={@Title}

Save this page on final time and cross your fingers because I think we are ready to test this baby out! Open your Dashboard page and click Add Task… This should open your AddTask.aspx page and automagically fill out Job # and Job Name.

If you like this or need some clarification, please feel free to drop me a comment.

 

Technorati Tags: Custom NewForm.aspx,WSS 3.0,Sharepoint,MOSS 2007