Stump the Panel: SharePoint Q&A

Hello,

We are using SharePoint (I believe it's 2007) at my company, and my department is using the Employee Training Template for training registration. We like the functionality it contains, but there is one shortcoming that we've come across that we need to fix in order to be able to use it.

Using the built-in functionality, I can create a class on the calendar and register for it. But we need to capture some information when users register (department, phone number, etc. -- just a couple of text fields). So I need to add a couple of fields to the Register.aspx page. I want those fields to be required, so that the user cannot click OK until there is data in those fields.

I have added columns for that data in the library, but of course the fields do not appear on the Register.aspx page. I need to manually add them somehow, and I know I need to get into the code of the page to do it. I know a little about it, so I am comfortable enough in that environment, but I have no idea where to start to do this.

Has anybody dealt with this, and can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

The page has to be opened in Sharepoint Designer and the fields added into the code. I've done extensive work with this template. You'd add something like this:


making sure to set the proper field names and columns and to not reuse any ff# values.

Instead of monkeying with the code, what I did was to create additional people and group columns in my registration list. You can set the display for these columns to phone number and department that get populated from the Active Directory import of your user profiles. Then in the registration workflow, I just added a step that updates these fields to the created by user.

Also, I documented a lot of information in my project of updating this template to something usable. You can check pirateeric.wordpress.com for ideas. The content was migrated from my old blog, so some of the links may be dead. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ping me.

Thanks for your help, Eric. I am going to take a look at that stuff now.

I tried using the info from AD already, but the information is out of date and not reliable, hence the need to capture at registration. So I think I am going to have to work in the code, unfortunately.

I'm making more revisions to my template so the information is pretty fresh in my mind right now. I'll walk you through it.

Add the additional columns you require in the Registrations list.

In the Registrations list settings page, mouse over these new fields and note the field name in the bottom bar of the browser. If the full name doesn't appear, click on the link for the field and jot down the internal field name from the query string. If you see escaped markup like this, replace the %5F with an underscore.


Open Sharepoint Designer, expand the Lists, expand Registrations, and open the Register.aspx page. Navigate down the page until you get to the <xsl:template name="dvt_1.rowedit"> section.

Find this bit of code.

Copy this section of code and paste in as many times as columns as you created. Delete style="display: none" from the TR. Replase the ASP text box code with:

Now replace each instance of ff2 with a unique number. I typically start at 9000 so I know that I won't run into any issues with collisions. For each additional column, add 1 to the value you started with. Replace the FieldName values with the display name of the column and replace @Title with @TheColumnName you jotted down above. If you can't recall these, refresh the datasource on the page and the fields should show up in the DataFields section of the web part.

Save the changes and try to register for a class. It might be beneficial to try this on 1 additional column at first to make sure it's all functioning properly.

Also, if you want the field to be mandatory, use this code.

Wow, it worked like a charm. I can't thank you enough for this walkthrough. It really, really helped.

Thanks again!!