This is the second article in a multipart series that is intended to help you create mailing lists for your SharePoint sites or blogs without writing a single line of .NET Code. In the introductory article, I listed the project initiatives, requirements, and objectives. In Part 1, I created a secured backend where we store the subscribers’ contacts. In this article, we will continue our journey, let’s carry on!

In the previous article, I made use of the ‘Contacts’ list template, provided out-of-the-box by SharePoint, to create a list which will act as the backend for our mailing list. In this article, I will show you how to configure the ‘Contact’ content type, create a custom subscription form and do some sort of customization. The intention of these customizations is not only to make the subscription form look different from the out-of-the-box list forms but also to show you the power, simplicity, and efficiency of SharePoint Designer 2007.

1. Navigate to the list settings page > Advanced settings.


2. Make sure that management of content types is turned on.


3. Navigate to the contact content type settings page from the list settings as shown underneath:


4. Configure the content type fields from the content type settings page. We need a  list subscriber to mandatorily supply their first name, last name and e-mail address and optionally supply their Company, City and Country.


5. Now, navigate to the New Form (NewForm.aspx) by adding a new contact to the list as follows :   




6. As shown in the figure above we need to get rid of the highlighted areas. I will show you in this article, and the next one how, to accomplish that.
7. Open up SharePoint Designer, connect to your SharePoint site collection, and supply your credentials.
8. Choose the list that we created in the previous article from the folder list. If the Folder List is not visible, on the View menu, click Folder List.
9. Make a copy from the NewForm.aspx and rename the copied version from NewForm_copy(1).aspx to subscribe.aspx as follows: 






10. Change the list New item form from NewForm.aspx to subscribe.aspx using the supporting files tab of the list properties’ dialogue box as illustrated below:








11. Now choosing to add a new contact to the list will redirect you to subscribe.aspx rather than NewForm.aspx.
12. Our next task is to modify the newly created form (subscribe.aspx) to look like a mailing list subscription form rather than the traditional SharePoint list forms.
13. Open subscribe.aspx using SharePoint designer.
14. Select “New Item” highlighted in the figure below. Delete it with the colon preceding it.


15. Now, we need to eliminate the “New Item” from the form breadcrumb.

    15.1. Select the “PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb” placeholder from the Master Page toolbar as shown in the figure below.


Note:  You can show this toolbar if it is hidden from View menu > Toolbars.


15.2. The word (Master) on the content placeholder tab means that the content is retrieved from the master page. To make this content region editable to override the retrieved data, click the arrow in the upper-right corner to show the Common Content Tasks list, and then click Create Custom Content as shown in the figure below. This will automatically create a new content region that will fill the placeholder in this page rather than using the Master’s default content.




15.3. Replace the SiteMapPath control with a link to the site collection’s welcome page. You can use the handy “SPLinkButton” control in conjunction with “ProjectProperty” control to accomplish that as shown below. The  good thing about SPLinkButton is that it is aware of ~site and ~sitecollection expression tokens.





16. To change the page title “IE Tab title”, locate the ”PlaceHolderPageTitle” placeholder using the Master Page toolbar discussed above and replace the ListFormPageTitle control with your own title.




17. Now, we are in a good shape; only one non-compulsory step is left which is adding the left navigation bar back to the page. Note the word (Custom) on the content placeholder tab. This means that the content is custom content for this page only, and that it is not retrieved from the attached master page. Nevertheless, we do not need any custom content for this page. We need to retrieve the left navigation menu from the master page so the only thing we need to do is defaulting the region to the master’s content using the Common Content Tasks as shown in the figure below.


18. Save your changes by clicking Save on the File menu. A message appears warning you that saving your changes will customize a page from the site definition. Click Yes.


19. And here is what you will end up with, if you follow the preceding steps.

Note: If you are not pleased with the customizations that you have made to the page, you can always reset it to the site definition.

Summary:

In this article, I showed you how to configure the ‘Contact’ list content type, create a subscription form for the mailing list, make it the default New Item Form and do some simple customizations to it.

In the next article, I will show you how to customize the form fields, use the extremely powerful DataFormWebPart, change the form validation mechanism to be client sided, add your own validation logic, configure the SPDataSource control and much more ..

Guest Author: Ayman El-Hattab

Ayman El-Hattab is a SharePoint Developer & Speaker. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer as well as a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in SharePoint. Ayman writes articles about topics in relation to SharePoint and its related technologies for online magazines, publicly speaks for numerous user groups and offline communities, is the founder of SharePoint4Arabs.com, organizes events for EGYSUG and you will always find him active at MSDN and Technet forums.

We want to display KPI indicators with each item (green if we met the target, yellow almost, red not even close). I’ve been using Visual Indicators for the Masses: KPIs in WSS.  So I setup different lists for each one, So in financial the target/actual is set to currency. In customer loyalty it’s a number etc. This was working fine until today, when I got to see more of the real data. I learned under financial that the target/actual could be sometimes a $ amount, or it could be a count, or a percentage!!!

Well, this is a common situation in the IT field, requirements change as we go . The problem seemed interesting and Chris and I worked together to solve it. The final solution looks like this:

This is a simple solution. It does not require code deployment and it works on WSS. You only need some time and patience to build everything.

In order for everything to work you need 5 custom content types, 4 of these are being listed under New menu.

By selecting one of these the user will be taken to a different form that requires him to enter data in a particular format e.g. numeric, date, currency or percentage. You can use different validations or some custom fields for each of these content types. In this example we have used additional meta-columns: category, frequency, trend and report. In order to display and format all of these I used the Data View Web Part and custom XSLT stylesheet.

The KPI item input form allows the user to set a lot of options to each KPI. The interface is similar to one of SharePoint Enterprise KPIs but you can use this on WSS.

Content Types structure

When building solutions like this one, the most important part is to plan your Content Types ahead of time. To fulfill Chris’s requirements I had to build 5 content types as shown in the picture below:

The KPI Base content type holds fields that are common for each subsequent content type. All “child” content types inherit base columns from the KPI base and each adds something unique. The percentage column adds to the Goal and Value columns that are percentage type, numeric adds numeric fields and so on.

Although inheriting content types might sound a bit complicated the most important benefit is much easier maintenance. If you need to add some additional meta-data columns to all content types you only need to change base content type and all of the child content types will be updated. It also gives you flexibility in case you plan to modify child content types.

Implementing this solution

Implementing this solution to your environment is quite easy. Just upload this list template to your SharePoint site, choose Create from Site Actions, select KPI Dashboard template from the Custom templates section. This template will automatically create the content types I mentioned above and the Dashboard view for your KPIs.

Conclusion

Although implementing a KPI dashboard like this one might look complicated it is not. By using the Data View Web Part you can create your own dashboards plus extras. The solution does not do anything special (only displays colorful icons) but your managers will love it.

In the next post I will provide more details on how to build Content Types step by step and provide details on how to implement XSLT stylesheet for your Data View.

Personal geek note: I wrote this blog post using Word 2010 (Technical Preview)

Author: Toni Frankola SharePoint Use Cases Toni started his Web adventure in late 90’s and has been working with various web technologies ever since.

Toni is leading project engagements and managing a team of consultants specializing in Microsoft technologies. His primary focus is on Microsoft Office SharePoint and Dynamics CRM. He works at Perpetuum Mobile, a Microsoft Gold Partner from Croatia.

This article comes about from a question from illegal operation in Stump the Panel.  He writes:

I’ve been expermenting with workflows, and have one almost working the way I want. Basically what I want to do is this.

The list in question has these fields.

Staff Contact
Renewal Date

The worksflow starts when the item is created, then pauses until the renewal date. On the renewal date, it sends out an email to the staff contact reminding them that it’s due, and to update their subscription infomation.

So far I have it almost working, it pauses until the renewal date, and then sends the email. Then if the person goes back and updates the item, it then goes back to pausing until the new renewal date.

But…

If a person goes in before it expires and updates the renewal date, the workflow doesn’t reflect the new date. For example, say it was to expire on 6/15 the users already knows this and goes in and updates their information today 6/12. They enter their new renewal date of 7/12. The workflow is still only paused til 6/12, and will send the email out too early.

So I need to add something to my workflow to always update that pause duration. Here is how my workflow is setup now. It’s set to automatically start when new item created, and start when item is changed.

Condition

If renweal date is greater then today
Pause until Subscription Data Renewal Date
Then send email Staff Contact.

What can I add to make it update the workflow when items are changed before they are due?

Jim Bob offered a possible solution with dual workflows on the list.  I thought of another solution using Information Policy Settings and a work flow.  The idea for this came from a screencast I saw that used document expiration policies to serve as a publishing mechanism for Announcements.  I thought information management could be a good candidate to solve this problem.  After some testing, it will work but there are some caveats to this solution:

1. This is a MOSS only option.  WSS users will have to find another way.
2. The timer job that handles expiration policy on the server runs only once per day.  It cannot be altered to run more frequently. 

If you can live with these caveats, let’s begin.

The Content Type

In the original problem description, it was noted this list was nothing more than an internal contact and a renewal date.  We’ll use this information to construct a content type for the list we will create later.

1. Click Site Actions, Site Settings.
2. Click on Site Content Types from the galleries section.
3. Click Create.
4. Give the new content type a name.  I’ll be using Customer Contract throughout the article for this content type.
5. Set the parent options as List Content Types Item.  If you have a lot of content types already defined, you can create a new group.  In this example, I’m putting it in the custom group.  Your settings should look like the below.  When complete, click OK.

The Columns

After clicking OK to create the content type, you’ll be directed to the options page for the newly created content type.  Now it’s time to add the desired columns to this content type.

1. Click Add from new site column since our columns don’t exist.
2. Name the Column Staff Contact and set the type to Person or Group.
3. If you have a lot of site columns already, you may want to create a new group to house the columns.  If not, using the custom group is fine.  Give the column a description.
4. Leave all other options as they are and click OK.
5. When the page refreshes, click on the Title link.
6. Set the Column Setting type to Optional and click OK.
7. When the page refreshes, click on the Staff Contact link.
8. Set the Column Setting type to Required and click OK.
9. Now to repeat the process to create the Renewal Date column.
10. Set the type to date and time.  Put it either in the custom group or the group you created for the last column.  Set the format to Date and Time, I’ll explain in a minute why.  Click OK.
11. When the page refreshes, click the Renewal Date link.
12. Set the Column Setting type to Required and click OK.

I chose to set the column as a date and time value to be sure all items are appropriately isolated by the daily expiration timer job.  This will ensure all items are captured when they should be.

The List

Now that the content type is created with our columns, it’s time to set up our list to hold it.  Standard run of the mill creating a custom list via Site Actions, Create.  Name your list, in this example, I named it Contracts.  Click Create to complete creation. Now to attach the Customer Contract content type to the list.

1. After clicking Create to finish the creation process of the list, the page will refresh and you’ll be sitting inside the Contracts list.  Click Settings, List Settings.
2. Click Advanced Settings.
3. Set the Allow management of content types to Yes and click OK.
4. Now you’ll see a new bar on the Settings screen like below.

5. Click the Add from existing site content types link.
6. Find the Customer Contract content type and add it to the right hand box and click OK.
7. When the page refreshes, click the Change new button order and default content type link.
8. Using the dropdown boxes, set the Customer Contract to the 1 position and click OK.
9. Now click on the Item content type.  Click Delete this content type.  Click OK to the warning box that pops up.

The list is now ready for new contracts.  Content approval can be turned on in the Versioning Settings if, as a manager, you’d like to see the flow of updated contracts or for final approval of them.  This will alter the next step, creating the workflow.  I am not going to show that in this example, but I will note where to make those changes in the workflow configuration.

The Workflow

Now that the content type and list are ready, we need to configure the process for expired contracts.  To do this we’ll crack open Sharepoint Designer and connect to our site.  When it opens, click File, New, Workflow.

1. Name the workflow Expired Contract, attach it to the Contracts list, and set it to be manually run.  Then click Next.
2. The first step will be to collect data from a user.  We want to know what the new contract date will be.  So click Actions, and find Collect Data from User.  Click on the data hyperlink to open a wizard.  Click the Next button.  Give the new task a name, I used New contract date needed in this example.  Click Next.  Click Add.  Create a new field as detailed in the picture.

Click Next.  Set the item properties as shown below and click Finish to close the add new item and finish again to close the wizard.

3. Now click the this user hyperlink to configure who the task should be assigned to.  This will open a window, double click on the workflow lookup and in the box that appears, select Staff Contact from the bottom drop down box.  Click OK two times to finish the configuration of the first step.

4. Add a new step to the workflow.
5. Now it’s time to take the data that was collected and update the contract date with this new value.  Click the Action button and select Update list item.  Click the this list hyperlink to open the dialog box.  Click Add.  Configure the workflow step as pictured below.  Click OK 3 times to finish the configuration of the item.  Then click Finish.

If you’d like to leverage content approval, add an update list item step above the collect data process in step 1.  Configure this to update the Approval Status to Draft.  In step 2, add an additional update item in the update list step to update the Approval Status to pending.  Then, if you wish, you can add additional steps to notify the approvers that a new item is pending approval.  This could easily turn this into a slick contract review process.

The Policy

The final piece to this puzzle is using Information Rights management to handle all this for us.  Go back to the Contracts list and go into the List Settings.  Click on the Information management Policy settings link.  You should then see the Customer Contract content type listed.  Click on this hyperlink.  Click the Define a Policy radio button and click OK.  Configure the settings as detailed in the below image and click OK.

Finished

The setup is now complete.  Everyday, the expiration timer job will run and look for contracts that are past the renewal date.  It will send a notification to the responsible person via email that they have a new task.   When they click the edit this task in the email, it will open to the data collection screen for them to enter the new value.  When they click the complete button, it will update the list item with that new value.

If a user updates the list item before it actually expires, there are no hung workflows sending reminders off at incorrect times.  As noted, the timer job runs once daily to look for expired items and is MOSS only.

Eric http://alexanderblog.info

I’m really happy to be presenting these. SharePoint is a world-wide community of users and this content proves it. Thanks, Ayman. Your work is appreciated.

Regards,
Mark

Description of the resources:
“Content types are incredibly cool and fundamental to how SharePoint works with Data and Information. Is this session we’ll explore the power of custom content types development and see how we can use them for customizing the visual appearance, introducing new behaviors and much MORE !”

About Ayman El-Hattab:
Ayman M. El-Hattab works at ITWorx since October 2008, and since then has been working on building solutions using Microsoft Office, SharePoint 2007, .NET Framework 2.0/3.0/3.5, Microsoft SQL Server, C#, XML,ASP.NET and others.

I decided to use Content Type data since it has a parent-child relationship. If you didn’t know, all Content Types have an ID. These IDs reveal the inheritance path of the Content Type (and System begot Item who begot Document and Document begot…).

Since this was only a test, I generated a baseline of Content Type data from our test server using SPD, a Data View Web Part, and the Web.asmx web service. If people are interested, I can walk through those steps. For now, just check out this demo (works best in something other than IE because IE does not support CANVAS tags natively).

With this test, I have a good idea of what’s involved to do this dynamically. The next phase involves getting SharePoint’s Content Types organized into the right format dynamically.

Paul Grenier

A SharePoint Master Calendar is created with multiple content types for filtering specific types of events. When that type of event is needed within another site, LyteBox is used to display those events as a stand-alone calendar. This solution can be used to push information to locations outside the original site and site collection, if needed.

Check out the screencasts and I hope to see you next Tuesday.

Testimonials from previous participants of the EndUserSharePoint.com live online workshops

“This is an excellent workshop. Mark answered every question and moderated with humor and patience through the usual communication hiccups with an audience that is international (Argentina, Ireland, all over the US).” — Betsy [SharePoint Dashboards, Online]

“This workshop was absolutely worth the time and money. I learned alot and will be able to easily transfer it to my daily work. I can’t wait to impress my coworkers.” — Tammy [SharePoint Dashboards, Online]

“Don’t waste anymore time reading this to check out if it was worth it – stop reading and book your session!” Mick Brown [SharePoint Dashboards, Online]

“This was one of the best training sessions I have attended. It delivered a lot of powerful information yet was simple to follow and participate in. I can’t wait for the next class!” — Heidi [The Fundamentals of SharePoint Lists and Libraries, Online]

“…very professional work. The workshop format with the hands-on lab made the 3 hour webconferencing event a valuable experience for me.” — Urs [The Fundamentals of SharePoint Lists and Libraries, Online]

“What I got out of it the most was by far the use of Task Lists, that was exceptional ! I had no idea that they could be that useful. I’m planning on importing many of my spreadsheets into the site, including our business plan.” — Erik [The Fundamentals of SharePoint Lists and Libraries, Online]

The session began with an overview of what content types are and why they are useful. We then went into an extended hands-on section where everyone created content types and associated them with a Finance Report library, along with various document templates.

That’s the basics. Let’s see what they have to say…

Join us on Friday for The Basics of Content Types live online workshop. You’ll get a hands-on jumpstart in using Content Types.

Excerpt from workshop description:
“As novice SharePoint site managers, many people create columns within lists and libraries that are only useful for that specific list. This means that web parts might not have access to those columns for filtering, duplication occurs if multiple lists need the same type of column, and maintenance becomes a nightmare if changes need to be made across an entire site collection.

“There are cases where a site collection manager manually made changes to hundreds of libraries created with a template that was missing a specific column. Content Types to the rescue…” Read More

Testimonials from previous participants of live online EndUserSharePoint.com workshops:

“I found this workshop well worth the time and cost. Even after managing SPS for over three years and architecting our current MOSS solution I found it valuable to spend this time to review content types and to actually put it into action.” — Kip [The Basics of Content Types in SharePoint 2007]

“I love these sessions They get me to thinking what I can (or might) do with SharePoint! I never thought of using Content Types for things other than a library.” — Shannon [Create a Master Calendar in SharePoint]

“This is an excellent workshop. Mark answered every question and moderated with humor and patience through the usual communication hiccups with an audience that is international (Argentina, Ireland, all over the US).” — Betsy [SharePoint Dashboards, Online]

“This workshop was absolutely worth the time and money. I learned alot and will be able to easily transfer it to my daily work. I can’t wait to impress my coworkers.” — Tammy [SharePoint Dashboards, Online]

“Was a great lab. Nice interraction between the host and the audience. Was great information and well presented with loads of reference materials which helps when retrying things on your own.” — Shaune [Create a Master Calendar in SharePoint]

“Don’t waste anymore time reading this to check out if it was worth it – stop reading and book your session!” — Mick [SharePoint Dashboards, Online]

“This was one of the best training sessions I have attended. It delivered a lot of powerful information yet was simple to follow and participate in. I can’t wait for the next class!” — Heidi [The Fundamentals of SharePoint Lists and Libraries, Online]

“…very professional work. The workshop format with the hands-on lab made the 3 hour webconferencing event a valuable experience for me.” — Urs [The Fundamentals of SharePoint Lists and Libraries, Online]

“What I got out of it the most was by far the use of Task Lists, that was exceptional ! I had no idea that they could be that useful. I’m planning on importing many of my spreadsheets into the site, including our business plan.” — Erik [The Fundamentals of SharePoint Lists and Libraries, Online]

• 8 Reasons why SharePoint is Bad for Your Business
• SharePoint eLearning Video Library Subscription
• Controlling Single Web Parts with CSS
• Live online workshop: The Basics of Content Types in SharePoint 2007

Laura Rogers and I will be delivering the second live online session of “Excel and SharePoint: I didn’t know you could do that!“. Based upon feedback from the first session, we have removed the two basic modules and updated the content to include using Excel to help create formulas for calculated columns and a deep dive into the tool panel within the datasheet view.

Here’s her problem statement:

I am working on a huge project for my organization and we are looking at using SharePoint to build a Knowledge Base Database and I was wondering if you have any recommendation of Content Types I should consider when creating a knowledge base or any great models/examples to review?

We are in the brainstorming the different content types, as training material, quick reference materials, error messages, known messages, that we will be capturing for basic end users and helpdesk specialists.

Let’s see what we can come up with here. You can ask more questions, make comments about recommendations, point to resources, write a case study about how you did it, whatever you’d like to offer, we’ll take it. How would you respond to Jennifer’s question?

If I was a generous kind of guy, which I am, I would give you a promotion code to receive a free live online workshop if you can help her out. Let’s see what you’ve got.