Collaboration, Technology, and New York

So you want to clone the meta data (columns) that are associated with a document in a library to another document that needs to be uploaded?

It’s not unusual to have a document with loads of fields in it. In fact this is the value of having documents saved in SharePoint, rather than the network drive.

But if I have a very similar document that requires the same or similar meta data, how do I clone/copy this data to the other file?

Datasheet view?

Well no, because if any of these fields are required, it’ll be difficult to actually upload the document.

The way to do this is to add an additional simple content type to the library with no meta data , then upload the document to the content type and then kick off a workflow from the an existing document with meta data in it (source) to populate the newly uploaded document.

These are the steps:

1. Create a new Content Type called Clone

Notice that the only required field is the file name.

1. Apply this Content Type to the Library where the document needs to be Cloned.

1. Create a workflow in SharePoint Designer to Clone the meta data.

• This could be a list workflow, but the Start Options need to be manually set

1. Create an Initiation From Parameter from the button on the Ribbon

This field is called DOC ID to clone

So now every time this workflow runs, the user is prompted to enter a value into this field.

1. Select update List Item and click Add and select your fields for copy.

In the figure above the Document Type Value field is being copied from the source document to the new other document. The value DOC ID is the target document.

Remember you don’t need to know the ID of the source document because the workflow is running on this item.

1. Save and Publish the Workflow. Call it Clone

    

2. Add the Value ID to the view of the library.

The design of the library is set up to clone the document.

Let’s run through the steps of the cloning process.

1, upload the document and select the Content Type Clone

2.     Save the document

So the document is now saved in the library

3.    Choice the menu drop down of the document in the library:

4.    Select workflows

5.    Choice the workflow Clone to start the workflow.

6.    Type in the Doc ID of the target document. This value can be obtained from the view (Remember you just added this field to the View)

1. Press Start. The workflow will copy the value in the field Document Type, to the newly uploaded document.

The information is copied. Final step:

1. Go to the target document (the one with the Content type Clone) and change the Content Type from Clone to the one with all the meta data.

2012: A Year of Microsoft Milestones

Non coding BI

Links from my presentation, from SharePoint Sat in Philly

Access to Sharepoint

Getting started with jQuery

jQuery dashboards

Mega Menu

Changing the URL in Excel

SharePoint 2010 search scope issue

Ever had this error?

The search service is currently offline. Visit the Services on Server page in SharePoint Central Administration to verify whether the service is enabled. This might also be because an indexer move is in progress.

This error is when you click on the Search Scopes on the site collection.

After much research on blogs and logs….. I was completely stuck and then I stepped back to think about what I’m trying to do.

It’s a setting in a site collection……So does this error occur with other site collections?

I discovered that the error was unique to this site collection.

I then started disabling site collection features.

And discovered this was the culprit.

I Deactivated it and reactivated it…..

And the search scope worked!!!!

The MPV crew couldn’t figure it out

A post Sandy SharePoint experience share… I enter the world of hosting

A post Sandy SharePoint experience share

Last week I had a few issues with an on premise SharePoint development deployments for a few clients. Offices flooded, tech staff not available and a few pressing deadlines, so I looked at the cloud, for at least a temporary solution to development.

Given that the hosting and cloud technology is almost impossible to Google because of the amount of search results, there were 2 companies that I heard of:

I’ve always heard folks talk about Cloudshare at user group meetings. This post is my finding, based on 2 weeks’ worth of activity and on the trial version.

The key advantage with both are:

• The on demand models are represented in the pricing. Cloudshare has an ‘all you can eat’ user activity model, though your session does switch off after 60 mins. The switch can be switched back easy enough.
• No server costs
• Credit card payment
• 1^st month free.

After looking into both services I ended up using Cloudshare, for the simple reason and this did blow me away when set up my credentials I choose my server, memory and hard drive size and 2 minutes later, the server was ready and fully operational. Yes no installation, no domain control, no admin….. non of the set up stuff. All menu driven.

The development began 10 minutes later.

There is even a SharePoint 2013 available.

Final comments:

Amazon (what I read in the sign up process) appears to be great if you need a server running for a day or week and it’s repeatable activity like training or a demo, but you’ll need to take time to install the software and need licenses.

Cloudshare, is easy for development with snap shots, quick and easy to set up, good for testing as well. Does seem to be limited on external urls and if your environment is complicated the pricing model could be expensive.

Links:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

http://www.cloudshare.com/

Changing the URL in a Links list: How To

Problem:

You’ve just copied a link list template to another site collection, or performed a 2007 to 2010 migration and have realized that the all the urls in the list point to an old site and a mega cut and paste is required

So you think the data sheet can do the trick…. No

And MS Access can help….. Well no

I was surprised at this as well.

This post explains how to dump the list into Excel and run a macro to change the URL and then paste the new links into the list. This is easier than you think by using Excel a tool that you already have.

I’m not an Excel expert and there could be more elegant ways of doing this in Excel

Much of what is explained is in this Excel file: Example file

Steps:

Dump the list into Excel.

1. Click on the Export to Excel from the Ribbon in Excel.

1. Create a macro in Excel.

See short video. To see how to create a macro. This could be anything. What is key is to create a macro that you can edit. See figure below:

1. Edit the macro. Click the edit button on the dialog.

And paste in the following, macro code.

Sub ReplaceText()

‘ ReplaceText Macro

‘

‘ Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+r

Call ReplaceHyperlinkURL(“co.uk”, “com”)

End Sub

The code above when run will replace the “co.uk” part of a URL with “com”. This could be anything really.

1. Run the macro from the dialog box

All the cells will be searched and if there’s a match, it will replace the text.

Now that the URL’s have been changed.

1. Copy and paste the URL’s in Excel back into SharePoint, using the datasheet view.

You just need to paste the URL column.

Packt Publishing reaches 1000 IT titles and celebrates with an open invitation

PRESS RELEASE

This is a very good offer: click here

28^th September 2012

Packt Publishing reaches 1000 IT titles and celebrates with an open invitation

Birmingham-based IT publisher Packt Publishing is about to publish its 1000^th title. Packt books are renowned among developers for being uniquely practical and focused, but you’d be forgiven for not yet being in the know – Packt books cover highly specific tools and technologies which you might not expect to see a high quality book on.

Packt is certain that in its 1000 titles there is at least one book that everyone in IT will find useful right away, and are inviting anyone to choose and download any one of its eBooks for free over its celebration weekend of 28-30^th Sep 2012. Packt is also opening its online library for a week for free to give customers an easy to way to research their choice of free eBook.

Packt supports many of the Open Source projects covered by its books through a project royalty donation, which has contributed over $400,000 to Open Source projects up to now. As part of the celebration Packt is allocating $30,000 to share between projects and authors as part of the weekend giveaway, allocated based on the number of copies of each title downloaded.

Dave Maclean, founder of Packt Publishing:

“At Packt we set out 8 years ago to bring practical, up to date and easy to use technical books to the specialist tools and technologies that had been largely overlooked by IT publishers. Today, I am really proud that with our authors and partners we have been able to make useful books available on over 1000 topics and make our contribution to the development community.”

GW Bridge at Night in the car

The end of my block