Monday, January 28, 2008

Calculated column value disappears after the item gets updated

This does not apply to all calculated columns, just to some of them J.
Here is an example: I’ve had created a calculated column with the following calculated value [ID], initially the column gets populated with the item ID just fine.
After the item gets updated, the calculated value disappears from the field. Here is a little workaround I’ve came up with.

Create a workflow in the SharePoint Designer attach it to your list, workflow should start on item creation, allow this workflow to populate the field with the desired value.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Action shortcut in tasks list item

This is a small tip which you might eventually find very useful.
This will minimize a number of clicks that users have to do in order to complete the task assigned to them by providing a shortcut to the action described in the task, such as a link to document library’s document upload screen, link to a list’s custom view or an infopath form that user is tasked with submitting .

When you provision a tasks list for your site add a URL type column to the list, you can call it “Action”.

This is how it works, when you create a task (ex: “Please submit your New address information”), populate the “Action” column with URL to the actual form that has to be submitted and into “Description” portion of this URL column put “Action” (this is the display name for your link to the form, use anything you want).

Now when a user clicks on the task, along with the rest of the task properties they see the link that will bring them to the actual activity they have to do, thus minimizing the number of click they otherwise would perform without this shortcut.

Another NLB day

One of my company’s client (with 4 servers in the farm and Cisco Network Load Balancing) had recently experienced abnormal behavior on Shared Services administration site. SSP admin site had started prompting them to login three to five times every time they clicked on some of the links within the site or when they just tried to go to the site itself. When we started looking into this issue it became apparent that they switched from Cisco router to Juniper’s NLB solution, which provides them with more features than Cisco used to do. Shared Services Provider Administration site is NLB balanced and after looking into NLB settings for these web application, we saw that it had compression and acceleration turned on.

We turned it off, both of these options, and the constant challenge for authentication disappeared.
Unfortunately there was not enough time to test, so I can’t tell you which one of these settings was directly contributing to this issue. But it resolved the issue.

Friday, January 4, 2008

SharePoint Beagle!!!

I'm excited to bring to your attention the Holidays present from Bob Mixon to the SharePoint community. The Sharepoint Beagle on SharePoint platform!!!

This is a monthly newsletter featuring articles on Administration, Development and “Real World” section which provides you with real world solutions. Check out the Administration channel where Bob Fox is one of the main contributors, bringing his real life administration experience.

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