Did another Microsoft exam yesterday.

Restricting Available Site Definitions

I recently did an 'in place' upgrade from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to MOSS 2007. After the upgrade, when trying to create a new site there was only one site definition available.

After some searching of various blogs I found that you can restrict available site definitions by going to this link http://&ltyoursiteurl>/_Layouts/AreaTemplateSettings.aspx

Here you can select which definitions to allow/not allow.

Multiple Authentication Requests - External Access

If you are accessing a WSS or MOSS site externally and not via a VPN connection, you will be asked to re authenticate whenever opening a Microsoft Office document. This will slowly drive you mad.

To overcome this first add the SharePoint site to your trusted sites, then you need to tell Internet Explorer to automatically log on using the current username and password.

Do this from Internet Explorer's menu...

Tools > Internet Options > Security > Custom Level > User Authentication > Automatic logon with username and password

You should not be asked to log on when opening documents now.

Traffic Lights

While working with clients I am often asked if they can have traffic light indicators on list items. This would be great for rag status on project based WSS sites for example. Unfortunately this is not a straightforward task, indeed 'Key Performance Indicators' are only available with MOSS Enterprise and in anycase these are overkill for many cases.

I had considered creating custom webparts to solve this but a search on the web came up with some good information. (Credit to Christopher at PathtoSharePoint)

The list or library must contain a required choice field named priority, the choices should be (1)High, (2)Normal, (3)Low.

Now create a calculated field to store the indicator. Depending on what type of indicator you would like, choose which of the following calculations to use in this field:

- Traffic light (actually a big bullet!):
=”< DIV style=’font-weight:bold; font-size:24px; color:”&CHOOSE(RIGHT(LEFT(Priority,2),1),”red”,”orange”,”green”)&”;’> •< /DIV> ”

- Indicator (reusing the default SharePoint KPI images):
=”< DIV> < IMG src=’/_layouts/images/KPIDefault-”&(3-RIGHT(LEFT(Priority,2),1))&”.gif’ /> < /DIV> ”

- Font color:
=”< DIV style=’font-weight:bold; font-size:12px; color:”&CHOOSE(RIGHT(LEFT(Priority,2),1),”red”,”orange”,”green”)&”;’> ”&Priority&”< /DIV> ”

- Background color:
=”< DIV style=’font-size:12px; background-color:”&CHOOSE(RIGHT(LEFT(Priority,2),1),”red”,”orange”,”green”)&”;’> ”&Priority&”< /DIV> ”

Now add the list or library as a web part on the page where you would like to see it and the indicator. This will look very odd and the indicator will appear as html text.

Now add a CEWP (Content Editor Web Part) to the page. Set the CEWP to hidden as you do not want to see it on the page. Using the source editor of the CEWP add the following javascript:

< script type="text/javascript">
var theTDs = document.getElementsByTagName("TD");
var i=0;
var TDContent = " ";
while (i < theTDs.length)
{
try
{
TDContent = theTDs[i].innerText || theTDs[i].textContent;
if ((TDContent.indexOf("< DIV") == 0) && (TDContent.indexOf("< /DIV> ") > = 0)) {
theTDs[i].innerHTML = TDContent;
}
}
catch(err){}
i=i+1;
}
< /script>

If everything is correct your list will appear with indicators like the above example.