This example just happened to me yesterday.  I am [...]]]> I can’t see why some companies continue to block Twitter access to their employees.  Especially developers.  For me, Twitter has been an invaluable resource.  A wealth of 140 character wisdom.  An constant supply of what is new in the SharePoint (or insert your favorite topic here) world.

This example just happened to me yesterday.  I am working for a client that wants me to write a SharePoint 2010 workflow using K2′s Blackpearl.  Believe me, I am excited about using Blackpearl but it is a learning curve and I want to be productive.   Normally, I would just fire up Visual Studio and start writing a workflow.  K2 promises that Blackpearl can write complex workflows without code.  I wanted to see if I could figure it out on my own.  I read through the “My first workflow” instructions and thought I understood what I needed to do.  I started working through my own requirements when I got stumpted.  I knew what I wanted to do, I just couldn’t figure out how to tell Blackpearl to do it!

Finally, I sent out a Tweet (and No, I will not tell you how I bypassed corporate firewall filters) asking this simple question:

I received a reply asking for my contact information and later last night – I received a detailed email from Holly at K2 telling me how I could accomplish this.  I searched Google, Bing without any hint on how to do this.  It didn’t help that I wouldn’t have understood what I was reading anyway.  Holly’s instructions were clear and easy to understand.  We’ve exchanged a couple of emails and she has suggested ways I could fulfill my whole requirement.  I am going to try this but I was so pleased that I wanted to get this post out here so that other companies would think twice about allowing their developers to use tools like Twitter.

I have a SharePoint site that is displaying the results of an SQL stored procedure.  [...]]]> Here’s a usability solution that was necessitated by my desire to present a logical, workable solution to my end-user.  I’m still learning jQuery so my solution may not be the most elegant – but it works. I welcome any improvements!

The Setup

I have a SharePoint site that is displaying the results of an SQL stored procedure.  I’m using Quest Web Parts for SharePoint – qSIListView part which is part of their fine System Integration web parts package.  The great thing about these web parts is that I can create a stored procedure on a database and then use the Filter capabilities of the qSIListView to supply the stored procedure with the parameter values.  It’s a pretty slick solution and very easy to configure.  My problem  is that when you use the filter fields as the Parameter input fields, only the “Equals” operator has any meaning.  I can select “Begins with” or “Contains” but it will only just pass the parameter value and not the operator.  That means that my End User will be presented with a lot of false options.  To avoid the confusion, I would like to present the user with one operator - “Equals”, or in the case where I’m trying to do some wild card matching in SQL, I would remove all but “Contains”.  You get my point.  The problem is that the Web Parts do not have the ability to filter out the operator selections.  I’ve submitted this change idea to Quest for future versions but in the mean time, I needed to find a solution.  My solution was to use jQuery.

Solution

There are many posts out on the web about using jQuery to manipulate the SharePoint interface.  One of the best sites for jQuery on SharePoint can be found on EndUserSharePoint.com.  The solution I am talking about today can be used in any web environment, including SharePoint.  Essentially, my short script removes all <option> elements from all select boxes that match a certain text value.  This effectively narrows the choices presented to the User to only the valid choices, Exclude from search and Equals.

To do this, I placed a Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) onto my page and pasted my script in it.  In the script, I use jQuery to select all <OPTION> elements of the page and remove them if they contain any of the invalid choices.   The script is pretty straight forward.  I have jQuery stored in a script library on my SharePoint site.  This library provides read-access to all users on the site.  It is also a common place to store all of my scripts.  A good post on creating a script library can be found on here.

Once I load the document, I have search for all matching <OPTION> elements and remove them.


<script src="http://mysharepointdomain.com/scripts/jquery-1.4.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
$("option").remove(":contains('Does not equal')");
$("option").remove(":contains('Contains')");
$("option").remove(":contains('Starts with')");
$("option").remove(":contains('Ends with')");
$("option").remove(":contains('Is empty')");
$("option").remove(":contains('Is not empty')");
});
</script>


That’s it!  The end result looks like this.

As I said earlier, this is a pretty simple solution to a problem that I was having.  Now, every time I use filter fields to supply parameter values, I can be assured that I have presented my User with valid options.

I welcome any feedback!

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