Selector, Multi Selector, and Item
Display
I want to reduce the number of sites so that
performance and maintenance are better and it is easier
for users to find their information. I also want an easy
ultiple webparts.
method to apply filters across m
Module Background:
Quest
Log
Homes
Storyline:
The QLH Corporate Intranet is a key resource to the entire QLH Staff. Every department has taken the initiative to create their own SharePoint Site.
Other QLH Employees have gone further and created their own SharePoint Site with information that is useful to other QLH Employees.
The performance of the QLH Corporate Intranet is very fast and has stayed that way since its roll out.
Existing
Problem:
The QLH Corporate Intranet performance was excellent until last week. QLH Employees have noticed a decrease in performance.
The QLH Executives has requested Adam Anderson, the QLH SharePoint Administrator to investigate the reason for the performance decrease.
Adam, after carefully researching the possible reason for the performance decrease, has found out that the number of SharePoint Sites has increased exponentially.
The initial number of SharePoint Sites has increased from 25 to 1,500!
Solution
provided
by
the
QDS
WebParts:
To improve the QLH Corporate Intranet, Adam has recommended reducing the number of sites.
To reduce the sites more efficiently, Adam adds to the recommendations, the use of the Quest elector WebPart.
S
The Quest Selector WebPart assists in the process in a single SharePoint Site.
Module Lessons:
of consolidating Sites by centralizing the data
Site
Proliferation
Site proliferation is a common issue in many organizations. It is pretty easy to create a new site in SharePoint and that’s what people usually do. When Jack starts a new project, he will create a new site for his project. When Jane starts a new project, she will create another site for her project. Without good governance, very soon the number of sites in your SharePoint server will become unmanageable. When this happens, a few problems arise:
1. It’s hard to find information because it scattered everywhere
2. It’s hard to get a consolidated view of the information that I need. For example, how can I see all my tasks that are scattered in so many project sites
3. Duplicate information in several sites
4. Performance might decrease as the number of sites increases 5. Time wasted in backing up sites that are no longer used
The Core Concepts module speaks a little bit about Performance Architecture. Performance Architecture is all about reducing the number of sites. The idea is this. If I am working on multiple similar projects, why do I need to maintain one site for each project? Wouldn’t it be better if I could manage all my projects in one site?
Quest Development Studio provides several WebParts that can help you consolidate your projects into one site without sacrificing the usability of the system. They are the Quest Selector, Quest Multi‐Selector and Quest Item Display.
What
is
the
Quest
Selector?
The Quest Selector WebPart is used to display data from a List in a dropdown control. There are two things that make the Quest Selector special:
1. It remembers the last item that you select by storing it in the ASP.NET session variable in the web server. If you navigate away and come back to the same page, or visit another page with a Quest Selector with the same Session Name, that Quest Selector will maintain the last selected item.
2. It can pass the selected item to another WebPart. Another WebPart that receives the information can use it for several purposes. For example, the Quest List View uses the
selected item as a filter. The Quest List Form uses the selected item to auto‐fill some of the fields that are displayed in the form.
What
is
the
Quest
Multi
Selector?
The Quest Multi‐Selector enables you to have multiple Quest Selectors in the same WebPart. Each Quest Selector will filter the next Quest Selector that comes after it. The last Quest Selector in the Quest Multi‐Selector can pass the selected item into another WebPart.
This is an example of when this capability can come handy for you. You have a site to manage multiple projects. Each project can be divided into several phases. You can have a Quest Multi‐ Selector to display the projects and their phases. The first Quest Selector will display the project information and the second Quest Selector will display the phases for the selected project.
What
is
the
Quest
Item
Display?
To put it simply, the Quest Item Display is the read only version of the Quest Selector. The Quest Item Display does not use a dropdown control to display the data. Rather, it presents the data as a text.
The Quest Item Display is normally used in an application where using the Quest Selector is not desirable. For example, you may have a very big Customers list that will take a long time to load and render in the Quest Selector WebPart. In that case, you will use the Quest List View
WebPart to show and select the data from the Customers list. The Quest List View is an ideal WebParts to view a big list because you can page and search the data efficiently. After users select a Customer data, the Quest List View will put that data into the session variable. The Quest Item Display can then displays the item in the session and pass it to another WebPart as a filter or to be consumed. As a matter of fact, this is the technique that we use in the CRM application template. The CRM application template can be used to manage information for thousands of company.
In addition to displaying the data in the session, the Quest Item Display can be used to ensure that the information that it needs is available in the session. If the data is not available, the Quest Item Display can do one of two things:
1. Display a message that the session is empty
2. Redirect a user to another page that contains a WebPart that can store an item into the session, such as the Quest List View
Do
you
have
an
example
on
how
to
use
these
WebParts?
We ship 2 application templates that show you how we apply the performance architecture concept:
1. Multi Project Application Template 2. CRM Application Template
Module Labs:
Lab
Setup:
Starting Location: http://www.questloghomes.com/sites/qds_training Starting Module: Selector, Multi Selector, and Item Display
QLH Employee: Adam Anderson Username: LITWAREINC\SPAdmin Password: pass@word1
Lab
1:
Configure
the
Selector
1. Click the Pages link in the panel menu on the left hand side 2. Click the link to the Selector page.
3. Click the Quest Selector WebPart Menu 4. Enter CompanySession for the Session Name
5. Enter .. for the Site Url. Please note that the Selector page is located in this URL:
http://www.questloghomes.com/sites/qds_training/module_15/Pages
.. means go up one level and the resulting Site URL will become:
http://www.questloghomes.com/sites/qds_training/module_15
6. Enter Companies for the List Name 7. Enter Company for the Display Field Name 8. Click Edit Button for the Configuration property 9. Select Company
10. Click the Appearance tab 11. Replace the Title with Company 12. Click OK
Lab
2:
Filter
the
Quest
List
View
with
the
Quest
Selector
1. Click Site Actions Menu 2. Click Edit Page
3. Click the edit WebPart Menu of the Companies WebPart 4. Click Connections
5. Click Provide Row To 6. Click Contacts
7. Select ID Value from DropDown 8. Click Next Button
9. Select Company List Item ID from DropDown 10. Click Finish Button.
11. You will notice that the Contacts view is now filtered by the Company selector. If you select another Company in the selector, the contacts that are shown in the view will change.
Lab
3:
Setting
up
the
Display
Format
in
the
Quest
Selector
1. Click the Quest Selector WebPart Menu 2. Click Configure
3. Enter <%Company%> ‐ <%Location%> for the Display Format. 4. Click OK.
Please notice that the Quest Selector displays the company information based on the format that you define. Please also note that the Display Format property takes precedence over the Display Field Name property.
Lab
4:
Displaying
Multiple
Columns
in
the
Quest
Selector
1. Click the Quest Selector WebPart Menu 2. Click Configure
3. Add ‐ <&CompanyType%> to the Display Format string 4. Click the Edit button for the Display Fields property 5. Check Company, Location and Company Type 6. Click OK
7. Click Selector Appearance
8. Type 400 for Persistent Selector Width 9. Type 400 for Drop Down Width 10. Click OK
11. Click the down arrow in the selector to display the dropdown. You will notice that the dropdown contains a grid that displays the fields that you selected.
Lab
5:
Configure
the
Quest
Multi
Selector
1. Click the Pages link in the bread crumb towards the top of your page 2. Click the link to the MultiSelector page.
3. Click the Quest Multi‐Selector WebPart Menu 4. Click Configure
5. Click the Edit button for the Configuration property. In the next screen, you will configure the first selector.
6. Enter Please select a Company for the Title 7. Enter .. for the Site Url.
8. Enter Companies for the List Name
9. Enter CompanySession for the Session Name 10. Enter Company for the Display Field Name 11. Click OK
12. Click Add Selector to add the second selector 13. Click the Edit button for the newly added selector 14. Enter Then select a Contact for the Title
15. Enter .. for the Site Url.
16. Enter Contacts for the List Name
17. Enter ContactSession for the Session Name 18. Enter ID for the Parent Filter Field Name
19. Enter Company List Item ID for the Filter Field Name
20. Enter <%First Name%> <%Last Name%> for the Display Format 21. Click OK
22. Click OK 23. Click OK
24. Select different company in the first selector and you will notice that the contacts in the second selector will change
Lab
6:
Filter
the
Quest
List
View
with
the
Quest
Multi
Selector
1. Click Site Actions Menu 2. Click Edit Page
3. Click the edit WebPart Menu of the Quest Multi‐Selector WebPart 4. Click Connections
5. Click Provide Row To
6. Click Conversation Records with a Contact 7. Select ID Value from DropDown
8. Click Next Button
9. Select Contact List Item ID from DropDown 10. Click Finish Button.
11. If you don’t see any conversation record in the view, click the New button to create one. Please create conversation records for different contact in different company and you
will notice that the conversation records view is filtered by the contact that you select in the Quest Multi Selector.
Lab
7:
Configure
the
Quest
Item
Display
1. Go back to the default page of this module 2. Click ACME Corporation in the Companies view
3. Click the New button in the Tasks view. You will notice that there is a Quest Item Display at the top of the form that has not been configured yet. We will configure this Quest Item Display to consume the contact information from the session.
4. Click Site Actions Menu 5. Click Edit Page
6. Click the Edit button in the Quest Item Display WebPart Menu 7. Click Configure
8. Enter ContactSession for the Session Name 9. Enter ../.. for the Site URL
10. Enter Contacts for the List Name
11. Enter You are creating a new task for <%Last Name%>, <%First Name%> for the Display
Format
12. Enter You have not selected a Contact for the No Selected Item Message 13. Click OK
Lab
8:
Redirecting
Users
to
another
page
1. In this exercise, we will redirect the user to another page to select a contact if one has not been selected yet. We will start by clicking the Site Actions Menu
2. Click Edit Page
3. Click the Edit button in the Quest Item Display WebPart Menu 4. Click Configure
5. Enter ../../ContactSelect.aspx for the No Selected Item Redirect URL
6. Click OK. Once you do so, you will be redirected to ContactSelect.aspx to select a contact information for the task.
7. Click the last name for one of the contacts
8. Notice that now the Quest Item Display displays the contact information that you just selected.
Lab
9:
Enabling
the
Change
Contact
button
in
the
Item
Display
1. What if you want to select another contact? We will enable the button in the Quest Item Display that can let you select another contact. We will start by clicking the Site
Actions Menu 2. Click Edit Page
3. Click the Edit button in the Quest Item Display WebPart Menu 4. Click Configure
5. Click Toolbar Appearance tab
6. Enter Select Another Contact for the Change Value Button Text 7. Enter ../../ContactSelect.aspx for the Change Value Button URL 8. Click OK
Click the Select Another Contact button. You will be redirected to the ContactSelect.aspx and you can select different contact information.
