Essential SharePoint 2007, 2nd Edition

Editing List Pages

SharePoint lists use these web pages to add, edit, and view items:

NewForm.aspx

Creates a new item and adds it to the list.

EditForm.aspx

Edits an item from the list.

DispForm.aspx

Displays an item in read-only mode.

AllItems.aspx, MyItems.aspx, and so on

Display a view of the list; views are stored as .aspx files alongside the add/edit/display pages.

These files are stored in the list's folder within the site. For example, the Problem Reports new item page is stored at ./Lists/Problem%20%Reports/NewForm.aspx.

Why is that important? Because you can edit those pages to hide fields, add web parts, or change them in any other way. To edit pages directly, you'll need SharePoint Designer. SharePoint Designer is "new" for 2007, but really it is just an updated and renamed version of Microsoft FrontPage.

There are a number of reasons why you might want to edit one of these standard pages:

• To restrict what information is entered in new items

• To display additional information on the page

• To create a page that combines tasks

In the following sample, I'll use SharePoint Designer to create a custom page to submit problem reports. I won't go into detail on how to use SharePoint Designer (that's a subject for another book); I'll just cover the basics required to complete these application requirements:

• Managers don't want users to assign problems, set their priority, change their status, or categorize problems. Those tasks will be performed once the item is reviewed by a technician.

• Users need a single place to go to submit items—they don't want to navigate deep into a site or lose their place once they've submitted an item.

• Users want to see the items they've submitted so they can tell if the issues have been resolved.

The following sections address each of those needs in turn.

Simplifying the New Item Form

The first task is to remove the unwanted fields from the NewForm.aspx page. To do that:

1. Open the web site in SharePoint Designer.

2. Open the NewForm.aspx page from the ./Lists/Problem%20%Reports/ folder.

3. Click on the Problem Reports list web part and change the IsIncluded element to false in the code pane as shown here:

   <IsIncluded>false</IsIncluded>

4. Click Insert → SharePoint Controls → Custom List Form. SharePoint Designer displays the List or Document Library Form.

5. Select the Problem Reports list and the New item form, and clear the Show standard toolbar checkbox as shown in Figure 4-22. SharePoint Designer adds a list form web part that can be edited.

6. Select the Assigned To, Issue Status, Priority, Category, and Related Issues table rows and press Ctrl+X to remove those rows.

7. Save the page and review the changes in SharePoint by clicking New on the list toolbar. It should look like Figure 4-23.

Figure 4-22. Replacing the form web part with a custom list form in SharePoint Designer

Figure 4-23. The vastly simplified form for entering Problem Reports

The Assigned To and Due Date fields are blank for new problem reports. You can set default values for those fields from the list settings page. You might want to set the default Due Date to [Today] + 14, and the default Assigned To person to the department manager. Since the Due Date appears on the NewForm.aspx page, it can be changed by the user; but since Assigned To doesn't, new items are always assigned to that default person.

If this were a real application, you'd go back to your customer at this point and ask what default values he wants—that information was left out of the spec!

Making It Easier to Submit Items

Under the current scheme, users need to know to go to the Problem Report list and click on New to submit a report. Once the report is submitted, they are returned to the Problem Reports list. That's more clicking than they should really need to do. We can simplify their task by adding a tab to the site's home page for the NewForm.aspx page. To do that in WSS:

1. Click Site Actions → Site Settings, and then click Top link bar tab under the Look and Feel heading. SharePoint displays the Top Link Bar page.

2. Click New Link and enter the full address of the NewForm.aspx page; enter the label for the tab in the description field, and then click OK. SharePoint adds a tab to the top link bar for submitting problem reports.

To add a top link bar tab for the new item form in MOSS:

1. Click Site Actions → Site Settings → Modify All Site Settings, and then click Navigation under the Look and Feel heading. SharePoint displays the Site Navigation Settings page.

2. In the Global Navigation section, select "Display only the navigation items below the current site" to stop inheriting link bar tabs from the parent site.

3. In the Navigation Editing and Sorting section, select Global Navigation, click Add Link, and enter the full address of the NewForm.aspx page. Enter the label for the tab in the description field; then click OK. SharePoint adds a tab to the top link bar for submitting problem reports.

Providing Feedback After Submitting

When a user completes the new item form and clicks OK, SharePoint automatically displays the default view of the list. That's not great feedback and it leaves the user with a few questions: Was the new item accepted? Which one is it? What do I do next?

To solve those problems, modify the default view of the list to display the new item clearly and to let the user know what to do next. To create the new view, follow the steps in "Creating Views," earlier in this chapter, to create a new standard view for the Problem Reports list with the settings shown in Table 4-4.

Table 4-4. Create View page settings for the Submitted view

Section	Field: Setting
Name	View Name: Submitted
	Make this the default view: Checked
	Create a Public View: Selected
Columns	Select: Attachments, Issue ID, Type, Title, Assigned To, Due Date
Sort	Modified, descending order
Filter	Current is equal to Yes
	And
	Created By is equal to [ME]
Group By	Issue Status, ascending order
	By default, show groups: Expanded
Style	Shaded
Item Limit	20, display items in batches

The new view displays only the items the current user has submitted, and new items appear at the top of the list under the Active group with a green New! icon beside them. That's clearer feedback, but the user still won't know what to do next. To fix that, edit the view page to add a web part containing instructions:

1. Display the Submitted view.

2. Click Site Actions → Edit Page. SharePoint displays the view in Edit mode.

3. Click Add a Web Part in the middle of the page, select the Content Editor Web Page, and click Add. SharePoint adds the new web part to the page.

4. Click the "Open the tool pane" link on the web part, click the Source Editor button, and enter the following code:

   <script type="text/javascript">
   if(document.referrer.indexOf("NewForm")>=0)
   document.write("<h3>Thank you for your report</h3>
   <a href='./NewForm.aspx'>Click here</a> to submit
   another report or <a href='../..'>click here</a>
   to go Home.");
   </script>

5. Click Save and then click OK to close the property pane of the web part.

The preceding example shows how to create a web part that runs client-side code. I call those client-side web parts, and they are powerful tools for customizing SharePoint. In this case, the web part displays a thank you message if the user has just submitted an item. That message is not displayed if the user just clicked on a link to the list.

When complete, the changes to NewForm.aspx and Submitted.aspx establish the simple Problem Reports workflow shown in Figure 4-24.

Figure 4-24. The completed Problem Reports application

Resetting the List Forms

SharePoint Designer sometimes breaks the link between the pages used to view, edit, and create list items. If the list starts showing Page Not Found errors, you'll need to reset the form files for the list. To do that:

1. Open the web site in SharePoint Designer.

2. Expand the Lists folder in the Folder List pane on the left side of the screen.

3. Right-click on the list in the Folder List pane and select Properties. SharePoint displays the list properties.

4. Click the Supporting Files tab and select the correct new item form as shown in Figure 4-25.

Figure 4-25. Resetting the form pages used by the list