Welcome to FrontPoint
FrontPoint is a blog written by folks from the dev/pm/test teams who create FrontPage. We’re here to discuss the many cool things that can be done using FrontPage with SharePoint web sites. We’re also here to talk about the neat stuff that can be done with FrontPage in general for building web sites, but there will be a decided editorial focus on working with SharePoint sites.
This is not a marketing site, this is the voice of a few individuals with their own opinions (*see disclaimer) and who care passionately about building cool stuff on top of SharePoint technologies using FrontPage. FrontPage and SharePoint have a history of two releases of working closely, yet a surprising number of people don’t know what can be done when these products are used together. We hope that by opening a conversation with you and FrontPage insiders, we can bring together more people who want to build amazing things with FrontPage and SharePoint.
FrontPoint contributors are:
John Jansen - Tester and XSLT data views expert
Charles Parker – FrontPage dev lead responsible for XSLT support and SharePoint integration
Rob Mauceri – Lead program manager for FrontPage and SharePoint integration
and you can expect to hear from other FrontPage insiders from time to time.
Leave a comment and tell us what else you'd like to see discussed in this space.
*Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at https://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.
Comments
- Anonymous
April 24, 2004
Can you use FrontPage to develop SharePoint sites - version 1.0 (non .Net version)? My company uses the old version (no matter how much I would like them to upgrade, it probably won't happen until next year)... - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
Yes you can. It is recommended that you use FrontPage 2002 with SharePoint Team Services, though.
The environment in your case is not perfect, but there is a pretty good integration story between the two products. However, none of the Web Part stuff is available and you won't be able to take advantage of XSLT and connections.
-John - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
John,
Since you're the data views expert, I'll post my question here and maybe you can answer or post an entry about it.
Is it possible for a single data view to consume two distinct data sources?
As an example, I have a list of survey responses, and a contact list of people that are required to fill out the survey. I want to find all the people who have not yet completed the survey. To solve this, I would like to use both lists from a single data view (since data views don't seem to be IListConsumers) and work the magic with XSLT.
I've found another solution, but it required custom coding to generate a data source, so I'll appreciate your views on this.
Thanks,
Eric
erwilleke at sep dot com - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
Excellent! Welcome to all of you. I am excited to read and learn more about FrontPage 2003, especially as it relates to SharePoint. - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
I'll add to John's coment regarding data views on multiple data sources: we've seen some customers create a web service that uses the wss object model to create an aggregate data source, and create a data view on the web service.
We'd love to hear your ideas on the kinds of data source aggregation you'd like supported in the future.
.: rob - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
Well, I didn't go so far as use the object model for this problem, I just created a web service that hits a pair of list web services and returned the subtractive field set I needed. This wasn't optimally flexible (uses web.config entries to define lists and accounts) nor completely kosher in the security models, but it satisified the needs of my current project since it didn't need to be exposed outside the server.
I could have solved the problem easily had there been a way for one data view to consume another in its entirety (IListProvider/Consumer) or for a single data view to have two dsQuery element executed and aggregated into a single XML data set in some manner (two top-level nodes?)
When you mentioned using two data views on the same page, is there any way to have view #1 provide EACH of its rows as a web part connection to the other web part, allowing web part #2 to display repeating information combined from the two tables. - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
I built a custom SQL view of UserData a while back that merged lists of the same ServerTemplate together, and I consume that with a Data View. It works well. :) - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 29, 2004
That is a really intriguing way to get around this limitation, but I have not been able to get it to work.
I think the most straight-forward method is the one mentioned above about custom SQL, which (if I read it correctly) means that the user queried the actual Content database in SQL and created views on that connection.
I also like the idea of using the OM that Rob mentions.
And as always, if anyone has code samples to share, I'd love to see them. - Anonymous
April 29, 2004
I've spent some more time looking into the possibility of merging two lists into a single data set.
If you use select="/" it gives you the lists on the current web, but I haven't looked to see if this view contains the data in the lists as well.
The contents of the dsQuery node in the data view appears to match the SOAP content sent to the List Data Retreival Service exactly, so going based on the information for the "select" parameter available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/spptsdk/html/dppDSQuerySelect.asp it seems that each of the "root node" parts of the select statements is really a different query. Any other thoughts on this before I abandon the effort? - Anonymous
June 10, 2004
Hi folks - welcome to all of you!
I have a couple of things I've been looking into and wondered if you could address?
First, do you know of any wort of best practices doc on customizing a wss site in FP2003? I have a site for which i need to change the UI a good bit, and I'm hesitatnt to do so until I understand the best way to go about it. I've looked at the sharepointcustomization.com site, but they left a lot of questions unanswered in my mind.
Second, i need to provide a calendar for an organization. Their intranet will have sebwebs for each dept (finance, HR, IT, etc.) Can I set up an events webpart on the main intranet site and then have it get filtered on each subweb for ONLY that departments' events?
Thanks in advance!