With more and more information being managed by SharePoint as departments begin to understand the vast powers of WSS and MOSS, item forms are beginning to become more complex and time consuming. I am one who goes full speed when filling out forms using the power of the keyboard but at the same time it is my own demise. Let me paint a picture of what happened to me just this past week. I was working on an update for a project I am currently managing. This list I am updating is our Project History list where we keep track of what is going on with a given project. So I was working away on writing up a fairly busy day, using shortcuts on the keyboard for formating or switching tabs or windows to gather all the details of events that occurred with a client, and I'm telling ya, this is pretty lengthy and detailed report when all of a sudden the page disappeared!!!!!!!!!!!!! What the... oh no, I have hit a shortcut to close the tab I was on. I could not believe it, all that time I spent writing up a report and poof it is gone.
Unlike the powerful "oops" features of Microsoft Office (document recovery feature), SharePoint has no way out of the box to save the work periodically. As a result, when it is gone, it is GONE! Other things can happen besides a simple keystroke error, such as loss of power. That is another good example that happened to me by the way, where I was working on an item in SP when all of a sudden we lost power. Now I used to be a laptop kind of guy and I would have a battery to help keep me going, but to power all my VPCs I needed a more powerful machine so I have moved on to a desktop. Luckily that time I didn't make as much progress on the original item so it was not as great of a tragedy.
So in the end, what am I blubbering about you might be asking. Well let me introduce you to the Form Auto Save Web Part (http://store.bamboosolutions.com/ps-17-5-form-auto-save-web-part-release-11.aspx). With the Form Auto Save Web Part, you can add it to the list form pages (NewForm.aspx and EditForm.aspx) and provide a specific time stamp to automatically save the item periodically. Another nice feature is if you are like me, you can get easily distracted by meetings, impromptu discussions with customers or peers, causing you to walk away from the desk forgetting about the form that is currently open. One of the configuration options of Form Auto Save Web Part allows you select to close the form if it is currently open when the scheduled auto save occurs. This provides additional security layer if confidential information is being displayed on the screen.
So how do you configure the Web Part? Simply open SharePoint Designer and locate the list of interest. Within the list, you will see a bunch of .aspx pages, open either NewForm.aspx or EditForm.aspx. In our example, I will be opening the EditForm.aspx form page for my Tasks list.
When you open the page, click on Insert menu and select SharePoint Control then Web Part...
You will notice on the right hand side of the screen a panel will appear called Web Parts. Select the Web Part List called Server Gallery. Locate the Bamboo Form Auto Save Web Part and drag it to the page.
The newly added Bamboo Form Auto Save Web Part will be highlighted on the form and will have the text The preview of this Web Part is not available. Double click on the highlighted box to open the Web Part properties window. Expand the section Bamboo Properties to modify the settings of the Web Part.
Time to Save (minutes) allows the user to define how long to wait to save the item.
Close After Save (Edit forms only) allows the user to specify if when the time expires to leave the item open on the page or close the item.
When you have finished configuring the Web Part, save the form page to take effect. To check to see if the Web Part is in action, open the form page where the Web Part is deployed, in our example, it will be the edit form for tasks list. At the bottom of the browser in the status window, a countdown timer is displayed to let you know when the next form save will occur.
I hope you found this useful!
Posted
Jun 27 2008, 02:18 PM
by
Jeff Kozloff
Jeff originally joined Bamboo Solutions in June of 1999 as a part-time Test Engineer (basically a gopher). He continued with Bamboo as a part time tester while obtaining my Bachelors of Science in Computer Science degree at Longwood University. Upon graduation in 2004, Jeff accepted a full time position at Bamboo as a Helpdesk Specialist and became Manager of the Helpdesk team in 2006. In October of 2007 until present, Jeff took a role as Project Manager in the Solution group bringing his in depth technical knoweldge of SP to Bamboo's customers.