The Bamboo Team Blog : Web Part

Lights, Camera, Web Parts!

EmilyBien — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:45:00 GMT

As you probably know, we here at Bamboo love the written word - as evidenced by our extensive Application Notes, Knowledge Base, and of course, our blog. But sometimes, after reading the latest depressing financial news, two memos about cost savings ("Why employees should reconsider the use of toilet paper") and your normal emails, the last thing you feel like doing is reading! Besides learning about our products via the abovementioned ways and downloading our 15-day, fully functional free trials, we've also created a few really cool ways to check out our Web Parts without even having to open a PDF.

Webcast Gallery - This is a one-stop shop for all of our webcasts for products like Task Master, Calendar Plus, and our Suites. Besides Product Overviews, there are also shorter "Featurecasts" that show you how to achieve certain tasks with our Web Parts, such as "Creating a Meeting or Event in Team Calendar". (Make sure you have the latest version of Silverlight in order to view these)

No, it's not your eyes deceiving you after staring at your computer for two straight hours, the pictures on our Product Pages are moving (well, for some of them - we still do recommend taking a break from your screen after an hour or so.) We're working on making these pages even more user-friendly so that you can see for yourself how these Web Parts can improve your portal. Suggestions? Please let us know or leave them in the Feedback tab for each product.

Lastly, we have 3 different Webinars for you weekly. Every Wednesday at 11AM EST our Project Management Web Parts are highlighted and at 2PM EST it's the Administration Suite. Click here to sign up for next weeks - even if you already have a few Web parts or are not quite ready for a Suite - it's still a great way to see how our products work together. At the beginning of every month we have a "What's New at Bamboo" Webinar that shows you the latest releases like new and improved version of User Manager Solution Accelerator along with the brand new User Registration Accelerator.

From the Desk of the CEO: An Optimistic View for 2009 and Beyond!

mtanner — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:40:00 GMT

Optimism? It would be a bit indulgent for me to write a year-end blog in 2008 without at least acknowledging that the economy is in a mess and we are living in uncertain, if not really uncomfortable times. I know that in part because I receive about fifteen emails each week from various service providers who each promise to educate me about how to "survive difficult times." Trillions of dollars of deficits, billion dollar losses, foreclosures and bailouts dominate the news, along with inevitable comparisons to the Great Depression. The news feels like the History Channel, filled with stories about asteroids hitting the earth, Mega-Disasters, Nostradamus and projections of various types of doom.

I'm not buying it. Actually, I am just incredibly optimistic about the future - for SharePoint, for IT in general, for your company and for Bamboo Solutions in 2009 and beyond. So I'd like to take this opportunity at the end of 2008 to reflect a bit, give you some contrarian views based upon what we here at Bamboo see happening within our customer base, and then share a bit with you about how we plan to continue trying to help in 2009 and beyond.

So why am I optimistic?

First, IT analysts that we track say that growth in IT spending will be down in early 2009, and pick up at end of year. But wait! Read that sentence again. Growth will be down a bit, and then pick up. Unlike the days of the dot-com crash, perceived excesses in technology spending have long been wrung out of much of the IT budget. Information Technology projects are now more often viewed as real enablers of doing more with less. So while IT is certainly not recession-proof, much of IT spending is much less discretionary than it was 10 years ago.

Second, underserved demand for business collaboration remains huge. In the past decade, the notion of using Web-based information sharing and collaborative applications both within and across companies has been a key vision for a lot of companies. Portals, shared content, collaborative and composited business applications remain part of that vision. But many companies, especially mid-size companies, have still been hesitant to broadly deploy until a clear technology emerged as the de facto standard. With respect to our friends at Oracle and IBM, I believe Microsoft's SharePoint has, or is certainly becoming that platform, with tens of millions of licenses shipped, and with MOSS 2007 emerging as the fastest growing product in Microsoft's entire history. If you are a company with a mixed investment into IBM, Oracle and Microsoft technology, you may argue relative technical pros and cons. But the plain fact is that the marketplace is voting for SharePoint with its wallet. That means the economics of scale will only drive further innovation and more adoption, which in turn means lower overall cost, which will again increase adoption. So the way I see it, pent-up demand is only just now starting to be fulfilled as the risks of implementing continue to go down.

Third, based on what I hear from our customers, I'm convinced that SharePoint is just starting to deliver on its potential. Bamboo Solutions may be small and scrappy as compared with behemoths like Microsoft, but between our storefront and Bamboo Nation^TM we now touch tens of thousands of individuals every month. Over 4500 companies and 110 partners across 38 countries around the world use our products. From this perspective, I think we can claim at least a pretty good read on what is happening. And what I hear is this: The vast majority of our customers are in the early stages of deployment; three quarters say that the SharePoint will be deployed enterprise-wide; and, the overwhelming majority plan to do even more with SharePoint in 2009.

As for the recession, I read the newspapers too. There's plenty of downsizing and budget cuts in almost all parts of the economy, and even in the high-flying tech sector, companies like Google, Yahoo, Cisco, HP and scores of others have shed staff. But remember that recessions are only defined in retrospect. So when the doom and gloom news seems the worst, that's precisely when things are probably rebounding. What we hear from our customers is that within companies today, and relative to other IT spending, solutions built around SharePoint seem are getting relative high priority. As a result, technical design and development talent around SharePoint remains very scarce. Individuals who possess technical knowledge of SharePoint along with with knowledge of business requirements are in very high demand.

What We Believe

If you are in the trenches and working day-to-day on deploying or managing SharePoint, the statement I'm about to make will sound fluffy. Sorry. But I think it's important to say anyway, so I ask your indulgence: SharePoint is not what the world thinks it is. In the long run, SharePoint is the key part of what amounts to an information operating system for business. Now, there are plenty of operating systems and enabling software technologies around. But they only start to really matter once they become ubiquitous. SharePoint fits the bill. And the operating system metaphor implies that as SharePoint grows, companies will want to deploy more and more business solutions quickly while avoiding "re-creating the wheel." So from our perspective, it's inevitable that commercially available off-the-shelf tools based on SharePoint will become increasingly important as well as increasingly purpose-built.

Now don't get me wrong - complex enterprise solutions will always require a lot of customization. But pre-built business solutions on SharePoint will become increasingly prevalent. And as SharePoint continues to win in the market, even vendors with content based applications built on their own proprietary stacks will eventually stop seeing SharePoint as something to defend against. After saying no for the requisite time (probably measured in years), I suspect they will eventually just have to closely integrate or even migrate to it. But in the meantime, our aim here at Bamboo is to continue to provide the largest collection of integrated technologies, components and accelerators to support this new business solution environment based on the SharePoint "information operating system."

We also believe that the whole notion of cloud-based computing will start to become reality in companies of all sizes over the next few years. Right now this area is new and cool and often viewed as some kind of "alternative" to having your own IT infrastructure. The leading indicator is that hosted use of SharePoint by small and medium size companies is booming. But in the future, cloud computing and internally deployed systems will not be either/or. The real change will be that it just won't matter. This should expand the use of a complete MOSS environment even further to virtually every company that needs to compete in an information-based economy. Microsoft's Azure announcement, along with their recently announced hosted SharePoint offering is sure to be just the tip of this iceberg, and as this trend becomes increasingly obvious, technology vendors will expose their own products as real Web services to adapt, again making the notion of easily assembled applications within the SharePoint environment not only feasible, but commonplace.

Where We're Going at Bamboo Solutions

Our business ambition is pretty simple. We want to provide you with value over the entire life of your SharePoint experience. So if you've come to Bamboo, tried and purchased one or two of our products - THANK YOU. But we know that if that's the only value we ever bring to you, we have lost an opportunity. We succeed when we provide information and technology that brings you back to us - as you prove the concept, do your initial deployments, broadly roll out the new platform, and continue add business value. As your needs expand, we want to be there with thoughtful extensions and purpose-built tools for your SharePoint platform. Even though our actual products provide just one piece of your overall solution, we know that piece can be bigger if we can continue to provide value that makes implementation and management easier and faster.

In fact, during 2008 we introduced an average of 3 new products each and every month. Going forward, we'll continue to build out our family of products with new offers, and with increased emphasis on system level integration between each of our products and other business information. In 2008 we introduced MashPoint as a platform for business data integration on WSS and enabled our Web Parts to support it. In 2009, we will enhance these offerings with an API based on REST. We'll also be exposing our Web Parts as Web services, so that with MashPoint you'll be able to more easily integrate SharePoint and our Web Parts into your overall environment ... today, inside the firewall, and tomorrow, on the cloud.

We're really excited about our product lineup for the first part of 2009, which includes improved WIKI content handling, additional custom column capabilities, better style management, enhancements to User Management, and more. Stay tuned to the home page of our store for new product announcements. In addition, in response to your suggestions in our forums, we're continually working towards improving versions of the free beta tools you can download in Bamboo Labs, such as SharePoint Analyzer, the Silverlight® Media Player, and others. We will continue to introduce innovative tools, such as SharePointOnVista, that allow developers work more easily with SharePoint and our products. And finally, going back to the notion of SharePoint as the "information operating system," you'll even see a few other entirely new product areas from us in 2009 that we think you'll be really excited about!

In our engineering area, we believe our team of more than 80 engineers is one of the largest commercial product development teams for SharePoint around. This includes one of the largest collection staffers - over 30 - who have earned their SharePoint certifications from Microsoft. We are also working closely with Microsoft in early reviews of the next version of SharePoint in order to help ensure a smooth transition for our existing products, and to continue providing innovative products to complete your SharePoint experience. We've also beefed up our custom projects team to support the increased amount of custom Web Part work that you've requested. So if you have a need that you don't see on our storefront today, just let us know.

In the customer support area, we are continuing to improve MyBamboo® to improve your overall support experience. If you've downloaded our products for trial and had to wait too long for support, we really apologize. We are working hard to improve the content of our KBs and to continue adding support staff to improve the time to response and the time to resolution. But we must prioritize our premium support contract customers first, our basic support customers second and then our free trial customers next. Yes, we know very well that your trial is a possible sale to us! But with thousands of trial downloads happening each month, our only viable options are to provide this support in as automated a manner as possible, put you ahead of paid support customers in the queue - or to charge you for the support incident. Given the options, we think it's far better to make our products available for free trials and let you decide.

And by the way - if you are a trial customer and your name is "anonymous," we really do get the fact that you don't want us to call and hassle you while you are evaluating our products. But if you take the time to join MyBamboo and trust us to tell us who you are before becoming a customer, your overall support experience is just going to be a lot better. I can't promise that we'll never ever contact you - but I can promise that we won't hassle you, we'll respect your time, and that we will do our best to only help.

Here on Bamboo Nation, you will see us continue to invest in the SharePoint community. What started as a way to connect with our customers has grown organically into so much more. In 2009 you will see more free tools and utilities like SharePointOnVista, MashPoint, SharePoint Analyzer and the SharePoint Price Calculator. We will continue to publish a steady stream of new articles and features, including original blogs like SharePoint Daily and SharePoint Blank. And we'll continue to bring you exclusive content from the biggest names in SharePoint with guest blogs from Joel Oleson, Jeff Webb, Dux Raymond Sy and an exciting lineup of new voices. Stay tuned to Bamboo Nation, and you'll always be on the cutting edge of what's new in SharePoint and especially at Bamboo.

So as we forge ahead into 2009 we here at Bamboo are going to be pretty busy. Like you, we are all ultimately driven by the same needs: accomplish more, be more productive and improve our customer's experience. In the end, this mantra is the same as in the boom times. So if you have not yet considered it, think about turning off CNN for awhile. Stop looking at your 401k and surf past the asteroids on the History Channel. Realism is important, but bad news sells and the sensationalism of the media is doing a great job of warping our collective minds. Instead, look around at how companies are using SharePoint to do more with less right now. Look at the fundamental shift towards SharePoint that the market is making right now. Consider the increasing demand for expertise. Then look at where these tools are going and extrapolate the positive business impact on improved collaboration, productivity, virtual teaming, immediate information availability and overall competitiveness. If you do, I think you'll join me in my optimistic view.

But before we turn the page to 2009, I invite you to join me for a comprehensive look at Bamboo's 2008 year in review, presented in conversations with the following department heads:

Introducing the ESP Content Editor

jeff.webb — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:14:00 GMT

!NEW The ESP Content Editor now includes a Variables Editor. Download the new version and try the upgrade.

Thanks for all the feedback on the Upload Wizard and the Dynamic Quick Launch Master Page. It's great to see folks out there downloading and using those free tools. In the spirit of the holidays, I've put another free tool out in Bamboo Media: The ESP Content Editor is a free Web Part that extends the built-in content editor Web Part to allow on-page editing and a few other nifty features.

Why I built it: I needed a way to quickly prototype CSS changes and see their effects on a live SharePoint page. There are a number of style browsing tools out there, including a few add-ins that let you change the CSS, but none of them included an easy way to save to the page. The ESP Content Editor lets you do that easily:

Add the Web Part to a page.
Write your custom CSS, JScript, or even plain HTML in the edit box.
Click Apply Change to see the effect, edit and correct your code as necessary.
Select Hide editor and click Apply Changes to make the edit box invisible.

Figure 1 shows the Web Part in action.

Figure 1. Using the ESP Content Editor

It's a real Web Part, so once it is installed on your server, you can customize it, export your changes as a .webpart file and reuse on other sites as needed. Just to give you an idea of what you can do, I created a second Web Part based on the ESP Content Editor called the ESP Style Viewer shown in Figure 2. It uses exactly the same server-side code as the ESP Content Editor, only the saved JavaScript and HTML are different.

Figure 2. The ESP Style Editor is based on the ESP Content Editor

There's a lot more to this Web Part which I'll cover in subsequent posts, give it a try and let me know what uses you come up with. I think it's a great building block that gives site owners the ability to create custom Web Parts without writing server-side code (as a site administrator, I like that).

Click Here to Download the ESP Content Editor Now

As always, let me know what you think, and Happy Holidays -- Jeff

Admit it, you're just too lazy to read about Web Parts

Nate Sullivan — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:38:00 GMT

You don't have to pretend. I explain, in painful, word-based detail, the ins and outs (no pun intended) of our new Web Parts, even throwing in the occassional picture to keep you interested, but at the end of the day, there's just so... much... reading.

Never fear. Inspired by this exciting news report, I've realized that maybe we need fewer words, and more thumping techno music in our explanations. In response, we've added some new flash videos and screencasts for several of our products, starting with Desktop Explorer, Office to PDF Conversion, and Chart Plus. Just swing over to each product's respective storefront page, and click the "watch overview" button. In a moment, the little pop-up window will begin extolling the many virtues of the Web Part/feature/application/etc., and you won't have to so much as lazily nudge a scroll wheel.

The movies are easily digestible -- less than two and half minutes each, and with a beat you can dance to -- and they give you the low-down on what the product does, why it exists, and what it brings to the table that out of the box SharePoint lacks. You'll need Adobe Flash Player (preferably version 9, the latest) to see them, but there's a link to Adobe's easy installer program right below the "Watch Overview" button, so that shouldn't slow you down much, even if you don't already have Flash installed.

We'll be adding more and more product overviews as time goes on; to be honest, it really is easier to explain what some of these products actually do for you by simply showing you, as opposed to providing bullet points and screenshots. So take a ride on our multimedia extravaganza, and buckle up. You haven't seen an action movie until you've seen one about EASILY AUTOMATING THE CONVERSION OF OFFICE DOCUMENTS TO PDFs!!! MOVIES ARE TEH AWESOME!!1!!11!!

Sorry, lost my composure for a second. And hey, since we're celebrating laziness in this entry, here's the Desktop Explorer overview movie right here in this post -- you don't even have to click a link.

You can thank me later. Enjoy the film.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Introducing the Bamboo Ultimate Suite

WesBryan — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 03:28:00 GMT

Our a la carte approach to Web Part purchasing has been enthusiastically embraced and is the driving force behind the Bamboo business model. It has helped thousands of companies to quickly garner the tools needed to build and enhance their SharePoint environments. As we built up our gallery of products, a number of organizations approached us to ask about acquiring the entire collection of Bamboo Web Parts. Of course we were happy to oblige, and over time it became evident that the demand for the entire collection of Bamboo product capabilities was going to grow as fast as our new releases. This realization has spawned the creation of the Bamboo Ultimate Suite. The Bamboo Ultimate Suite offers a wide variety of product functionality that covers domains such as project management, SharePoint administration, business intelligence, and collaboration. By purchasing the Ultimate Suite, organizations can acquire all this functionality at significant licensing savings with the convenience of a one-time purchase.

The Bamboo Ultimate Suite currently contains 37 products. So why is “currently” underlined? That’s because the Ultimate Suite is continuously updated with new products. As we make new Web Part releases, we work to add those products to the Ultimate Suite. If you are familiar with Bamboo’s aggressive development and release cycle, then you know that new product releases at Bamboo are frequent and include an average of two new products each month. Those that buy the Ultimate Suite and opt in to the Premium Support plan will receive all new product additions to the Bamboo Ultimate Suite free for one year.

The best news is that if you happen to already hold a number of Bamboo product licenses, then those licenses can be converted to credit towards your Bamboo Ultimate Suite purchase. Use this link to get more information about the Bamboo Ultimate Suite, or contact Bamboo Sales directly to speak to a team member who can answer both your product and licensing questions.

Translating the Bamboo Products

Jeff Kozloff — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:15:00 GMT

With the continually growing fan base (and purchasers of course) of our Bamboo products, we realized that many of our customers have the need to display their SharePoint deployment in different languages. In response to this growing demand, Bamboo has provided the means to modify the text in both Web Parts and the Web Part Properties Tool Pane to display a different language.

In this posting we will discuss where the Language files exist, how to update them and how to set the Web Part to use them.

To locate the language files, navigate to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\virtualdirectories\ on your SharePoint front end Web server. If you are not entirely familiar with this directory, this is where your Web Application web files reside. Each directory within VirtualDirectories map to a Web Application, commonly labeled the same as the port of the given Web Application. After you located the appropriate Web Application directory, expand to locate a sub directory called wpresources. WPResources contains resource files necessary for various Web Parts to function such as image files, user interface layout files, and in our case language files. Each Web Part has their own Resource folder. All Bamboo resource folders start with the name Bamboo followed by the Web Part name, for example for List Rollup Web Part, its resource folder is called Bamboo.ListRollup.WebPart.

After you locate the resource folder of the Web Part of your choosing, you will notice various files within the folder. You will want to locate specifically a set of files with an extension of .XML. Commonly included with each Web Part is a set of 4 files:

1031.German.xml
1033.English.xml
1034.Spanish.xml
1036.French.xml
*Note - Even though we include all 4 of these language files, the majority are simply placeholders for future translations and mimic the 1033.English.xml.

When you open one of the language files, notice the XML format. In case you are not familiar with XML, let me provide you with a quick overview of things to know. XML files are built using what is called Opening and Closing tags. Each "set" of tags decipher a different setting for the program to read. A given set of tags are defined by the name of the opening and closing tag. For example and opening tag could be <Date> as a result, the closing tag always matches the opening tag name with the addition of a /, ie: </Date>. Between opening and closing tag sets could be either text to define a value for that setting or an additional set of tags. You can also provide comments within XML files to help provide organization and notes. To signify the beginning of a comment, use the following comment opening tag . Any text between these two tags will be ignored by the program.

Now that I've explained how XML files work, let's discuss the Web Part language files. Within a Bamboo language file, you will notice a set of comment lines that help organize the file, commonly in 3 sections: Web Part Labels are labels that are found in the actual Web Part interface to the end user; Tool Part Labels are labels that are found in the Web Part Tool Pane where you configure the Web Part; and lastly, Custom Resource Messages are messages returned to the user from either the Web Part or Web Part Tool Pane.

Within each of the abovementioned sections reside several sets of tags. Each set of tags defines a different string of text found in the given Web Part. For example, Bamboo List Rollup Web Part has the following section of user interface:

Notice that the following strings exist in the above Web Part segment example:

Selected Lists:
Sites:
Click arrow button to populate List and View drop-down selection.
Lists:
Views:
CAML Query:
Get View Query
Show Help

Now viewing the 1033.English.XML for Bamboo List Rollup Web Part, the following sets of tags define the above strings of text -

<resource id="SelectList">Select lists:</resource>
<resource id="Site">Site:</resource>
<resource id="SiteDes">Click arrow button to populate List and View drop-down selection.</resource>
<resource id="ListName">List:</resource>
<resource id="ViewName">Views:</resource>
<resource id="CamlQuery">CAML Query:</resource>
<resource id="GetViewQuery">Get View Query</resource>
<resource id="ShowHelp">Show Help</resource>

Notice that in the above example, I have color-coded the tags to help identify the text that can be modified. Between the red tags is the text that is displayed in the Web Part. So for example, if I were to modify the above sample set of tags and add the text (Blog Example) -

<resource id="SelectList">Select lists (Blog Example):</resource>
<resource id="Site">Site (Blog Example):</resource>
<resource id="SiteDes">Click arrow button to populate List and View drop-down selection (Blog Example).</resource>
<resource id="ListName">List (Blog Example):</resource>
<resource id="ViewName">Views (Blog Example):</resource>
<resource id="CamlQuery">CAML Query (Blog Example):</resource>
<resource id="GetViewQuery">Get View Query (Blog Example)</resource>
<resource id="ShowHelp">Show Help (Blog Example)</resource>

The List Rollup Web Part sample interface will show a different set of strings with the modified translation file.

Now that I have introduced you to the translation files and how to update them, let's talk about how to set the newly updated file to the Web Part instance of your choice. To achieve this is very simple. First, navigate to the Web Part instance of your choosing. Next, open the Web Part Tool Pane and expand Bamboo Properties section. Here you will see a setting called Select a language with a drop down menu associated. This drop down menu will display all XML files found in the associated Web Part resource directory found in wpresources.

By default the 1033.English translation file is selected. One of the great advantages to the translation files is the ability to translate the Web Part Tool Pane. As mentioned, by default the 1033.English file is selected when a new instance of the Web Part is deployed. However, if you would prefer to have a different translation file selected when a new instance of the Web Part is added to the page, this is easily done.

Add a new instance of the Web Part to a Web Part Page.
Open the Web Part Tool Pane and set the Select a language to the file of choosing and leave all the other settings as is.
Export the Web Part to your local machine. This is found in the same edit menu as the Modify Shared Web Part. This will save a file with an extension of .dwp.
Now go to the SharePoint front end Web Server, and navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES
Locate the appropriate Web Part folder, this matches the same name as you found in the wpresources directory.
Within the Web Part directory a folder exists called WebParts. Replace the DWP within this folder with the newly exported Web Part file.

As a result, any future instances of the Web Part added to the page will have the appropriate translation file selected by default.

Calculated Fields don't leave home without them

DaisyAnand — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:13:00 GMT

Being new to Bamboo and SharePoint, most of my time is spent on self learning and working on custom solutions. Working on custom solutions means interacting with customers, which is the best part of my job as this is where I get to see how Bamboo Web Parts are being used as part of a process or an overall solution and not just as an end point or tool in themselves. This is the most creative aspect of my job as our first task usually is to understand the real need behind the request which allows us to sometimes suggest a change to the approach and resolve the issue by using out of the box SharePoint or by stringing together some Bamboo web parts. Here are a few examples of how we used calculated fields as the solution for some of our customers business needs.

1. The custom request that wasn't - it came from a customer using the Bamboo Alert Plus Web Part to send alerts to task assignees one day before the task is due. The web part worked fine, except for the people who had tasks due on Mondays. These people couldn't benefit from the alert because they were rarely in the office on Sunday to see the email message. For tasks due on Monday, the customer wanted to send the alert the preceding Friday. They called and asked for a custom version of our Alert Plus web part

A calculated field came to the rescue (no customization needed), we just needed to add the field to the list and configure the alert differently. Here's how we changed the Tasks List first:

Create a calculated column (data type = single line of text) in the Tasks list to store the day (i.e. Monday) the task is due. The calculation for this column is: “=TEXT(WEEKDAY([Due Date]),"dddd")”. Call this column “Day”.
Create another calculated column (data type= Date and Time) called “Alert Date” in the Tasks list to store the day the alert should be sent. The calculation for this column is: “=IF(Day="Monday",[Due Date]-3,[Due Date]-1)
Create a view in the Tasks list called Alert that includes all incomplete tasks where “Alert Date” = [Today].
Create a Bamboo alert for the Task List for items in this view which will trigger the alert on the days when an item is present in this view

2. Jeff, a member of the Bamboo Solutions team recently showed a customer how to solve his dilemma by using a calculated field. This customer was looking for a way to provide a unique incremental identification code for each item in a list. The code needed to have a set prefix followed by an incremental number. For example with our projects, we have PXXX for our custom project numbers where the XXX is an incremental number, like P001, P003, etc. You can create an incremental identification code by using calculated fields and the ID column. Our customer wanted to display PXXXX where XXXX is a 4 digit incremental. To achieve this you create two columns. The first one defines how many zeroes you need to prefix the ID with since you always want XXXX to be four digits. The second one stores the value for the incremental identification code itself.

In this case the first column was called “ID Set” and the formula is as follows –

=IF(ID<10,"000",IF(AND(ID<100,ID>=10),"00",IF(AND(ID<1000,ID>=100),"0","")))

As a result if ID is only 1 digit, the result of the column is 000

If ID is 2 digits, the result of the column is 00 - and so on

And if the ID is 3 digits, the results is 0

Else nothing is return.

The next custom column is called “Incremental Form ID” and the formula is as follows –

="P"&[ID Set]&ID

3. Another custom request that wasn't came from a customer wanting to display two lines of information for each event on the Bamboo Calendar Plus Web Part. Since the Web Part allows you to only have one field set as your display field, a calculated field came to the rescue again. In this example I created a calculated field (Display for Calendar) that joined two columns in the Calendar list so I could display the Title and Location for each event in the same field:

The result in Calendar Plus now shows the Meeting Title and the Location:

I found the logic for calculating "day" on a Microsoft Office Online page which has a rather extensive list of common formulas that can be used in a list or a library. So bottom line, sometimes the answer lies in the list itself where a few calculated fields may get you the data you need to group or sort by, set your alert or display on, or filter on and so forth. However, sometimes the data of a calculated field can also limit what you can do with it specially when linking to it or using it as a lookup from another web part so an end to end test of the scenario where you will be applying the data is always the best approach.

How Can We Make Bamboo Web Parts Better?

Steve Gaitten — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:20:00 GMT

Are you using a Bamboo Web Part today and wish it had just one more feature or capability? We want to hear from you and we want to build that feature into an upcoming release.

Bamboo has fully embraced an agile development methodology. That means we are able to get new products to market faster than ever. We're releasing about 2 new products every month, and we issue upgrades and enhancements constantly. With nearly 100 software engineers at work around the clock, we have the ability to respond to your requests for new products and product enhancements very quickly.

We've added a new feature to the Bamboo storefront to make it easy for you to contribute ideas for new features. Even if you don't have a suggestion today, this is a great way to get an idea of the new features we'll be working on. You can also vote on other people's feature suggestions and help let us know what functionality is important to you. Here's a screen shot of the interface:

So, visit the Bamboo Solutions Online Store, click on the "All Products" item in the left hand navigation, choose a product and click on the Feedback tab.

We take your feedback very, very seriously. Give it a try, I think you will be impressed by the results.

;) -S