SharePoint Data View Web Part Announcements List

The frontpage of any corporate Intranet should have announcements to provide site users with up to date information about the on goings of the company. SharePoint provides a number of options to make this possible. The following article will provide you with information about how to use the Data View Web Part to display an Announcements list. This method allows for greater customization than some of the methods and is rather easy to implement.

Let’s begin with the scenario: In some companies announcements are typically mailed through a distribution list to all employees. The SharePoint announcement list we have setup currently is receiving e-mail via the distribution list and stores the information in the appropriate columns. The best way to display this info is using the Data View. For more setup information read below.

List Setup Tips:

To create an Announcements list View All Site Content > Create > Announcement (under Communications)

To enable your list to receive e-mail – Enter the list > Settings > List Settings > Incoming E-mail Settings (Under Communications)

The following assumes that you already have this announcement list setup.

1. Now that the announcement list is setup and hopefully already has at least one entry in it (if it doesn’t create a test announcement) we are ready to open the page we want the data view on it SharePoint Designer 2007. Right click on the page, check it out and detach from page layout.

And

2. Select the Web Part Zone you wish to display the announcements by clicking on the title. Insert the data view by selecting Data View > Insert Data View on the top menu. This will open the Data Source Library task pane and you will see a list of data sources on the current site.

3. Select the Announcements list drop down in the data source library and click. If you do not see the list it is possible it could be on another site collection. You will have to connect to this library via the Connect to another library… link in the Data Source Library task pane.

4. We can now see all the rows in the Current Data Source that we just selected. For this case we will select the following rows to display – Title, Created, E-Mail Sender and Body. Select these rows by holding the Ctrl key and clicking them with your mouse. Once you have all the rows you would like to display selected click Insert Selected Fields as… > Single Item View

5. You will notice that the data view is now displaying the fields in the order of the rows we selected in two columns. My personal preference is the first column displaying the name of the row has got to go… let’s delete this by right-clicking within any of the rows within the column we want to delete and selecting Delete > Delete Columns

6. Now the ordering may need to be changed depending if you want the body on the bottom or e-mail sender on the top, etc. This is done by selecting the entire WebPartPages: DataFromWebPart > Selecting the menu to the right > Edit Columns

You can now Move Up or Move Down the Displayed Columns

7. Now you probably will want the Title of your announcement to be a hyperlink that directs to the list entry page. By default your title will be text format and look rather boring. To set this as a hyperlink to the menu item we will need to select the column and use the menu to the right (using the small arrow) and change the Format to Hyperlink

Note: This will pop a warning message saying only in a trusted environment… Ok this to open the Edit Hyperlink window.

8. Now this is where it gets semi-tricky. The way I found the correct URL was by using the Content Query Web Part. Explaining further, before using data views to display announcements I was using custom CQWPs to display the data. This was alright for awhile, but I kept running into problems and realized that data views are the best way to display the information. Plus they are just easier to work with.

To get the correct hyperlink for the {@Title} value follow these steps:

a. Insert a Content Query Web Part to any zone on the page

b. Modify the web part to query items from the announcements list we created in the introduction of this article and click OK.

c. Preview your page in Internet Explorer and right click on the announcements titles to get the URL. Copy this hyperlink to your clipboard. The whole hyperlink will look something like this:

http://mySharePointServer.com/_layouts/CopyUtil.aspx?Use=id&Action=dispform&ItemId=14&ListId=10B06D13-1F0D-4E86-8183-9CD43DFEC217&WebId=D11E6E1F-3155-433D-B3A0-4CD31FD5B038&SiteId=01574ebc-b0f8-43e0-9b8c-95aa6ccsaa30

Change the link to read:

http://mySharePointServer.com/_layouts/CopyUtil.aspx?Use=id&Action=dispform&ItemId={@ID}&ListId=DA4660F2-7F9A-4751-88F5-A7C26517F54C&WebId=E98A4391-677F-40C5-85C0-58A2AB4709B6&SiteId=02354ebc-b0f8-47e0-9b8c-95aa2cdeaa30

Important: Changing the Blue text above to ItemID={@ID} directs to the appropriate list item id; you don’t want all the links to go to that one specific announcement ID.

Tip: To find out the ListId you can select Data source properties… of the Current Data Source in the Data Source Details task pane.

Note: Make sure the Hyperlink’s title value remains {@Title} (SharePoint Designer will automatically change this field when the hyperlink reference changes).

9. Style the announcement title using the Conditional Formatting task pane. Select the Title column, this will enable the Create dropdown in the Conditional Formatting task pane. Click Create > Apply Formatting

Now in the Condition Criteria add a new clause that states: Title Contains ‘ ‘ Now apply all the formatting you wish in the Modify Style window and click OK.

Note: the ‘ ‘ is simply a space meaning it can contain anything, the format is always applied.

Tip: You can create additional clauses for formatting keywords or highlighting key points, simply specify the word in the contains space… get it?

Hint: You can also apply formatting by using the style options in SharePoint Designer

10. Additional formatting: If you want to limit the amount of text displayed in the body of the announcement this is possible. Just double click on the body column and add the following formula substring(@Body,1,500) and manipulate the numbers to display the amount of text you wish.

11. Finish all your adjustments, save, reattach to page layout, check in and publish a major version so all audiences will see the new data view.

Final Look of our Announcement:

If you have any problems please comment.

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