The sometimes not so light side of SharePoint

Concatenate two list columns

melhamilton — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:10:48 +0000

Here are the steps to take if you need to concatenate two columns from a SharePoint list.

Go to list settings

Create a column

Name the column and set the type to Calculated Value
Enter the formula: =CONCATENATE([Column1],[Column2])

Custom Send To Location

melhamilton — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:00:23 +0000

Just a quick note:

I recently had a requirement to be able to easily and regularly send documents from one document library to a different site. I found out that you cannot use a Meeting Workspace as the receiving site, but a Document Workspace works.

Does anyone have any insight as to why that might be? How about a list of other site templates that won’t work?

Thank you for your input.

Couldn’t get a workflow to trigger from InfoPath form

melhamilton — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:45:32 +0000

I had an InfoPath form (web enabled) with “hidden” data (user name, dept, and manager) being used for a workflow. I promoted all of the fields so I could use them in SharePoint designer to design the workflow. The idea was that when UserA submits a form their manager gets an email notification so they can approve. UserA submits the form – no email.

Long story short: If you have “hidden” information you want to use in an InfoPath form and a workflow – you need to put that information in a seperate view but “Allow InfoPath-only features” on the views properties. This allows the info to be “seen” by the workflow but not the users!

Wow – that was frustrating!

Filter View based on current Month

melhamilton — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:06:35 +0000

I am new to the “Blog World” but hope to help make someones life easier by posting about issues I run into on a day to day basis when dealing with SharePoint.

I recently had a customer request that they only see the current months list items by default. This ended up being not as easy as it looked. By using this blog post as a reference I followed the following steps to achieve the desired result.

1. Created a random “Today” column on the list/library.

2. I created a column called MonthCheck with the formula shown below:
=IF(MONTH([Today])=MONTH([DOB]), “Current”, “NotCurrent”)

3. Delete the “Today” column so SharePoint defualts this value to builtin [Today]

4. Applied a filter for the view to show only where MonthCheck is equal to Current.