Friday 4 July 2014

Data View Web Part—Merge Sources

This is a Web part that can be created as a data view Web part using SharePoint Designer 2010. With this method, specific libraries can be selected from within the site and merged together to create one big list of documents.
In SharePoint Designer 2010, open your site and click Data Sources on the left. In the ribbon, click Linked Data Source. Click Configure Linked Source, and there you will be prompted to select from any of the lists and libraries on the site.
Click Next, choose Merged source, click Finish and click OK. This article is not a deep dive into the specifics, but what you would next open a Web part page in SharePoint designer and insert this new source onto the page. This data view Web part would display one big list of documents. This can be done in any version of SharePoint, including Foundation.
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Data View Web Part—Content Rollup
This is another Web part that can be created as a data view Web part using SharePoint Designer 2010. This Web part will roll up all content of any one content type. Some code tweaking in the HTML of the page is necessary for the functionality, but once this has been done, it will show a rollup of all items of a given content type. This can be done in any version of SharePoint, including Foundation.
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Data View Web Part—Search Results
This last method of displaying rolled up information is the most complex of all of the other methods listed. When it comes to performance, though, this Web part is the most efficient. The creation of this Web part involves another data view Web part in SharePoint Designer, but for the rollup, it utilizes the search results Web part. This is an enterprise-only Web part and is not available in other versions of SharePoint. The efficiency of this Web part lies in the fact that it does not perform the query each time the page is loaded. The query and retrieval of the data is done when SharePoint search indexes the content source.