Weblog Ton Stegeman [MVP]

On my CodePlex project I have just released a new version of the Content By Type web part and the Filter webparts. This post will summarize the changes in the web parts. It will also introduce the latest family member, the User Information Filter web part. I have introduced the Content By Type web parts two years ago, and some time later I introduced the filter web parts to the package. Currently the web part package has been downloaded nearly 3000 times and I get some great feedback en feature requests. So it was time for a new version. I want to thank Jesus Lopez from Spain for creating a number of nice new features. Thank you very much!

User Info Filter Web Part

This web part is new in this release of the package. It can get a value from the User Information List from the current user and pass that as a filter value to connected web parts. The screenshot below shows an example. It shows the page in edit mode. The User Info Filter web part is a context filter web part and therefore is not visible at runtime. In this example, it is used twice. The upper web part gets and name of the logged on user and passes that to the connected My News web part. This is a Content By Type web part that queries the site collection for news items published by myself. The second User Info Filter gets the department for the current user and passes that to the My department news web part. This shows an overview of all news published by my department.

This new filter web part is available both in WSS and MOSS. Besides being a filter provider, the User Info Filter web part also is a filter consumer. This way you can load properties of another user from the User Information List in SharePoint. Another filter web part on the page provides the name (or any other user property) to the User Info Filter. This web part finds that user in the User Information list and passes one of the values of that user to the consumers. The screenshot below shows an example.

In this screenshot you see a List Item Filter web part. This lets users pick an author from a list. The name of this author is passed as filter value to a User Info Filter web part and a Content By Type web part. The user info filter web part load the department for the selected user and sends that value to another Content By Type web part. These two news web parts aggregate the news written by that user, or written by the department of that user.

Content By Type web part

This paragraph shows all new features of release 1.3 of the Content By Type web part:

1. Filter using column headers
   Just like any List View web part in SharePoint, you can now filter the Content By Type content by selecting one of the values in one of the column headers.
   
2. If you use grouping, you now have an option to hide the fieldname from the group header.
    
3. The context menu can show the option to take users directly to the folder that contains the item / document. Instead of redirecting you to the list and making you find the folder yourself, the web part now directly redirects you to the folder.
   
4. While configuring the web part, you decide what options appear in the context menu. Instead of all options, you can select what options will be available for your users.
   
5. Links to display and edit forms now pass the current page as Source parameter in the querystring. Users are redirected back to your overview page when they click the Close button.
6. There is a new option to collapse all groups by default.
    
7. An item in the list can now be linked directly to either the item, the folder, the list or the site. In previous versions you could only link to the item directly.
    

Item Filter web part

There have been a number of enhancements to the list item filter web part:

1. Improvements have been made to the loading mechanism of the list. You enter the server relative url to the site and the list. You can use the title of the list, or the url name. If you want to use a list from the current site, simply enter the title or url name of the list, without any slashes. In WSS the guidance to enter the reference to the list is improved.
2. The tag cloud has the option to display a ´Show all´ link. This link can be used to reset a previously selected filter.
   
3. You can now use multiple webparts that show a tag cloud on the same page. They no longer interfere with each other.
4. While configuring the web part, you can now set an item limit for the query.
   
5. If you are using multiple List Item filter web parts on the same page that use the Checkbox display mode, you can hide the search button for all but one.
   
6. Items in sub folders are now also included in the filter web part.
7. There has been a bug fix in connecting to and from the web part when used in the Tag Cloud display mode.
8. Loading a list from a site collection that is using an ´explicit inclusion´ managed path now works.

Page Column Filter web part

This release of the Page Column Filter web part has a number of improvements:

1. The reference to the selected field is stored in the web part configuration as the internal name of the field, instead of the ID. This makes it easier to use the web part in multi server environments (like developement, test, production)
2. The web part can now be used in a page layout directly.
3. The web part now also sends values of calculated fields to connected web parts.

Web Context Filter web part

1. Release 1.3 of the filter web parts makes the Web Context Filter web part available in WSS. Previous versions could only be used in MOSS.
2. The web part can now be used in a page layout directly.

The new package is released as version 1.3 on this CodePlex page. Enjoy the new version!