Thanks!

Cascading Drop Down - multiple select

Update: Marc D. Anderson has now updated the Jquery files, so if you use the latest version this won’t be an issue anymore and you can disregard this post.

I have previously written a walk-through about how to implement a relationship between two columns:

http://www.uccorner.com/54/sharepoint/cascading-drop-down/

My friend and excellent SharePoint-er Jasmine Garry found ut that under certain circumstances, this approach did not work. To be more precise, if your site is in another language than English, and your column in the list where the relationship is (i.e. “Vacation Plans”) allows for multiple select, you get this error:

Message: Column not found on page

The reason for this is that the Jquery file uses hard-coded English terms to create a string that works with multiple select.

Solution:

First, in the code for your custom NewForm (the page where you are getting the actual error), look for a select tag and find the one where title=”City possible values”. Possible values will be in your own language. Now open the jquery.SPServices-0.4.8.min.js-file (or the version you are using), replace all occurrences (there are several) of possible values with the equivalent from your own language that you just found in the source code for the page.

Now, do the same procedure for “selected values” and you are good to go.

This is a workaround, and is expected to be fixed in a later release of the Jquery file by Marc D. Anderson.

Thanks to Jasmine Garry and Marc D. Anderson for figuring this out: http://spservices.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=85478

February 17th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Sharepoint, Sharepoint 2007, WSS 3.0 | Leave a comment

Cascading Drop Down

The request for Cascading Drop Down, filtered drop down, dependent drop down or what you call them is one of the most common requirements from customers. This rather basic functionality is surprisingly not implemented in either WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007.

Update: This also works in Sharepoint Foundation (2010). I have created a new post for 2010 here.

What is Cascading Drop Down?
You have two columns in your Sharepoint list, Country and City. Both are lookup/drop down columns. When you choose a country in the Country Drop Down, you only want to see the cities in this country available in the City Drop Down column. This of course makes life easier for the end user, and improves data quality.

Solutions en masse
There are however lots of solutions for this. Datacogs’ Cascading Drop Down is well-known, and various improved versions like SharePoint Cascading Drop Down List (With Filter) Field Type and Query Based Lookup Field Control (Custom field controls), both on Codeplex. These are all free, you can also find solutions out there you have to pay for. I have tried several of these, however good work these guys are doing making this for free, there are some issues that keeps me from using them, like annoying page refresh, creating lots of versions of the list element and the general problems you can get with restore/moving/upgrading data that is not standard Sharepoint.

The solution
Instead, I have used this solution with success. The list is still standard Sharepoint, which gives great flexibility and stability. This way, the filtering is done in the forms for creating and editing elements. Because of this, you don’t even have access to the server to implement this. I have used this solution both in document libraries and in regular Sharepoint lists. Continue reading →

January 22nd, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Sharepoint, Sharepoint 2007, WSS 3.0 | 83 comments