Cascading Drop Down - jQuery Sharepoint

Cascading Drop down or otherwise called Dependent Drop Down in one of the most sought after control in SharePoint environment and for the matter all the business systems. I am not sure why Microsoft has not built a control in SharePoint that achieves this functionality Out of the box (OOTB). I would happy to see Microsoft create a custom field type called cascading lookup and make it available in the upcoming SharePoint version.

Alright, now let us see how we can achieve this. There are couple of different ways you can achieve this

Creating custom field type

Using jQuery

I would not recommend creating custom field unless you are selling a product and want to include this in your product. Jquery is better for couple of different reasons

Do not require GAC deployment. Hence can be used in sandboxed solution and SharePoint Online

Simpler to maintain and since it is client side would not cause any problem when migrating to newer version of SharePoint.

Let us see how we can get the ball rolling with cascading drop down using javascript/jquery

There are some prerequisite that we need to do before we can get fully working dependent drop down.

a.       Get jQuery from here

b.      Get SPService library from here

SPService is a javaScript/jQuery Library for SharePoint. Once you have the files downloaded boom all pre-requisites are done. Now let us see how we can assemble all these things together to solve the puzzle.

Create a List in SharePoint to contain the parent column information. In this case I am creating a List called Category which is going to contains entire product category.

Create another list that contains information for child column or the dependent column. I am creating a sub category List which contains product sub category information

 

Now create a Look up field in the sub category List looking information against the category list. This is done to create a relationship between category and sub category.

Create a Document Library in SharePoint to house the jQuery and SPServices file. The lIbrary should be accessible by all users. Upload

1.       jQuery-<version>.min.js

2.       SPServices-<version>.min.js

I am mentioning the version here because number varies depending on the version of jQuery and SPServices you download. At the time of writing I am using

·         jQuery 1.3.2 and

·         SPServices-0.7.0

We now have necessary infrastructure for the cascading dropdown. In order to see this working we need to create a List/Library with lookup columns for parent and child columns. I am creating a list to track the products issue. You can have library but the procedure still remains same.

 

Once you have the List click on Forms web part in the Ribbon and select default new form. The New form page will be available for editing where we can add web part.

 

I am adding a Content editor web part and here you can either directly add the following code to content editor web part or you could do the way I am doing where I am creating a file containing this script and add the link to file in content editor web part. I am going to upload the file with the script to the same library. The reason for me to do this is, I can now enable versioning and every time I modify or someone modifies there is audit for changes and always go back to previous version if needed.

You can see from the image where I have a hidden Content Editor Web Part and Cascading dropdown is working.

 

 Code:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="/Information technology/Shared Documents/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="/Information technology/Shared Documents/jquery.SPServices-0.7.0.min.js"></script>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function () {
    Cascade("{0B4E64E9-FB9A-4B42-9FEA-F428D4B56B7A}", "Category_x0020_Name", "LinkTitle", "Category Name", "Sub Category");
  
});

function Cascade(relationshipList, relationshipListParentColumn, relationshipListChildColumn, parentColumn, childColumn) {
    $().SPServices.SPCascadeDropdowns({
   
        relationshipList: relationshipList,
        relationshipListParentColumn: relationshipListParentColumn,
        relationshipListChildColumn: relationshipListChildColumn,
        parentColumn: parentColumn,
        childColumn: childColumn,
        debug: true
    });
}

Details description about each one of the parameter in spservices can be found here.

You could also do this by modifying the page in the SharePoint Designer and adding the script directly in the content place holder main

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderMain" runat="server">

I would not suggest doing this because it is using SharePoint designer and could

• ·         Cause problems when changing in production if you do not have proper change control procedures
• ·         Cause validation issues in controlled environment because the pages are now ghosted and roll back will be problem.

 If you are using List remember to add the content editor webpart in Edit form also.

Content Type Syndication

I wanted to write about Content Type Syndication for some time and did not get a chance to spend some quality time writing about this. But I feel the time spent is worth because during this time I had an opportunity to implement content type syndication in couple of different environment and will try to share those scenarios here so we can understand how content type syndication is useful in achieving desired outcome.

Content Type syndication is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 that helps sharing of content types across sites. This was a needed feature in SharePoint to become a complete Enterprise Content Management System (ECM). In order to achieve content type syndication there is another service that Microsoft introduced in SharePoint 2010 which is Metadata Management Services (MMS).

What is Content Type Syndication hub and why is it necessary for ECM systems?

Well, for ECM or Web Content Management (WCM) there are situations where content is shared across multiple site collections.  Content Type is a better way to organize content in a site collection and also have templates (Word template or Excel Template) associated which makes the content creator life easier. Content Types are one the foundation for better document management. You can read more about content type here.

Content Type Syndication is a step forward in achieving Content Management capabilities because it lets you create the content type and share it across web application. You can even extend it to share across multiple farms.  This is will help in managing content type efficiently and effectively. Further, Content Type syndication helps in solving one of the most common and ubiquitous problem in SharePoint environment i.e uncontrolled prolific growth. This also helps in SharePoint governance and administration.

Two scenarios that I mentioned earlier in the post where I used content type syndication are

·         Regulatory System

·         External Facing Portal

Let me now tell you why we decided to use content type syndication in these scenarios. First of in the regulatory environment the system is completely validated and there should be no unwanted modifications in the system, further the documents in Regulatory systems are created in another environment. The other environment is used for Document Management and here is where the documents are created on a day to day basis. Once the documents are approved ready to be sent to the regulatory agencies these are converted to PDF and pushed into Regulatory System from where it will be published to regulatory bodies across the world. You could clearly see the need to share content type between 2 of these systems. If this was to be done in 2007, we would have to create content types in 2 separate environment (there are different ways to do it but I am not going in to this now) and if there is a need to change any content type or add new content type in future then validation needs to be done again on regulatory system. This is going to cost more but with Content type syndication now we enabled regulatory and document management system to consume content type from the hub and we now have single source and huge cost saving.

Content Type Syndication Part-2