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Friday 8 May 2015

SharePoint 2013 Out of Box Web Parts

To carry on the tradition of my most popular post, which is the list of 2010 web parts, I figured I’d delve into documenting the list of 2013 ones as well.  Here is the extensive list, in order that the web parts are shown in SharePoint, with information about each one.  I’ve also made notes about which ones are available in Office 365, and which ones are new.
Web parts:

Blog

These are all used on a blog site template.
  • Blog Archives – SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Used on a blog site, and is typically shown on the left side of the page.  It lets you browse to older blog posts by month.
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  • Blog Notifications – SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    By default, this is shown on the right side of a blog site, with links to get to the RSS feed or create SharePoint alerts for the blog.
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  • Blog Tools - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This gives the blog owner some quick links to manage their blog.
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Business Data

  • Business Data Actions - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Business Data Connectivity Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Business Data Item - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Business Data Item Builder - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Business Data List - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Business Data Related List - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365 
  • Excel Web Access - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Allows you to display a spreadsheet in a web part and much, much more.  Here’s more info.  Also, here’s a great tutorial/demo that Joelle Farley did here.
     

  • Indicator Details – Enterprise only – SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Once you have a status list on your site, which looks like this (icon shown below), then you can pick one specific KPI from that list to display in this web part.  You can even decide what the status icons should look like.
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  • Status List – Enterprise only – SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Status lists (KPIs) have NOT been depreciated in SharePoint 2013, but you can’t create one on the “Add an app” page. Read this blog post where he discovered how to find them in 2013.  You have to create a report library and use the web part page with status list content type. 
  • Visio Web Access - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Allows you to view Visio diagrams in the browser, and even interact with them!
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Community

These web parts are used on the community site template, which is new in 2013
  • About this community – NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    States when the community was established.  This date is set on the Community settings page.
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  • Join – NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    For users who are not already members, it allows them to join.
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  • My Membership – NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This web part can be added to your community site or any site that has the community features enabled. It shows the currently logged in user all of the information about their own participation in that community.
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  • Tools - NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    These are the tools for the community administrators.
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  • What’s happening - NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This web part shows information about the current community. The number of members, discussions and replies.
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Content Rollup

  • Categories - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Content Query – Publishing features enabled - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This web part lets you roll up content from within a site collection.  This particular one is rolling up tasks and grouping them by the name of the site that the tasks are on.
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  • Content Search - NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365 Enterprise
    Here is a separate blog post that I wrote about it, with a video as well. 
  • Project Summary – NEW - Enterprise site collection features must be enabled - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This web part displays a great timeline around a task list.  There are little arrows at the top right that let you toggle between the timeline and the list of late tasks.  When you create a site from the project site template, this web part is included on the homepage by default.
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    The web part settings allow you to pick a task list, and choose some more options from the checkboxes below.  The upcoming setting will also let you show items from the calendar on the site.
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  • Relevant Documents - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Shows documents on the current site that are relevant to the current user.  Settings allow you to check boxes for items that were modified by, created by, or checked out to the current user.  This is from all libraries on the site.
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  • RSS Viewer - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Allows you to input the URL of an RSS feed in the web part settings, and see that feed on your page.  Note that if you want to view a SharePoint list or any SharePoint data as an RSS feed, you’ll need to be using Keberos for authentication on your farm.
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  • Site Aggregator - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Lets each end user add in their favorite sites, to see a quick list of content from that site. The little blue button at the top right is clicked to add each new site, and they are displayed in tabs across the web part.  You can see I’ve added three to the one below.
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  • Sites in Category - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Displays sites from the site directory within a specific category.  This appears to be a residual web part from older versions of SharePoint. 
  • Summary Links – Publishing features enabled - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Allows you to enter in a list of links and group them by one grouping level.  For each link, you can also point to an image that is already in a library on your SharePoint site.
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  • Table of Contents – Publishing features enabled - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Displays the navigational hierarchy of your site, up to three levels deep.  You set what level it starts from, within your site collection.
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  • Term Property - NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Shows information about a term in the managed metadata term store.  You can select if you’d like it to show the Name, Description, Path, ID, or any other custom property.  In this example, I selected the “Overtime” term, and selected to show the path.  Although it looks like a navigation breadcrumb trail, these are not clickable links.
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  • Timeline - NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This one is similar to the Project Summary web part, except it’s more simplified.  Notice that there’s no “add task” or “edit list” button, and there is no pretty little pane on the left letting you know about overdue, soon due tasks and such.  The web part settings allow you to pick a web, list and view name.  The thing that’s BETTER than the project summary one, is that this one lets you pick a different site, and the other doesn’t.
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  • WSRP Viewer – Enterprise site collection features enabled – view WSRP data.  
  • XML Viewer – Use your own XML code, or link to an existing XML file.

Document Sets

These two web parts can’t really be placed just anywhere on your site, like the homepage.  They are the built in web parts that are part of a document set when you’re viewing it.  So you create a document set, click the name of it, and then these web parts display the info about it and the list of documents inside of it.
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  • Document Set Contents - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    The one on the bottom in the screenshot above.
  • Document Set Properties - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    The one on top in the screenshot above.

Filters

– Enterprise site collection features must be enabled for these to exist.  All of these web parts must have web part connections as part of their functionality.  The purpose is to send a filter to some other web part like a list, to filter what is displayed in that list.
  • Apply Filters Button - SharePoint 2013
    This is used in conjunction with one of the other filter web parts, such as SharePoint List filter, choice filter or text filter.  It just gives the end user a button to click in order to apply the filter they just selected.  The settings allow you to change the verbiage on the button, and allow end users to save their favorite filter selection if they want.  If this web part is not used, the user’s filter choice will be applied immediately instead of waiting for them to click a button.  This is what the properties look like:
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  • Choice Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Allow users a set of choices to pick from.  This is a list of hard coded choices that you type directly into the web part settings. Here are the properties, which allow you to make it required, enter a default value, show “Empty” as one of the options, or choose multiple values.
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    Note that it doesn’t look like a drop-down box, it looks like this:
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  • Current User Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This one is a lot of fun, and I use it ALL the time!  It allows you to utilize some property of the current logged in user, to pass that information to another web part.  I’ve written a couple of other blog posts about it, too!
    SharePoint List Form – Default User Information
    Testing the Current User Filter Web Part 
  • Date Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Use the date filter to pass date information to another web part to filter that web part. Then, you can send the exact date filter to the other (usually a list or library) web part, or send it as a parameter.
    Note: Metadata Navigation and Filtering can be used for filtering dates as well.  This is a feature that you can turn on in the list of site features.  Once you’ve activated this feature, go into the list or library settings page and click Metadata Navigation.  Add your date field to the key filters area.  This filter will end up showing in the left navigation when viewing your list/library. 
  • Filter Actions - Office 365
    Use this web part when you have 2 or more filter Web Parts on one page and you want to synchronize the display of the filter results.  This is the same as the Apply Filters web part in SP 2013. 
  • Page Field Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This filter lets you use the title of the page in order to filter one or more web parts on that page by that value.  
  • Query String (URL) Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This is another extremely useful one that has been around a while, which I’ve already written several blog posts about.
    Query String URLs are like, SO Useful! (Part 1 of 4)
    Query String URLs are Magical (Part 2 of 4)
    Pass Default Value From a Web Part Page to a New Item 
  • SharePoint List Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This one is similar to the Choice filter web part, and looks the same, except instead of manually typing all the choices into the web part settings, you’re using a SharePoint list (from any web in your site collection) as the list of choices.  Pick a field for the value and a different field for the display if you’d like.
    Note! Once you pick a view, the only fields that will be available in the value and description boxes will be fields that are actually in your view.  In this case, I had to edit the “All contacts” view to include the ID field and the Last Name field (not the last name with drop-down one).
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  • SQL Server Analysis Services Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Uses a SSAS Cube in order to send filter information to another web part. 
  • Text Filter - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This lets you type in free form text to pass as a filter to another web part such as a list view.
    The Text Filter Web Part – Without Having To Filter Exact Text

Forms

  • HTML Form Web Part - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This one lets you use free form HTML code in order to create a form on your page.  This requires knowledge of how to write HTML code.  By default it gives you a single text box on the form. 
  • InfoPath Form Web Part - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Create an InfoPath form in a form library or customize a SharePoint list using InfoPath, and then that form can be placed directly on any page in SharePoint!
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    Jennifer Mason also wrote a great blog post about how to pass parameters to this web part.  SharePoint 2010- InfoPath Form Web Part Connections Using Parameters

Media and Content

  • Content Editor - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This is a completely free-form web part that lets you type text and format it and/or insert code or just edit the HTML.  After you insert this web part on the page, put your cursor in the web part and you’ll see the Format Text tab in the ribbon.  There is a button in there, Edit Source if you’d like to delve into the code.  Otherwise just start typing text. 
  • Get started with your site – NEW - Getting Started site feature enabled - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    imageThis web part helps you get started with a new site by providing you some shortcuts.  
    • Share your site – This is the same as clicking the Share button at the top right corner of the site.
    • Working on a deadline? – Lets you quickly add a task list and calendar to the site
    • Add lists, libraries, and other apps – Takes you to the Site Contents page
    • What’s your style – Takes you to the Change the Look page, which is the same as clicking Site Settings and choosing Change the Look.
    • Your site. Your brand. – This is the same as clicking Site Settings and choosing Title, Description and Logo.
    • Keep email in context – In Office 365, this takes you to a page that lets you add a site mailbox. 
  • Image Viewer - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Lets you insert an image onto your page.  Also, since your home page is a wiki page, you can insert pictures directly on it without having to use this web part. 
  • Media Web Part - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Lets you show a video on your site.  When you insert it on a page, instead of going to “Edit Web Part” to open up the web part toolpane like you would normally do for other web parts, with this one you click to select the web part, and then click on the Media tab in the ribbon.
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    Then you can select media from your hard drive, SharePoint or elsewhere, and even pick what image you want displayed as the default before the movie starts. 
  • Page Viewer - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    This one is very clunky, and lets you view another web page from within your SharePoint page… like a window. 
  • Picture Library Slideshow - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    A picture library on your site is required for this to work.  Click Add an App, choose Picture Library, and then put your pictures in there.
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    The default is 15 seconds, and once you pick a library, pick a view in it.  Example: You could create a filtered view that only shows pictures from a certain date range or from a certain event.  The web part displays them in a rotating slideshow in the exact size of the picture.  It helps if you make sure that your pictures are all the same dimensions. 
  • Script Editor - NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    For devs or anyone who has jQuery or JavaScript or some type of snippet of code to place on the page.  Back in the old days we just used the Content Editor web part for this. 
  • Silverlight Web Part - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Enter the URL of the Silverlight application package (.xap file) to display in the web part.  This is usually something that a developer has created custom.

Outlook Web App

If you have Outlook Web Access installed on your in your on premises SharePoint environment OR you have Office 365 including Exchange, you will have these web parts that let you interact with your mailbox.
4/7/2014 update: It looks like these web parts don't work with Office 365.  I put my mail server address as https://outlook.office365/owa, and now the web part says "this content cannot be displayed in a frame".
  • My Calendar
  • My Contacts
  • My Inbox
  • My Mail Folder
  • My Tasks

Search

Enterprise only.  If you go to a search site (and the results page) in SharePoint, and “Edit Page” and take a look at all of the web parts that are involved, these are the ones you’ll find there.  I like the search results web part a lot, and sometimes I use it instead of the new Content Search web part.  It has a lot of similar settings.
  • Refinement - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Search Box - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Search Navigation - NEW - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Search Results - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
  • Taxonomy Refinement Panel – NEW - Publishing features enabled - SharePoint 2013 – These are used with cross-site publishing, and you can find more information about them here.

Search-Driven Content

Enterprise only.  These are the same as the Content Search web part listed in the “Content Rollup” category above.  These are each pre-configured in order to give you ideas in which the Content Search web part can be used.  Note that when you use Content Search, you will have a button called Switch to Advanced Mode (on the Basics tab), which you don’t have in these search-driven content web parts.  ALL NEW
  • Catalog-Item Reuse – To be used with cross-site publishing
  • Items Matching a Tag – useful in rolling up items that have been tagged with managed metadata terms
  • Pages – Only shows .aspx pages
  • Pictures – Only shows pictures.  When the end user clicks on one, it takes them to the dispform.aspx page (view properties) for that picture.
  • Popular Items
  • Recently Changed Items
  • Recommended Items
  • Videos – only shows videos, and shows the length under each one.  The best place to keep videos in SP 2013 is an Asset Library (they’re pretty awesome). My test site only has one video, here’s what it looks like in this web part:
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  • Web Pages
  • Wiki Pages

Social Collaboration

  • Announcement Tiles - NEW - Office 365  - This looks like a Promoted Links list, but has a couple of slight differences.  It has a begin and end date field, and each announcement will drop off once the end date has passed.  It lets you fill in descriptions for each announcement, but doesn’t force you to put a link URL in it like a promoted links list does.  It only shows one announcement at a time, and there are no web part settings to configure.  I saw this web part in one of my Office 365 tenants but not the other, but I’m not sure why.
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  • Contact Details - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365  - lets you pick one person from a people picker, and display the contact info for that person.
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  • Note Board - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365 – This shows the Note Board for a page, but I think the site feed web part is what you’d want to use instead.  
  • Organization Browser - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365  - It’s supposed to show the Org in a Silverlight control that you can interact with, but the only place I’ve seen this actually function is on the My Site.  How can you see this?  Click Newsfeed and click on someone else’s name besides your own.  On the right you’ll see “Org Chart”.  Click See More.  Click each person’s name to navigate through the org.  This is all based off of the “Manager” property in user profiles.
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  • Site Feed – NEW - Enterprise site collection features enabled - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Have a conversation on your team site!  Any conversations or comments will show up in your newsfeed as well.  Here’s a screenshot from my virtual environment, with some social comments I made up. You can also click the ellipsis on any of these comments, and choose Follow up.  This will add a task to your own personal task list on your My Site.
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  • Site Users - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Shows the name of the users in a specific SharePoint group, or all groups on a site.  If you have integrated instant messaging (like Lync), you can quickly see people’s presence and IM them. 
  • Tag Cloud - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Shows a tag cloud pertaining to tags that the current user has tagged (by default). Optionally display the number of tags next to each term.  You can also change it to show tags from all users or tags under the current URL by all users.  Default item max is 50, and you can change this.
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  • User Tasks - SharePoint 2013 / Office 365
    Shows the currently logged in user all of the tasks assigned to them in task lists on the current website.  The rollup of all tasks on user’s My Sites are much better, though!

SQL Server Reporting

  • SQL Server Reporting Services Report Viewer
    This is only available if SQL Server Reporting Services has been installed on one of your SharePoint servers.

Others

  • Find by Document ID – only on the Document Center and Records center sites.
** Another cool new thing in SharePoint 2013 that isn’t really an out-of-box web part, is the new list type called Promoted Links.  Create your pretty links with images and display this list in a web part on your home page or anywhere!

Thursday 7 May 2015

Content by Search Web Part

Adding the Content by Search Web Part

Before we being, you must first add a CSWP to your SharePoint page.
1. Click Edit on the Page ribbon.
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2. Click the Insert ribbon and then click Web Part.
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3. From the Content Rollup category, select ‘Content Search’ and then click Add.
4. Choose the drop down arrow of the Content by Search web part and click Edit web part.
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Configuring the Query

Now that you have added the CSWP to the page, we can configure the query to return the desired results. The CSWP can aggregate content from any list or library from within the SharePoint farm and then filtered based upon the type of content or by meta data. Once the query has been built, you will be able to configure the display options.
To configure the query:
1. From the toolpane of the content by search web part, click the ‘change query’ button.
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2. The CSWP dialog displays allowing you to configure the query using four different tabs.
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3. The Basics tab displays some configuration options on the left hand side pane and preview results in the right hand pane. This is useful allowing you to see what content your web part will display prior to completing the configuration.
4. The first field in the Basics tab is the ‘Select a query’ field. The queries that you can select from are ‘Result Sources’ which are configured within the Search Service application through SharePoint Central Administration or via the Site Settings.
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5. The example I will give is a configuration to rollup Tasks from Task lists. One thing we know about Tasks is that they are created using the Task content type of a content type that derives from Tasks. Therefore, I will select ‘Items matching a content type’ as my result source.
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6. You can then choose your scope using the ‘Restrict by app’.
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7. Although, the field is not in the correct order, the next field to set would be the ‘Restrict by content type’. Note that this field will change depending on your Result Source. Set the option to Task to rollup tasks. The preview pane should show the tasks that you will be aggregating.
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8. You can then further restrict the results using the Restrict by tag or Add addition filter options.
9. You can further refine the results using the Refiners tab. An example would be filtering by Author or Assigned To.
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10. The Settings tab allows you to set certain settings that affect the load behaviour of the web part among others.
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11. The first setting it whether to use Query Rules. The Query Rules are set within the Site Settings and can be used to fine tune the search results.clip image018 thumb Content by Search Web Part
12. Finally the Test tab provides you with the query text which can be used to test the search results.
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Configuring the Display of your results

Now that the scope and the query is set, we need to make the results look better. The CSWP toolpane contains Display Templates depending on how you want to display the results. There are three types of control. List, List with Paging or Slideshow. The Item will field will then show variations of the displays using the display templates.
clip image021 thumb Content by Search Web Part
Once you have selected the display template, expand the Property Mappings and populate the managed property fields with the columns that you wish to display. In my example I have configured the display settings for a Task List.
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The results are now shown within the Web Part.
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Clicking the hyperlink for each result will navigate you to the item itself.