Excellent Post! I scoured the Internet looking for detailed descriptions about the different users for this site template (Teachers, Learners) but couldn't find any information.  This post, along with parts 1 & 2 have been extremly helpful.  Thanks!

Hi! Thank you for this post. I have fixed my register/un register bug that was associated with available seats not being updated. And this is all fine.. User can have read access to the course list to register/unregister. But the problem is when user has only read access to the course list - the available seats is not being updated and if they are given contribute or EDIT permissions - then the  available seats work fine.

My question is How can I simply remove EDIT Item link if the user has read access or Edit permissions by following your blog? It is a javascript link so I cant remove on the sharepoint desinger. Please help!

Hello,

I have another question - On this display form - we have export event - which export the course to your outlook calendar etc. Is there a way to change the text from Export event to "Move this to calendar" or something. I have been playing around and I am not having any luck with the sharepoint designer or xsl editor.

And when you are creating a new course - You type the course name and then description. When you go to description - you see this rich text editor gets enabled ( Font sizes, choose fonts change color). Is there a way to not give users capibility to see this editor just like Course Title field.

Please help!! Thank you

Hello,

When I click on the course title - It goes to Display form page and where it shows for New Item , Edit Item Delete Item Manage Permissions Export event etc. You see all of this if you have proper rights But since I gave the user edit rights - they can see Edit Item on this page. How do i make summaryview on this page? When I go to edit I dont see which view options.

Hi Dink,

Thanks alot for helping on this. I dont want the entire toolbar to dissappear. The users wanted to see Export event ( their courses to their own calendar). Is there not a way for users with minimal rights to NOT see Edit Item link but see the Export Event?

Even I cant see the toolbar now if I want to edit a course etc... and I have full rights..

THank you so much for helping :-)

Hi Dink,

I was wondering if you are still there. I needed help with this if possible. Thanks alot

Hi,

I wander if you can help me. I want the registrant to be able to add feedback when the course is finished, but I want them to only be able to see the course that they have attended. Any suggestion on how to do this?

Hello,

While trying to do perfom the first task in step six it says:

While in "Edit" mode, open the toolpane for the "Courses" list (edit > Modify Shared Web Part).

Open the "XSL" editor and locate the following:

When i goto modify that webpart for "Courses" i do not have the option for the xsl editor. I have tried this on the main page as well as the list page for Courses. Am I looking in the wrong spot for this?

Also, in Step 4, number 8.

"2. Change view of "Courses" webpart to "calendar" "

I do not see a "calendar" option in the view menu. I have <current view>, All courses, Courses and <summary view>. Is there something im missing on this?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

Dink,

That did the trick. Thanks A lot!

Has anyone tried to enable cancelling courses? Because multiple entries in Registrations have the same Course ID, you get the 'Ensure Unique Lookup' error and only the first name gets the cancellation email I'm trying to enable. I'm playing with appending new registrations to a multi-line text field in a new list and feed that field to the email addressee field in the workflow. However, I'm having difficulty getting that field to show only email addresses. It tends to show usernames too. Perhaps there is a way to restrict a people field to just the email address?

Anyone have any tips here?

New to all this,

Michael

Dink, Your tutoring in Parts I, II and III on how to get thie most out of this template has been excellent. We're 95% there with things, but I'm still struggling with the same issue Sara mentioned - the need for the Export Event functionality - which disappears when you comment out the toolbar on the Registrations page.

Worse case scenario, we just tell folks to add it themselves, but in this day and age, that's not a good solution.

Any insight or suggestions from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

Jon

Because I'm using WSS in a hosted environment, I don't have access to the master pages and layouts. However, I was able to do the following to increase security:

1. Hide Registrations and Past Registrations from the browser - every little bit helps.

2. Removed the toolbar form disform and replace it with an 'edit' button that goes to a view that only shows the courses you created; My Courses.

3. Set Toolbar Type=None on all views except My Courses and the default Calendar view.

4. Modified the workflows so when anyone other than the course creator modifies something, the admin gets an email saying who did it.

5. Removed the toolbar containing 'delete' form editform.

6. Because my site also has a mechanism for the course creator to cancel or modify a course and notify all the registerees, I also modified this workflow so anyone trying to cancel/remove a course first, unknown to themselves, modifies a low priority field. Then, I compare 'modified by' to 'created by'. If the person is not the creator, the workflow won't remove the course. Also, it sends the admin an email saying who was trying to do this while emailing that person they don't have rights to do that...even though they really do but you know what I mean.

Tyr Reading this:

SharePoint Calendar Tips

So, everyone knows that SharePoint has a calendar list type that is defined and ready to use, out of the box.  Hopefully you know that with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and 2007, you can read the SharePoint calendar from Outlook.  

And with Outlook 2007, you have full, two-way synch and offline access to SharePoint calendars, giving you a true "group calendar" functionality that can replace other tools including Microsoft Exchange public calendars.  If you're not up to speed with the things I've mentioned so far, check out the information on the Microsoft Office Online site.

What if, however, you want users to be able to add items from a SharePoint calendar directly to their calendar, without having to subscribe to the entire SharePoint calendar? Having access to a SharePoint calendar using the web interface of the SharePoint site, or using the Outlook rich client, is great, but that doesn't get items onto your smartphone or PDA.  I know that I visit sites that allow me to export events to Outlook using the iCalendar format.  How can that be done with SharePoint?

One of my colleagues asked me that recently and the answer turned out, in some situations, to be much easier than expected.  It's already built in to SharePoint!  Because I do tend to use Outlook to access my own SharePoint calendars, I'd never noticed!  If you open a calendar item in the "view item" mode, there's an Export Event button right there!  Click it,  and an .ics file opens.  Ain't that easy?

Unfortunately, SharePoint does a lousy (read: incorrect and useless) job of exporting recurring events, so it's possible to use only for non-recurring events.  But if that's what you need, that's a great start.

The other problem is that the Export Event command is buried in the single item view.  What if you want it more exposed?  You can add a field to the calendar list that allows you to show the "Export to Outlook" function as part of the list itself.  

1. Open the list Settings page.

2. Click Add Column.

3. Enter a name (I used iCAL as the column name for this example).

4. Choose a Calculated column type.

5. Enter the following formula:

="http:// sharepoint.intelliem.com/sites/test/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?CS=109&Cmd=Display&List=ListID&CacheControl=1&ID="&ID&"&Using=event.ics"

a.The ListID is the escaped GUID of the list.  You can see the correct ListID on the address bar as you're adding the column: View image here (ct.email.officesharepointpro.com/.../cts).

Now, you can expose the calendar in a list view (rather than a calendar view) and show that column.  The column name, description, or other "hints" to the user can explain that the link creates an iCalendar file.  The next step would be to create a custom list view, using SharePoint Designer, where you use the value of the field to create a hyperlink with visible text that says something like "Export to Outlook."

Last but not least, you can roll your own solutions to provide "Export to Outlook" capabilities that can even support recurring events. You can start with this SharePoint Team Blog entry (ct.email.officesharepointpro.com/.../cts). The blog entry sets up and links to code in the Community Kit for SharePoint that exports events.

One important one that I'll like to know if anyone has solved the problem of when you change the date and location of a course, it does not get refereshed in the reminder that get sent to the registrants.

Any idea on how to resolve this?

Regards,

Jimmy

Source of item posted 7/11/2008:

Dan Holme

Office & SharePoint Pro

Community Manager

in the last two days, 4 different "participants" deleted the COURSEs instead of removing their registration. (some folks just don't read instructions!)   Has anyone found a *simple* solution to this?

Hi Dink,

Good work on this walk through this has helped us no end we are finally able to use the site properly for our internal training courses, there is one thing i would like to run past you though. i have done everything that you have laid out in your instructions but when a user who is part of the new security group i created goes into the courses calendar the New button is still visable .

did i over look something in your instructions?

PLEASE, why can't somebody just make a new site template available with these fixes already applied?  Perhaps some of the gurus here could start a CodePlex project to make and release improvements to the Fab40?

Hi Dink,

Thanks so much for these articles.  I was able to apply your fixes and provide a solution my internal clients are pretty happy with.

I did notice another bug in the "Courses I am attending", "Courses I have attended", "Courses I am teaching" and "Courses I have taught" data view web parts: the items don't sort by course start date.  Instead, I think they sort by course title.

To fix this, I opened the page in SharePoint Designer and selected the web part (you can also modify the web part and open the XSL Editor).  Look for this block of code:

<xsl:template name="dvt_1.body">

<xsl:param name="Rows"/>

<xsl:for-each select="$Rows">

<xsl:sort select="*[name() = $dvt_sortfield] | @*[name() = $dvt_sortfield] | text()[name(ancestor::*[1]) = $dvt_sortfield]" order="{$dvt_sortdir}" data-type="{$dvt_sorttype}" />

<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.rowview"/>

</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

Then change it to:

<xsl:template name="dvt_1.body">

<xsl:param name="Rows"/>

<xsl:for-each select="$Rows">

<xsl:sort select="*[name() = $dvt_sortfield] | @*[name() = $dvt_sortfield] | text()[name(ancestor::*[1]) = $dvt_sortfield]" order="{$dvt_sortdir}" data-type="{$dvt_sorttype}" />

<xsl:sort select="@EventDate" order="ascending" />

<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.rowview"/>

</xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

That takes care of the sorting.  Looks like you'll have to do it for each of the 4 web parts.

Whenever I create a new site w/ the training template- under Site Settings > Regional Settings (Under Site Administration)- the time zone is set to Pacific time.  Our web settings in central admin set the default time zone to EST- this only happens when using the training template.

Wondering if it is something specific to us since nobody else has mentioned it.  

When does "registration has completed" kick in? I have a course today at 10:30 CST, but a user on the West Coast could not register at 10:00 CST for the course. Is there a way to work around that or turn it off?

Hi Dink,

I know Steve has asked this question and you answered it, but I am having trouble getting to see XSL editor on Courses web part.

You said, "Select an item on the  "Courses" list first so you're viewing the item details (not the entire list).  From there you should now see the "XSL" editor."

So, I clicked on one of the dates and then clicked on Edit-->Modify Shared Web Part, but I still do not see XSL Editor.

What am I doing wrong??

Perfect.

Thanks for your rapid & well written response!!!

Is anybody having any issues when a course date gets changed?  It appears that the workflows don't account for date changes. Reminders for the news course date aren't sent.

Any ideas?

Anyone had to add additional fields to the registration screen?  I have managed to get the field added and editable, but I can't figure out how to edit the update procedure.

HI Dink,

Out of sheer laziness, I was wondering if you could export the ETST template with all of your fixed included and post it up here for us to download?  I am under a crunch to setup a training site.  

Thanks in advace...

Laziness aside. I've successfully taken the steps in the first and second part of the tutorials but I can't get the third one to work.

Dink, could you PLEASE post a final version of this template?

It would be highly appreciated!

Never mind. On Part II of these walk-through's I saw Dink's comment:

"The way that SPD workflows work is that they are not attached to an individual list template, rather they get attached to a list "Instance".  Because of this, they aren't really "Portable" in the same sense that list "templates" are.  Saving a site that has SPD workflows attached as a template, will not include the workflows."

I noticed that my work flows disappeared when saving the modified ETC as a template.  x-|