Updated presentation from my SharePoint Saturday Boston session - "Introduction to Developing Custom Actions within SharePoint"

1. Introduction to Developing Custom Actions within SharePointGeoff Varosky

2. About Me Geoff Varosky MCP, MCTS Senior Solutions Developer for Grace-Hunt, LLC. Blog: http://www.geoffvarosky.com Email: gvarosky@grace-hunt.com Twitter: @gvaro

3. About Grace-Hunt Founded in 2004 Based in Hudson, MA Presence in North East, Mid Atlantic, and South East Regions Senior Level Staff Microsoft Gold Partner Specializing in SharePoint and Dynamics (CRM, SL, GP, NAV) Web: http://www.grace-hunt.com

4. Agenda What are Custom Actions? Demonstrations Creating a Simple Custom Action Anatomy of a Custom Action Creating a Slightly More Complex Custom Action Hiding Custom Actions Custom Action Groups References Q&A

5. Just What Are Custom Actions? Per Microsoft – “A custom action represents a link, toolbar button, menu item, or any control that can be added to a toolbar or menu that a user sees. Custom actions can be bound to list type, content type, file type, or programmatic identifier (ProgID).” Source: http://snipurl.com/d8y70

6. Just What Are Custom Actions? What does that mean? Custom Actions can be bound to List Types A Custom Action can be bound to a Document Library, but, may not be bound to a Task List Example: Check In/Check Out

7. Just What Are Custom Actions? What does that mean? Custom Actions can be bound to File Types Example: ‘Edit in Microsoft Word’ bound to Word (.doc, .docx, etc.) document types

8. Just What Are Custom Actions? What does that mean? Custom Actions can be bound to Content Types Example: Folders, Document Content Types, List Content Types, etc. Programmatic Identifiers Example: Task List Identifier (107)

9. What Can Custom Actions Do? Examples of Custom Actions Edit Control Block (ECB Menu) Toolbars Site Actions Menu Site Settings Page Central Administration Pages Operations, Application Management Shared Service Provider Pages You get the idea… (hopefully?)

10. Examples Toolbars

11. Examples Site Actions Menu

12. Examples Site Settings

13. Examples Site Settings (Custom Action Group)

14. Examples Edit Control Block (ECB)

15. Examples Central Administration Pages

16. What Can Custom Actions Do? But wait, there’s more! Create links to pages that really should be there… Example: There is a link to the Site Collection Recycle Bin on the Site Settings page, however, there is no link to the current site Recycle Bin. (Why? Who knows…) Never fear though – you can add one easily (Demo #1) Custom Actions can pass along information to act upon Example: Add a “Complete Task” action to an Edit Control Block, which calls an ASPX page, taking the parameters of the List ID and Item ID, and updating the task item within a list. (Demo #2)

17. What Can Custom Actions Do? …and more Custom Actions can also be hidden Example: You do not want site administrators to be able to delete their sites by using the Delete This Site link on the Site Settings page – so, we can remove it by using HideCustomAction (Demo #3) Create Groupings of Custom Actions by using CustomActionGroup Example: Create a grouping of your Custom Actions on the Site Settings page for all of your Custom Actions… (Demo #4)

18. What Tools Are Needed? Notepad! What do I use? Visual Studio Andrew Connell’s SharePoint Project Utility for Visual Studio http://snipurl.com/d8yv9 Requires DevExpress DX Core to be installed (free) WSPBuilder (CodePlex) http://snipurl.com/d8yxv SharePoint Solution Installer (CodePlex) http://snipurl.com/nt6ux

19. Demo Creating a Simple Custom Action

20. Anatomy of a Custom Action Feature Definition (feature.xml)

22. A “sub-site”

23. Only activates the feature on the specific web

24. Site

25. Site Collection

26. Applies to all webs within the site collection

27. Web Application

28. Applies to all site collections and webs within a web application

29. Farm

31. Anatomy of a Custom Action <CustomAction ContentTypeId = "Text" ControlAssembly = "Text" ControlClass = "Text" ControlSrc = "Text" Description = "Text" GroupId = "Text" Id = "Text" ImageUrl = "Text" Location = "Text" RegistrationId = "Text" RegistrationType = "Text" RequireSiteAdministrator = "TRUE" | "FALSE" Rights = "Text" Sequence = "Integer" ShowInLists = "TRUE" | "FALSE" ShowInReadOnlyContentTypes = "TRUE" | "FALSE" ShowInSealedContentTypes = "TRUE" | "FALSE" Title = "Text"> </CustomAction>

33. May be a GUID or a unique term

41. Boolean (True or False)

42. Cannot be used on ECB menu list items

43. Rights

44. Specify rights needed for this Custom Action to be visible

45. Example: “ApproveItems,DeleteListItems”

47. References the current SPWeb context

48. ~sitecollection

49. References the current SPSite context

50. {ItemId}

51. GUID of the item action is called from

52. {ItemUrl}

54. GUID representation of the list

55. {SiteUrl}

56. References the URL of the SPWeb context the action is called from

57. {RecurrenceId}

58. Unsupported in context menus (http://snipurl.com/ntcjc)

59. Source URL

60. This token is not available, but there is a way to get it via JavaScript, which we will see in Demo #2

62. Demo Hiding Custom Actions

63. Demo Custom Action Groups

64. Resources My Blog http://www.geoffvarosky.com Click on SharePoint Saturday category on left side of page GraceHunt.SharePointCodePlex Projects http://codeplex.com/GraceHunt John Holliday’s Custom Action Resources Hiding Custom Actions, and a Utility to get all custom action identifiers http://snipurl.com/d8zea

65. Resources MSDN Custom Action Definitions http://snipurl.com/d8zi7 Default Custom Action Locations and IDs http://snipurl.com/d8zka How to: Add Custom Actions to the User Interface http://snipurl.com/d8zq2 CustomAction Element http://snipurl.com/d9jd4 CustomActionGroup Element http://snipurl.com/d9jfx HideCustomAction Element http://snipurl.com/d9jhs

66. Q&A

67. About Me Geoff Varosky MCP, MCTS Senior Solutions Developer for Grace-Hunt, LLC. Company: http://www.grace-hunt.com Blog: http://www.geoffvarosky.com Email: gvarosky@grace-hunt.com Twitter: @gvaro