I continue my series about Client Side Rendering (CSR) and jsgrid. Today I want to try a custom field where users can drag and drop images. The inspiration comes from:

• AutoUpload field written by Anton Vishnyakov and
• Base64 Drag and drop written by oroboto

What I want to achieve is:

1. A custom field that is rendered with jslink
2. Users can drag and drop small pictures (thumbnails) into the field
3. A base64 image representation is saved as the field value
4. Optionally implement pasting images using Clipboard API

Step 1 Create a field with a custom jslink

Create a field of type Note. I am using the PnP Core Extensions to make it quickier:

In my project I have a column called Request Status. This column is not shown in any forms, meaning users should not edit, because it is controlled through the app. Nevertheless it is editable in the Quick Edit. Yesterday I wrote about jsgrid in my blog. Now comes more. Today I’ll share a little practical solution how one can disable editing a field in Quick Edit. The field is edited in jsgrid, but to disable it, we only have set the property called AllowGridEditing to false on our column (not even touching the heavy jsgrid api). We can do in the OnPreRender event in our Client Side Rendering (CSR) registration. Having the context object we have access to the Fields (ContextInfo.ListSchema.Field):

JSGrid is the javascript framework in SharePoint used in Quick Edit View (previously Datasheet View). There are a few very good blog posts on this topic (See below in “Sources”). Nevertheless the fact is that jsgrid and working with quick edit from a developer’s perspective is a huge undiscovered area. Articles I have seen are intended for advanced developers. The goal with my post today is to outline the very basics of working with JSGrid. When you know the basics you will be more comfortable to discover and try out more. The example I want to show is a jsgrid code for a “VerySimpleColumn”. The source code can be found on gist.github.com To focus on jsgrid, I assume you have knowledge and some experience of working with jslink, which is related to jsgrid.

Today I want to announce a tiny web application for calculating max memory in the SQL Server to improve the overall performance in you SharePoint environment: SQL Max Memory Calculator. One of the important actions to improve the performance in SharePoint is fine tuning of the SQL Databases. Regarding the databases one of the crucial settings is the Max Memory Setting. You can read more about database optimizations for SharePoint in a whitepaper written by SharePoint MVP Vlad Catrinescu. The document is available on the SharePoint Community Web Site:

The blog post below describes the technical details about how Web Parts can be exported using a hidden tool in OOB SharePoint, though this requires manual assembling of a special url. If you are just interested in a solution for an easy Web Part Export function, just proceed directly to my new blog post where you can download my tool that you can add to your web browser.

Web Part Exporter

Today my colleague Johannes Milling wrote an awesome post: Export SharePoint List Data To XML Directly from the GUI He uses the old and forgotten RPC-based web service owssvr.dll (that has existed since SharePoint 2003). This url pattern is used to get the xml-formatted list data for a specific ListView:

http://<site_url>/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List=<list guid>&View=<view guid>&Query=*&XMLDATA=TRUE

To automate this I have written a PowerShell function. All the details are in the comments:

Recently we made an investment to improve the performance of our intranet. We made many changes in different layers: SQL, Network, Browser upgrade and code. Here I want to tell about what code changes we did to improve the web browser performance. Please leave feedback if you find it useful. You can also share your suggestions. We measured the performance before our code changes and after them. We had amazing results. Unfortunately I can not share any numbers, but we improved the Time to First Byte, time to load event firing in the browser, memory consumption in the clients and, perhaps, the most important, we improved the perceived performance of the Intranet, the way how users experience the speed and UI responsiveness. To do this I got many ideas of my project colleagues and branch colleagues. Here is the list of changes we’ve implemented:

In our Intranet we got this nasty double encoding error that was introduced in SharePoint April 2014 CU. In July 2014 CU the problem is still there. I often hear the suggestions to update files directly in the hive (the root folder for SharePoint: C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\) In that blog post it is described what the problem is and what files are affected and what code must be altered in order to get it to work (which I like). But it is also suggested to update the Search.ClientControls.js directly on the server (which I don’t like). So my advise is:

In our project we have a requirement to show birthdays and job anniversaries in the Newsfeed. The solution is simple (when you know it) but there has not been any information about it online, until today. I want to share a few lines of PowerShell code to enable Anniversary notifications in the Newsfeed. This desired piece of code was written by my colleague Emma Degerman. Enjoy:

$job = Get-SPTimerJob | ? {
  $_.TypeName -like "*.UserProfileChangeJob"
}
$job.GenerateAnniversaries = $true
$job.Schedule = [Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSchedule]::FromString("hourly between 55 and 55")
$job.Update()

The code retrieves the Timer Job that changes User Profiles, sets “GenerateAnniversaries” to true, then it updates the schedule to run it before the Activity Feed Timer Job and updates it. By the way, it is only applicable for SharePoint On Premises.

In this post I want to share an unusual, nevertheless interesting conceptual idea of loading content from SharePoint 2013 apps on many pages. The original awesome concept was proposed and developed by my colleague Martin Villysson at Bool.

The problem we are trying to solve

SharePoint apps are great to extend functionality in SharePoint and integrate other systems (full page apps available through Site Contents), they also provide tools to enrich the default SharePoint experience by App Parts (Client Web Parts) and Custom Actions (additional menus).