Creating a bookshelf with the Content Query Webpart in SharePoint

A lot of information these days comes in form of an eBook or similar format like a simple PDF. In SharePoint the easiest way to present this information to the user is as a list. For the more ambitious there is the metadata navigation, which brings a lot of beauty for handling list content. I will use a more sophisticated approach via the Content Query Webpart (CQWP) to present the information like books on the bookshelf.

Preparation

Before we can start, we’ll need to step back for a moment and think about the data structure we’ll need in order to support the view we are creating here. There are a few questions you must ask yourself:

• Where and in which document library will you store you eBooks?
• Will you mix different content types in that document library or will you create a new library for every document type?

In my case, I have more documents other than just eBooks. I’ve decided to keep all documents in a single document library and to identify the documents by their content type. Therefore, one of the first steps will be to create the library, the columns and the content type.

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SharePoint 2015 is peeking thru

Today I was working with the SharePoint Design Manager on Office365 when I found something interessting:

Wave 16 can already be selected in Office365

It seems like Microsoft is already testing Office Wave 16 in the field or at least preparing for it. It is possible to select the Option for SharePoint 2015, but you will get an error that uploading has been disabled by the administrator.

How to identify which w3wp.exe process belongs to which Application Pool in IIS

I received an e-mail today, where I was asked how to identify the IIS Application Pool and the corresponding w3wp.exe process. Actually it doesn’t need much and no extra tools are needed.

1. Open the Windows Task Manager by right clicking on the Taskbar and selecting Start Task Manager
2. In the Menu, open View / Select Columns…
3. Search the list for Command Line and enable the check box



4. Look for the w3wp.exe processes and expand the column for the command line

As you can see, the process is started with the name of the Application Pool in the IIS management console

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Readers galore - Microsoft published 130 eBooks for free download

Microsoft provides developers and IT professionals with new reading material and released 130 free eBooks on various topics. Beside of the PDF format some of the books are offered as MOBI and EPUB formats as well.

Microsoft manager Eric Ligman is regularly publishing free E-books and other information material on his MSDN blog. Eric and his employer are now stacking up the pile and provide a staggering 130 additional E-books for free download.

Configuring the Content Query Webpart to use seperate xslt template files

The Content Query Web Part is without doubt one of the most powerful webparts that come along with SharePoint. And because there are so many bits you can tweak, it’s probably one of the most complex as well.

As you might know I’ve used the CQWP in the past to create a calendar view for Milestones and Events. For these changes I’ve added the new templates directly into the existing ItemStyle.xsl file. Even thou this is a valid way to do it, I was a bit unhappy with the solution, because you always need to manipulate a SharePoint original file. If you make a mistake, you might brick all of your other CQWP used in the SiteCollection. So there has to be a better way to do this.

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