• twitter וחבריו הם כלי מיקרו-בלוגינג מעולים, אבל קהל היעד שלהם מצומצם, ואנשים צריכים להבין ב-RSS ובכלל להתחבר לקונספט הזה בצורה מאוד חזקה.
• ilcu, זוכרים? האתר שמרכז פעילויות ואפשר לשלוח בו זימונים לאנשים? אז גם הוא לא ממש עומד בפני עצמו, כי אין בו שום דבר אחר לעשות.
• LinkedIn, מקושרים וכו’ - אז הוספתי את כל החברים שלי והמכרים שלי, ועכשיו כולנו מקושרים אחד לשני. מה עכשיו? מה עושים? מחכים שמישהו ישלח קורות חיים או הצעת עבודה? או אולי הודעת שרשרת?

רק לא לשכוח - בסך הכל זו רשת חברתית, ואולי אוטוטו ייטרפו הקלפים שוב, ו-OpenSocial יעשה מהפכה. פייסבוק זו פשוט עוד דרך טובה לשרוף זמן פנוי… והרבה ממנו.

שיהיה בהצלחה.

Change the field title text Add a remark to the title Add a link Make the title a link Put some javascript

The trick in doing this is also not breaking the Form Web Part, so new fields will appear in the form.

The solution is… Javascript at runtime! It’s inspired by this post for changing the default value of a field, only this time we’re talking about the title text and not the field value.

So how to do it? Easily. Open the NewForm page with SharePoint Designer and view the HTML code. Look for the main content placeholder:

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId=”PlaceHolderMain” runat=”server”>

Paste this code inside it, before the table:

<!– Begin Field Link Code –>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
// Add the function so it will be called on Body_OnLoad.
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push(“AddFieldLinks”);

function AddFieldLinks()
{
  // Call the search function with an anonymous function that will 
  // be executed upon finding the relevant field.
  AddFieldLink(“Status”,
   // This anonymous function adds a link to the field’s title.
   function (currentText)
   {
     return currentText + “<br/>” + 
     GenerateLink(“policy.html”, “<u>See Status Policy Document</u>”);
   }
   );
}

function GenerateLink(url, text)
{
   return “<a target=\”_blank\” href=\”" + url + “\”>” + text + “</a>”;
}

function AddFieldLink(fieldName, fn)
{
  // Get all field titles 
  var tags = document.getElementsByTagName(“H3″);

  // Go through all field titles and search for the requested field.
  for(var i=0; i < tags.length; i++)
  {
    if((tags[i].children.length == 1) && 
       (tags[i].className == “ms-standardheader”) &&
       ((tags[i].children[0].innerText == fieldName) || 
        (tags[i].children[0].innerText == fieldName + ” *”)))
    {
      // Found the field we need to update. Set its 
      tags[i].children[0].innerHTML = fn(tags[i].children[0].innerHTML);
      break;
    }
  }
}

</script>
<!– End Field Link Code –>

Now just edit the body of the AddFieldLinks function to change the title of the relevant fields.

It’s parameters are:

• The title of the field
• A function that returns a string for the title.
  Notice that I used an anonymous function so you can set a different behavior for each field title - for example, one will be a link, the other would be appended some text, etc…

Now just save the file, approve the unghosting, and that’s it!

Here’s the result - click to enlarge:

Dor.

Appearatnly the out of the box activity sends the message body as HTML, but the editor is not rich, thus misleading us to think we can only insert simple text. However, the solution is to simply paste HTML code into the body. And that’s it!

This way you can create messages with cool content, and align the body as RTL (Right To Left) for relevant languages such as Hebrew.

Here’s a screenshot from SharePoint Designer in Hebrew, in which I created an RTL message:

Tip: Check the Workflow XOML file that SPD creates before running it for the first time. (Because on the first run it will compile and workflow will become unchangable.) See the HTML string you created and run it through some HTML Decoder, to convert special characters to understandable text. Then you can make sure the HTML is OK.

This appeared to be easy - Yahoo offers these kind of web widgets that can be embedded in a site.

However, the Yahoo widget has a big logo and commercials, and this isn’t suitable for an internal MS site. So I needed to get the data elsewhere.

After some research I found a way to do this, using MS only tools:

• Get the stock value from Microsoft MoneyCentral Web Service [found it here]
• Get the chart from MSN Money

So I separated the functionality to two Web Parts:

• Data View Web Part (created using SharePoint Designer) - to consume the Web Service
• Content Editor Web Part - to run some javascript to get the chart image

If you’re interested in how I created the Web Parts, keep on reading. Otherwise, skip to the end of the post to download them.

1. The Stock Value Web Part

That’s easy - open up SharePoint Designer, open some SharePoint page you can edit on a test site, and connect to a data source - the MoneyCentral Web Service. You’ll get the data, which you can add to your page using the Data View Web Part.

However, there’s a problem - the Web Service output is a string that contains a lot of XML data as a String and not as a complex XML tag. SharePoint Designer doesn’t know the schema of that XML and can’t isolate just the current value of the stock from it. So I used a couple of functions to isolate the relevant text. (substring-before, substring-after.)

Then just save the page, view it in your browser, export it using the Web Part menu, and import it to wherever you want to place it. (By working on a test site and importing the Web Part, the page desination page will not be unghosted.)

2. The Stock Chart Web Part

This is a bit more tricky: you can take images straight from the MSN website, because the image source is a DLL that generates them on demand. You just need to send the right parameters.

Please notice that by using this trick, we’re actually “stealing” bandwidth and CPU from MSN’s servers. So the minimum I could do is put some nice link to MSN to give them credit..

I created a Javascript function that generates the URL:

formatChartImageSrc(symbol, fromDate, toDate, imgWidth, imgHeight)

Parameters:

• symbol: a string containing the stock symbol name, like “MSFT”.
• fromDate: a Date object containing the date from which to display the timeline.
• toDate: the date in which the timeline will end (usually today)
• imgWidth, imgHeight: Dimensions of generated image.

Here is a sample use of the function that outputs the URL for a 1-year view of the MSFT stock, until today. Then I get an IMG element with the ID “chart” and set it’s source to the generated URL.

var stockName = “MSFT”;
var toDate = new Date();
var day = 1000*60*60*24
var fromDate = new Date(toDate - day*365);

var srcUrl = formatChartImageSrc(stockName, fromDate, toDate, 300, 300);
var chartObj = document.getElementById(“chart”);
chartObj.src = srcUrl;

I place this code and the <img> tag itself in the Content Editor Web Part, and that’s it. The image will be up to date.

Download & Installation

Here are the links to the files:

• Stock Value Web Part
• Stock Chart Web Part

Changing the stock symbol
After you save the Web Parts locally, open them in a text editor. Search and replace the word MSFT with the stock symbol you want to display. Do this before uploading the Web Parts to your website.

Importing the files to the site
To install, go to a SharePoint Site, click Site Settings and then Edit This Page. Add a Web Part to a zone, and then click the bottom link in the Add Web Part Dialog to get to the advanced mode. Now you’ll see the gallery on the side of the page. On the top of the gallery, you will see the word Browse. Click it and choose Import instead. Then pick one of the .webpart files and upload them. Drag and drop, repeat for the second file, and that’s it!

• Rimzu - המעניין ביותר לדעתי מבין השירותים. סוג של סוציומטרי (כן, כמו בצבא) שעושים לך חברים שלך באופן אנונימי.
• Pownce - סוג של מסנג’ר קבוצתי עם יכולת שליחת קבצים, הודעות ולינקים.
• Wallop - כמו Facebook, רק בפלאש, ומשעמם.