Charting Solutions for SharePoint

Looking for a charting solution for SharePoint list data within your site? Here’s a quick summary of some options:

Dundas Chart for SharePoint
http://www.dundas.com/Products/Chart/SharePoint/index.aspx
$1999 server licence *

Bamboo Chart Plus
http://store.bamboosolutions.com/pc-57-1-chart-plus-web-part-release-22.aspx
$400 server licence *

LiteSuite LiteChart
http://www.litesuite.com/pages/litechart.aspx
$100 per Site Collection *

ChartPart
http://www.codeplex.com/ChartPart
Requires Microsoft .NET 3.5 Framework SP1 and the Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET 3.5 installed.

Excel Services
Excel Services is one of the Business Intelligence features that comes as part of MOSS Enterprise Licence – see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms561082.aspx. Luis F. Bitencourt-Emilio did a great article which included consuming SharePoint Lists in Excel Services – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb267252.aspx. Excel Services can then be used to create charts of the data in SharePoint list. Very flexible but could take some time to setup, configure, etc. as required.

Data View Web Part
You can do quite a bit with XSLT in a Data View web part – see for example http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1CC1EDB3DAA9B8AA!447.entry. However, developing custom XSLT can be quite involved.

DIY
Of course, if you have time, resources and the necessary skills available, one can always take the DIY approach and develop your own charting solution. Silverlight opens up a whole new world of possibilities in this approach. For inspiration, have a look at http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2008/12/04/3d-silverlight-charts-in-sharepoint-smarttools-charts.aspx

If we’ve missed out on any other noteworthy options, please feel free to let us know.

* Prices correct at time of writing but subject to change.

Indexing WordPerfect files with SharePoint

On a recent MOSS 2007 project, our client wanted to index WordPerfect documents stored both in SharePoint and a file share. After some searching on the web, no official solution/approach for this seemed to be available from either Microsoft or Corel!

Further searching yielded these blog posts which appeared to offer the best hope of a solution:

• Shane Young http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2005/11/29/77181.aspx
• Dwight Bragdon http://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/bragdon_dwight/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=8 (update: link broken but cached snapshot available on Google)

We tried out both approaches but unfortunately couldn’t get either to work for us and so it was back to the drawing board! We then stumbled across this WordPerfect iFilter from Corel – http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1153321224268?pid=1216666073390. The Corel website is light on information about the iFilter but it seemed to be worth a shot and I’m glad to report that it worked a treat!

Here is an overview of the installation method used:

1. Download the PDF IFilter from the Corel website

• Corel WPF IFilter http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1153321224268?pid=1216666073390
• wpd icon (here is a link to one)

2. Stop IIS on all WFE and Index servers

• Start> Run> Services.msc and stop the IIS Admin service

3.    Install the IFilter on the Index server. By the way, we noticed that this iFilter installation automatically makes the Registry key modification referred to in one of the above posts.

4.    Copy the wpd icon file to Drive:/Program Files\Common files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Images on front-end servers

5.    Edit the Docicon.xml file on front-end servers to include the .wpd extension

• Browse to Drive:/Program Files\Common files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Xml
• Open the Docicon.xml file and add an entry for the .wpd extension <Mapping Key=”wpd” Value=”NameofIconFile.gif”/>

6.    Restart all servers

7.    Browse to Central Administration > SharedServices > Search Settings > File Types. Click on New File Type, enter wpd as the file extension and click ok.

8.    Run a full crawl of the Content Source where the WordPerfect documents are stored.

Hopefully, this alternative approach might be of use to someone if either of the above mentioned methods don’t work out. If so, please post a comment to let us know.

SharePoint Gantt View: adjusting the scale

One of the terrific list features in SharePoint v3 (i.e. WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007) is the Gantt View.

It’s available by default in a Project Tasks list or you can add a Gantt view to an existing list.

For further information, have a look at Microsoft Office Online: Create and manage a project task list

While this feature is not intended as an alternative to project scheduling tools such as MS-Project, for many projects/project teams, it provides a more than adequate means of defining/presenting/sharing/managing the project plan.

However, out-of-the-box it does have a couple of limitations including:

• it doesn’t support task dependencies or linking
• grouping of tasks (i.e. as sub-tasks) isn’t available
• the timescale isn’t adjustable (by either user or administrator) and the default view is in weeks. For projects spanning months, this can be a nuisance.

On a recent project, I was looking for a means to adjust the project timescale. After much searching and for the most part being told that it couldn’t be done (at least not without significant coding effort), I found this blog post by Christophe at Path to SharePoint How to scale down the SharePoint Gantt view. It’s a simple, quick and flexible solution and only requires you to:

1. Edit the page with the Gantt View and insert a Content Editor Web Part
2. Modify the Content Editor Web Part and using the Source Editor, insert the CSS code provided.
3. Hide the Content Editor Web Part and Save the page.

Of course, hopefully Microsoft will see fit to provide this out-of-the-box in the next release?