SharePoint Product recommendation of the week - WSS 3.0 Connected Fields.

The first post in a series of (hopefully) many to come, I want to tell you about a product that really impressed me. I am going to give "stars" to show how impressed I was.
For now, these stars are lousy images that I created my self using visio and paint.net, but if there is a volunteer amongst my readers who can whip up a nice "sharepoint tips star" design, please contact me through this "email ishai" link (you understand why I will not expose my email address?). Please upload the image to a web site (picasa, flicker and so on) so I can see it. I will publicly thank anyone who will submit an entry into this "make Ishai a star" contest.

The product of this week is "WSS 3.0 Connected Fields" by a company called InfoWise. For proper disclosure I have to say that the owner and the lead developer there are both friends of mine - but that doesn't change the fact that this product is awesomely cool - 4.5 stars.

Also known as "Master-Detail" or "Cascading Dropdowns", WSS 3.0 Connected Fields adds another field type to the types of fields you can add to lists in SharePoint. this field type operates like the built-in lookup field, but also allows you to specify a "parent" lookup.
This way you can create a master-detail connection between two fields. For example, choose a "category" and have the "product" list filter to products in that category! how great!
What is even more impressive is that they support infinite connections. so "Continent" will filter "Country" which will filter "State" which will filter "City" and so on and on.

But every friendship has its limits - and so does this solution. The only thing that bugs me about this is that the field type cannot be used in site columns and therefor in content types.
As a developer I understand the difficulty - but still I reckon that this solution can only get 4.5 stars and not 5 just because of that.

Here are some images from the infowise web site (ignore the hebrew bit in the second one - it is the "none" value for the lookup - a Microsoft localization stuff-up?):

Search Highlighting For MOSS2007 (and 2003) - Update

This is an update to a year old post about a product that I helped write - the SharePoint Search String Highlighter. Apperantly my friends in KwizCom have added support to MOSS2007!

Before you say "but moss has search highlighting", let me remind you that this solution also highlights in the documents (word and pdf), and can also help you solve a problem that is usual with search results - make sure the links open in word and not in the browser (I hate when that happens).

So take a look - tell me what you think...

Another shameless plug - SharePoint-Desktop synchronization solution For 2007 and 2003

I have to tell you about the new product from my good friends at KWizCom (ok, not so new - but I didn't have a chance to check it before now).

Their new product (ShareGO) is a great solution to synchronize documents from SharePoint 2003 and 2007(!!!) document libraries. They add a button to Internet Explorer: This allows you to configure a 2-way sync that includes:

• Download new/updated server files
• Upload locally updated files/local new files
• Manage collisions - files that were updated both on the SharePoint server and locally.
• Provide local recycle-bin for server-deleted files

Check out their web site. They have some movies that show how the product works, and I noticed a new support option in their site- you can chat with them and ask them questions.

A last note - if you have some recommendations for products you want me to review, let me know (comments to this blog are always read!).

Great new search solution for WSS 2

I know I usually write about wss3 and sharepoint 2007, but this product just got released by KwizCom that I thought all my readers should be aware of.

The product is "WSS Cross Site Search" and it allows you to search in WSS as if you had portal (across sites, advanced search and more) and for cheap (current pricing stands on 560$)!

Now, I have seen some other products that do similar items, but what I liked about this one, is that it completely integrates into the wss framework. Take a look:

And check out the advanced search page:

I also like the sound of some of the items in the feature list:

• Easy management of properties available for the advanced search
• User can define that the search results page will be displayed on a new window
• Clicking an Office 2003 document (Word, Excel, PPT) in the search results page opens it in Edit mode
• Available both as a web part and as a custom control, enabling easy deployment both in WSS sites and WSS site definitions

How good is that???

I hope you find it as useful as I do. The guys from KwizCom did it again.

Link to the product page

Search Highlighting

Hey, I just have to let everyone know about this one. You know how google (and other search engines) highlights the words you searched for in the results? well, now you can do that in sharepoint! I wrote this application for Kwizcom (friends of mine). Its a sharepoint portal server search that highlights the searched words in the search page and inside the documents (doc, rtf and pdf). You also can configure how the highlighting will appear (bold? blue? blinking? just configure your own!) and how it will work (case sensative? search whole word or part of a word?). Oh yeah... a bonus feature (one that customers always ask me for) is that when you click a word document from the search results - it will open up in word and not in the internet explorer window (which is annoying!). Now your users dont have to click "back" to get from the word document back to the search results. I find it fantastic value... check it out!