Macaw Discussion Board... the way SharePoint discussions should work... and now do work!
The Macaw Discussion Board
This weblog post describes the immediate availability of a reworked and improved discussion board for Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal server providing last-post first views, a discussion thread view, and SWYRO (See What You Respond On). It is available on http://spsutil.sourceforge.net. This post is it’s documentation.
Introduction
It is great that SharePoint supports discussion lists, its a pity that their implementation is "suboptimal".
The two biggest problems that I have with the discussion lists are:
- When you reply on a discussion item, you don’t see the text you are replying on
- Discussion items are displayed in the wrong order: oldest items first!
Changing this behavior is not as easy as providing a new view. Some more work is required.
We worked around these limitations more than a year ago, but I never found the time to make these modifications available to the community. Until now…
The features
There are two views on a discussion:
- Complete thread index, latest started discussion thread at the top
- Latest posts view, shows the latest 40 posts with the newest post at the top
The thread index view provides the following information:
- Title of first post in thread
- Started by
- Number of Replies
- Last Post (date + poster)
On selecting a thread, a hierarchical view of this discussion thread is displayed:
If you are not sure from a certain reply on which post it is replying, you can select the “parent” link:
If you look at the content of a single post (for example after following a link from an alert e-mail), there is a view in thread link available to view the post highlighted in its complete discussion thread:
Some other interesting features:
- When you click on the name of a poster, you go to the UserInfo information on the user on WSS, and to the profile page of the user when on SharePoint Portal Server
- Complete support for presence detection on all user names
- Completely built on top of the standard WSS discussion board
Availability
The Macaw Discussion Board is available at http://spsutil.sourceforge.net. It is distributed as a SharePoint List Template: MacawDiscussionBoard1.0.stp.
And if you are looking for the sourcode: it’s all there. Just fire up your FrontPage 2003 and you can look right in to it! I hope your XSLT skills are a bit up-to-spec;-)
Installation
The MacawDiscussionBoard List Template is constructed for usage in standard WSS sites. Usage in Portal Area’s is not tested. To test it out, create an empty top level site:
Goto “Site Settings”, and select “Go to Site Administration”:
If you are on a top level site, you will see the option “Manage list template gallery”. If you don’t see this option, go to the top level parent of the current site and perform the actions from there:
On the List Template Gallery you can upload a new list template:
Specify the list template file, and press “Save and Closed”:
The List Template is now available, select “Create” to add an instance of this new template:
Select the MacawDiscussionBoard:
And you are done!! Congratulations!
If you want a more permanent availability of the list template, and you are a SharePoint administrator, you can add the list template using the stsadm.exe tool on the SharePoint server. See the Administrators Documentation for more information.
Troubleshooting
If the Macaw Discussion Board list template does not appear under Discussion Boards in the Create screen, you are probably in a site or area that does not support the list template. Please test first is a standard WSS site.
Limitations
The Macaw Discussion Board has some limitations. For the Thread Index view, information on all items must be retrieved on server side. Happely enough NOT the body text;-). This means that performance can degrade on discussion lists which huge amount of posts. We have a discussion list with over 2500 posts without any problems. Let me know if you run into trouble, we can make somethig up.
Configuration
Some things on the discussion board can be configured like the styles of odd/even/selected posts in a discussion thread, the indenting in a hierarchical thread view, and the formatting of date/time. To do this configuration open the pages of the Macaw Discussion Board in FrontPage 2003.
The following pages have configuration options (look for it in code view):
AllItems.aspx:
<!-- CONFIGURATION SECTION FOR DISCUSSION RENDERING -->
<!-- format of date time rendering, uses standard .NET format as specified in http://authors.aspalliance.com/aspxtreme/aspnet/types/datetimeformatstrings.aspx -->
<xsl:param name="PostDateTimeFormat">dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy H:mm</xsl:param>
<!-- END OF CONFIGURATION SECTION FOR DISCUSSION RENDERING -->
SingleThread.aspx:
<!-- CONFIGURATION SECTION FOR DISCUSSION RENDERING -->
<!-- style for odd/even/selected items in the thread -->
<xsl:param name="OddItemStyle">background-color: #dddddd;</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="EvenItemStyle">background-color: #eeeeee;</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="SelectedItemStyle">background-color: Yellow;</xsl:param>
<!-- format of date time rendering, uses standard .NET format as specified in http://authors.aspalliance.com/aspxtreme/aspnet/types/datetimeformatstrings.aspx -->
<xsl:param name="PostDateTimeFormat">dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy H:mm</xsl:param>
<!-- message when page in called without 'discussion' parameter -->
<xsl:param name="NoThreadMessage">The Single Thread view can only display information if a thread is specified.</xsl:param>
<!-- indentation level in pixels for threaded items in the tree -->
<xsl:param name="TreeIndentation">10</xsl:param>
<!-- END OF CONFIGURATION SECTION FOR DISCUSSION RENDERING -->
NewForm.aspx:
<!-- CONFIGURATION SECTION FOR DISCUSSION RENDERING -->
<!-- style for odd/even/selected items in the thread -->
<xsl:param name="OddItemStyle">background-color: #dddddd;</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="EvenItemStyle">background-color: #eeeeee;</xsl:param>
<xsl:param name="SelectedItemStyle">background-color: Yellow;</xsl:param>
<!-- format of date time rendering, uses standard .NET format as specified in http://authors.aspalliance.com/aspxtreme/aspnet/types/datetimeformatstrings.aspx -->
<xsl:param name="PostDateTimeFormat">dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy H:mm</xsl:param>
<!-- message when page in called without 'discussion' parameter -->
<xsl:param name="NoThreadMessage">The Single Thread view can only display information if a thread is specified.</xsl:param>
<!-- indentation level in pixels for threaded items in the tree -->
<xsl:param name="TreeIndentation">10</xsl:param>
<!-- END OF CONFIGURATION SECTION FOR DISCUSSION RENDERING -->
Applying the Macaw Discussion Board changes to an existing discussion list
Note: The below procedure has not been extensively tested. You are on your own, so please know what you are doing!
It is possible to apply the Macaw Discussion Board to an existing discussion list. You can do this using FrontPage 2003.
- Make a backup of your site containing the discussion list to modify!!!
- Install the Macaw Discussion Board somewhere so you can access it’s pages usintg FrontPage 2003
- Lookup the list name of the existing discussion list (GuidExisting). Look for example at the code of the EditForm.aspx page. At the end you see the following line with the GUID which is the list name:
<ListName xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm">{2F9B130C-EDE0-47D5-AF8C-E0A9B696DFEA}</ListName>
- Lookup the list name for the installed Macaw Discussion Board (GuidMDB)
- Make a copy of all pages in the existing list (make for example a backup directory in the List folder (at the same level as you .aspx list pages). Don’t move the pages, otherwise the interrnal links for the list pages gets messed up!
- Copy over the pages of the Macaw Discussion Board instance to the existing list, overwriting the existing pages of your list instance.
- On all pages do a replace of the Macaw Discussion Board instance GUID (GuidMDB) with the GUID of the original list (GuidExisting).
- Remove any pages that are not also in the Macaw Discussion Board instance
- Done!!
If there is a need for an application that performs these actions, please let me know and *maybe* I’m in the mood to create one!
Licensing
Macaw Discussion Board License Agreement
You can use this Software for any commercial or noncommercial purpose, as long as the Macaw Discussion Board is not marketed and sold as if it is your own application. In return, we simply require that you agree:
- Not to remove any copyright notices from the Software.
- That if you distribute the Software in source code form you do so only under this License (i.e. you must include a complete copy of this License with your distribution), and if you distribute the Software solely in object form you only do so under a license that complies with this License.
- That the Software comes "as is", with no warranties. None whatsoever. This means no express, implied or statutory warranty, including without limitation, warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or any warranty of noninfringement. Also, you must pass this disclaimer on whenever you distribute the Software.
- That neither Serge van den Oever [Macaw] nor any contributor to the Software will be liable for any of those types of damages known as indirect, special, consequential, or incidental related to the Software or this License, to the maximum extent the law permits, no matter what legal theory it's based on. Also, you must pass this limitation of liability on whenever you distribute the Software.
- That if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software for a persons use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically.
- That the patent rights, if any, licensed hereunder only apply to the Software, not to any derivative works you make.
- That your rights under this License end automatically if you breach it in any way.
FAQ
Q1: Why is there no threaded view with newest thread on top. Same as the default view for a standard discussion board, but then implemented “right”?
A:1 We have such a view at my company, but I could not get it working;-) There also is not really a need for such a view in my opinion. I never use the view at work, and no forum implementation uses such views.
Q2: How about multilanguage support, do you support any other language than English?
A2: I have no idea what happens if you install this on a site that is in another language. All texts in the discussion board will definitly remain in English. There is even a chance of broken link to the administrative pages because they link to the /_layouts/1033 directory. If anyone has any information on this (and information on making "language-neutral" templates)...
Q3: When I add new views to the discussion list, they don’t become visible in the left menu.
A3: This is by design. Because the wrong pages ended up at the left menu, I did add the links above “Actions” (The “Discussion” menu) manually. If you want to add a view, modify the pages AllItems.aspx (Thread Index), Latest.aspx and SingleThread.aspx.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my colleagues Arjan Paauw and Olaf Conijn for input in the implementation of the Macaw Discussion Board.