Having decided to use Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) as a company-wide document repository I'm thinking I'm probably going to need to report on the documents and list content (in combination with data from other enterprise systems) and not just rely on SharePoint Search, so Reporting Services seems like a sensible option. Clearly though RPTSVCS can't do this out-of-the-box so I'll need to write a data processing extension. So I thought I'd see if anyone else had tried so far...

Other than what I read in this thread, and this one so far no-one has written an extension for accessing a web service (or at least, if Bryan Keller hasnt found it the I doubt it's out there yet). So I doubt theres one floating out there for accessing info in WSS and I'll need to roll my own. I found these links which I think will prove useful, any other pointers would be welcome:

File Share Extension
XML Data Extension
Clarification on the Placement of CodeGroup Elements for Extensions
How hard is it to write Reporting Services extensions?

If I manage it I'll post and article here!

UPDATE: Ohad has listed some other useful links including two for extensions for custom ADO.Net DataSets by Gavin Joyce and by a GotDotNet community

UPDATE 2: I have converted the original GotDotNet sample to VB.Net and it works! Now to write one to work with web services and ultimately with WSS lists so I can report on WSS lists to my heart's content...

Although I'm now happy with my custom web service, codewheeney isn't and has posted that he/she has worked out how to use the FrontPage RPC calls to do the same stuff without resorting to web services.

I thought I'd post in case anyone else was interested and maybe we could persuade codewheeney to share the code... Otherwise the concept is (partly) documented here

Dim targetWeb As SPWeb = SPControl.GetContextWeb(Context).Webs.Item("sites/IT")
Dim docLib As SPDocumentLibrary = CType(targetWeb.Lists.Item(New Guid(targetFolderGUID)), SPDocumentLibrary)
Dim docLibFile As SPFile = docLib.RootFolder.Files.Add(fileName, fileContents)
Dim docItem As SPListItem = docLibFile.Item
docItem.Fields("Category") = "General"

If I attempt to set the value of a field (i.e. a Column) in a List, the complier complains that:

Property 'Item' is 'ReadOnly'

Anyone know why I shouldnt be allowed to do it this way?!

---

UPDATE: the following code is what I was looking for...

docItem("Category") = "General"
docItem.Update()

targetWebsite = SPControl.GetContextWeb(Context).Webs.Item("sites/IT")
Dim folder As SPFolder = targetWebSite.GetFolder(targetFolder)
Dim NewFile As SPFile = folder.Files.Add(fileName, fileContents)
Return NewFile.Title + " created " + NewFile.TimeCreated.ToLongDateString()

]

[Client code:

DialogResult = OpenFileDialogUpload.ShowDialog()
If DialogResult = DialogResult.OK Then

sFilePath = OpenFileDialogUpload.FileName
sFileName = sFilePath.Substring(sFilePath.LastIndexOf("\") + 1)
Dim fStream As IO.FileStream = CType(OpenFileDialogUpload.OpenFile, IO.FileStream)
Dim nBytes As Integer = CInt(fStream.Length)
Dim binFile(nBytes) As Byte
' get the file contents into a buffer
Dim nBytesRead As Integer = fStream.Read(binFile, 0, nBytes)
' send the document to sharepoint
Dim spf As New SPFiles.SPFiles
spf.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials
MessageBox.Show(spf.UploadDocument(sFileName, binFile, sDestination))

End If

This topic is currently active on a newsgroup thread

Currently watching this thread with great interest - I love the new Google Groups

Great work guys, here's one person who's definitely interested in the final solution!

respect to:
Mike Walsh
Bart Waeterschoot
and Ian Morrish

UPDATE: Respect also, of course, to Jim Duncan. Mads Nissen has also now posted his own solution

I have been mulling over this for a long time so I thought I'd start a post and see where it went, and I'll keep this up to date (or write an article) if I get somewhere with it. I am the sole developer in an IT team of 5, our other main function therefore is systems admin and support for all IT systems within the office (other than printer maintenance which is out-sourced). I wrote our in-house fault-logging/issue tracking application in ASP.Net but it's lacking some features we need (I was only learning when I worte it!), and I want to do a complete re-write in SharePoint as this seems like a sensible place to host such a solution as we begin to make more and more use of SharePoint.

I like the look of the Issues list in WSS and would like to use it as a simple fault logging system. However 'out of the box' it doesnt have everything we'd need and I'm going to have to extend it somewhat:

For example

1. I would prefer the ' Assign to' drop-down list to only list site administrators (or users with some other specific level of permission) rather than every user of the site - or be some other form of custom look-up that could be configured.
2. I would prefer the notification email to also be cc' d to the user logging the issue. That way the person to whom the call has been assigned can quickly ' Reply to All' so that everyone involved knows what' s going on. The other (even better) solution to this would be if the system could automatically create an alert for the user logging the issue (and maybe even the person who has been assigned the issue) to be notified of changes to the issue (with maybe a quick link to an opt-out to this alert).
3. It would be nice if this could be somehow be linked to tasks, either in a task list in WSS or in Outlook (i.e. the person who has the issue assigned to them also has a new task created for them). I had already written a post here on using an issues list and a tasks list connected via two web parts but I saw some limitations with this approach which I outlined, and would need to be resolved.

Andrew Velez just posted an article on Javascript 'listeners' which sounds like just the kind of thing I'm looking for in point (2) but I'm not too sure just yet what Andrew is using these listeners for so I'm going to ask!... more to come...

Update: a while ago I printed off an article by Mark Bower at Microsoft on how to customise the context-menu for list items, but all I can find now is this article which is not quite as friendly but it gives you a starting point. It occurs to me that you could use this for a 'send email to person who logged the fault' function. Not quite as nice as the solution I hoped for in point (2) but better than nothing.

I had been reading in Bryan Keller's post "How hard is it to write Reporting Services Extensions?" 

The documentation for Reporting Services includes a sample, however, that sample does not cover the use of data extensions that handle parameters. This is the only area where it gets confusing. Hopefully we will include a more comprehensive sample in the future.

...but I didnt need to search too far to find Gavin Joyce's post with some sample source code for doing just that.

Now to try it out for myself!

 

In reply to Tom Rizzo's post Bryant Likes questions why you would want to export a report to XML, and Tom provides a useful reply. I'd like to add how I found this feature useful too:

Lets say you have a report where, for the sake of readbility, you have indented some of the text, and you also have quite a bit of grouping going on. Lets also say you have a user who likes playing around with the data in Excel using pivot tables and all that kind of stuff, and to be honest, you would rather leave them to decide how they want to arrange the data rather than trying to get a fixed spec off them which might not then suit somone else's needs. If they export direct to Excel, they get the data arranged in the same grouping and indenting and they can't easily manipulate it. If however they are willing to do this in two steps (ok, you'll need to give them a bit of training) they can export to XML, then import in to Excel 2003 and they can pick and choose the fields they want to display, and where, because Excel can work out the schema all by itself (well, sometimes!).

DonXML has posted a great topic on putting your resumé (or CV for those of us in the UK) into XML format so that you can transform it into any look-and-feel you like (and export to PDF etc). I look forward to being able to post my CV direct onto my .Text blog!

Download SharePoint Add-ins here - thanks to Bryant Likes  for the pointer!

... I'll be sure to keep my eyes on these [link removed], in beta at present but seem to work fine. It's strange that they are in beta but they don't seem to want us to provide any feedback. Anyone else used them for anything interesting? Anyone seen anyone blogging on this topic? Any issues we should be aware of?...

I was just reading this excellent article. I tried it out - and it works well. It's a shame however that in the 'lookup' to another list, you cannot define a filter. I would like to use this for a fault-log application, but once an issue is closed it doesn't make sense to link a new task to a 'closed' issue, plus you don't want the drop-down list getting too long as issues build up...