I’m using a calendar to track panel discussions on a given day.  I have two sessions: morning and afternoon.  I want to create a view that shows morning sessions only listed alphabetically via a session ID.  This is a little tricky to accomplish (unless I missed something real obvious).

I can easily create a filtered view showing just that day’s events.  The calendar will show all those events and if they all take place on the same hour, it lists them side by side in the hour slot.  That’s great.  The tricky part is that, by default, it wants to list them in ID format.  So, if I add "Session 02" and then "Session 01" to the calendar, it shows them in that order (i.e, Session 02 and then Session 01).  To list them in Session ID order, I thought to try these things:

1. Configure the view using the web user interface.  No luck.  There are no options to sort items this way.

   Since that didn’t work, I am now hoping there’s a CAML query somewhere in there that will allow me to override the sort.  CQWP lets me make that kind of change, maybe calendar will as well?

2. Edit the web part,  look for an "export" function and … BZZZT!  I can’t export its XML.  There is no export option.

   I’m still holding out hope that I can find and modify some CAML query.  Since I can’t export the web part, that leaves SharePoint Designer.

3. I add the calendar web part to a sandbox site and open that site using SharePoint Designer.  I look at the markup for the web part and I find what I’m looking for.  It’s encoded madness, but it’s there: "<ListViewXml …. >encoded madness</ListViewXml>".  Specifically, there’s this gem:

<Query>
  <Where>
    <DateRangesOverlap>
      <FieldRef Name="EventDate"/>
      <FieldRef Name="EndDate"/>
      <FieldRef Name="RecurrenceID"/>
      <Value Type="DateTime">
        <Month/>
      </Value>
    </DateRangesOverlap>
  </Where>
  <OrderBy><FieldRef Name="Session_x0020_ID" /></OrderBy>
</Query>

(I’ve decoded the &lt;’s and &gt’s and split them out to multiple lines for clarity’s sake).

Add the <OrderBy> bit and now it sorts by Session ID, not the internal list item ID.

GIGANTIC tip o’ the hat to Becky Isserman for her comment to Isha Sagi’s blog post: http://www.sharepoint-tips.com/2008/07/caml-sorting-by-file-name.html.  I wouldn’t have put the <OrderBy> in the right place without her comment.

I hope to write this up more clearly with screen shots soon, but in case I never do, at least I did this much.

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We collectively spend a great deal of time thinking about SharePoint solutions — how to create them, which tool to use, what happens when they fail to deploy, timer jobs, scopes, etc.  We spend so much time thinking about the up-front bits that it’s easy to forget that we need to retract them as well.  Retracting solutions is probably more difficult, from a conceptual design perspective, than deploying them.  Deployment is basically a cookbook affair.  Typically, install a feature, maybe have a feature receiver load some data into a list, that sort of thing.  However, retracting is potentially more complex.

A given solution may create artifacts like these:

• Content Type
• List Definition
• Site Definition
• Data in a list
• Even receivers
• InfoPath forms

The list goes on.

While it’s obviously important to design a solution that instantiates those artifacts correctly, it’s just as important to consider the update and delete cases.  If your solution creates a new list and populates that list with data, what happens when the solution is retracted?  In some cases, the list should be deleted.  In other cases, it should be left intact for historical purposes.  Your business requirements will guide you to the right decision.

To help with this, create a matrix that lists each artifact your solution deploys to SharePoint.  List three columns per artifact, one for create, update and delete.  For each case, determine the correct outcome for that operation.

This sort of analysis is obviously best done before the solution is ever deployed to a SharePoint farm.  However, like smoking, it’s never too late to start doing things correctly.  Create that matrix and develop a plan to address the missing update/delete scenarios.  It may be a hard problem to solve, but at least you’ll have put a box around the problem.

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