Creating a view for birthday

** UPDATE: try this updated version **

Well, I struggled with this for an hour or so until I finally found a solution...

Scenario:

our customer has a list of users with a date field with their Birthday.

He wishes to see the upcoming birthdays for users in the upcoming week.

Problem:

The birthdate field holds the actual birthday of the user (i.e. July 24 1980), but he wants to see it as July 24 2008... July 24 2009... and so on.

Well, since we cannot use the [Today] field in calculated column (all tricks wont work - the field won't update!), I have conjured this solution that only asks for a yearly update to the column:

First, we have to create a calculated column that results in the current year birthdate

(from July 24 1980 to July 24 2008)

1 - create a date column to hold real birthday (named: BDay) or type date.

2 - create a calculate column to hold this year's BDay (named: YBDay).

3 - set the output type of the calculated value to "Date and Time"

4 - use this formula to generate its value:

=DATE(2008,MONTH(BDay),DAY(BDay))

Now, the rest is easy:

You create a view and set filter to 2 conditions:

where [this year birthday] >= [Today]

And

where [this year birthday] <= [Today] + 7

Now, you see all birthdays for the upcoming week!

Just remember - next year you will have to update the formula of the calculated field.

Hope this helps you - sure did saved me :)

Adding a filter combo-box web part as you wish

Its been a while, not that I didnt have what to write about (I have loads - believe me), just had no time...

I want to share a simple solution for filtering list views I did for a customer that could help some of you guys.

I had a customer that needed a combo box web part (simple) that will hold several values for filtering other list viewers web parts on the same page.

Well, obviously we have our "SharePoint List Filter - Multiple Drop-Down" web part from our site for download, but here I was aiming for a simple solution that will not take values from fields automatically and did not need all the benifits of a product such as that (as great as it may be).

So, what I did was to add a content editor web part that will hold the HTML code for the drop-down list with all its values. On each change I passed the selected value to the query string and posted the page.
Here is the code for that web part:

select value: <select id="cmb_WPQ_" onchange="onChange_WPQ_(this);">
<option value="">select...</option><option value="value 1">option one</option>
<option value="">select...</option><option value="value 2">option two</option>
</select>
<script>

function onChange_WPQ_(ddl)
{
for(var i=0; i<ddl.options.length; i++)
{
if( ddl.options[i].selected )
{
view = ddl.options[i].value;
selected = i;
break;
}
}

if(view == '') return;

window.location = window.location.href.split('?')[0] +
'?view=' +
escape(view) +
'&selected=' +
escape(selected);
}

function onLoader_WPQ_()
{
try
{
if( window.location.href.indexOf("&selected=") > 0 )
{
var selected = window.location.href;
selected = selected.slice(selected.indexOf("&selected=") );
selected = selected.replace("&selected=","");
document.getElementById('cmb_WPQ_').options[selected].selected = true;
}
}
catch(e)
{}
}


onLoader_WPQ_();

</script>

(paste this code in the HTML editor of a content editor web part)

Now, when this takes care of showing the drop down list and sending information for the selection to the query string all I have to do to make this play is to add a query string filter web part (comes out of the box), set it to take "view" query string key and connect it to the list viewer web part I want!

This way I can use simple HTML web part as filter providers for more advanced solutions with no real .NET development.

Hope this helps, feel free to comment if you have question.

Creating a A-Z filter for a list

My customer wanted to have a library list, for adding books.

We had a title field for the book and some other meta data for each book.

He wanted to have a page where users could filter the list to view all books starting with A,B,C...Z

Something that will look like:
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,...Z

And a list grid below that will filter all books starting with the selected letter.

I found a rather easy solution for that that needed no code at all - only customization!

Basically what I did was:
1 - Add a calculated column that will hold only the first letter of the Title field.
(fomula for this: =LEFT(Title,1) )
2 - Then I added the list grid web part.
3 - To add filter support I added above a rich text web part and added the HTML for A,B,C...Z and made each letter a hyperlink to the same page with adding "?FilterBook=A".
4 - Now, all i had to do is to add a query string filter web part (comes with SharePoint) and configure it to take the filter value from "FilterBook" query string and send it to filter the list grid web part below.

Done!

No code solution that took no more than 10 minutes!

Customer happy, me happy :)