Slinger's Thoughts

In my search around the web for SharePoint insight, I came across a blog post on SharePoint Beagle, about a custom training classes scheduling solution.  It’s very elegant, and would work perfectly.  If it worked. For reference the tutorial by Natalya Voskresenskaya is here. I would have e-mailed her directly for the solution, but I can understand her not wanting to post her contact information online.  So I follow the tutorial as word for word as I can. Which I will detail below. (Hopefully she isn’t too upset with me for posting this, but it is a fantastic solution, and I would like to get it to work.) So, I create a new site in my site collection. I set it to the Team Site template per her recommendation, and I name it “training.” I create a calendar list named “Classes.” I don’t create a workflow to notify any trainers because so far I am the only one.  I add one column to the list labelled “trainer” and set that to allow only “Members” of the training site.  I then create the “Attendees” list per her website and set the columns in that the same way she recommends.  Then we get to fire up my trial version of SharePoint Designer 2007.

She says to insert a “DataView” web part into our page.  Ok?  After some hunting I go into the top menu bar and select “Insert – SharePoint Controls – Data View.”  It’s one of several “DataView” webparts that I can find that all seem to function identically.

So the web part is placed on the page.  Now her tutorial and my experience start to differ a little. She says to select the “Classes” list for the data.  Ok.

Now it asks me which columns I want to display in a panel on the right hand side.  I pick the ones she suggests. Title, Start Time, End Time, Location and Trainer.

I select “Insert Selected Fields as” and choose “Multiple Item View.”  My results are beginning to look like her example again. In the “Common Data View Tasks” I also select “Show with Sample Data.” This makes it a little easier to see what my results are going to look like.  I have sorted the columns, and inserted a column. (Table, insert Column from the top menu bar.)  I insert the “Form Action Button.” (This is located in the tool box under SharePoint Controls, in the Data View Controls subcategory.)  I select “Custom Action” and click settings, and lo and behold it pops up the workflow editor just like she said it would. (Of course it would, she’s smart and I’m still learning.)  I create a variable, ClassID and set it to “List Item ID.” Now, here comes the part where I am making a mistake, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what I am doing wrong. I create an action to “Create List Item.” (We don’t need conditions because the condition we are defining is the click on the Form Action Button, I think.)  In the Create New List Item dialog box I select the “Attendees” list.  For the title I click on “Modify.” A dialog box pops up for the Value Assignment.  Set This Field is set to “Title,” of course.  Under “To This Value” I hit the formula button (fx). For “Source” in the new window that pops up I select “Classes.” That is the source of the data after all.  For “Field” under “lookup details” I select “Title.”  Seems logical, we want to set the “Title” field of Attendees to match the “Title” field of Classes.  Now I need to tell it which one. So I mosey on down to the bottom portion of “Define Workflow Lookup” and for “Field” I select “Classes:ID.”  Now it should be noted that this was the prescribed selection from here, although I am presented with other options that may also be valid, I’m not sure.  These include “Classes:GUID”, “Classes:Title” (which would likely send me into an infinite loop), “Classes:MasterSeriesItemID”, and “Classes:UID.”  If figure the safe bet is “ClassesID.” For the “Value” field under “Find the List Item,” I hit the formula button again (fx) and in the new window that pops up, I select “Workflow Data” for the source, and “Variable:ClassID” for the field. I go through pretty much the same drill for “Start Time” and “End Time.”  Now, here is where I think I am making my mistake with this workflow.  We have to set that variable that we created somehow.  So I click “Add” in the “Create New List Item” window, and change the field to “ClassID.”  For the Value, I’m off in the formula button again, I select “Workflow Data” for the source and “Classes:ID” for the field.  I check the workflow and it contains no errors. (This just means that it won’t break.  It has an error in it somewhere.)  I click finish and the workflow is compiled.  Then I click “OK” in the Form actions window that was open under everything else this whole time. At this point, I should be able to check my work.  I create a dummy class, and then try to use the form action button to sign up for my dummy class.  It seems to work great.  I check my attendees list, and it has added a class, but it has not passed any of the class information into the list.  I have made a view with the “ClassID” column visible, and a view in the “Classes” list that shows me the “Classes:ID” for my dummy class.  They don’t match.  Somehow my variable that I set is not getting passed.  The logic is there, at least to me, but it isn’t working as advertised.  Now I can use some help from you guys.  What did I set wrong in my workflow?  How do I get this to start working correctly. I want to get this to work right before I move on to the other issues that I am running into.   And please don’t go trying to find a way to harass Natalya, she was nice enough to put up the tutorial.