My name is Joe McShea and I am an SharePoint consultant/software architect and founder of IntelliPoint Solutions LLC, a northern Virginia based software consulting firm focused on helping customers deliver enterprise collaborative software solutions on the Microsoft stack. I have been designing and developing software and other technology solutions for more than 20 years. Since 2007, I’ve done quite a lot of SharePoint work.
Historically, I’ve done mostly farm solutions in C#, sometimes with a little JavaScript mixed in to spice things up. Clearly the direction Microsoft is going with SharePoint Online calls for a change, so I’ve started focusing a lot of effort on No Code Sandbox Solutions and the App Model. Towards that end, I’m also the author of an open source project for SharePoint called SPEasyForms, which is the focus of this blog.
SPEasyForms is an open source solution for Office 365 and SharePoint 2013 and 2010, hosted on CodePlex. It is a tool for customizing SharePoint new, edit and display forms through a list settings page. No code is required; it is intended to be for power users and administrators to use to customize SharePoint forms without needing to know JavaScript, HTML, or CSS. Just deploy the solution, go to a list settings page, and configure things like tabs and conditional field visibility through a drag and drop GUI interface. It was also written to be extensible, and this site is intended to document how to code JavaScript extensions and plug them into SPEasyForms.
About SPEasyForms – Latest Stable Release! v2015.01.06
SPEasyForms is a tool for applying jQuery constructs like tabs and accordion to SharePoint forms without necessarily knowing anything about JavaScript or HTML or CSS. It works on SharePoint 2010, 2013, 2016, and Online (Office 365).
The things you can configure with SPEasyForms fall into 3 broad categories:
- Containers – the ability to organize fields in a form in some way; current implementations include:
- Tabs – an implementation of jQueryUI tabs
- Accordion – an implementation of jQueryUI Accordion
- Columns – the ability to put fields or containers into 2 or more columns instead of one per row (technically, one or more, but one column doesn’t really buy you much)
- Stack (NEW!) – allows you to stack 2 or more containers on top of each other, so you can put multiple containers onto a single tab or accordion page.
- Wizard (NEW!) – a specialty container that allows users to page through containers using next and previous buttons.
- HTML Snippets (NEW!) – a specialty container, that doesn’t actually hold any fields, but allows you to inject arbitrary HTML into the page, including referencing external scripts and style sheets.
- Conditional Visibility – conditionally format a field:
- Based on various conditions like:
- Membership in a SharePoint group
- Which form is open (i.e. the new, edit or display form)
- Comparing the values of other fields based on various comparison operators (i.e. make this field read only when the Color field is equal to Red), comparison operators include:
- Equals – equals a string literal
- Matches – matches a JavaScript regular expression
- NotMatches – does not match a JavaScript regular expression
- GreaterThan (NEW!) – greater than a string literal
- GreaterThanOrEquals (NEW!) – greater than or equals to a string literal
- LessThan (NEW!) – less than a string literal
- LessThanOrEquals (NEW!) – less than or equals a string literal
- NotEquals (NEW!) – is not equal to a string literal
- Based on various conditions like:
- Formatting Options:
- Hiding a field completely
- Making a field read-only
- Highlighting a field in one of four colors
- Formatting Options:
- Field Control Adapters – modify the controls users see in the form to input data; current implementations include:
- Cascading Look Ups – join two look up fields such that the values available in one look up are trimmed based on the value selected in another look up
- Autocomplete – provide type ahead functionality in a text field based on values pulled from a field in another list on the same site
- Lookup Detail (NEW!) – allows you to pull in additional fields from a lookup list based on the value selected in a lookup field.
- Default to Current User (NEW!) – pre-populate a user field with the current user on the new form.
- Star Rating Adapter (NEW!) – can be applied to numeric fields. Fields are displayed as five stars and edited by clicking on one of the stars.
Most of the things marked (NEW!) were actually released in the updates package to v2014.01. The Stack and Star Ratings Adapter are actually brand new.
There is a full fledged user manual that explains this functionality in nauseating detail, but it’s approximately 45 pages. There’s also a quick start guide, which provide a lighter overview of this functionality to get you started with using SPEasyForms quickly. The full manual is installed with the solution and available in the editor from the help button on the ribbon. There are also 4 approximately 10 minute videos that cover most of the material in the user manual.