The Grouping tab on the administration interface allows you to configure the Active Display to automatically group information based on the contents of a selected field. You can also control the color and font of the group labels and specify whether or not the results should be expanded.
Active Displays allow you to perform three kinds of grouping on results, each of which is described below:
• Grouping by sites, lists, and/or folders
If you use all available grouping options, the results will be grouped according to the criteria in these sections, in this order:
NOTE: The “Add New Item” link will not be included in the Active Display display unless Group by Sites and/or Group by Lists is enabled.
Active Display results can be grouped by site, list, and/or folder, with options to expand or contract the results in each type of group. These grouping options, presented at the top of the Grouping tab, can be used in any combination.
To enable a grouping option, simply place a check mark to the left of the option. To disable it, remove the checkbox. The Expand All checkbox expands the Active Display results under all selected grouping options.
The Group by Folders property is not limited to use with document libraries. If you enable this option on a list Active Display, the results will be presented under a single heading that combines both the site and the list. Users do not have to click through multiple heading levels to get to the information they need.
NOTE: If you choose to group by both sites and lists, the items returned by the Active Display will be sorted alphabetically by URL. This is a known issue and will be resolved in a future release.
When dynamic grouping is utilized, the Active Display will automatically group the results based on the values in one ore more columns that you identify. For example, if you have a document library with four different document categories, the documents can be grouped by category, If you add a fifth document category at some point in the future, any document items with that category are automatically included in the Active Display and grouped under that new category.
Active Displays allow you to group on up to three columns. To take the above example one step further, you can group first by category and then by stage. So the items within each category in the Active Display would be grouped by stage. As more categories and stages are added in the future, they will all be included in the Active Display automatically.
To utilize dynamic grouping, all you need to do is select the column(s) you want to group on from the drop-down list(s). The remainder of the fields in the Dynamic Grouping Settings section of the tab are optional.
NOTE: If you need to group on more than three columns, you can do so via the web part tool pane, accessed by selecting Modify Shared Web Part from the web part menu. The Dynamic Grouping property in the Return Properties section allows you to identify an unlimited number of groups. The following format should be used:
ColumnName<NEW>ColumnName<NEW>ColumnName<NEW>ColumnName
Where ColumnName is the name of the column to group by.
This drop-down is used to identify the name of the first column to reference that contains the values to group on. This must be one of the display fields within the web part. Using the example above of grouping by category, you would select Category here from the list of available columns.
These two drop-downs are used to identify the name of the second and third columns to reference that contain the values to group on. Using the example above of grouping by category and then by stage, you would select Stage here from the list of available columns and leave the third grouping drop-down set to “None.”
This field is used to identify the background color for the dynamic group headings. Click Choose Color to the right of this field to select the desired color, or you can enter the color in hex format. Leave this field blank to use the default color.
This setting is used to identify the font family, size, color, and weight to use for the dynamic group headings. Leave this field blank to use the default font and style.
Example: font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; color: blue; font-weight: bold
Select Yes from this field to have the Active Display show an expanded view of the results that includes site and list names, dynamic group headings, and returned items. Select No to contract the results and display only the names of each site included in the Active Display.
With static grouping, you specify not just the field you want to use to group items, but also the specific field value(s). To continue the example used above for dynamic grouping, you would utilize static grouping if you did not want to display all of the documents with all possible document categories, but only those with a category of Requirements or Specifications.
To utilize static grouping, you need to define the Group Heading Text and the Filter. The remainder of the fields in the Static Grouping Settings section of the tab are optional.
When you are finished defining each group to be included in the static grouping display, click Add Grouping. When you do this, an additional set of entry fields is displayed so you can define the next group. If you want to remove a group from the display, simply click Remove Grouping below the definition of the group you want to remove.
NOTE: Static grouping in Active Displays supports all of the CorasWorks Date/Time functions. These functions are listed under “Supported Functions” in Defining a Filter with the Filter Builder. However, there are a few restrictions regarding how these date functions can be utilized. For Winter 2006, only “greater than” and “less than” filters are supported in static grouping. “Equal to” and “not equal to” are not currently supported. For example, these are all valid static grouping filters:
• Due Date<>[CurrentWeekStart]
There are circumstances where you will need to work around this. For example, say you want to set up an initial filter where Status=Completed, and a second filter which looks for items with a Status other than Completed. Ordinarily, the second filter would be defined as Status<>Completed. With Active Displays, this requires either a work-around or a more explicit filter (for example, Status=In Progress || Status=Not Started || Status=Deferred, etc., where || is the symbol used for the “OR” connector).
Also note that for static grouping, the [Today] filter means “today” instead of “now.” So for example, Due Date>[Today] would translate to “Due Date>03/15/2006” rather than “Due Date>03/15/2006, 10:36AM” Note that this is different from the Filter tab, where “today” really means “now.”
This field is used to define the text to use for each static group heading in the Active Display.
This field is used to define a filter to limit the items returned by the Active Display. For syntax and other rules regarding filter definition, see “Defining a Filter,” below.
NOTE: Filters defined in the Static Grouping section of the Grouping tab are not converted to CAML. Only filters defined on the Filtering tab are converted to CAML.
The format for a basic filter is "Field=SearchText" (Example: Postal Code=11111). You can use > and < when filtering date fields. (Example: "Date<7" will return items that are older than 7 days from today) Filter grouping with parentheses () is not permitted. The fields available to use for filtering are identified in the Supported Schemas section of this help, on the “Filterable Fields” line of each identified schema.
The following values can be used for filters based on Boolean fields:
The following date functions are also available:
In addition, the following connectors can be used:
Some common examples of filters and connectors are shown here:
Example 1: Show all tasks that are assigned to me, and are
due within seven days
Assigned To=[ME] && Due
Date>-1 && Due Date<7
Example 2: Show all tasks that are assigned to me or to
someone else
Assigned To=[ME] || Assigned
To=UserName
(Where [ME] = Currently Logged In User)
This field is used to select the background color to use for each static group heading in the Active Display. Click Choose Color to the right of this field to select the desired color, or you can enter the color in hex format. Leave this field blank to use the default color.
This field is used to select the font color to use for each static group heading in the Active Display. Click Choose Color to the right of this field to select the desired color, or you can enter the color in hex format. Leave this field blank to use the default color.
Select Yes from this field to have the Active Display show an expanded view of the results that includes site and list names, static group headings, and returned items. Select No to contract the results and display only the names of each site included in the Active Display.