SharePoint User Group UK

Is there any -simple-out-of-the-box- way to create a view that would display a Group-By of a column that is a multiple entry ?

ie:

Client1 = UK, France, Italy
Client2 = France, Spain, Portugal

I want to see a Group-by view that wil display something like :

+ UK
       Client1
+ France
       Client1
       Client2
...

Sharepoint by default does not split multiple entries into many, and therefore will not allow Group-by of a multiple entry column, if it did I understand it will return
+ UK, France, Italy
       Client1
+ France, Spain, Portugal
       Client2

Basically a 1-to-many and back relationship will be nice.

Anyone has a workaround ?

thanks.

---

Francois Souyri

thinking off the top of my head and after only 1 cup of tea this morning....
what if you create another table of 'countries' - join this with your main table in designer and do the group by on the countries table ?

---

Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise.

Sorry for the delay to reply, I was off.

Thanks for the response, however not sure it will work in this case, as I am not trying to link or merge 2 different tables (or create a new one as you suggested) but the data only comes from one single list. It's barely a View display feature that I am trying to achieve.

ie : another example could be as below

 list contains the following fields =   
[Name]    [Skills]
Joe           Microsoft, Oracle, Lotus
John         Microsoft, Tivoli
Jack         Microsoft, Lotus, Adobe

then I want to view the same list but <by Skills> as :

+Adobe (1)
          Jack
+Lotus (2)
          Joe
          Jack
+ Microsoft (3)
          Joe
          John
          Jack
+ Oracle (1)
          Joe
+Tivoli (1)
          John

 

---

Francois Souyri

No, I don't think that this is possible out of the box. I've not seen a way, anyway.

However, it is possible to build that using custom code, I think. I noticed before that the Lists.GetListItems webservice gives multiple results for items if you've got a multiple-choice column on the list:

http://www.novolocus.com/2008/04/07/duplicate-rows-from-the-sharepoint-lists-webservice/

I couldn't think of why the Lists webservice would do this, but in the context of Group By, this would make sense! You could probably use this 'feature' too, and write your own web part.

Not an ideal solution, but it should work.

Hi

Did you ever get a (non-programming) workaround for this? ( I followed the links but they got a bit technical for me)

You have described by problem exactly. I find it strange that it displays the lists like this for fields where you have multiple entries, given the point of Sharepoint is to make information more accessible rather than less. Structuring the way it does is confusing.

I am more used to Lotus notes (I know that is not exactly compariable), but notes does display lists like this.

Cheers

Steve

nope,
I gave up the idea and now everytime I see that I may need to dispay a multi entries columns in a Group By view then I change the way it is to adopt a different data modeling.
Shame I know :-( but no time for programming it yet, I will update the post if I get into it.

---

Francois Souyri

We've been looking at Quest's Recovery manager but they also have a Developer package, which (apparently) allows for easy content roll up and displaying / merging lists with a parent child relationship - i know it's not exactly what you're after here but they may have something to help ?

http://www.quest.com/development-studio-for-sharepoint/

---

Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise.

Hi Francois

This is definately not something that is available out of the box and would require custom development or a third party product. I have also found multiple times that I want to group by a field that has multiple values - it is annoying!

Jenny 

---

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/jennyeverett