SharePoint 2010 template Document Libraries for Business Intelligence. (Part 1)

Document Library Templates are very useful to reuse the embedded logic and settings of a document library. When using SharePoint as a front-end for your entire Business Intelligence solution the provided templates will not always be sufficient. In this post which will consist out of two parts, I would like to show how easy it is to build and configure your own Document Library templates. To do this I will use two different, and in my opinion very useful templates for your Business intelligence front-end. This part of the blog describes how to create document library template that introduces the “Hide in list view” option that is available when you run SSRS (SQL Server Reporting services) in native mode. Part two of this blog will be about a document library template to provide functionality for ad-hoc reporting.

 
Introduce the “Hide in list view” of SSRS in integrated mode

There are several scenarios where you do not want to show the report to the end users, for instance if the report is a sub report or used to drill through from another report. When running SSRS in native mode you have an easy way to hide a report that you don’t want to show.

But when you use SSRS in integrated mode the ability to easily hide the report is no longer there. To get this option back we will build a template document library that provides this functionality. The most important step is to add an extra column to the document library. This column will be used as a filter in the view for the template document library.

The following actions need to be executed to build this template document library:

• Create a new standard document library.
  • Click on “site actions” and then on “New Document Library
    
  • Fill in the name and keep the other options on default and click “Create”.
    
• A document library is created and can now be edited. Click on the new document library and navigate to the ribbon and click on “Create column”.

• Create a column of type Boolean with a name like “show”, “Visible” or “hide”.
  For this demo I will use the column name “Visible”.
  
• The next step is to introduce a new view for the users.
  Create a new view by clicking on the “Create View” in the ribbon.

  
  Be sure to check the box to save the view as the default view for the users (Everyone).

Now the most important step for the “Hide in list view” functionality is to set the filter criteria for the view. Within the view settings scroll down to the filter part. Check the box for Choose Show items only when the following is true: and add the necessary criteria to hide or show the report based on the created column. The column name in the demo is “Visible” so the criteria to show the item should be that the value of the field “Visible” must be equal to yes (box is checked).

• We now have a document library with two views one to check or uncheck the box “Visible”.

And one view for the users, that will only show the necessary reports.

So we now have the “Hide in list view” functionality with SSRS integrated mode.

• The following steps are to make sure this functionality is stored in a template for reusability. Navigate to the document library settings and choose the option save document library as template.

  

  The option creates a template document library file (.stp). This file will be stored under the heading “List Templates” on the site settings page. This is also the location where you can upload any other created template document libraries.

• After uploading the template to the “list templates” of the site, it can be selected from the menu when creating a new document library. The created template for this demo is called “SSRS Document Library” and is shown as one of the options while creating a new document library.

More information on document library templates and example of an ad-hoc reporting document library template in part two of my blog post about “SharePoint 2010 template Document Libraries for Business Intelligence”.