What s New With the Content Query Web Part

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Whats New with the Content Query Web Part

Howdy, my name is Dustin Anglin and Im a Program Manager on the Enterprise Content

Management team. Today Im here to talk about the new things were doing with one of mostpopular SharePoint web parts, the Content Query Web Part, or as its better known amongst

acronym-o-holics, the CQWP.

If you havent already checked it out, be sure to check out both theECM overview by Jim

Massonand theWCM overview by Sangya Singh.

CQWP for Newcomers

For those of you who are new to the CQWP, heres a brief explanation of what it does and what

kinds of things you can use it for.

The Content Query Web Part is a tool that site designers can use to aggregate interesting andrelevant slices of information on web page by letting you build queries through an easy to use UIand then display that content in unique, configurable ways.

The CQWP is designed to return roll-up content over several different scopes, anywhere from a

single a list or library, to all lists or libraries across an entire Site Collection. In SharePoint 2010,

the CQWP single list query is also optimized to work over large single libraries, taking

advantage of smart indices and other tools designed to improve query performance over largedocument libraries.

For a more in-depth overview of the CQWP, Id recommend checking out theSharePoint 2007blog post by George Perantatos.

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Creating a Related News Stories Web Part

with CQWP

I find the best way to learn about something is to give an example, so lets go througharchetypical scenario that uses the CQWP to show news stories related to the current news story

Im reading. Also, since we dont want older stories, well make sure our web part is set up to

show only recent stories, say stories created in the last week.

Building the Query: Driving the Query based on Context

The Content Query Web Part is awesome for displaying queried content on a page, but I dontwant to have to add a new CQWP to a web part zone EVERY time I create a new news story,

especially when Im just going to set up the same web part over and over again.

In SharePoint 2007, you could add a CQWP to a page layout so it appeared on all pages of acertain type (for instance, in this scenario you could create a News Article page layout), the

problem was, you could only set one query on that web part, which means each page using theNews Article layout would return the same set of results.

What we want to do is have each News Article page show articles that are related to thecurrent articleIm reading, like related sports stories if Im reading a sports article.

We also need a metadata field to describe what kind of News Article the current article is, like

Sportsor Business, so we will add a new Managed Metadata field called News Category

which we can link to the term storewhere we can create a managed taxonomy of news

categories for our authors to pick from.

So heres the conceptual outline for what our News Article page layout will look like:

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I mentioned that we want our web part to be driven by the context of the current article,

specifically the current articles News Category. In SharePoint 2010, we can accomplish this bysetting up our query filters with two nifty new tokens:

PageFieldValue

This token lets you specify a field that is on the current page layout and dynamically replaces the

value for the filter with the current pages field value.

For Example: Ive created a custom Managed Metadata field News Category whichspecifies what kind of story my News Category is (Business, Politics, World, Sports, etc)and added it to the News Article page layout. By using the PageFieldValuetoken, the query

will change based on the current pages News Category. So if the current pages category is

Sports it will return pagestagged with Sports.

PageQueryString

Just like the PageFieldValue token, you can also choose to look at the URL query string for avalue to use in the Query.

For Example: You could add a Query String value to the URL like &NewsCategory=Sportsand set the CQWPs query to return pages where the News Category field was equal to Sports

or whatever value was currently in the Query String.

Using the query string parameter is better when you want to show different sets of results in a

web part without having to make a new page for each different results set.

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For this example, we will use the PageFieldValuetoken to setup our CQWP to return news

articles whose News Category field contains the same metadata value in the current articles

News Category field. And by modifying the custom News Article page layout, the CQWPwill automatically appear on all new News Article pages, already set up and ready to display

related news articles.

Looking a bit closer at the query, you can see that Ive added two other filters. The first one

filters out any article with the same name as the current article (essentially making sure the

current article isnt duplicated in the query results), and a filter that only returns news storiescreated in the past 7 days, making sure the results are always fresh.

Also, in this instance, the News Category metadata field is one of the new Managed

Metadatafields, which the CQWP fully supports, including the single & multi-value varieties.

While not shown in this example, the CQWP also supports filtering over the Enterprise

Keywords columns & the All Tags column which lets you look for any managed metadata tag

on a queried item, regardless of which metadata field on the item contains the tag.

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Displaying the Results: Mapping Columns from the Tool

Pane

Some people love writing XSLT, and to them I say write all the XSLT you want and more powerto you. However, for the rest of us, and some might argue the majority of us (we still love you

XSLT coders), figuring out how to show field X, Y, and Z by writing XSLT is last thing we want

to do.

In SharePoint 2010, one of the coolest new features to the CQWP is the ability to choose whatfields you want to display directly in the tool pane UI. So now that the query is defined, lets

open up the Presentationsection and check it out:

Going to the Presentationsection of the tool pane, there is a new section called Fields todisplaywhich lets you type in the fields you want to display for any defined XSL style. So think

of the Item Styleas a blank template, defining how many things can be displayed and wherethey go, but not which fields get displayed. Once youve selected your template, you just need to

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plug in the fields that you want to display by typing them into the slots that show up for the given

item style.

I chose to use a style that had an image on the left, a link to the page that was represented by the

articles title, and a brief excerpt of the article (a Custom Field I defined for my page layout). By

typing in the fields I want to display in each of those slots, I get the following results:

Total time spent messing with XSLT: 0.0 seconds! Woohoo!

Wrapping it up

So to recap things, heres what we accomplished:

Added a CQWP Web Part to all my news story pages by modifying the page layout inone place

Configured the Web Part query to be driven dynamically based on the current pagescontext (sports articles return related sports articles, business articles return otherbusiness articles, etc)

Configured the presentation of the web part to show custom fields without writingcustom XSLT.

And heres a look at the final product:

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Now when my content authors write news stories, every article will have a web part showing the

most recent related articles, and my content authors dont have to mess around with web partsand queries.

In Summary

This is just one example of some of the cool new things you can do with the Content Query WebPart by leveraging power of context driven queries, and the easy-to-use, code-less way to

configure how you display your content. Check back often for more info on the CQWP and other

exciting new ECM features in the SharePoint 2010.

PostedFriday, May 14, 2010 11:30 PMbyecmblog|0 Comments

Filed under:Web Content Management,Content Query Web Part,WCM,CQWP,Configuration

nochange

View Changes Makes In-Browser Content Localization

EasierView Changes is a new SharePoint 2010 Variations feature that compares two versions of a

source page relevant to the corresponding target page. View Changes provides a report

highlighting the differences between the source version that has most recently propagated to the

targetand the prior source version that propagated to the target and was published on thetarget.By highlighting differences, the View Changes button simplifies in-browser content

editing using the Variations feature.

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Im Josh Stickler, the Program Manager responsible for Variations. In this post, I will explain:

Where to find the View Changes button When the View Changes button is available Our envisioned content editing process using View Changes

The most common application of the Variations feature is in multi-language sites. Let's look at

View Changes from the perspective of Anders, an English-to-Danish translator working with the

Danish subsidiary of AdventureWorks, an international camping goods retailer.

AdventureWorks is set up with an English (EN-US) site as its source label and target labels for

international markets, each corresponding to a different language. Pages from the source label

automatically propagate to the target labels when they are published so AdventureWorks' globalweb presence is in sync. Translators at each of the targets then process the English-language

content for localized consumption. AdventureWorks Variations hierarchy looks like this:

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Initial Localization

Automatic Creation

Let's imagine that content authors at AdventureWorks in the United States have just published anew page with a sneak peek of this winter's new product lineup. Since Automatic Creation is

enabled (this is the case by default), the page is picked up by the Variations Propagate Pages

timer job and copied to all target labels, including Danish (DA-DK).

E-mail Notification

As the designated owner of the new page, Anders gets an e-mail informing him that this page hasbeen copied to the target label by the Variations feature and is ready for processing.

Target Translation and PublicationAnders navigates to the page on the Danish (DA-DK) variation of the AdventureWorks website

and sees the English language content. Since it's all new, he translates all of this content into

Danish and submits the page for approval. The page is approved and published and now appearson the Danish variation of the website.

Since Anders received an entirely new page to translate, there were no changes to view; hence,

the View Changes button is not available.

Subsequent ModificationSource Modification and Publication

Back in the United States, AdventureWorks decides to announce a new product in its sneak peek

lineup. English language content authors add a paragraph describing this new product, an ultralight sleeping bag, and publish the page. The page now propagates to the Danish variation.

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E-mail Notification

Anders receives an e-mail notification that new content is ready for processing. He visits the

appropriate page on the Danish variation site and the English content appears and is waiting fortranslation.

But wait, there is a lot of English content here, and Anders has already translated most of it.

Only one paragraph has been added. How will Anders know that he doesnt need to re -translate

the whole page?

Its at this point that the View Changes button comes to the rescue and is available.

Please note that View Changes requires the Variations Propagate Pages timer job to be enabled.

View Changes only compares changes between a source version of a page and a target version

that has been copied using the Variations Propagate Pages operation.

Version Comparison

Anders clicks the button and a version differential window pops up, highlighting the newparagraph that has been added. Now, Anders knows that only this paragraph has been added and

doesn't have to scan through the new and old versions of the English content to determine what

he has to translate.

Restore Previous Version

Anders decides he prefers to revert back to the translated Danish version of the page as a basisfor adding the new paragraph. With the View Changes window open, Anders knows exactly

which paragraph to translate and where it goes. He adds the new content in Danish, submits for

approval, and it's published live on AdventureWorks Danish variation site. Fantastisk.

In addition to providing target variation site translators with insight into what content has

changed when pages are copied from the source, SharePoint 2010 also enables authors on thesource to decide when to propagate content to targets. By default in MOSS 2007, when content

authors published pages in the source variation site, that page would automatically propagate to

all target variation sites, even for small changes that are relevant only to the source variation site.

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SharePoint 2010 provides the ability to disable automatic page propagation; source variation site

content authors can then use the Update Variations button to propagate content on demand. See

my previous post, Site and Page Propagationfor more information on how to enable thissetting.

Thanks for reading! Keep checking back for new blog posts.

Regards

Josh SticklerProgram Manager

PostedWednesday, May 05, 2010 9:00 AMbyecmblog|0 Comments

Filed under:Web Content Management,Content Deployment,Content Management,WCM,

Variations nochange

Web Analytics in SharePoint 2010: Insights into Reportsand Metrics

As part of SharePoint 2010, we have created a set of features to help you collect, report, and

analyze the usage and effectiveness of your SharePoint 2010 deployment. These set of features

are a part of the Web Analytics capabilities of SharePoint 2010. The overview of the WebAnalytics features in SharePoint 2010 was presented inthis blog post.

This blog post delves deeper into the various metrics available to analyze the site usage data.

There are three categories of the SharePoint Web Analytics reports: Traffic, Search, andInventory. The reports are aggregated for various SharePoint entities like Site, Site Collection,

and Web Application for each farm. Further, reports are also aggregated per search serviceapplication. By default, the reports show the data for a period of 30 days. One can change thetime period to view data for up to 25 months by going to Analyze tab.

Visually we show the metrics in one of the two ways: trend reports and rank reports. A trend

report shows how a particular metric is doing over a period of time. While a rank report, shows

the top 2000 results for a particular metric. Figure 1, 2 show examples of a trend and rank report

respectively. Thats not all; you can further analyze the reports by applying filters like stringmatch in the URL, user name, queries, browser and others.

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Figure 1: Example of a Trend Report showing Number of Page Views for each day for a defaultperiod of 30 days.

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Figure 2: Example of a Rank Report showing the Top Pages sorted on the Number of PageViews for a default period of 30 days.

What follows is an overview of each type of the report and the associated metrics. Also,

summarized are the kind of reports available for each level of aggregation i.e. Site, SiteCollection and Web Application and Search Service Application.

Traffic Reports

The traffic reports capture the user behavior information related to total clicks, frequent users,

popular pages, and information about navigation to and from the current SharePoint component.

Trend Reports

1. Number of Page Views:Total number of page views each day.2. Number of Daily Unique Visitors:Total number of unique visitors each day.

SharePoint authenticated users and anonymous users (using IP address) are counted asvisitors.

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3. Number of Referrers: Total number of unique URLs external to the current entity(parent entity is treated as external as well), from where the users navigated to the current

entity.

Rank Reports

1. Top Pages:Most viewed pages in the current entity.2. Top Visitors: Most frequent visitors of the current entity.3. Top Referrers:Top URLs external to the current entity from where users navigated to

the current entity.4. Top Destinations:Similar to Referrers, these are the top external URLs that the user

visited from the current entity.

5. Top Browsers: Top browsers being used to visit the current entity.Report Scope Site Site Collection Web Application

Number of Page ViewsNumber of UniqueVisitors

Number of Referrers

Top Pages

Top Visitors

Top Referrers

Top Destinations

Top Browsers

Table 1: Summary of the traffic reports availability at different SharePoint hierarchy levels

Note: Traffic Reports do not apply at Search Service Application level.

Search Reports

The search reports capture the user behavior information related to the queries on the site.

Trend Reports

1. Number of Queries:Total number of queries each day.

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Rank Reports

1. Top Queries: Most issued queries per day.2. Failed Queries: Most issued queries for which either there were no results or the user did

not click on any results.

3. No Result Queries:Most issued queries for which no results were returned.Other Reports

1. Best Bet Suggestion Report: Recommends URLs as most likely results for particularsearch queries based on analysis of usage patterns. The site administrators can accept or

reject these suggestions. If they accept, the corresponding query-URL pair is added to the

search keywords list.

2. Best Bet Usage: Shows how Best Bet suggestions are doing over time. For every BestBet query issued, the report shows the percentage of clicks on the Best Bet URL

compared to other URLs.3. Best Bet Action History Report: Tracks the actions performed by the site administratoron the Best Bet Suggestion Report.

Report Scope Site CollectionWeb

ApplicationSearch Service

Application

Number of Queries

Top Queries

Failed Queries

No Result Queries

Best Bet Usage

Best Bet Suggestions

Best Bet Suggestion

Action History

Table 2: Summary of the search reports availability at different SharePoint component hierarchy

levels

Note: The search reports do not apply at Site Level.

Inventory Reports