Article published on the 1st of February 2021.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Requirements
3.1. Setting up a managed property mapping for the AssignedTo field
3.2. Creating a wizard for copying items
3.3. Creating a Search Setting for copying items
1. Introduction
Batch Update makes it possible to update multiple items across multiple sites in the same action.
One use case for this feature could be in a project management solution, where a set of tasks has been assigned to specific person. This person leaves the company and needs to be replaced in the system. All task assigned to this users needs to be reassigned to a new employee.
Another use case could be that every year, all tasks of a specific type on a solution needs to be completed the 1st of April. This year this deadline is moved. Therefore, a WorkPoint user needs to find all tasks of the specific type across sites and update the date.
The feature is configured using both Search Settings and the Wizard Configurator. It can also involve the Advanced Search webpart, but this is not required, as Search Settings can be displayed in the Express Panel.
2. Requirements
Use of the Batch Update feature requires a WorkPoint Enterprise license and that your license includes the Batch Update feature. If you have an Enterprise license, you can request the Batch Update feature for a fee. Contact WorkPoint Sales at sales@workpoint.dk for more information.
Additionally, the Wizard Management feature is required to use the Batch Update feature. For more information, contact WorkPoint Sales at sales@workpoint.dk.
3. Configuration
In the following configuration case, we work within a Project Management solution with the following business modules:
-
Companies: Used to store company entities and their data.
- Contacts: Used to store information about various contact personnel.
- Projects: Used to store project entities and their data.
In this example, we want to be able to batch edit the "Assigned To" person of a set of tasks which we search for in an Advanced Search webpart.
This configuration will go through the following steps:
- Setting up a managed property mapping for the AssignedTo field
- Creating a wizard to use for copying the tasks
- Creating a Search Setting to be able to search for tasks, pick relevant ones, and start the update wizard.
- Creating a page for document search and adding the Advanced Search webpart to facilitate the search and editing of tasks.
3.1. Setting up a managed property mapping for the AssignedTo field
We are going start off by setting up a Search Setting Managed Property mapping for the field which should be editable in the Batch Update operation. In this case, that is the AssignedTo field. We do this in the Search Settings page in the WorkPoint Administration:
Note that if you wanted to be able to edit another field, e.g. the Due Date field, in the Batch Update operation, a managed property field mapping would need to be set up for that field in the same way as was done for the "AssignedTo" field.
- In the WorkPoint Administration, in the left side menu, we click "Search settings".
- In the Search Settings page, under "Managed property mappings" we click "App managed property mapping".
- For "Mapped field" we type in the internal name of the field we wish to be able to edit. the internal name of the Assigned to field on tasks is "AssignedTo", so we type this in.
- For "Managed property" we need to type in the name of the managed property that corresponds to the task field. In this case, the managed property is also called "AssignedTo", so we type that in.
- To save the mapping, we click the "Save" button.
The mapping should now show in the Search Settings under Managed property mappings:
We can now proceed to set up a wizard for copying tasks.
3.2. Creating a wizard for copying items
To create the wizard for copying items we go to the Wizard Configurator in the WorkPoint Administration:
- In the WorkPoint Administration, in the left side menu we click "Wizard configurator".
- In the Wizard configurator settings page, we click "Add wizard configuration" to create a new wizard.
We configure the new wizard as follows:
- We provide an informative name for the wizard. In this case, the wizard is used for batch update items such as tasks, so the name reflects this.
- Optionally, you can add a translation for the title.
- We provide a short description of the wizard and what it does.
- Optionally, you can add a translation for the description.
- We enable the wizard.
- We add the "Batch update" flow to the wizard.
- We add the parameter "Editable fields" and select the "AssignedTo" field we mapped in section 3.1. This parameter is used to define which fields should be editable in the wizard. Currently the wizard only supports Date and User fields.
- To save the wizard, we click the "Save" button.
The wizard should now appear in our Wizard Configurator settings page:
We can now move on the step 3 in the configuration.
3.3. Creating a Search Setting for copying items
We will now create a Search Setting for searching through the solution to find relevant documents and items to copy:
- In the WorkPoint Administration, in the left side menu we click "Search settings".
- In the Search settings page, we click the "Add search setting" button.
- We enable the search setting in the Express panel.
- We provide an informative name for the search setting.
- for Operator, we select "Starts with".
- For Type, we select "Item search". This is important for the selection of documents to function in the Search Setting.
- For "Page size" we type in "15".
- In the field "Wizard configurations", we select the wizard created in section 3.1.
- We add a result group called "All Tasks".
- In "Column groups" we have created a new column group for showing a couple of the fields associated with task, including task name, the person the task is assigned to, the task status, and the due date.
- In the base query we type in "contentclass:STS_ListItem_Tasks". This will make sure only Task items are shown in the results of our search.
- To save the Search Setting we click the "Save" button.
For more information on Search Settings, please visit this article.
The last thing to do in this step is to clear the WorkPoint 365 browser cache:
- On the WorkPoint solution, click the "Home" button.
- Click "Need help?"
- Click "Clear WorkPoint 365 browser cache".
With both the copying wizard and Search Setting created, we can now create a page for the document search in step 3.
3.4. Creating a page for the document search
In this step we will create a page on the root site of the solution, and place an Advanced Search webpart to use with the Search Setting we created in section 3.2.
- On the root site of the solution, we click the "New" button.
- In the menu, we click "Page".
- We select the "Blank" template.
- To create the page, we click the "Create page" button.
- On the newly created page, we hover over the top panel and click the "Edit" button.
- In the Title area configuration panel, we select the "Plain" layout.
- For Alignment, we select "Center".
- We rename the page to "Task Search".
- We click the X to remove the title of the person who created the page.
- Next, we add the "Advanced Search" webpart to the page.
- For the newly added webpart, we click the "Edit" button.
- In the "Select which panel to show", we select the Search Setting we created in section 3.3.
- We then publish the page.
- We click to add the page to the Quick Navigation menu on the root page of the solution.
The page should now show as published, and display the Advanced Search webpart using the search setting we created:
The webpart is now set up to search for and display task items, along with the data columns we specified.
This concludes the configuration of the Batch Update feature for the example case.
For more information on the Advanced Search webpart, please visit this article.
4. End User Guide
In this use case, we have a set of tasks on various projects in our Project Management solution. Tasks are assigned to various personnel. Some tasks are assigned to a user called Edward Dean, and others are assigned to Chris Butler. Chris Butler recently resigned, and his tasks must be taken over by Edward Dean. We will therefore execute a batch update of all task items which Chris Butler was previously assigned to:
- In the Task Search page we set up, we perform a search to find all tasks to which Chris Butler is assigned. We search for the property "assignedTo" and use a value of "Chris Butler".
- We select all items by selecting the uppermost checker.
- We then click the "Send to" button.
- We then click the Batch Update wizard.
- In the Assigned To field in the wizard, we assigned Edward Dean instead of Chris Butler.
- We then click the "Update" button.
- The wizard lets us know that a number of items will be updated and that this operation cannot be undone
The wizard now updates the selected items. You can follow the process, or you can close the window at this point.
We can now reload the page and see if there are any tasks left with Chris Butler assigned:
- We can see that the tasks which were previously assigned to Chris Butler is now assigned to Edward Dean.
If we want to be sure we have changed all tasks, we can perform a new search for Chris Butler's name in the "assignedTo" property:
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.