Case:

New tasks (i.e. List Items created within the last 30 minutes) in a User’s “My Tasks” DVWP are highlighted to bring attention to these high priority items.

Undesirable Solution:

Use a declarative workflow to check if the task is no longer new and reset a new ”flag”.  XSL will check the “flag” when the DVWP renders and display tasks appropriately.

The workflow would follow the logic:

1. Start on Item creation
2. Pause for 30 minutes
3. Set hidden boolean field value (isNew) to false

The DVWP then uses XSL to check the value of isNew to set the CSS class of a TR, TD, or some other HTML DOM element:

<xsl:if test=”@isNew = 1″><xsl:attribute name=”class”>newTask</xsl:attribute></xsl:if>

This solution is not optimal as a long-term workflow runs on every List Item.  As a result, numerous workflows may be running on the server causing decreased server performance.

Solution:

Use XSL to check if a Task is new and set the CSS class appropriately when the DVWP renders.

Logic

For simplicity of the XPath expression, a task may be considered new if both of these conditions are true:

1. The date of creation is the current day (i.e. today)
2. The time of creation occurs less than 30 minutes before the current time (i.e. now)

(This logic will not handle Tasks assigned from 23:41 to 23:59 as new after 00:00 of the next day.  Such Tasks may be handled with a seperate XPath expression to properly determine their new condition.)

Comparing the Date

Checking that the date of creation is today requires a comparison of equality between two dates.  Therefore, it is possible to use the out-of-the-box (OOTB) ”equal to” operator; unlike the “equal to” and “not equal” to operators, other operators (e.g. “numerical addition”, ”less than”, etc.) require numerical arguments.  Created must be formatted properly as it is stored in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ISO8601 format (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ) and therefore contains data other than the date.  The method FormatDateTime() (see MSDN SharePoint Developer Center) requires the date as a textual argument and thus Created must be converted to a string using the method string().  For accuracy, the method FormatDateTime() is used as it allows for the explicit definition of date/time formatting.  In this example, the format “MM/dd/yyyy” is used.  For accuracy, today’s date (i.e. ddwrt:Today()) must undergo the same formatting procedure.

The XPath expression to compare the dates is:

ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”MM/dd/yyyy”) = ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(ddwrt:Today()),1033,”MM/dd/yyyy”)

Comparing the Time

The time of creation from Created may be retrieved by formatting the ISO8601 value using the method FormatDateTime() and a date/time format of “hhmmss”.  The format “hhmmss” is used so that each component of time (i.e. hour, minute, second) may be easily retrieved individually.  Each component may be retrieved using these XPath expressions:

hour: substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),2,2)
minute: substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),4,2)
second: substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),6)

Each component of time will be converted to the basic time unit.  In this example, the basic time unit is minutes (as the duration of the new condition is “30 minutes”).  Each component converted to minutes may be retrieved with these XPath expressions:

hour: substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),2,2) * 60
minute: substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),4,2)
second: substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),6) div 60

Adding each component converted to minutes will provide the time as minutes since 00:00 of that day.  This “minute-time” new may be calculated using the XPath expression:

(substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),2,2) * 60) + substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),4,2) + (substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),6) div 60)

As tasks are new if created within the past 30 minutes (i.e. the difference between the time of creation and current time is less that 30 minutes), a task may be determined to be new using the XPath expression:

((substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(ddwrt:TodayIso()),1033,”hhmmss”)),2,2) * 60) + substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(ddwrt:TodayIso()),1033,”hhmmss”)),4,2) + (substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(ddwrt:TodayIso()),1033,”hhmmss”)),6) div 60)) - ((substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),2,2) * 60) + substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),4,2) + (substring(string(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”hhmmss”)),6) div 60)) < 30

The XPath expression may be abstracted as: (the current time in minutes) – (the created time in minutes) < 30 minutes.

Durations Greater than 24 hours

If a duration to check surpasses 24 hours, calculation must be performed on the date values.  As no OOTB date/time comparison operators exist, the dates must be converted to numbers.  Dates may be converted to numbers using the format “yyyyMMdd”; this format is acceptable for numeric comparison as dates inherently have hiearchical components; years are superior to months which are superior to days (e.g. any date in 2009 is newer than any date in 2008 and any day in December is newer than any day in November of the same year).  The difference between two dates (in days) may be calculated with the XPath expression:

number(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(ddwrt:TodayIso()),1033,”yyyyMMdd”)) – number(ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Created),1033,”yyyyMMdd”))

Conclusion

Generally, XSL enables powerful conditional rendering of DVWP that may greatly enhance the basic functionality found with OOTB DVWP.  The provided example illustrates how XSL and XPath expressions may be used to perform logical calculations and comparisons using basic numerical operators.  This capability may be used to benefit server performance and reduce SharePoint “clutter” by avoiding unecessary columns.  The use of XSL should be considered but is not appropriate for all scenarios (e.g. some data is best stored in a column rather than dynamically calculated).

UPDATED: 17 NOV 2009

The method TodayIso() (see MSDN SharePoint Developer Center) is incorrectly specified to return the current date and time in ISO8601 (see World Wide Web Consortium and Wikipedia).  The returned format is not ISO8601 as the value is terminated by the character “Z” (i.e. Zulu) incorrectly denoting the time is in UTC.  The returned time is in the server’s local time zone.  Therefore, a server hosted in the Eastern Time Zone (i.e. UTC-5) may return the value “2010-01-01T00:00:00Z” rather than the appropriate value ”2010-01-01T05:00:00Z”.  Therefore, this example assumes that any servers are set to UTC.

The requirement has come to fruition to see the elapsed time from the “Modified Date” to “Now” on a reports document library. This is not possible in a calculated value unfortunately do to [Today] and [Me] values being consumed in a calculated value are considered “Volatile” by SharePoint out of the box. These use the core MOSS/WSS functions and since the list is 100% dynamic it doesn’t pull session or current state information before loading the list on page load. Every possible solution was attempted prior to using this custom solution. Although this is all “client side” customization all methods of using out of the box methods were tried prior to this solutions development, the downfall being that even when [Today] was able to be used in a calculated value it did not record the time, only the current date.

Required Items

This solution involves slight modification of Meta Data through a simple SharePoint Designer workflow, a short JavaScript function, and the creation of a “Last Updated” field that is a Date and Time field. Below are step by step instructions with screen shots of how to properly customize any List or Document Library to use this functionality. SharePoint Designer, .NET Frame Work 3.5, and WSS 3.0 are required to implement this solution.

Elapsed Time

Create or open an existing document library and go to settings.

Figure 1 Document Library Settings

Click Create Column

Figure 2 Create Column

Name the Column “Last Updated” (Red) and make it a Date & Time column (Blue)

Figure 3 Configure Column

Click Save, and go back to the Document Library page. Click Site Actions, and Edit Page.

Figure 4 Edit Page

Click Add a Web Part and select a Content Editor Web Part and click add.

Figure 5 Add a Web Part

Figure 6 Content Editor Web Part

Select Edit on the Content Editor Web Part and select Modified Shared Web Part

Figure 7 Modify Web Part

Select source editor and copy the following into the source box and click save.

I used the below code from this website: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2009/01/23/jquery-for-everyone-replacing-today/

Source:

<script src=”http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

$(function() {

var str = “Last Updated”; //change this based on col header

var today = new Date();

today = Date.parse(today)/1000;

var a=0;

var headers = $(“table.ms-listviewtable:first> tbody> tr:first th”).get();

$.each(headers, function(i,e){

x = $(e).contents().find(“a[title*='"+str+"']“).length;

a = x > 0 && i > a ? i : a;

});

var dArray = $(“table.ms-listviewtable:first> tbody> tr:gt(0)”).find(“>td:eq(“+a+”)”).get()

$.each(dArray, function(i,e){       �

var d1 = Date.parse($(e).text())/1000;

var dd = (today-d1)/86400;

var dh = (dd-Math.floor(dd))*24;

var dm = (dh-Math.floor(dh))*60;

var time = ((Math.floor(dd) > 0 ? Math.floor(dd) +” days, ” : “”)+

(Math.floor(dh) > 0 ? Math.floor(dh)+” hrs, ” : “”)+

(Math.floor(dm)+” min”));

$(e).text(time);

});

});

</script>

Figure 8 Source Editor Selection

Figure 9 Source Editor Input

Open the page in SharePoint Designer and create a new workflow file.

Figure 10 Create a Workflow

Name the workflow as “SetLUAsModified” select the list to attach as the document library you are using and select on create and on edit as when the workflow will run.

Figure 11 Set Last Updated Time

Click next and now create your Action, we are setting the last updated field to equal modified. Go to the Actions Drop down and select set field in current item (Red), then set value 1 as “Last Updated” and Value 2 as “Current Item” “Modified” (Blue)

Figure 12 Set Field

Figure 13 Set Last Updated

Figure 14 Set Modified

Save the Workflow and go back to the site, add a document to the library or edit an existing document and the “Last Updated” field will change to 0 minutes.

Figure 15 Test Results

The Document Library drives this Workflow not the List.

As seen in the previous blog, Step 1 is the ChangeTitle step and this copies the File Name into the Title Column, the rationale was to maintain unique file names but keep the documents grouped by non-unique Titles.

Step 2 is new and it is the “CreateListItem” step.  This creates the item in the list if it not already there.  Validating that it is not there maintains only one record in the List while allowing for multiple records in the Library.  I validate it off of the current item (Document) title but it ensures that there is no such record in the List which maintains an accurate “Version” count.  Once this validation has completed the list Item is completed, if there is already an item with like Title in the list it skips to Step 3 which sets the Version count.  The Item is created the Title is copied from the Current Item (Document) and the Version Count is set to 0.  Please see the Screen Shots Below for “CreateListItem” Step.

Step 3 adds 1 to the current version # in the List.  If this is a new document it becomes Version 1, if it is an old document it is version x + 1.  We will use this field to create a variable to add to our New Calculated value we are calling this step “SetCount” and it updates the lists count and stores a “calc” variable.  The calc variable set in step three will enable the “Versioning” as seen in Step 4.  Please see the Screen Shots Below.

Step 4 has been modified slightly, as before the pause was to give time for the File Name to enter into the calculated value, since this step actually places the “Count” Value into the Item and Calculated Values pull from the Item itself the pause has been moved to below the input of the calc variable into the “Count” field on the current item.  The pause allows for the calculated value NameCount to wait for the Count variable to be added which takes about 30 seconds, however 1 minute is the shortest pause possible in SharePoint Designer.  Please see the screen shot below:

There will be a third post regarding this effort as far as adding the JavaScript mouse over tool tips for the groups by title in the default view.

To resolve the error “failed to load the workflow” when opening a declarative workflow in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007, please follow the steps provided below:

1. Close Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007
2. If using Microsoft Windows XP, navigate to the directory:
   C:\Documents and Settings\[USER NAME]\Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer\ProxyAssemblyCache\
   If using Microsoft Windows Vista, navigate to the directory:
   C:\Users\[USER NAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer\ProxyAssemblyCache\
3. Delete all folders with the naming convention 12.x.x.xxxx
4. Start Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 and open the desired workflow

Please be aware that it may be necessary to perform these steps multiple times.

UPDATE (09/28/2009):
A possible cause of this behavior may be related to the use of custom activities within the workflow.  If the above solution does not resolve the issue, it may be necessary to redeploy/reinstall any custom activities that the workflow may reference.

[Scott Muller's SharePoint Blog]