List rollup for recurring meetings

Question

Here is the situation, the client is using SharePoint 2007 and has implemented Meeting worksites for a series of meeting dealing with design reviews. They are wanting a roll-up view of all the tasks, agenda items and decision items associated with the this series of meetings. I know I can create a web part that walks through all the meeting instances but they prefer a solution via SharePoint Designer or if a web part is required, one from a reputable 3rd party vendor.

I have tried using SPDataSource but it will not return the entire list, only the item for the next scheduled meeting. I can not seem to get it to return the entire list. Ideas?

Answer 1

If the results are from different Sites > Webs > lists etc, then you'd have to go custom by writing a custom web part. In this web part you'd have to write some CAML to query Sharepoint for specific site templates or specific sites/lists. If you dont like CAML, you can iterate using something Like Linq to Sharepoint or normal Iterations over SPWeb/SPSite objects.

Going the Sharepoint Designer route, would require you to build up a Content Query Web Part and use XSLT to retrieve and display the data. In your scenarion, this could become a bit of a mission. I suggest going the custom route to 1. Retrieve the Data based on your CAML Query 2. Iterate over the results and display in the webpart.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

You can use Data View Web Parts with DataSourceMode="CrossList" as well. This will give you more control over the output formatting than a CQWP, but may take more heavy lifting on the XSL.