Enable “Change Item Order” button on ribbon

Question

I have a page that I'm provisioning in Visual Studio 2010 through a module. In my elements.xml I have a <File> element with a <View> element underneath like this:

<File Path="TemplatePage.aspx" Url="Edit_Pages/Links.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary" >    
  <View List="Lists/Links" BaseViewID="1" WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="2" />
</File>

The view looks at a list of links. Everything goes fine with the provisioning but when I go to the page and click on the webpart the "Change Item Order" option under the ribbon "List Tools -> Items" is disabled. However, if I go to the list directly through "View All Site Content", the option is enabled. My question is "How can I enable the Change Item Order button?".

Answer 1

I found a technique to set the "Allow users to order items in this view?" property for the webpart. I call this method from the feature receiver of my provisioning feature. The key is setting the XsltListViewWebPart.ViewFlags to include SPViewFlags.Ordered. Here is the forum entry answer by Porter Wang which led me to my solution.

SPList list = web.Lists[listName];
SPFile file = web.GetFile(pageUrl);
file.CheckOut();

SPLimitedWebPartManager webPartManager = 
  file.GetLimitedWebPartManager(PersonalizationScope.Shared);

XsltListViewWebPart selectedWebPart = (XsltListViewWebPart)
  (from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart webPart in webPartManager.WebParts
   where webPart is XsltListViewWebPart && webPart.ZoneIndex == webPartZoneOrder
   select webPart).FirstOrDefault();

if ((selectedWebPart.ViewFlags & SPViewFlags.Ordered) == 0)
  selectedWebPart.ViewFlags = selectedWebPart.ViewFlags | SPViewFlags.Ordered;

webPartManager.SaveChanges(selectedWebPart);
web.Update();

file.CheckIn(String.Empty);
file.Publish(String.Empty);
file.Approve(String.Empty);

Answer 2

That option is enabled normally only on Links and Meeting Workspaces. E. Struyf has an excellent series on how to customize any list to support it here http://www.estruyf.be/blog/order-list-items-like-in-a-meeting-workspace-part-1/ For a list instance based on the TemplateType=103 (LINKS)

<ListInstance Title="Global Links"
                OnQuickLaunch="TRUE"
                TemplateType="103"
                FeatureId="00bfea71-2062-426c-90bf-714c59600103"
                Url="GlobalLinks" RootWebOnly="TRUE"
                Description="Use this list to store links with Global scope"/>

Inserting a ListView while provisioning the page should be achieved like this

<View BaseViewID="9" List="GlobalLinks" WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="1" DisplayName="Global Links" >
        <![CDATA[
          <WebPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2">
              <Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
              <TypeName>Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ListViewWebPart</TypeName>
              <Title>My Requests</Title>
              <Toolbar>None</Toolbar>
              <NoAnnouncements>You have no links available.</NoAnnouncements>
          </WebPart>
        ]]>

      </View>