Share point 2010 : Managing Data Connections (part 3) - Creating a Profile Page, Creating External Data Actions

11/9/2012 3:52:34 PM

5. Creating a Profile Page

After you create the BDC Model, you then need to create a profile page for each ECT, which you can use to view an instance of an ECT. On SharePoint 2010, it is easy to create a profile page using either SharePoint Designer or the Central Administration website. The following procedure explains how you can create an external data action named View Profile that will be added to any instance of an ECT pointing to the profile page. This external action is the default action for the ECT, so when users click any external data item, they will be redirected to the profile page.

To create or update a profile page, follow these steps.

Open a browser and go to the SharePoint Central Administration website.
Under Application Management, click Manage Service Applications.
On the Service Applications page, click the name of the Business Data Connectivity Service where the ECT is defined to display the BCS Application Information page shown earlier in Figure 18-5.
On the Service Application Information page, in the View group on the Edit tab, select External Content Types from the drop-down menu, as shown earlier in Figure 18-7.
Select the ECT for which you want to create a profile page, and in the Profile Page group on the Edit tab, click Create/Upgrade.
You will see a dialog box with information concerning the create/upgrade profile page process. Click OK.
The Profile Page Creation Succeeded dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 10. Click OK.

Figure 10. Profile Page Creation Succeeded page

The External Content Types view of the Service Application Information page refreshes and the link to the newly created profile page is listed in the Default Action column of the ECT, as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11. External Content Types with Default Action column

Note:

If a profile page already exists, clicking the Create/Upgrade icon will re- create the profile page, overwriting the previous one, unless you have changed the site that is hosting the profile pages. Any customizations you made to the previous profile page will be lost. If you created your own custom external action and defined it as the default action, then the profile page created by this procedure will become the default action.

Note:

When a SharePoint 2010 site is an upgraded SharePoint Server 2007 site that includes BCS data, profile pages, and actions, then the first time you complete the preceding procedure, you will create a new profile page. The previous profile page will not be overwritten, and the action for that profile page will be renamed to View Profile (SharePoint Server 2007).

Note:

To create a profile page for SharePoint Foundation, you will need SharePoint Designer or a developer to create the external action using the procedure outlined in the next section.

6. Creating External Data Actions

Actions provide a link to the external data source. Actions are URLs that are usually defined in the BDC Model on an ECT basis. You can add more actions, modify existing actions, or delete existing actions after you have imported the BDC Model, and you can do this without having to delete the application and re-import the BDC Model. To add actions, follow these steps.

Open a browser and go to the SharePoint Central Administration website.
Under Application Management, click Manage Service Applications.
On the Service Applications page, click the name of the Business Data Connectivity Service where the ECT is defined to display the BCS Application Information page that was shown earlier in Figure 18-5.
On the Service Application Information page, in the View group on the Edit tab, select External Content Types from the drop-down menu, as shown earlier in Figure 18-7.
From the drop-down menu for the ECT for which you want to add a new action, click Add Action.
On the Add Action Web page shown in Figure 12 , type a name for the action, type the URL, specify whether to launch the action in a new browser window or not (default), add parameters to the URL if required, and add the icon to display next to the action. You can choose from the Delete, Edit, or New actions, or you can choose your own image.

Figure 12. Add Action page
Click OK.

Note:

New actions added to an ECT are not available on existing External Lists created from that ECT. Only new External Lists created from the ECT will display the action.

Wherever an instance of an ECT is displayed, the actions will be visible and presented as a drop-down list, as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13. External data actions

When the View Profile action is selected, the profile page is displayed, as shown in Figure 14 . The profile page generated by SharePoint Designer and the Central Administration website consists of two Web Parts: the Business Data Item Builder Web Part, which has a Web Part connection to the Business Data Details Web Part.

Figure 14. A populated ECT profile page of a customer instance

Although actions are limited to a URL, you can open a client application from a URL. Two ways you can do this are by writing a Web Part that opens the client application or by writing an Internet Explorer pluggable protocol handler.