SharePoint Solutions Releases Workflow Essentials
Looking for an easy way to create dynamic, data-driven content in SharePoint? SharePoint Solutions (news, site) is offering a new free tool to help you out: SharePoint Data Zoom Web Part.

Dynamic Content in SharePoint

There are other ways to get dynamic content into your SharePoint site, but this one is designed for the less technical user -- or anyone who wants to create dynamic content fast. The web part is a free tool that enables you to offer dynamic, data-driven content on any SharePoint page. This includes data from SharePoint lists, SharePoint sites -- including cross-site content or any non-SharePoint content.

The web part uses NVelocity's unique template engine and a custom source editor. The best part is you don't have to know .NET or XSLT to use this web part. You also don't need SharePoint Designer.

Of course it does require you to develop an understanding of scripting using the NVelocity template language.

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SharePoint Solutions Data Web Part
 

Data Extensions

There are a number of extensions available for this web part that enable you to pull content into SharePoint from external data sources. A free one is the SharePoint Data Zoom Extension for Syndication which enables you to pull in content from ATOM and RSS feeds.

There are a number of other extensions including Active Directory, SQL Server, ASP.NET Membership Services and Salesforce.com. Each of these extensions will cost you US$ 495.00.

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Learning Opportunities

Data Zoom Web Part - RSS/ATOM Example

The Web Part's source editor provides command menus for helper utilities for accessing, manipulating and formatting data.

You can read more about this new Web Part from SharePoint Solutions on its Community Site or access the full documentation to see how to make it work for you.

Installation for the Web Part is a 3 step process that includes installing the Web Part on your Front-end Web Servers, deploying the WSP file to the SharePoint Server farm and activating the new feature.

The SharePoint Data Zoom Web Part works for both WSS and MOSS and requires version 3.5 of the .NET framework.

Download your copy now.