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Timesheet System Integration

Background City of Langford has a homegrown ASP.NET timesheet system Allows staff to enter there time on a daily basis. Time entry is recorded on a project by project basis The times system exports a file which is imported into our Payroll ERP System (Great Plains)

Background Cont. System has its own SQL server database

Background Cont. Projects assigned to each employee are configurable. Each user is assigned a supervisor in the system.

Timesheet System Snip

Approval Process In the “old days” – People would print out there timesheet get their supervisor to sign it and submit it to the payroll department – Purely a paper process

Integration Functionality Approval done in SharePoint document library Submit timesheet to SharePoint using SharePoint API Document tagged with metadata (submitter, date), dropped in Supervisor Folder (with security) Ability to comment Timesheet

Server API vs CSOM (SP2010) Pros/Cons Server APICSOM Easier to codeLimited OM exposed Entire OM exposedMore difficult to code Requires sharepoint server on machine running code Can run on any client Wrapper over web services

Development History Originally in SP2007 this system used the Server API (no CSOM available). Required timesheet website to run on sharepoint server. In migration to SP2010 CSOM became available. Switched to this API so timesheet not coupled to sharepoint server

Pseudocode Generate report (already existing), byte array Connect to sharepoint site, list Query for supervisor folder IF it doesn’t exist then create it first Upload to supervisor folder Tag with metadata

Generate Report Using.rdlc (visual studio report designer) to generate report

Connect to the sharepoint site, list

Query for Supervisor Folder (CSOM)

Query for supervisor folder cont

Create Supervisor Folder (CSOM)

Versus Server API

Upload Code

Tag with metadata (CSOM)

Tag with metadata (server API)

Timesheet Library Approve View (data grid format)

Supervisor Folders (in approval view)

Approval View (Datagrid)

Approval View Settings

Bonus Content Ever tried to change someones name in sharepoint? Ever had someone accidentally delete the root site in a site collection?

Bonus Content – Changing User Names

Bonus – Recover Deleted Site Collection