Custom Unique Identifier for SharePoint 2010/2013

Client

The Client is a reputable Swiss company providing a full spectrum of SharePoint consulting services for business and IT.

Challenge

The Client discovered that SharePoint lacks in key functionality that is highly required by their customers. Therefore, the Client decided to create a new column type in Microsoft SharePoint that would be able to generate ongoing numbers and literals, which represent unique identifiers for SharePoint items in Business applications. Although SharePoint has unique identifiers for each item, these are not usable for business applications to identify and display elements.

Solution

ScienceSoft tailored a SharePoint 2010/2013 component for this project. The feature (Column Type Sequencer) allows generating unique identifiers for SharePoint items. Every unique identifier consists of variable arguments that are joined together to a unique string, which can be interpreted by any user.

The Column Type Sequencer supports various configuration options that enable the user to determine the concatenation rules for a specific key (identifier) that will be applied to that column in current list.

In order to concatenate unique identifiers in a proper way the column type contains a formula builder that is capable of fetching data from other list fields, system parameters and from fixed literals which are predefined values - e.g. date literal DD.MM.YYYY or YYYY or YYYY-MM.

The following variables are possible as concatenation parameters.

List fields:

• other field values of the current item

System parameters:

• current user attributes
• current date formatted with all kinds of dates
• current group attributes
• ongoing number
• ongoing day number
• ongoing month number
• ongoing year number

Literals:

• Literals in any form as part of a unique identifier

Column type sequencer meets the following requirements:

• available in any list in a SharePoint site;
• localized into English and German;
• generates unique key instantly whenever a new item is created in a list with an activated sequencer column;
• has common licensing system integrated.

Results

ScienceSoft created a new feature for SharePoint 2010/2013. As a result, the Client can provide full functionality to end-clients, which addresses their key business needs.

The project was completed within the project plan and delivered in line with the Client’s requirements.

Technologies and Tools

SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013, Visual Studio 2010, .NET, SharePoint Client Object model.