Integrate Dragnet w/ Share Point

[Tony]

We use Share Point portals for our ongoing projects. Our external clients uses these portals to collaberate with us. In the past, we would use the standard List controls in Share Point to have outside users send us bugs/issues/requests/etc.

We want to expose the license-free "Add Item" functionality (a-la AddItemExternal.aspx) in our Share Point portal. To start my proof-of-concept, I just copy-pasted the HTML portion of your example page into a User Control (which we will later host within a Share Point page).

The example you provide uses a couple of Dragnet-specific controls (namely the Type, Category, Platform and possibly other look-ups). I presume that these come from the Dragnet bins. What I would like to find out is:

(A) Am I allowed to copy some of these Dragnet bins to our Sharepoint server so that these controls work there without violating our licensing?

(B) What all controls am I looking for? There are more look up lists administered in Dragnet than those three shown above.

(C) What Dragnet bins will I need in order to make all this work?

Tony

[mskrobul]

You could probably do this without violating our licensing if you can get it to work. We don't support or really recommend doing this.

It would probably be easier to just write your own controls using the web service api if you want to make custom page outside Dragnet. All the functions needed to fill the controls are available through the Web Service API. That is why we provide the Web Service API.

The custom controls in Dragnet were not meant or written to be used outside the Dragnet application. Getting these controls to work outside Dragnet would probably be quite cumbersome (if it is even possible, we have not tested this scenario at all).

Can you just make a page in SharePoint that links to the AddItemExternal page in Dragnet?

[Tony]

Thanks for your reply. I have a couple more questions, if I may.

(A) I am happy to write my own custom controls if that is waht would be best. Are you able/willing to share the basic code associated with these controls to save me the time?

(B) I don't see any documentation online with regard to the Dragnet web service APIs. Am I missing it, or do I need to ask for it?

Unfortunatly, using an external link to your page isn't really feasible. First, we insist on tight integration and for something like this I can't justify an external link. This is something our clients will see/use and it needs to be seemless. Second, we intend to store the AD account name in one of the custom fields so that we know which client submitted each bug and I need to code in that functionality ont he Share Point side.

Thanks again for your help and continued support.

Tony

[mskrobul]

The Dragnet web service page lists all of the methods available through the web service.

http://servername/dragnet/dragnetwebservice.asmx

There are some simple examples on how to use the web service in our KB section:

http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=2775
http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?t=2568

As for the control code, the Dragnet application itself doesn't go through the web service, so the code for your controls would be different from the controls in our controls library.

Are you only writing one page that using these controls (an add item page)? If so, you probably wouldn't need to go through the trouble of writing custom controls that load themselves, you can just load the information into regular drop down lists. If you are going to re-use the controls on many pages, then it would make sense to write custom controls.

Basically, for all the controls (whether they are custom or not) you would want to:

1- List the values you want

Code: Select all

//assuming the web reference is MyDragnetService and the 
//web service is initialized already and called _dragnetService
MyDragnetService.MantisStatus[] statuses = null;
_dragnetService.ListStatusValues(out statuses);

2- Fill in the drop down list using the "Label" or "Name" property for the text and the "ID" property for the value

Code: Select all

	
ListItem[] items = new ListItem[statuses.Length];
for (int i = 0; i< statuses.Length; i++)
{
  ListItem li = new ListItem(statuses[i].Label, statuses[i].ID.ToString());
  items[i] = li;
}
DropDownList1.Items.AddRange(items);

Or if you want to using binding for the controls, see the following infromation for binding custom collections from a web service:
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/msdn/ ... apper.mspx.

If you would like a basic example of a custom control, email me directly using the button at the bottom of the message and we can write you an example.