Aggregating Data Issue

Mikem — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:20:06 GMT

(Duplicate post, thought maybe there's a front end way around the issue... perhaps different control use will circumvent the problem. I look forward to your creativity).

Hey All,

I have a form that contains checkbox inputs for multiple inputs. I'm aggregating these selections into one text box field for ease of display to the user. The result is a column which contains nemerous comma seperated selections (all predefined input, no user input). The issue I'm having is that SharePoint's default filtering uses a direct string match which is problematic. For example:

Say I had a list of known programming languages for a user and the following input:

User 1 - C++, Java, C#

User 2 - Ada, C, C++

User 3 - C

In the language column I can only filter on exact matches so the filters that appera are: "C++, Java, C#", "Ada, C, C++", and "C". The truly troubling part is that if a user selects the "C" filter they won't view user 2 due to the direct matching. Essentially I want to be able to do a contains filter.

I know the contains filter capability exists in datasheet view but this requires the user to first select a "custom filter' and than manually type in their filter. All well and good for me, but honestly the users won't get that far. To that end I want to provide the user a GUI or some other interface that will essentially implement a contains filter on SharePoint. I found some scripting for applying filters via URL but 1) had trouble even getting those to work, 2) they also did a direct match which doesn't really help.

I've been struggling with this for a while but I have to believe that there is a way around this. Again, the contents of the aggregated string are all known... there is no dynamic user input. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mikem

General

Aggregating Data Issue