Within this post, we will explore how to configure the Lightning Conductor’s Object Model to aggregate SharePoint List and Library content from across your SharePoint environment.
Lightning Conductor SPFx Getting Started.
OBJECT MODEL DATA SOURCE
The Object Model is a data source provider in the Lightning Conductor that works by performing an aggregation on the content in real-time. That is, if the aggregated content were to change within the list, such as a Task being changed from ‘In Progress’ to ‘Completed’, the Lightning Conductor would display the change immediately. We will look deeper into the Object Model’s configuration in this article.
Object Model Data Source Configuration
To aggregate lists with the Lightning Conductor, you can either use the Quick Configuration or the Advanced Mode to build a view of aggregated content. The Quick Configuration addresses some common scenarios, such as rolling up Tasks, Documents, Events etc. You can easily select the type of list that you want to aggregate, any filter requirements, choose your scope, and then display options. Once the results are displayed on the page, you can further customize your view using Data Formatting, Conditional Formatting, Adding and Removing Columns, Grouping and much more. The Advanced Mode allows you to be far more granular with other settings, including the Object Model, and we’ll focus on those options in this article.
The Object Model Configuration in the Data Source tab is divided into four main sections:
- Rollup Source
- List/Item Types
- Column Source
- Settings
ROLLUP SOURCE
The Rollup Source describes where you would like your SharePoint list item to be aggregated from. At this point, we are only concerned with the source of the data, and not the type of data. The options include:
- Show Items from Current Tenant
- Show Items from All Hub Sites and Associated Sites
- Show Items from Current Site Collection
- Show Items from Current Site and Associated Sites
- Show Items from Multiple Site Collections (The Site Collections must be selected in the tree view)
- Show Items from Current Site
- Show Items from Current Site and Subsites
- Show Items from Multiple Sites
- Show Items from Multiple Lists (List Type will not be required as the type of list is selected as the source already).
Show Items from Current Tenant: This option will aggregate content from any specified list or library type from any SharePoint site within the Microsoft 365 Tenant.
Show Items from All Hub Sites and Associated Sites: This option will aggregate content from any specified list or library type from hub sites and associated sites within the environment.
Show Items from Current Site Collection: This option will aggregate content from any specified list or library type from the current site collection.
Show Items from Current Site and Associated Sites: This option will aggregate content from any specified list or library type from the current site and any associated sites.
Show Items from Multiple Site Collections: This option will aggregate content from any specified list or library type from multiple site collections. When choosing Show Items from Multiple Sites Collections or Sites, a site tree hierarchy will appear, allowing you to select the site collections and/or sites to include in the rollup.
Show Items from Current Site: This option will aggregate content from any specified list or library type from the current site only.
Show Items from Current Site and Sub Sites: This option will aggregate content from any specified list or library type from the current site and its sub sites.
Show Items from Multiple Sites: This option will aggregate content from any specified list or library type from multiple sites.
Show Items from Multiple Lists: This option will aggregate content from multiple lists. For this option, List Type will not be required as the list type is selected as the source already.
Clicking on the Site Collection/Site name selects that Site Collection/Site as the scope. Doing this will add a vertical line to the left of the Site name. If you want to select several Site Collections specifically, click on their names rather than tick the boxes.
Ticking the box selects only subsites – or in the case of “Show Items from Multiple Site Collections”, only associated Sites of a Hub Site.
If, for example, you want to roll up from a Site and its Subsites, then you should click on the name AND tick the box.
If you choose the Rollup Source “Show Items from Multiple Lists”, you will also see the site tree hierarchy, allowing you to click on the names of the lists to include. This will add a vertical line to the left of the list name.
LIST/ITEM TYPES
Once the scope has been selected, you can specify the type of content from that scope that you would like to include within the rollup. E.g. Tasks or Announcements. The type of content can be further refined by specifying the content type group and content type used to create the list item. For Example, your organization may have created a content type that inherits from Document called Invoice, which appears under ‘Custom Content Types’. If you selected Documents as the List Type and Invoice as the Content Type, only Invoices from Document Libraries would be included in the rollup. Any other list type that used the Invoice content type would not be included in the aggregation.
COLUMN SOURCE
The column source section is optional. Most of the time, you will not need to select a list as the column source. The Column Source has nothing to do with which list items are aggregated but helps to make custom columns available on the Columns tab of the web part. The Column Source is only relevant when some of your lists contain custom columns. By default, we will show all columns available for selection from the lists defined in the scope. However, if one of your lists contains a custom column which is not displayed as an available column within the Columns tab, you can select that list as the column source. All columns from that list will then be available to display within your view.
SETTINGS
The settings section contains many fields:
- Item Limit – Use the Item Limit text box to restrict the number of items returned from the data source. Use this option for performance reasons. This limit will be applied to the first X amount retrieved from the data source.
- Item Limit Per List – This will also restrict the number of items returned from the data source based on each source list separately. Also, use this for performance reasons.
- Batch Size: This will specify the maximum count of items that could be retrieved from the list per each request.
- Retrieve Missing Parent Folder – If the slider is on, then the rollup engine provider will also retrieve parent folders (also items) for all rolled-up items which are missing among rolled-up items. Such a situation could occur if the parent item(s) does not satisfy the provided filters or are missing because of a specified item limit, etc.
- Retrieve Missing Parent Tasks – If the slider is on, then the rollup engine provider will also retrieve parent tasks for all rolled-up task items which are missing among rolled-up task items. Such a situation could occur if the parent task(s) does not satisfy the provided filters or are missing because of a specified item limit, etc. If the users want to render all displayed fields also for all rendered parent task(s), then by checking this option, the rollup engine would retrieve all missing parent tasks of all tasks included in the rollup.
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Allowed Filters
- Select Only Persistent to allow all users to see the same filtered values. Users can not use the dynamic filtering capabilities of the Web Part.
- – Select Persistent and Dynamic to use a combination of persistent filters and dynamic filters. The Web Part uses the persistent filter first to display a subset of items from the rollup source. The user can then use the Web Part’s filter options to further limit the displayed items.
- – Select Ignore All Filters to display all items from the rollup source. That is, the persistent filter settings selected on the Display tab are ignored, and users cannot use dynamic filters.
- Ignore Missing Columns Filter – If the slider is on, any columns with missing filters will be ignored.
- Ignore Access Denied Errors – If the slider is on, access denied errors encountered during the roll-up will be ignored.
CONVERT OBJECT MODEL VIEW TO SEARCH ENGINE VIEW
You can choose to convert your existing Object Model Engine view to a Search Engine View. To do so, select the conversion button on the Web Part tab of the view and follow the configuration instructions. You may need to specify names of mapped managed properties for relevant columns.
