User Guide – netDocShare app for SharePoint Server 2013

netDocShare comes with a unique license ID which will be verified on load. Please note that netDocShare requires an internet connection to verify your license, which should not be an issue since it also requires internet to retrieve content from the NetDocuments API.

When receiving our netDocShare deployment materials, you should also have received a netDocShareLicenseKey.txt file. This file contains your unique key which will activate netDocShare and the specific features that you have requested. In order to activate, simply drop the key file, which we have provided, into the library where our assets were deployed. Neglecting this step will yield licensing errors and will not allow usage of the app. In our farm solution, the assets will deploy to a location on the file system. We have given an example path below:

AssetPath:

https://{your-SharePoint-Tenant}/_layouts/15/netDocShareFarm/assets/images/folderIcons/

File Path:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\netDocShareFarm\assets\images\folderIcons

Attempting to use the app without putting in the license key will be able to yield the exact path in an error message similar to the one shown below:

The instructions in this guide are mostly meant for our Sandbox solution deployment, however, as there are few differences between the two in terms of functionality, the same instructions can be applied to the Farm solution. All the significant differences are listed here:

Search is a global feature that exists on every WebPart. The search bar can be turned on or off in the configuration. By default, search will show the currently selected container as its search context in the placeholder field. Note that search functionality cannot be expanded beyond the original source container but it can be constricted by navigating into sub-containers. The placeholder text should update automatically, informing the user of the search context when navigation occurs.

Search functionality will vary depending on the type of content that is retrieved by the WebPart and also how it is configured. There are 2 main options for search configuration: “Search Current View” or “Search All”.

When the user clicks the search button or presses enter with a search term, the WebPart will execute a query to NetDocuments that searches through all containers and sub-containers that are contained within the primary source. The current contents of the display table will then be replaced by the search results. Users can revert to the previous view by pressing the “x” button inside the search box.

With our 2020 update, we also have a new webpart dedicated to search integration between SharePoint and NetDocuments. This webpart is only available through an extra license feature purchase. Please see our section on the “Integrated Search” viewtype for more info.

NetDocShare relies on the dynamic column and Profile Attributes system in NetDocuments to retrieve its data. In order to show custom columns, users must have set up profile attributes as a NetDocuments Administrator and enabled them as custom columns in the cabinet in use. Once this pre-requisite has been fulfilled, users can display any sort of custom column content from NetDocuments.

By default, our webpart will include the fields “name”, “version”, “id” and “extension” as default columns to include in a newly created view. However, users can customize this in various ways. Using the config Builder, users can dynamically retrieve columns that exist in their NetDocuments account and then add or remove any columns desired (Note: This excludes the Name and version fields which are mandatory). Users can also re-arrange columns as they wish

In the image above, you can see that custom columns “property1” and “choice” have been retrieved from the cabinet and “property1” has been added to the view. Please see the Config Builder section for more information about using custom columns.

Clicking on the “Filter” icon beside the search bar (pictured in the screenshot below) will open filter fields for each column included in the view. Users can enter filter terms that will return results in the current container that match the provided term. Below you can see an example of filtering the document extension to only see Microsoft Excel files. Users can filter by any default or custom column that has been enabled for the cabinet in NetDocuments. Name and version will always be included as default columns, all other columns are customizable in the view.

Columns can be re-sized directly on the webpart table. Simply hover over the edge of a column and the cursor should change into a resize icon with a tooltip reading “Resize Column”. Drag the dotted line to resize the column. After re-sizing occurs, the webpart will automatically save the new width that has been modified.

Re-Arranging columns can be done through the Config Builder mentioned earlier in the “Choosing Columns” section. On this page, after choosing the desired columns, users can drag & drop the column name bubbles to the desired order that will appear in the view. Please review the “Choosing Columns” section or please see the “Config builder” section for more info.

Note: When re-sizing columns on SharePoint, the change will only persist for the current view and current user. This is due to page edit & permission issues. If you would like column re-sizing to persist for all users, please re-size as a user who has edit permission on the page while the page is in “edit” mode and the webpart pane for the current webpart is open.

Users can upload a new document into any WebPart which has a specific source location that is a container. For example: folders and workspaces are valid containers that one can upload to. Whereas, views such as RecentDocs or Favorites or Saved Search View are not valid containers and therefore cannot be uploaded to.

Simply click the upload button and it will open the upload dialog window (pictured below). In this window, users can drag & drop one or more files or click to browse their local directory to find a file for upload.

In TreeView, there are usually multiple sources displayed. In this case, the upload destination will be the latest cabinet/folder/sub-folder selected by the user.

The uploaded documents will immediately be sent to your NetDocuments repository barring any error happening. Users will be notified of any errors during upload. Please note: even after successful upload, in some limited cases, the user’s view on netDocShare may not immediately update to show the newest upload. This is due to the fact that NetDocuments processes and indexes the files in the background and the indexing priority tends to be lower for API uploads. This can be avoided by waiting a few minutes and refreshing the WebPart

Note: Uploading files with no content results in an error. If a document is uploaded that has had its contents deleted, then it would not count as “no content.” As of version 3.3.0, users can now upload by directly dragging & dropping one or more files onto the content table itself.

Users can also download documents in several ways. Firstly, there is a “download” option which can be turned on or off in the context menu. There is also a default click behavior which can be automatically set to download. Finally, users can select multiple documents using the selection tick boxes on the left and bulk download all selected files.

Our Enterprise level license contains a few more features that are provided only to enterprise customers. These features are automatically enabled if your license has been purchased or upgraded to enterprise level.

Our webparts have the ability to directly integrate ndThread views of containers or workspaces directly as additional tabbed views in either SharePoint or Microsoft Teams. To use this feature, simply check the “ndThread” checkbox when creating a new view with config Builder or editing an existing view. ndThread must already be activated on a tenant-level in your NetDocuments account, please contact your NetDocuments Administrator for more info on how to enable ndThread.

Similar to ndThread, the new ndTasks feature will also appear as an additional tab when activated.

Support for directly opening documents in online office editors has been added. Note that this feature is only available for Office documents which include an ‘x’ in file format such as “xlsx” for excel files.

SharePoint-NetDocuments Search Feature – ability to search and filter NetDocuments and SharePoint content right within SharePoint. This features allows users to customize a search webpart that can search across both SharePoint and NetDocuments. It also allows usage of share filters, even when column names and designations may differ. Please see our section on integrated search in order to learn how to create and configure this webpart.

Simply click the upload button and it will open an upload dialog window. In this window, users can drag & drop or browse their local directory to choose single or multiple files for upload.

In TreeView, there are usually multiple sources displayed. In this case, the upload destination will be the latest cabinet/folder/sub-folder selected by the user.

The uploaded documents will immediately be sent to your NetDocuments repository barring any error happening. Users will be notified of any errors during upload. Please note that, even after successful upload, in some limited cases, the user’s view on netDocShare may not immediately update to show the newest upload. This is because NetDocuments processes and indexes the files in the background and the indexing priority tends to be lower for API uploads. This can be avoided by waiting a few minutes and refreshing the WebPart.

Note: Uploading files with no content results in an error. If a document is uploaded that has had its contents deleted, then it would not count as “no content.”

Users can also download documents in several ways. Firstly, there is a “download” option which can be turned on or off in the context menu. There is also a default click behavior which can be automatically set to download. Finally, users can select multiple documents using the selection tick boxes on the left and bulk download all selected files.

netDocShare Config Builder is one of our essential webparts when working with netDocShare for the first time. The Config Builder can be used by technical or non-technical staff to help create configurations for webparts that all other users will see.

Create a new page or use existing Config Builder webpart.

After choosing the NetDocViewer webpart, click edit button and wait till right panel shows up. At this point, you will be able to tell whether the App has loaded successfully or not. If you see a message stating “Please input your NetDocuments Configuration Object”, the webpart is ready to configure and use. If you see any other message, some part of the deployment has gone wrong. Please ensure that netDocShare has been deployed properly by seeing our Deployment Guide. Create the Config Builder webpart by pasting the following into the webpart configuration window on the right side:

{ “viewType”: “createConfig”,
“assetPath”: “{your asset path here}” }

The assetPath determines where the webpart will load its code and assets from. Typically, this can be found during the deploy process. Here is an example of a typical path we usually see in Sharepoint Online:

https://{your-tenant}.sharepoint.com/sites/AppCatalog/ClientSideAssets/{webpartGUID}/

For Sharepoint On-Premises, Your assetPath might look like:

https://{yourSharepointTenant}/SiteAssets/netDocShare/CDN/assets/images/folderIcons/

More detailed information about the Config Builder can be found in “How to use SharePoint Config Builder.”