Microsoft 365 Community SharePoint, 17 Aug 2023

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From YouTube: List Formatting Tips & Tricks – Formatting operators for adjusting your output

Description

📺 In this 15 minute developer focused demo, Chris uses the recipe tracker tenplate in Microsoft Lists to show some tips and tricks for List formatting. With SP Formatter extension, he shows how to format operators, introduces us to enhanced formatting experience with Intellisense and Auto-Preview and also discusses to work directly in VS Code. Closing the demo with an overview of arithmetic, conditional and logical, as well as conversion operators, Multi-Value and Loop Operators and Text operators, and Value extraction operators.

This demo is taken from the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Development Community call August 17th, 2023. Join the next call! Download recurrent invite from https://aka.ms/community/calls

✨ Presenters
Chris Kent (Takeda) | https://twitter.com/theChrisKent

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A

Foreign everybody, hello, I'm Chris, and uh let's talk about some exciting list, formatting stuff, so we'll head on over to our uh Warrior versus site, until I figure out how to switch dang it ah video still there we're still here. Okay, sorry teams keeps crashing on me I'm losing everything here there we go all right. We figured it out. Keyboards are hard all right, so we're on our horse's site and we're just going to create a new list.

A

You know the uh the horses are always uh cooking lots of delicious things and thank God Microsoft has created a beautiful template for tracking that and SharePoint all right. So we've got our recipe tracker here, so we're gonna create a recipe tracker at. What's that, oh all, right.

A

I've moved on, we've moved on, so that's all right, so we will also move on. So the idea is, we've got a recipe tracker here right. It's very exciting comes with some formats, uh we're just gonna use that template to begin with, and we're going to call this uh recipes.

A

That sounds exciting and then we'll just add a couple of recipes to this list and then we're going to take a look at what we can do with that right. So uh we'll just add: let's take this uh off, we don't we don't care about this. Let's just hide that column right. We don't need a link, but let's add another column like a description here or text here.

A

You know a description of our uh recipe called description, I'm very excited I'm, going to call it a multiple lines of text and we'll just save that all right. So now we've got a beautiful list. It did not remove the link, not only it matters too much we'll bring that over here and now.

A

Let's add just a couple of items, so we could get this going, but uh soggy oats and then we'll add, uh what's called horse lasagna, that's right and then of course, I've already generated a couple of images for these uh somewhere of my some images and my horses somewhere the horses and then we got the recipes here we go and we got some horse lasagna all right now. This is the uh smooshy oats, perfect sogio smooshy oats, some kind of Oats all right.

A

So this is some of the AI generated images that apparently don't work here. So that's very exciting: let's try this again, one more time uh perfect, we'll upload some horses lasagna well, whatever, uh let's just exit the confusing of that uh fixed of note. Somehow my images are broken. It doesn't really matter we'll skip the images uh for today.

A

For now, though, let's grab some descriptions, though so maybe we'll ask AI, we'll ask Bing to help us out right, so we'll ask it to generate a description for a recipe called uh smooshy oats right there we go and uh so I bring this up, because this is a great way to make demo data right.

A

uh So if you're just messing with list formats- and you want some some data to generate right- you can use the little ipsum lips and bacon whatever it's called right or you know you can ask Ai and uh you'd, be one of those cool kids right uh to make sure demo fancy I'm gonna stop responding. We don't need those steps right, so we'll just grab uh whatever this is perfect.

A

Now, let's paste that in there beautiful and then let's get one more for the horse lasagna as well, all right, we'll just ask it to generate one for us on horse lasagna swamp, perfect, but we'll paste it twice. Apparently all right there we go just do it sounds great all right, so we'll get that we'll get a description for the horses lasagna and then we're gonna take a look at some format it. So one of the things we've been doing recently is: we've been showing some fairly Advanced uh scenarios right.

A

A couple of weeks ago we took a look: how to make a poll application. uh We've looked at all sorts of different types of applications, some Advanced formatting things with the for each and the loops and the inline editing. All those videos are available and I recommend you check them out, uh but for our purposes we're going to go back to basics just a little bit and and talk about how we even understand what formatting is right.

A

So we've created this list: we've done cool AI things, so we've checked off our list of uh being a cool, a or cool demo in 2023, by having AI shown so boom check that off. Let me close that Bing guy, all right and now so we've got ourselves a list right. We've got some sample data in it and we can take a look at how we want to format that right.

A

So, for instance, uh if we just go in here and we're going to go column, settings and we're going to format this column and one of the things we can do right is, we can get these nice little Wizards and that's okay for us we're able to advanced mode and we're going to take a look. What we can do now I have turned on SP formatter. That is a extension for either Chrome and for Edge I'll have a link and everything for that and what that does, and what that does.

A

It adds this little box here. It makes things a lot easier. um It makes things work really well, but one of the things we're going to do is we're going to take a look at. How do we figure out what we can do right so you'll notice that we hit this kind of intellisense right? We start to type as the LM type is suggested here. All right. We even can start to see. uh You know we could type div and we can type our text content now. These are the only things that are really required.

A

We can say wow right, we could put in literals text and now it'll always say Wow E there. So that's pretty cool. Let's make this a little bigger there we go uh now. How do we know what can go in there if anytime, you're interested? This is actually a link. If you hold down control and you click it, it's going to open up in a new tab here and if you wanted to read how to describe your Json with Jason Good News, you can right. So this is a Json schema file.

A

uh Don't expect you to really read through this too much, but if you're interested in exactly what you can do, this is a great spot to check that one of the things I want to point out. um Is that not only does it show you, you know what values are allowed and what are required right. You can see if you go all the way down to the bottom. Here we talk about. The only thing that's required is either element type, the column, format of reference, so that's kind of cool.

A

You can see these kinds of things, but what I think is more interesting is Expressions, so we have the idea of a property or a value right. So if we take a look here, this is the property Elm type. This is the value div right now, for the most part, properties are going to be fixed right. There's a specific list of what are available there, there's a couple of dynamic ones.

A

With uh data attributes and with Aria tags you can check out, but otherwise they're all kind of fixed they're always going to be named and there you go, but the values can vary. Wildly right, for instance, LM type, is you know one of a few right? If we type in l type all right, we can see that it only takes an enumerator value. This is it. This is all you can put in there and more. Interestingly, you cannot do an expression and when I say expression, I mean that's.

A

When we get fancy right, you see, there's a definition for expression um and their definition shows an operator is one of these items here. One of our exciting operators or an operand is all these different things, including an expression of self and then almost everything is either a string or an expression. Otherwise, so that allows us to say you know, text content doesn't have to be wowee right. We can actually put a curly brace, and now we get an operator right.

A

So now we get operator- and we can say you know like uh starts with that- sounds like an exciting operator or else just stealing unsuccessful, easy understand so ceiling just rounds down. So we do ceiling the idea what operators always has operands right and those are an array of things and in this case we're going to say you know 45.5 and if we preview that we can see that it goes up to 46.. Let's turn this enhanced formatter on, so we don't have to hit preview all the time right.

A

So if we have ceiling here, we could also type instead floor and I can see it goes down to 45, but to get the idea here, it's a little hard to read, but this is called the abstract, syntax tree uh style right, so AST and you'll see this show up.

A

This is the only thing that's supported if you're doing the SharePoint 2019 or, if you're, using some of the uh the rules that generate stuff you're going to see this kind of thing now this can be Rewritten pretty easily as just a string which we'll take a look at in a moment. But it's important to see this and not be too scared of it. Because again you can kind of go crazy. There are some weird things and I'm going to turn on debug mode. So we can see some of that weird things right.

A

So, if I type in uh you know almost anything all right, so if I type a number like, you would think, would work right, I'm actually told it's not a valid operator, and that's because the debug mode I actually can see all of the list of operators. I can use, uh but some of these in this syntax I have to actually include the parentheses. Now. Why is that? For some of them and not for others? Why are some but okay, somewhere up case yeah?

A

Yes, Microsoft right, but either way that's kind of what's happening and again you could have uh you know you could Nest these all the way down before they get a little confusing. uh Alternatively, right, you could just write uh in equals and that will indicate we're starting an expression in line right, so an Excel style expression where we could say you know ceiling of 45.5 right. We see that uh has 46 over there notice again that SP formatters applying this automatically right, so I forgot the O boom there.

A

It goes and you can see this is a lot easier to read, especially when you start nesting a lot of these Expressions, so I want to make sure I called that out. The other thing to note is how you reference other things right, so this value can also be fancy things right. So we saw before we were just like dog and there's dog. We could also do things like you know, placeholder strings right so, and this is the SP formatters really quite a bit of intellisense here.

A

um So I can see the at current field, which is going to take the value there, but I could also reference other columns right. So if I want to take the description and show that I would put a square bracket, a dollar sign and again, SP formatter is doing a really cool thing where it's actually looking at what columns are available on this list and showing them to me here right. uh So this guy didn't refresh after that.

A

So let's just go ahead and type in descriptions, but we type in the internal name for a column and there's the description right and that's very cool. Now, if we wanted to do something like recipe right well, that doesn't work right recipes not found on the data object and that's because that's actually the title field right. So these are the internal names now one thing you can do is: if someone does that, and you want to reference, what is that display?

A

Name right, like maybe you're trying to write in you know, equals and you're saying title right. Is this thing right, uh I, don't know why you would do that, but maybe you're doing that right, but you don't want to say title because what, if they've changed that right so now, you can quickly change that here and you can reference column metadata instead of a dollar sign.

A

You can put the exclamation point and say display name right and then we'll say another plus here right and we'll wonder what I did wrong for days and days all right, I, don't know what I did. Is it lowercase I, don't know display values lower case either way? The idea is, you can get better data about these things.

A

You can do the placeholder tokens and you can do these expressions um and it gets really really cool when you start to combine these things and usually conditionally turn things on and off to apply, Styles and so on. But the key thing with Expressions is to not be too scary because that operator, operand stuff and then to be aware of what's available. So one of the ways I like to see what's available is, of course you can always check out uh the actual documentation right.

A

So this formatting syntax references, the is the document with kind of the bulk of that stuff. You see all these special string values I mentioned current field, but so it's going to call it how you can get those sub properties uh you know like saw. The people field have all these extra properties very exciting.

A

And then, if you come down here, you can see this is where again we reference that kind of metadata for the field, uh not sure what I typed wrong there, but it doesn't really matter right and then this is how you reference internal field names and again, if you use that debug mode, you can start to see those internal field names and use SP formatter it's going to get even easier for you and again with that automatic preview, which is really really helpful. Okay and then the last thing is, you can see the operators.

A

If you come here, you can see operators all of them listed here, along with examples of how do you call each I said in the text content, but it's not limited to text content. Almost everything except except element, type and I- think custom action for the most part take an expression. So again you can get pretty fancy with some of the stuff and it's very cool. So now, let's take a look at our slides, real, quick and we'll wrap it up so again, I want to call it this SP formatter by Circle, it's free.

A

It's part of PNP check it out. It is awesome, it's an extension uh for both Chrome and for Edge, so the new chromium Edge, and it makes things so much easier. I, don't generally demo it here because it is an extra install, but this is what I use to write all my formats and I highly recommend it as well all right and then finally, I've got this we'll have this linked elsewhere right, so you can go through these. It's just that documentation just kind of laid out a little bit different grouping right.

A

So these the arithmetic operators and the goal here is to show you just how much power there really is, but also to call out that some things are online only right and some things are included in SharePoint 2019, so so the arithmetic operators, here's your conditions and logic right, so you can do some really cool comparisons and check it with strings and so on.

A

One thing to note here is a little weird: is that if you're in that operator, operand syntax, you use either a question mark or use a colon don't use if, but you don't use either of those if you're in the Excel expression. I know that sounds a little weird, but just think I was reading it. This way like. If this, then that kind of thing okay, so you totally got that here's some conversion operators, so there's a way to take in uh you, know your value.

A

So when you get your current field value uh or you grab another field value, it comes back as the value it is actually the type. So it's not necessarily A String. It could be a Boolean right, so it's going to be true or false, or it could be a date which would mean it's actually a giant number of the milliseconds since 1970, something or other right, and so you can use these here to convert those between those types of things, including some.

A

You know Locale type items and then of course, there's the multi-value and loop operator, so you can jump through so you've got multi-choice fields or multi-person fields or, if you're, just working with a split or you're doing four each. You could do all sorts of cool things there. So these are a little more advanced, very exciting and then, of course, we have our text manipulation. Operators right.

A

So this is how you can change some of that strings around you want to jump in there, and you can say you know, make a shout at people by always making an uppercase or sometimes you just want to display it right, and you just want to add a padding to the beginning right. So the pads start, a very common use case right- is the pad numbers, so they all line up correctly.

A

The fun thing is, it accepts a string so just wrap that around one of those conversions, two strings on your number and you're good to go and then finally, here's some value extraction operators. So this is how you can actually grab some very specific details uh out of a value right again. This could be your calculated values or these can be field values and it makes it very, very cool.

A

So all that to say this stuff is extremely powerful and we've been showing you all sorts of cool, powerful things with it, but I wanted to take it back a little bit. Just talk about these Expressions aren't near as scary, as you think, I think they're actually easy to write than calculated columns everywhere, just because some of those are a lot easier right there, just like the map, kind of like Excel they're, similar Power, FX, and so on so check those out.

A

If you have any questions just reach out to me, and that's uh that's it for me, David.