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Acronym Dictionary with Dynamic Search Tool

A common irritation in business these days is the deluge of acronyms.  The meanings for most are easily found with a quick google search, but many are company-specific.  It has been requested of me for a long time to create an acronym dictionary, but unfortunately it's one of those low-priority requests that never gets any attention.  Until, that is, I realized that this could easily be solved with a SharePoint List and AJAX in a CEWP.

Storing the acronyms in a SharePoint list was always in the back of my mind, but making it easy for users to find them is the hard part with out-of-the-box SharePoint functionality.  So I created some HTML/JS code that queries the "lists" web service and displays matches dynamically as the user types.

What it is

Custom List
Create a custom list with the following columns:

  • Acronym – Signle line of text – Required
  • Meaning – Single line of text – Required
  • Definition – Multiple lines of text – Not required
  • Company Specific – Yes/No
  • Citation – Multiple lines of text – Required
  • Begins With – Calculated (grabs the first letter in the acronym; used in the default view to group by first letter)

The list will need the following views:

  • All Items (default view) (All columns grouped by "Begins With")
  • Web Service View 1 (Displays only Acronym, Meaning, Company Specific)
  • Web Service View 2 (Displays Acronym, Meaning, Definition, Company Specific, Citation; item limit set to 1)

HTML Page
An HTML page contains a text box that when typed into, displays matches by querying the web service (Web Service View 1).  Then, within the results, a user can click the Meaning of the acronym to display a window containing the definition and citation.

Implement it

  1. Unzip the file attached to this post.
  2. If you are using SharePoint Portal 2003, it may make sense to create a dedicated area for this solution so you can control who has permission to manage the content in the list.
  3. Go to http://[YOUR_SITE]/_catalogs/lt/Forms/AllItems.aspx and upload the list template (Acronym Dictionary.stp) into the List Templates Gallery.
  4. Create the list from the new template.
  5. Edit the following JavaScript variables in AcronymViewer.htm (in the attached ZIP)
    1. 1
    2. 2
  6. Add AcronymViewer.html to a Document Library within the area.
  7. Paste the URL of the HTML page into the Content Link box in a CEWP.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 7:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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