SharePoint: Reproducing a Roll-Up DataViewWebPart in Another Web

After reading a fantastic post by Laura Rogers on displaying a roll-up web part using Sharepoint Designer and the all-powerful DataViewWebPart, I came across a need to produce a similar (but summarised) view of a Roll-up on another site.

My current full rollup exists in a Web which recurses its sub Webs to extract details. What I wanted was a summary of this view on the Top-level site homepage (default.aspx).

I was able to “Connect to another library” and add the site in which the main roll-up exists to my Data Source Library for the top-level site, but when I changed mode to CrossList and set the Webs mode to Recursive in the mark-up (all this detailed in Laura’s blog post linked above), all I saw in the Data Source Details was 3 fields, ListId, WebId and ID. No others 🙁

What I needed to do, it turns out, was hit a little sly link below the title text “Current Data Source:”, which brings up a dialogue box letting you filter or sort the Data Source query. This also has a drop down box entitled “Item and Folder Scope”. Setting this to Recursive then displayed all the fields in the List I was connecting to, and when I went to “Edit Columns” in Common Data View Tasks, I could see everything and add/remove columns as I needed for this summary view.

When sorting my data in the roll-up, I have to also use this dialogue box to set the sort parameters, as doing it via the Common Data View Tasks results in an empty result set.

So, when making a recursive roll-up for another Web, ensure you set the Item scope to Recursive in  SPD, as well as adding the XML tag “Webs” to the selectCommand!