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• Lightning Conductor 2010

Benefits gained from using the Lightning Conductor 2010

Allow aggregation from across Site Collections allowing for Best Practices to still be met

It is mostly agreed that having multiple site collections is better than a single, huge site collection. In SharePoint 2007, two factors would affect this decision; Content Rollup and Content Types. SharePoint 2010 addressed the Content Type issue which can now be created as Enterprise Content Types. The Content Query Web Part which is part of SharePoint Server 2010 still will only rollup from the current site collection. The Lightning Conductor helps you overcome this limitation.

Leverage Managed Meta Data

Managed Meta Data is a new feature of SharePoint Server 2010. This feature can help your users find content more easily through search and navigation. The Lightning Conductor Web Part builds on this allowing the Managed Meta Data to be displayed when the information is aggregated.

Save development costs

If you want to display columns other than Title and Description from a List or Library, you will need to write your own custom XSL file for the Content Query Web Part. If you do not have XSL skills in house, this can be an expensive process. Even if you do, why spend hours or days writing XSL if there is no need? The Lightning Conductor Web Part allows you to easily select columns for display by ticking the check box for each column.

Flexible for future requirements

If you do author your own XSL file for the Content Query Web Part, there are likely to be changes to the list or library in future such as adding an additional custom column. This means that you need to perhaps change the XSL file to suit new requirements and support them on an ongoing basis. With the Lightning Conductor Web Part, you can change the configuration easily at any time.

Supported by Microsoft

To query SharePoint List Items, simply writing your own code against to query the content might not be supported by Microsoft. As well as writing your own code being expensive, you may break existing Microsoft support contracts if this is not done correctly. For example, querying the content directly from the database is not permitted. We’ve followed all of the guidelines by Microsoft to author a web part that both performs well and is 100% supported by Microsoft ensuring we do not query content directly.