Queries and Rules Screen
This article describes how to use Queries and Rules section to enforce SharePoint governance policies or create custom reports for SharePoint securable objects.
The Queries and Rules section allows you to create automatic or manual actions to manage the content settings or create custom reports on SharePoint objects. Crawl your SharePoint farm settings and enforce SharePoint governance policies wherever you need them, in just a couple of steps.
The following buttons are available in the Queries and Rules home ribbon:
- New Rule – start a wizard to guide you through the creation of a new rule.
- New Query – start a wizard to guide you through the creation of new query report.
- Edit – make changes in your rule or query configuration.
- Delete – delete previously created rule, query, or history item.
- Run – start a manual rule or query execution.
- Run with Service – start an automatic rule or query execution in the background using the SPDocKit Service. The rule or query will be executed under the service account context. Choose whether you would like to receive query results via email or just browse them through the query history once the SPDocKit Service has finished.
- Refresh – refresh query/rule history to receive the latest result updates.
- Add – create a new folder.
- Rename – rename an existing folder.
- Delete – delete the existing history.
While both queries and rules have different icons for manual and automatic executions, only queries have a different icon for history results. A tooltip with a description will appear when you hover over the selected object icon in the Queries and Rules definition explorer.
Use the query wizard to determine if all your governance policies have been properly enforced across your SharePoint farm or to create custom reports.
Query scope - the wizard can target whole Web applications, specific site collections within a Web application, subsites, lists and list libraries.
Supported SharePoint securable objects - site collections, subsites, lists, list items can all be used in queries to retrieve properties from.
Supported query properties:
- For site collections: allow designer, anonymous access enabled, customizing pages enabled, database name, detaching pages enabled, language, last modified, lock status, managing URL structure enabled, number of subsites, primary administrator, resource quota exceeded, sandbox solutions enabled, secondary administrator, storage, template, title, UI version, url.
- For subsites: access request email, access request enabled, author, created on, has unique permissions, index site content, is root web, language, last modified, offline client availability, title, url.
- For lists: appear in search, attachments enabled, author, can create folders, create major versions, create minor versions, created on, dialogs enabled, display on quick launch, has external data source, item count, last modified, list template, major version limit, minor version limit, offline client availability, quick edit enabled, require check out, require content approval, title, url.
- For list items: checked out to, created by, created on, last modified, list, modified by, site collection, subsite, title, url.
Use the rule wizard to create a manual or automatic procedures that will help you enforce SharePoint governance policies.
Wizard scope - the wizard can target whole Web applications, specific site collections within a Web application, subsites, lists and list libraries.
Supported rule types:
- 1.List rules
- 2.Attachments – to specify if users can attach files to items in a list.
- 3.Dialogs – whether to launch a new, edit and display forms in the dialog.
- 4.Display on the quick launch – whether the documents will be displayed on the quick launch.
- 5.Document version history – whether a version is created each time you edit a file in a document library.
- 6.Folders – whether the “New Folder” command is available.
- 7.Item-level permissions – specify which items user can read and edit.
- 8.Offline client availability – whether this document library should be available for offline clients.
- 9.Opening Documents in the Browser – whether browser-enabled documents should be opened in the client or browser by default when user clicks on them.
- 10.Quick edit – whether Quick Edit can be used on this list to bulk edit data.
- 11.Rating settings – whether or not items in a list can be rated.
- 12.Require check out – whether users must check out documents before making changes in this document library.
- Search – list visibility in search results.
- 13.Subsite rules
- 14.Request access mail – specify an email address used for approving access requests to a subsite.
To run a rule or query manually means that you have to start SPDocKit, find the appropriate rule or query and press the Run button. There is an additional method of manual execution, using the SPDocKit Service. This means that you still have to manually select a rule and press Run with Service, but the service will crawl your SharePoint farm in the background and once it finishes, results will appear in the rule or query history.
If you choose automatic execution, the following triggering options are available:
- One-time – configure one specific date and time at which the selected query or rule will be executed. The query or rule will no longer be automatically executed after the specified scheduled time.
- Daily – configure the query or rule start date and time at which this rule will be executed on a daily basis. You can choose recurrence period, that is if this query or rule will run every x days, or will it run every weekday. Minimal recurrence period is one day.
- Weekly – configure the query or rule start date and time at which this rule will be executed on a weekly basis. Choose on which days rule will run and recurrence period (every x weeks).
- Monthly – configure the query or rule start date and time at which this rule will be executed on a monthly basis. Choose on which days of the month rule will run and recurrence period (every x months). The other option is to run query or rule on a specified day of the week, every x months.
- Quarterly – configure the query or rule start date and time at which this rule will be executed quarterly.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T while focused on the Triggers tab of the wizard to see on which dates query or rule is scheduled to run!
Each time a selected query is executed, SPDocKit saves the results in the query run history. You can see them in the Queries subfolders, under each query definition, marked by an orange arrow. Results are sorted by date and time of the rule execution, so you can see which changes were made with each run.
Also, each time a rule is executed, SPDocKit creates a history record. Records are sorted by date and time of the rule execution. Select a specific rule definition, click the desired date, and a list of applied changes will appear in the grid below.
Take note that the query wizard allows you to specify whether the query results, both automatic and manual, will be visible only in the query history or if they will also be sent to the specified email addresses in a XLSX, DOCX or PDF format.
Rule results can be explored only within the SPDocKit user interface.