SharePoint Dragons

The title says it all, really. There was one particularly tricky part, where the view needed to be stored in a separate variable, like so:

$view = $myCustomList.DefaultView

Because $myCustomList.DefaultView resulted in the creation of a new View object every time, causing any changes you made to a previous object instance to be lost. The code is here, and it requires you to set up a managed metadata service instance (ours is called Managed Metadata Service), the following blog post can help you with that: http://chakkaradeep.com/index.php/sharepoint-2010-content-type-hubs-publish-and-subscribe-to-content-types/

$TestSiteUrl = “http://demosrv/sites/Wilmie”
$Web = Get-SPWeb -identity $TestSiteUrl

#Dev: remove list and create it every time anew
$List = $Web.Lists["CustList"]
$List.Delete()

$listTemplate = [Microsoft.SharePoint.SPListTemplateType]::GenericList
$lstId = $Web.Lists.Add(“CustList”,”Cust Descr”,$listTemplate)
write-host “list ” $ListName ” created successfully” $ListName -ForegroundColor Green  

$myCustomList = $Web.Lists["CustList"]

#Example simple text field (without taxonomy field, this makes testing easier)
#$firstNameColXml = “<Field Type=’Text’ DisplayName=’FirstName’ Required=’TRUE’ MaxLength=’255′ StaticName=’FirstName’ Name=’FirstName’ />”
#$myCustomList.Fields.AddFieldAsXml($firstNameColXml,$true, [Microsoft.SharePoint.SPAddFieldOptions]::AddFieldToDefaultView)  
#$myCustomList.Update()

$taxonomySite = Get-SPSite “http://demosrv:1971″
$taxonomySession = Get-SPTaxonomySession -site $taxonomySite
$termStore = $taxonomySession.TermStores["Managed Metadata Service"]
write-host “Connection made with term store -”$termStore.Name
$termStoreGroup = $termStore.Groups["MyTermStoreGroup"];
$termSet = $termStoreGroup.TermSets["MyTermSet"];

Add-Type -Path ‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.dll’
$taxonomyField = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.TaxonomyField] $myCustomList.Fields.CreateNewField(“TaxonomyFieldTypeMulti”, “Location”)
$taxonomyField.Required = $false
$taxonomyField.StaticName = “my_static_name”
$taxonomyField.SspId = $termStore.Id
$taxonomyField.TermSetId = $termSet.Id
$myCustomList.Fields.Add($taxonomyField)
$myCustomList.Update()
Write-Host “Added field ” $taxonomyField.Title ” to list ” $myCustomList.Title -ForegroundColor Green

$field = $myCustomList.Fields["Location"];
# PLEASE NOTE: It’s important to store the view in a variable, because calling list.DefaultView results in the creation of a NEW view object every time,
# if you do that, new columns will NEVER be added succesfully to the view.
$view = $myCustomList.DefaultView
$view.ViewFields.Add($field)
$view.Update()
$myCustomList.Update()

Write-Host “Added field ” $field.Title ” to default view” -ForegroundColor Green

Write-Host “Finished set metadata”

Setting default column values for content type columns, the equivalent of [Document Library] > Document Library Settings > Column Default value settings, was surprisingly hard to build in PowerShell. The main gotcha has to do with the fact that you can’t do this via the SPContentType type, instead, you have to do it via the more obscure MetadataDefaults type, located in the Microsoft.Office.DocumentManagement.dll. Here’s the script:

Cls
Write-Host “Initializing SharePoint PowerShell Environment”

$SnapIn = “Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell”
if ( get-pssnapin $SnapIn -ea “silentlycontinue”)
{
  Write-Host “Remove SharePoint snap-in” 
  remove-pssnapin $SnapIn
}
if ( get-pssnapin $SnapIn -registered -ea “silentlycontinue”)
{
  Write-Host “Add SharePoint snap-in” 
  add-pssnapin $SnapIn
}

Write-Host “Start Setting default value for content type column”

Add-Type -Path ‘c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI\Microsoft.Office.DocumentManagement.dll’
$ProjectWeb = Get-SPWeb -Identity “http://demosrv/sites/Wilmie”
$List = $ProjectWeb.Lists["1. Project Management"]

$ContentType = $List.ContentTypes["TestContentType"]

$ColumnDefaults = New-Object -TypeName Microsoft.Office.DocumentManagement.MetadataDefaults $List                 
$ColumnDefaults.SetFieldDefault($List.RootFolder, “TestColumn”, “TestValue from PS”)
$ColumnDefaults.Update()

Write-Host “End setting default value”