Showing the Risk or Issue Id’s in the workspace edit and display forms

By blurg64

May 8, 2011

It’s always puzzled me why Microsoft never did show the ID of a SharePoint based list entry in the edit or display form. What do I mean by that? Well, out of the box, when you create a list in SharePoint, each item has an ID associated. This ID is then used to identify the individual records in the list. Once you have created an item in the list you can see the ID in the view

But not in the edit or display views of the list item.

Now this is not unique to Project Server 2010, nor SharePoint 2010 for that matter. The same behaviour can be seen in SharePoint 2007 as well. So why am I telling you all this, well today one of my clients requested that the risks and issues lists on their Project Server instance be modified to show the actual id of the item, making it easier for them to reference and relate to the information they were viewing.

Well, it turns out doing this is pretty easy. Basically all that is needed is to add a content editor web part to the the Display and Edit forms and add a small piece of JavaScript to render the relevant ID. A quick search on the web revealed this article from PathToSharePoint.com that provides the code as well as steps to insert the Content Editor web part on a WSS 3.0 / SharePoint 2007 installation. So I am going to concentrate on what is required to do so for SharePoint 2010.

First navigate to the list you wish to make the change to, in my case I am using an issues list. In the ribbon choose List and then click on ‘Form Web Parts’.

Click on the little down arrow and three options will be displayed.

We are interested in modifying the Default Display Form and Default Edit Form. There is no point in editing the Default New Form as the ID won’t be available yet to display.

Click on the Default Display Form, the screen will refresh to show the form in edit mode and display the web part zone.

Click on the ‘Add a Web Part’. The Web Part gallery will be displayed, select ‘Media and Content’ in the Categories and then the ‘Content Editor’. Click on Add to add it into the web part zone.

Click on the ‘Click here to add new content link’ inside the Content Editor Web Part.

Select the Edit HTML Source from the HTML menu.

In the dialog, paste in the code from the PathToSharePoint site into the HTML Source and click on OK.

Choose to Stop Editing the Page and then navigate back to an issue and choose to view it, causing the newly updated display form to be used.

You’ll notice a new item has appeared on the top line showing the Issue Id. Now all that’s needed is to repeat the above for the Default Edit Form and your finished. Of course, this will only customise the list of the site you are in. If you want this to be carried through all of your sites, make sure you make the same changes to your Project template site.