We are developing a document management solution with Sharepoint 2007 and I'm having some issues figuring out a couple items with the structure. The documents are templates that are used to merge data into letters sent to clients. While the templates will be managed in Sharepoint, the actual letters that will be generated will be handled through a web application. The rules to which template is to be pulled up would be "assigned" through Sharepoint via Meta-Data. This data would be sent over to the other system (which would keep track of the rules and an identifier to the raw template). A web service would be created on the SP side so the front end application would simply call it to pull up the template (once it was determined which one to use).
Okay that said the real question is how to deal with the rules? I originally thought meta-data and write the data out (via web service call) to the web application db. For example when saving the document have a meta data field for Template Type (for this custom contenttype). First problem how to populate a drop down available for sharepoint to load a list of templatetypes? Can I drive this from a database or do I have to use a static xml list.
Best Answer
Aaak. You can create a field based on a lookup of information on the BDC. You can also create a lookup based on a list in SharePoint.