SharePoint as a Twitter Client. Sort of – Part Three

Following on from part two I commented that there were a couple of issues outstanding,

1. It doesn’t automatically update the SharePoint list. We have to repeat the list creation process every time.
2. We have to run the process manually. 

This post will cover the first item on the list and is really straight forward.

Go back to the first post and make sure that you have created your list on your SharePoint site by exporting it. (Go now, I’ll wait).

Once it’s done in the Access Database delete the “status” table (or rename it if you want to play it safe).

Then from the “External Data” tab select the option to “Import SharePoint List”.

The wizard will start – enter your site name and select the option.

“Link to the data source by creating a linked table”.

Click Next to display the lists you can import.

Choose the list (I’ve called mine “TweetPoint” – think it’ll catch on?)

Click OK to link the list.

You’ll then see the SharePoint list alongside the other Access tables.

User Information List is also linked as this holds user information which will be entered onto the list for things such as the “Created by” field.

Now the clever bit to hook it up to our Twitter API calls.

Bear with me because this is really complex 🙂

Right click on your newly imported list and select the rename option

Change the name to “status”

Done! (ok I may have exaggerated how difficult this was)

So what’s actually happened here?

We’ve changed the name that Access uses to reference the table.

In the background it’s still hooked up to SharePoint via it’s URL so any changes we make on the table will automatically be updated on the SharePoint side!

The import process we created in the first post is expecting to append the data to a table called status (since that is what the Twitter API returns) so that is exactly what we’ve provided!

Only one thing left to clear up in the next post!

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Andy Parkes

Andy Parkes is Technical Director at Coventry based IT support company IBIT Solutions. Formerly, coordinator of AMITPRO and Microsoft Partner Area Lead for 2012-2013. He also isn't a fan of describing himself in the third person.

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