How to add a picker to the send to other location screen

Update: Although the soution here is not strictly supported as I modified core.js to quickly demonstrate the functionality, the note at the end of the post shows how to make it a supported change. Just thought I would mention this as some people have been commenting about unsupported changes....


The standard send to other location functionality in MOSS leaves bit to be desired as the end user is forced to paste a URL into the textbox of a target lit to send the document to.

This post shows how we can place an asset picker in the page to assist the end user in selecting a target location. This is the send to functionality I am referring to:-



First of all the send to another location link takes you to a layouts page called copy.aspx. We will make a copy of this page so as not to alter the original and call it copy2.aspx in the same folder (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS).

The picker we are going to use is on re-purposed from the site manager page. I'll briefly describe how the picker is launched. There is a function called LaunchPickerTreeDialog contained inside the PickerTreeDialog.js, this in turn calls a general modal dialog box function inside core.js. As long as we pass the appropriate parameters to this call we can re-use the tree picker.

First we need to add a reference to the PickerTreeDialog.js file, I added my script reference under the page head content placeholder like so:-

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderAdditionalPageHead" runat="server">
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="/_layouts/1033/PickerTreeDialog.js"></script>

Secondly we need to add a button and attch the script to it to launch the picker, find the following piece of code:-

<TD class="ms-authoringcontrols" width="100%" colspan="2
<wssawc:InputFormTextBox Title="<%$Resources:wss,copy_enterfolder%>" class="ms-input" ID="TxtFolder" Columns="35" Runat="server" maxlength=255 size=60 width=100% />

and replace it with this:-

<TD class="ms-authoringcontrols" width="100%" colspan="1">
<wssawc:InputFormTextBox Title="<%$Resources:wss,copy_enterfolder%>" class="ms-input" ID="TxtFolder" Columns="35" Runat="server" maxlength=255 size=60 width=100% />
</td>
<td colspan="1">
<script>
function launchPicker()
{
var url=location.protocol + "//" + location.hostname ;
var callback=function(arr)
{
if(arr==null || arr==undefined)
return;
var site=arr[1];
var list=arr[2];
var x=document.getElementById("sendToBrowse").parentNode.previousSibling.children[0]; <!-- this will need to change if you change the layout -->
x.value = url + site + (site == '/' ? '' : '/') + list;
}
LaunchPickerTreeDialog("Select Destination","","","",url,null,"","","/_layouts/images/Copy.gif", 0, callback );
}
</script>
<input type="button" id="sendToBrowse" onclick="launchPicker();" value="...">
</TD>

Now all we need to do is make the send to functionality call our new copy.aspx page instead of the original copy. Locate core.js in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033. If you search inside that file for copy.aspx, there are two places it is defined, edit both to say copy2.aspx. That's it! The send to other location functionality will now use our modified screen, complete with location picker dialog.

The end result should look like this:-




The method I have detailed here does involve making a change to core.js which is not strictly speaking a supported modification, also it will affect all sites on the machine.


With a little extra work you can get around this. Instead of modifying the core.js file directly you can just take a copy of the function in which those changes reside (AddSendSubMenu) and override it in your own custom javascript file. This can be achieved with either a custom site definition specifying a CustomJSUrl property (see SDK for more details) or by creating a copy of the default master page, making the sites inherit from that and embed a reference to your custom JS file in there.