My Weather RSS Feed
Do you want logged in users to see a RSS feed of their own weather? If you have MOSS Enterprise, this can be done using the Current User Filter web part and the RSS Viewer web part!
One thing that needs to be done ahead of time: Your zip code field needs to be set in the SSP as visible by everyone and replicable. (I’ll go over this at the end)
This is the URL that I obtained from the weather.com site, that will display a RSS feed of just weather from my zip code. See that my zip (35242) is in the middle.
http://rss.weather.com/weather/rss/local/35242?cm_ven=LWO&cm_cat=rss&par=LWO_rss
- Add the Current User Filter web part and the RSS Viewer web part to the page.
- In the Current User Filter properties: Set the SharePoint Profile Value field to “Zip Code”
- Expand the “Advanced Filter Options” section:
- Dissect the weather URL, and put only the part before the zip code in the box “Text to insert before values”.
- Put the part of the URL after the zip code in the box “Text to insert after values”, and click <OK>.
- Now, it’s just as simple as creating the connection between the two web parts. On the Current User Filter, click to create a new connection to send filter values to the RSS Viewer web part.
- Select to “Get Feed URL From”
- Done. Now, your RSS Viewer should display the current logged in user’s zip code weather.
So, for those of you who need help with the SSP part, here’s how to add the zip code field:
In your SSP, go to “user profiles and properties”, and then “View Profile properties”. If you don’t see zip code in there, click “New Property”. Change the default privacy setting to Everyone. Now, you may want to run this by a few people, because once we set this property to Replicable, it will always show on the user info list on each site, and can’t be undone. The Data Soucrce field to map from Active Directory is called postalCode.
Thanks Laura, my VP eats this kind of stuff up. Would love to see a whole book of these sort of things.
We’ll use this on our revamped Intranet; maybe we can wean some users off their WSFA Weather Bug addiction. Thanks!
Is there any way to know in advance if the zip code field is present already? And I would SO buy such a book, FYI!
Nancy, When you add the Current User Filter web part to a page, and look at the drop-down list in the web part’s properties, that will show you the fields that already exist. Laura
hi laura, The Data Soucrce field to map from Active Directory is called postalCode. In case in the SSP if the postalcode field is not there.How do we go about then?
Arparna, You can open adsiedit.msc on a server. Then, navigate to a user opject and open its properties. Scroll through all the properties until you find the one that contains the zip code. Note the name of it, and that’s the one you need. Laura
Hi, I’ve the following requirement a. When user logs into the sharepoint portal, it should display the next travel city and the weather details at the location ( travel date + 2 future days after travel date with weather images). b. User should be able to select a city and see the weather information in that city (current date + 2 days after current date with weather images). Can you suggest me the best web service which will help me take care of this requirement. Thank Prasad
I am using Sharepoint 2010 and cannot find an option to add New Connection on the Current User Filter. Please advise.
Hi Orlandp, Here are the instructions on how to connect web parts to each other: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/connect-data-in-web-parts-HA010024105.aspx
Thank you for the instructions. After more research it appears our problem was that I was trying to insert the Current User Filter & RSS Feed on the master page. When doing so, it did not allow for the Connection to be made. When I insert the web parts on a page, it does allow for the connection, says it is “sending the values” to the RSS feed, but the RSS Feed webpart says “you have not selected an RSS web feed.” If I hardcode the URL in, it works. Any ideas? I’m new at Sharepoint, but thinking perhaps it is not pulling in the ZipCode although I mapped it to postalCode. How can I tell?
Here you go, I just blogged about how to test the current user filter web part: http://wonderlaura.com/2010/12/2/testing-the-current-user-filter-web-part
Here is the correct, updated URL http://wonderlaura.com/2009/04/07/my-weather-rss-feed/
Hi Laura – I don’t see a postalCode or Zip Code property available in the drop-down box of that list. How would I go about rectifying that?