CAML Designer support for SharePoint Online

Yesterday we’ve put a new version of the CAML Designer online. This version fixes a number of bugs but also introduces support for SharePoint Online and cross-site lookups.

When you open the CAML Designer and click the CAML Query tab, the logon dialog is immediately displayed. You can fill out the URL to your SharePoint Online site. You don’t have to specify your credentials in the credentials box at the bottom of the logon dialog because they will be asked later on while authenticating. Don’t forget to switch to Client Object model or even the SharePoint Web Services.

Once you click the OK button, a browser is opened which asks you to enter your credentials to get authenticated against SharePoint online.

Once your credentials are validated, you will that the treeview gets populated with the lists and libraries of the SharePoint Online site.

We also changed the flow of the user interface a bit. When you click the Connect button, the logon dialog is displayed. After entering a valid URL and having clicked the OK button, your are automatically redirected to the CAML tab. Once on the CAML tab, the treeview is automatically populated with the lists of the SharePoint site you wanted to connect to. Selecting a list will populate the left panel with fields, but also activate the Where button so you can immediately start building the Where clause.

Another improvement we built in based on input of one of our users, is the dropdown list on the logon page with URLs you already accessed using the CAML Designer.

More detailed documentation on CAML and the CAML Designer can be found here.

One of our “users” – or may we call him beta tester? – Maximilian Melcher also recorded a video on the CAML Designer :). Thanks Max!