Sharepoint 2013 : Business Connectivity Services - External Lists

An external list is a list in SharePoint that connects to a third-party external system, using a predefined external content type. In this section, I shall show you how to create an external list from an external content type and how the list operates within your SharePoint site.

Assuming you followed the steps in the previous section, or you have a working predefined external content type, creating an external list within SharePoint Designer 2013 is easy.

1. Open SharePoint Designer 2013.
2. Open your SharePoint 2013 site containing your external content type and where you will create the external list.
3. Click the External Content Types node in the left navigation pane.
4. Right-click the External Content Type in the right pane; I chose my Employee ECT.
5. SharePoint shows a dialog; enter the list name and description.
6. Click the OK button to complete the creation of the external list.
7. In the left navigation, click the node for Lists and Libraries.
8. Scroll down the page to see the external list (Figure 1).

This is all there is to do to create an external list in SharePoint Designer. If you click the External List instance in Designer, you will see a page that has all the details about the list (just like regular internal lists). From this page, you can edit the list permissions, create views, create custom actions, etc. Now, view this list in your SharePoint site.

1. Open the SharePoint 2013 site, to which you deployed the external list.
2. Click the gear icon and then select the menu item to view site contents.
3. Scroll down the page until you find the external list—notice how it does not look much different from the regular list, except for the tile icon.
4. Click the tile to open the external list.

If you are lucky, after clicking the tile to view your external list you might see data. The majority of readers (myself included) might see an access denied error. This is because the current logged in user does not have access rights to use the external content type entity to access the external data. I shall demonstrate how to remedy this issue as follows:

1. Open Central Administration.
2. Click the link to manage service applications, under the Application Management heading.
3. Scroll to the Business Connectivity Services application.
4. Select the Business Connectivity Services application and click the Manage icon on the ribbon.
5. Click the drop-down arrow next to the External Content Type and select the menu option to set permissions.
6. SharePoint displays a dialog like that in Figure 2.

   

   Figure 2. Set permissions for an external content type

7. Add user to the top-most box and then click the Add button (or you could assign access to the group Authenticated User to allow everyone access to the ECT).
8. For each added user or group, assign permission from those listed (Figure 2).
9. Click the OK button to save.
10. Return to the external list in your SharePoint site.
11. Refresh the page and you should see data (Figure 3).

    

    Figure 3. External data shown in SharePoint via BCS

In the example demonstrated in the preceding steps, you created a new Employee external content type. This ECT connected to the Employees view in an Adventure Works database, within SQL Server. You configured the external content type to implement all CRUD operations, allowing Create, Read, Update, and Delete on the data. From the external content type, you created an external list.

Try viewing the external list in your SharePoint site and then editing one of the rows of data. After saving your changes in SharePoint, switch over to your SQL Server and execute a select of the Employees view—notice how the data reflects the change you made in SharePoint.