As you may know I have released a tool you can use for SharePoint site provisioning. But what does it mean and how can you use it? During your development process you may need a test environment with lots of data.
You can either create this test data by hand or you can use my tool Content Generator 2011 in order save time. This article shows you how to create 10.000 list items in 5 minutes in a SharePoint list using Content Generator 2011.
Download & User Manual
SharePoint Site Provisioning - Content Generator 2011
How to
Connect to an existing site collection using the top menu –> SharePoint –> Connect to…
Using this connection you will be able to use site, page and list templates which are available at your site.
- First click on Lists in the tree to mark the list node.
- Second go to the template selector and choose Lists and libraries.
- Third double click on a document library.
You have now added a document library.
A new document library was created as you can see in the picture.
Please click the document library.
If you click at the document library you will see the properties of the list in the lower right corner.
- Using Copies you can decide how many copies of that list should be created. You can easily create hundreds of lists with this property.
- Using title or description you can set the title and description which are shown in SharePoint after creating the list.
- Using the other properties you can decide if this list allows the creation of folder, versions, and so on…
If you right click on the document library you can add folders (since version 2.1.0.10) and list items.
If you select the list item with the left mouse button you can edit the properties.
- Check in and Approve allows you to check in or approve list items if the list supports it. You can also keep items checked out.
- Using FileName you can set the title of a list item. The property is called FileName since you can also upload files if the list is a document library.
- Using the column collection you can set certain meta data of the list item. Please refer to the user manual.
If you use the keyword RANDOM (since version 2.1.0.10) files will be uploaded to your document library based on the following rules:
- The path to a folder on your file system was specified using the top menu –> Tools –> Options…
- This folder has files which should be uploaded to your document library.
- RANDOM randomly uploads files from the folder to your document library.
- Choosing 1000 copies means 1000 times a random file will be uploaded to the document library:
- A file can be uploaded twice while another file may not be uploaded.
- If you have only 500 files there will be files uploaded twice or more.
Save your tree as a template using File –> Save as… Now go to the tab Jobs and create a job for your template.
- Choose a web application where your template should be created.
- Choose a target site collection.
- Choose your template and click Add job.
Right click on your newly created job and click run. Your document library will be created and documents will be uploaded. Depending on the resources of your hardware it takes around 5 minutes to create 1 GB diverse content in your document library.