New Button on DispForm.aspx, Deploying With a Solution

I was asked by my client to create a button on the "View Task" form ribbon that the user could click and automatically complete the task. Sounds easy right? Well, if you are using SharePoint designer it is. SharePoint Designer has a straight forward and easy way to deploy new ribbon buttons, pretty much anywhere you want. They even have a nice step by step instruction manual on how to go about doing it:
Create a custom list form using SharePoint Designer

But what if you want to deploy that button to many different farms? From your development farm to your production farm as part of a feature deployment, perhaps? What do you do? Well, it gets a little more complex now. You need to find the correct ribbon to add the the button to. But, SharePoint uses the DispForm.aspx for... well... all of its forms, so what to do?

I am trying to make it harder than it seems. It is actually a piece of cake if you have done any ribbon manipulation at all. And if you haven't, well... maybe this would be an easy one to start on.

First, you need to know about how to make a generic button on a typical list page. Chris O'Brien does an EXCELLENT job of describing how to do that. Go to his blog for instructions.

Got a basic idea? Good. Now that you know how to make ribbon tabs and buttons, you basically know how to create and place buttons and tabs on virtually any page that SharePoint has. You just need to know the LOCATION!! The location is that pesky little property in the CommandUIDefinition. Most of the time you will be putting your button with the other buttons SharePoint has so your property will look very similar to this: Location="Ribbon.Tabs._children

But, let's circle back to the topic of this post. We don't want a new button on the list page we want it on the DISPLAY page, or DispForm.aspx. Turns out there is a location for that. Just follow all of Chris' instructions on how to add a button or tab, but change your CommandUIDefinition Location property to Ribbon.ListForm.Display.Manage.Controls._children

This is the ribbon location for what you see on the DispForm.aspx page. You can package up your button in a feature and deploy to where ever you would like it. No need to change the form page in every farm!