Taking the basics to the business with no-coding solutions for SharePoint 2010
To perform these functions, the Ribbon can be the navigational method or you can click on the content itself. Either way is efficient; it is simply a personal preference.
To add a new item, click on the Items in List Tools and then click on the New Item shown in the following screenshot:
If there is more than one content type in the list there will be additional items on the New Item on the ribbon.
To view or edit an item, click the checkbox next to the list item and then click the View Item/Edit Item from the ribbon.
To add an item, click Add new item located at the bottom of the list:
Both methods will open a new form.
For readers that are familiar with MOSS, the new form to edit or view an item opens as a pop up and it is not possible to obtain the URL or any parameters in the browser.
Content can be added to the fields by clicking the Save button on the form and saving the entered information.
To view or edit an item, click on the downward arrow on the item to display an item menu. Then, click on the View Item/ Edit Item to see the entire form.
The downward arrow is only displayed when you hover your mouse over the item.
In this section, you will learn how to manage content that is in a list. Managing content is about how to manipulate it so that it can be used for your business collaboration activities.
The functionality to manage content can be navigated from the Ribbon.
Alerts are notifications on list or library items that automatically notify users when new content is added, changed, or deleted.
Alerts are useful in many business scenarios, such as:
To avoid your e-mail inbox being inundated with alerts, create a folder in Outlook and create a rule to copy all received alerts to this folder.
There is the ability to e-mail a link to the list to someone else by clicking on the E-mail a Link option on the Ribbon. This is often used by a user as an informal approval or review process with other team members. Rather than e-mailing an attachment, an e-mail link to the document in the library is better because the e-mail link will always link to the same file even if the file is resaved.
We have observed that sometimes users are hesitant to use this SharePoint feature because they feel users will click on the link and edit the document and resave it in the list, thus overwriting the original document. This concern can be overcome by two approaches:
The site permissions inheritance methodology is applied to lists.
By clicking on the List Permissions icon on the Ribbon, you have the ability to Manage Parent Permission and Stop Inheriting Permissions.
As with Site permission inheritance, there is the ability to manually break the inheritance of an item in a list.
This can be done by clicking on the drop-down menu of an item and selecting Stop Inheriting Permissions in the Ribbon.
You will be prompted with an information box, alerting you with what you are about to do.
By breaking the inheritance of an item, list, or even a site, it creates a security administration overhead in which you would have to create unique permissions, and this can cause confusion with users and administrators.
You can only manage permissions on the site, list, or item level. You cannot manage the permissions on a view in the list.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a web feed technology from blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized, normally timely format. The benefit is that you can subscribe to different sources of information and aggregate the feeds into a single location, such as Outlook or another location on the SharePoint site.
To create an RSS feed from a list, click on the RSS Feed on the Ribbon.
The Datasheet View provides the ability to edit items in a list as if the list was an online spreadsheet. You can tab across fields, paste between them, and sort and filter columns. This is useful if you need to edit multiple items at once.
To switch from a Standard view to a Datasheet view, click on the Datasheet icon on the Ribbon.
In the Datasheet view, there is additional functionality available, featured in the following sections:
You can show the totals of each column in a list by clicking on the Show Totals icon on the Ribbon. The totals can be defined as Average, Count, Maximum, and Minimum.
To add a column to a list, click on Create Column on the Ribbon.
Type in the column name, and select the column type.
(Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.)
Column typeDescriptionSingle line of textA single value column, such as a Full Name.Multiple lines of textText Description: This field format has rich text capabilities, such as bold, and font sizes similar to Word, so it is ideal for entries that would perhaps be in an e-mail or Word document. If version control is enabled on the list, there is also the ability to append text to a previous submission. This is useful when there is a dialog between multiple people.Choice (menu to choose from)Multiple Choice values: This is ideal when you require the fields to be predefined to the user. Also, if a view has categorized data in it, this column type should be used.Lookup (information already on this site)Look up information from another list on this site: This column type can be viewed as a relationship data structure-one to many.
This is also useful when there are multiple lists using the same data.Person or GroupUser look up from Active Directory By using a user’s name from Active Directory, additional information about the user can be obtained, such as their department and manager. Also, by using this column type, workflow notifications to the value can occur.Hyperlink or PictureURL address.Calculated (calculation based on other columns)Ability to select other columns in the list and perform calculations from these, such as the number of days between two dates.Full HTML content with formatting and constraints for publishingAbility for a column to display the contents of the HTML from an Editor Web Part. Snippets of HTML can be entered directly into the column.Image with formatting and constraints for publishingColumns that store links to images defined in the item properties. Each column displays an image, with proportional sizing. This field type renders an image to the correct size on a web page when it is loaded.Hyperlink with formatting and constraints for publishingColumns that store hyperlinks and display the names of hyperlinks defined in the item properties. Link formatting and constraints may apply. This field type renders an image to the correct size on a web page when it is loaded.Rich media data for publishingA column that can store and display media files. Ideal for video content as it is streamed in the browser that could be stored in the Asset Library of the site.Managed MetadataCentrally managed metadata to tag the item. By associating metadata to content, it is easier to search.
The Column Validation on a column provides logic validation on a form, which can provide a more descriptive validation message to the user. This can be based on either individual column value validation or an overall item validation based on multiple columns.
Under each new column there you have the ability to make the value a required field, give it a default value, and add it to the default view.
SharePoint Workspace, formerly known as Groove, is part of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 edition. Therefore, it’s important to note that SharePoint Workspace 2010 only works with SharePoint 2010. For older versions of SharePoint, the Groove software is required.
SharePoint Workspace provides the ability to use content offline on your desktop, and then synchronize into the SharePoint lists when you are back online. This functionality is ideal for those who are travelling and have limited Internet access to online information.
SharePoint Workflows consists of a sequence of connected steps that depict a sequence of operations performed by a person. By clicking on the workflow button on the Ribbon, you have the ability to add and review workflow settings.
The key benefits of using workflows are to facilitate business processes and improve collaboration, through managing tasks and steps and speed up decision making by helping to ensure that the appropriate information is made available to the appropriate users at the time that they need it.
Workflows also help ensure that individual workflow tasks are completed by the appropriate people and in the appropriate sequence, so users who perform these tasks can concentrate on performing the work instead of on the work processes.
A business scenario for a typical workflow could be with a document library to route a document to a group of people for approval. When the author starts this workflow, the workflow creates document approval tasks, assigns these tasks to the workflow participants, and then sends e-mail alerts to the participants.
When the workflow is in progress, the workflow owner or the workflow participants can check progress on the Workflow Status page. When the workflow participants complete their workflow tasks, the workflow ends and the workflow owner is automatically notified that the workflow has finished.
For a workflow to work with a business process, the business process must be understood, such as how it starts and ends, and who the approvers are.
Applications such as Visio, Access, and Project have user functionality designed for certain business activity, such as Visio for process mapping, Access for reports, and Project for project management, but often this information is created centrally in a list. SharePoint has the functionality to copy list items to these desktop applications so users can work and prepare this content for another activity. By clicking on the application icons on the Ribbon, list content is made available in the Visio, Access, and Project applications.
It would be difficult for the functionality of Visio, Access, and Project to be replicated in a web-based form in SharePoint, so Microsoft has complimented these desktop applications with SharePoint by allowing information to be stored in a list and be accessed from the applications. Also, users can be very familiar with a certain application such as a project manager and Microsoft Project, and would rather work with Project and publish information to SharePoint than work in a SharePoint list to enter information.
The advantages of this approach are that information can be stored in a SharePoint list, with the benefits, such as centralization, version control, and security.
By clicking on the Export to Excel link on the Ribbon, the items in the view are exported to Excel. There are a number of benefits in exporting content to Excel, which include Excel’s reporting capabilities such as graphs and pie charts, and if users do not have access to the list information then it can be e-mailed to them.
You may be thinking to yourself, “I thought the whole idea of SharePoint is to centrally store information in a single location where it is accessible to everyone”.
Yes, it is, but there are certain scenarios where exporting data to Excel is the most appropriate approach, such as:
This is an export of data from a list, rather than another application to edit data and sync back into the list.
To navigate to different views in a list, click on the View drop-down menu on the Ribbon.
For lists to be truly utilized you must think about your current tasks and how you want them structured in SharePoint. This is called front loading of information. Questions that you should think of are:
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