Start by creating a new calendar on your learning center site. Use the information in the following table to create the Classes calendar.

Many of the columns that you require are provided out of the box on a standard calendar list: start date, end date, location, attendees, and so on. However, some additional columns are necessary to create a fully functioning and useful solution. Reference the information in the following tables to implement two new columns on the calendar.

This example assumes that your organization allows only a single presenter for a given class. If that is not the case, select Yes for Allow Multiple Selections. However, this setting might have side effects outside what is intended with this example.

Why are you creating a separate column for ClassId when you already have the default ID?

In some organizations or companies, classes are identified by a specific combination of numbers or letters (for example, HR-302). To be more closely aligned with these considerations, you can use a Single Line of Text column instead of the default ID integer column to handle this data.

These are all the columns you will be adding at this time. You will revisit this list once you have created additional infrastructure for documents, discussion boards, and links.

Next you will create a view to address one of the business problems: the inability of users to find recently added classes. This view displays all classes that were created within the last 7 days. You can adjust the number of days as you see fit for your organization. Use the information in the following table to create the new view.

Create a new announcements list on your learning center site. Use the values in the following table to fill in the metadata during list creation.

Out-of-the-box announcement lists are very simplistic with primary fields of Title, Body, and Expiration. As it turns out, these fields satisfy most of the needs you have for class announcements. One additional column that will help in linking directly to the class is a lookup column. The following table contains the metadata you will use to create this column.

An announcements list is a good way to alert users of recently added classes. If you want to take the solution one step further you can optionally configure alerts on the Class Announcements list or Classes calendar to send notifications to users. You will not be creating an alert in this scenario, but it is important to be aware of some of the advantages and disadvantages with alerts in case you do explore this path.

In terms of advantages, you can specify the delivery schedule (immediate, daily, or weekly), the action conditions (item added, item modified, and so on), and additional criteria that is list-specific. Also, you have additional delivery methods (sending the alert as an email or as an SMS text message), provided that you have properly configured your farm to send alerts via these methods.

As for the disadvantages, if you create an alert for another user, that user might not be aware that you have configured the alert. In addition, you lose the ability to modify the alert after it has been created. You can delete the alert if you have permissions to do so, but you cannot modify it.

To make the most out of the Class Announcements list, you will want to add a list view web part for the list to the root page of the learning center site. Browse to the root page by clicking Learning Center on the breadcrumb link near the top of the page. Follow these steps to add the web part to the page:

After you have added the web part to the page, your screen should look similar to the following screenshot.

Open SharePoint Designer 2010 and open the URL of your site. Click Workflows in the bar at the left. Use the information in the following table to fill in the metadata for the workflow. To create the workflow, first click the List Workflow button in the upper-left corner and choose Classes. The screenshot shown here displays an example of the list workflow options. Note that the image includes some of the additional infrastructure that you will be adding throughout this chapter. Disregard those items for now.

If you are familiar with the design surface for workflows in SharePoint Designer 2007, you may be in for a bit of a surprise, because the design surface in SharePoint Designer 2010 went through quite an overhaul from the previous version. Refer to the following screenshot for an example of using the SharePoint Designer 2010 workflow interface. To add workflow actions, you can begin typing the name of the action you want to use.

Start out by creating three steps for the workflow. Use the values in the following table for the steps and types of actions to create.

As listed in the explanation of the workflow process, two variables need to be defined: Announcement Expiration Date and New Announcement Reference. You will need to define these variables when you fill out the associated action steps. Use the information in the following table to define the necessary variables.

With the variables created, you can now fill out the action steps. Use the information in the following table to fill out the Initialization step.

In the preceding table, you might notice seemingly peculiar syntax for ″[%Current Item:...%]″ in the value column. This is SharePoint Designer’s syntax for specifying a lookup to a column in the Current Item object. In this scenario, Current Item equates to the class list item that the workflow is firing on. Refer to the following screenshots when selecting the ″[%Current Item:Title%]″ and ″[%Current Item:ID%]″ lookups.

Next you will implement the Create Announcement step. Use the information in the following table for the metadata to use.

Next, fill out the Conclusion step’s actions with the values in the following table.

At this point your workflow steps should look like the example in the following screenshot.

The last step is to define the workflow start options. Click Workflow Settings (see the following icon) on the ribbon.

You will be taken to the Workflow Settings page, which gives an overview of the workflow metadata, links to customize the workflow, and other useful information. To change the start options, look at the Start Options panel on the right side. By default your workflow will be set to Allow This Workflow To Be Manually Started only. Clear this check box, and then select the option Start Workflow Automatically When An Item Is Created.

After you have made your selections, the Start Options screen should look similar to the following:

If everything was configured successfully, you should be able to click Check For Errors on the ribbon and see the following dialog box. At this point you can save and publish the workflow back to the site.

Create a new document library on the learning center site. Use the information in the following table as metadata for the new document library.

The Class Documents document library contains all the columns that are required, so there is no need to add other columns at this time.

Create a new discussion board on the learning center site. Use the information in the following table as input during the creation process.

The Class Discussions discussion board contains all the columns that will be required, so there is no need to add any additional columns at this time.

Create a new links list on the learning center site. Use the information in the following table to create the Class Links list.

When it comes to using the Links list template, you will run into an issue (which will become apparent in the next section) when you try to link to this list. The problem is that hyperlink columns cannot be the target of a lookup column. By default the Links list template uses a hyperlink (rather than a Title string) to represent the list item. Since you need a column to reference against, you’ll be adding a new Single Line of Text column and a workflow to work around this issue. Use the information in the following table to create a new column.

As mentioned in the previous section, Create the Columns, the workaround for referencing a link column from a lookup requires a workflow. This custom workflow may be one of the simplest you will ever create. The workflow will set the value of the URLAsText column to the value of the URL column formatted as a string. Use the information in the following table to create a new list workflow.

Since this workflow will have only one action step, you can omit additional logging steps and actions. Use the values in the following table to define the single step and action for this workflow.

Next, fill out the action step using the following information:

Lastly, you need to define the starting options. Since the value of URLAsText must always be kept in sync with the URL value, you need to trigger the workflow whenever an item is created or edited. As you did with the workflow you created for class announcements, clear any default values and use the values Start Workflow Automatically When An Item Is Created and Start Workflow Automatically When An Item Is Changed.

Click the Check For Errors button on the ribbon. If no errors are returned, save and publish the workflow back to the site.

You need three additional columns on the Classes calendar that correspond to the lists you just created. Use the following table to implement these additional columns.

With these columns in place, you can now associate classes to documents, discussions, and links that have been added. Because you implemented the relationship in a class-as-child model, the associations will all be visible in a centralized location when users view the class.

With the Classes calendar completed you can now add it to the root page of the site. This provides users with a quick glance of the classes when they visit the site. Follow the same process you did when you added the Class Announcements web part to the root page, only this time select the Classes calendar for the left web part zone. Once the web part is added, drag it below the Class Announcements web part. After you have completed these steps, your root page should look similar to the following screenshot.

If you still have SharePoint Designer 2010 open, bring it back into focus. If not, launch it again and open the URL of the learning center site. Click Workflows in the left bar and create a new list workflow associated with the Classes list. Use the information in the following table to define the workflow.

This workflow will have four steps. Use the information in the following table to define the steps and types of actions needed.

As you can see, the Link Discussion to Class step is a new step. This step is where you create the association between the class and the discussion thread. To do that, you need to define workflow variables. Use the values in the following table to define variables for use later in this workflow.

You will begin by filling out the Initialization step. Use the information in the following table for the values to use for each action.

Refer to the following screenshot when selecting the ″[%Current Item:ClassId%]″ lookup.

Next you will implement the Create Discussion step. Use the information in the following table for the metadata to use.

The Link Discussion to Class step is different from what you created in the Create Announcement workflow. In this step you link the discussion just created to the current item. By doing so you replace two manual processes with one automated process, which helps out the learning center administrators. Use the following information to fill out actions in this step:

Note in the preceding table that you are setting the value of AssociatedDiscussions equal to Variable: New Discussion Reference (Return field as: Item Key). The last section about returning a field as an item key (the actual reference to the list item) is important and different from returning a value as a string (just the text of the list item property). See the following screenshot for an example of how to configure the lookup.

Next fill out the Conclusion step’s action using the following information:

The following screenshot shows what your workflow should look like at this point.

Since you want this workflow to be triggered when a new class is created, you need to change the workflow start options. Click Workflow Settings on the ribbon. Clear the option Allow This Workflow To Be Manually Started, and then select Start Workflow Automatically When An Item Is Created.

Again, you should be able to click the Check For Errors button and receive the dialog box stating there are no errors. Save and publish the workflow to the site to finish up your work.

Since you are interested in making modifications to the Contributor permission level, you will make a copy of that permission level and save modifications to a new one. Navigate to the root of the site collection and open Site Permissions from the Site Actions menu in the upper-left corner. Click Permission Levels (see the following screenshot.)

On the list of permission levels, click Contribute. You want to copy these permissions to a new permission level, so scroll to the bottom of the page, and then click the Copy Permission Level button. Once the page refreshes, use the following information to define the new permission level:

With the custom Attendee permission level created, you can now assign it to a SharePoint group. Navigate back to the Site Permissions screen. Click the Create Group button on the ribbon. Define the group metadata as you see fit, with the exception of the Give Group Permissions To This Site section. You will see that the new Attendee permission level is available. Select the check box for the Attendee permission level before saving. Now you can place attendee users into this group to ensure that they won’t be able to delete content from the site.