The following table presents the functionalities of SharePoint’s out of the box lists and libraries, as well as accompanying business scenarios, illustrating when to use each type of list and library:
|
List Temple Name |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Announcements |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site.
NoteIf your company communicates to its employees with company-wide e-mail, the announcements list is an ideal information repository to use because its content is searchable and the list is e-mail enabled, so the contributor can e-mail an announcement into the list and the contents of the e-mail will be copied into the list. So, there is no change in contributor activity.
|
|
Asset Library |
Team Site, Document Workspace, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, Business Intelligence Center, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, Publishing Portal, and Publishing Site with Workflow.
NoteThis list is ideal as a corporate brand library of logos, graphics, and videos. SharePoint's workflows and policies can be used to manage the content. Creative teams can submit digital assets to the asset library where they are reviewed and published. The assets can be tagged and organized for end user consumption. Users will have access to official, authorized corporate logos or brand assets.
|
|
Calendar |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site.
NoteThe calendar list is not associated with an individual, but rather a resource such as a conference room, or team-based activities. This list also integrates with your Outlook, with drag-and-drop functionality.
|
|
Circulations List |
This list should be used to send information such as confirmation stamps or documents to team members. The list has inherent security trimming ability to recipients.
NoteThis list is useful for managing confidential tasks or requests.
This template requires activation of the Group Work lists. This is done in the Managed Site Features, in Site Settings. |
|
Contacts |
Team Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site.
NoteThis list integrates with Outlook, so a user can connect this list to their Outlook in order to send an e-mail to a contact in the list. Because the field names are the same as the contacts in Outlook, you can cut and paste contacts from Outlook directly into the list. This is a useful feature of SharePoint contacts that would normally reside in an individual's Outlook to be shared with other team members.
|
|
Custom List |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Business Intelligence Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, Publishing Portal, Publishing Site, and Publishing Site with Workflow.
NoteIf you have a requirement that requires custom fields, this is the template to use. Note: if you are going to use this template, views and fields all need to be added. With existing list templates, there are already predefined fields and views.
|
|
Custom List in Data view |
Team Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site. |
|
Discussion Board |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site.
TipThis list is a message board, where groups of users can collaborate/have a two-way dialogue. We have seen this used very well in many environments. Company communications forum: Where there are announcements comments. Technical knowledge base: A user asks a question and there is dialogue among a team. This list can also integrate with Outlook, so you can synchronize content Office in Outlook. A nice touch is a discussion list to add the rating feature to the list as users' focus will be drawn to certain items.
|
|
Document Library |
Central Administration, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, Business Intelligence Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, Publishing Portal, Publishing Site, and Publishing Site with Workflow. |
|
Import Spreadsheet |
Team Site, Document Workspace, Blog, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, Publishing Portal, Publishing Site, and Publishing Site with Workflow.
NoteOnce a decision has been made to migrate the information from a spreadsheet into a list, the challenge is to actually migrate the information. If the spreadsheet contains multiple columns, a straight manual cut and paste of the information will be time consuming. When this list is created, you are prompted to choose a spreadsheet file. Once this is selected, the contents of the spreadsheet will be copied to the newly created list. Note: The spreadsheet should have column names to define the column names in the list. Cell formulas are not copied into the list.
|
|
Issue Tracking |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site.
TipIdeal for logging issues with, for example for a release of a product of activity or a general to-do list. The Assign To feature is an out of the box feature of the list, so when an item is created and the Assign To field is populated with a user, they receive a notification. One drawback of this list is that it is not e-mail enabled, so a user cannot e-mail a support item into the list.
|
|
Links |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site.
NoteA URL links repository This is useful to have a single list containing links and displaying the list through a web part on a page, rather than the same links entered multiple times on different pages.
|
|
Picture Library |
Central Administration, Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Publishing Portal, Publishing Site, and Publishing Site with Workflow.
NoteThis list is ideal for storing graphics and photographs that can be tagged with metadata, size dimensions, and expiration date. This library has a preview view for images, which is useful if you need to quickly search and review hundreds of items.
|
|
Project Tasks |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site.
TipThis list has project management light functionality. The features unique to this list include a Gantt view to display project and dependent tasks.
|
|
Survey |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, and Publishing Site.
TipThis list has the ability to survey users with questions that can dynamically change depending on the response. Because the responses are in a list, these can be exported into Excel for further reporting.
|
|
Slide Library |
Team Site, Blank Site, Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, Business Intelligence Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, and Publishing Site.
TipThis library stores slides from PowerPoint 2010 files, which can be distributed to users. PowerPoint files can become quite large and out of date, so with slides centrally stored in a single location, content can be managed, shared, and distributed easier to users. The slide library is discussed further in Chapter 11.
|
|
Tasks |
Central Administration, Team Site, Blank Site, Blog, Group Work Site, Visio Process Repository, All Meeting Workspace, Document/Record Center, Business Intelligence Center, My Site Host, Personalization Site, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center, FAST Search Center, Enterprise Wiki, Publishing Portal, Publishing Site, and Publishing Site with Workflow.
TipThe tasks list is ideal for teams to collaborate To Do List Items. This list integrates with Outlook, so tasks can be created in Outlook and synchronized into the task list in SharePoint. This is useful if a request is e-mailed to you, so you can drag-and-drop the e-mail into the task list and assign it. Note: There can be multiple task lists connected to your Outlook client. However, the more SharePoint lists that are connected to your Outlook, the slower it is to open and use.
|