A view in SharePoint controls how items in a list or library are displayed. At a basic level, the view sets the columns to be displayed (normally shown from left to right, like columns in a spreadsheet), how the items are sorted, and which items to filter. Views are used to help categorize and locate items within a single library. While creating views is easy, there are many optional settings that you can use.
Any list or library will have at least one view that is marked as the default. You can create new views as well; here are a few practical examples:
- Sales personnel who store their customer proposals in SharePoint can use separate views to manage the documents by region, salesperson, size, or type.
- Accounting staff can use views to manage invoices. Some users use a view to organize invoices by the number of days overdue (30–60, 60–90, etc.), whereas others use a different view to group invoices by customer.
- Magazine publishers can use views to organize pictures based on tags that have been applied to each photo. For example, if an article on environmental cleanup is being published, items in a picture library can be found quickly and perused.
Depending on the list or library template used, different views are automatically created when creating the list or library. The built-in views on a tasks list are a good example. These include All Tasks, My Tasks, Due Today, and Active Tasks, among others. Although this chapter focuses on managing documents in libraries, views on a list or library work the same.
When you’re creating a view, two types are supported:
- A personal view can only be used by the person who created it. Any user with Contribute access on the library can create personal views.
- A public view can be used by anyone who has read permissions on the library. Only users with Full Control, Design, and Manage Hierarchy permission levels can create public views.
The configuration options when creating a personal view and a public view are the same.
NOTE SharePoint 2010 views are built using an XSLT List View Web Part, which you can create and edit using SharePoint Designer 2010. The web part gives you more advanced options such as conditional formatting on certain columns. To learn more, see the article “Create a Custom List View Using SharePoint Designer” located at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/create-a-custom-list-view-using-sharepoint-designer-HA010379079.aspx.
Here are the steps to create a new view on a library:
1. Access the library.
2. Just above the ribbon, click the Library tab (underneath Library Tools).
3. Click the Create View button in the ribbon.
4. Choose the view format or select an existing view to start from. The options available vary somewhat depending on the type of view. The Standard format is the most common and is the one used in the following steps.
5. Enter a short but recognizable name for the view. If this is a public view, the name is also used for the new web page that is created.
6. For Audience, specify whether this is a personal or public view.
7. Select the columns that you want to appear in the view. Also, select the position in which you want each column to appear (from right to left).
8. For Sort, specify the column or columns to be used when ordering items in the view. Up to two columns can be used. For example, you can first sort by state, then by city. (Items can also be sorted on-demand from the view by clicking on the column heading.)
9. For Filter, specify a condition to be used to exclude items from the view. For example, you might want to hide documents that were last modified more than 30 days ago.
For large lists containing more than a thousand items, it is best to use an indexed column when creating a filter. To learn more about creating indexed columns, see the article on The Sanity Point blog titled “Indexing SharePoint List Columns” located at www.thesanitypoint.com/archive/2009/09/20/indexing-sharepoint-list-columns.aspx.
10. For Inline Editing, check whether you want to allow users to edit an item “inline” in addition to editing through the usual pop-up dialog box.
11. For Group By, choose a maximum of two columns to configure grouping and subgrouping. This is a helpful way to collapse a large number of items into manageable groups. For example, you might want to group by document type or by author (Created By column).
12. For Totals, choose the column or columns to display a total value based on an aggregate function (e.g., count, sum, average). Unfortunately, the total is figured for all the items displayed and you cannot subtotal if you are grouping. (But you can create subtotals by customizing the view in SharePoint Designer.)
13. For Style, choose how the items should appear. For example, the Shaded style displays every other item with a shaded background color.
14. For Folders, you can optionally display items without folders, organizing them into a single list of items. Be careful when using this option if you have thousands of items and are not limiting the item count in the next step, as this option can cause performance problems.
15. For Item Count, select the maximum number of items to display in a single page. The default value is 30 items, and additional items are visible by navigating to subsequent pages. Although this value can be increased, proceed with caution as doing so can cause performance problems. Also, SharePoint employs item count throttling on large lists, and by default, users can see a maximum of only 5,000 items. For more information, see Chapter 2, “Creating and Managing Web Applications.”
16. For Mobile, adjust the settings for how this view is shown for mobile clients. These settings apply only to public views.
17. Click OK to save the view.