SharePoint 2010 – How to create a company notification system part 2

Introduction
In the first part of this series I showed you a company notification system . In this second part of the series I want to explain how I configured the solution. Let’s start!

Custom List

I am going to start with creating the list where the notifications are going to be stored. I click at Site Actions and More Options and select Custom List. I name the list Notifications and click at Create.

I want the users to be able to leave notifications with all the defined fields so I am going to create custom columns. I click in the ribbon at List and List Settings. I go to the Columns section and click at Create column. I have to create the following columns:

Column name

Type

Extra config.

Required

Notification date Date and Time Date onlyToday’s date

No default view

Yes
Reported by People/Groups People OnlyNo default view Yes
Department Managed Metadata Departments term setNo default view Yes
Description Multiple lines of text No default view Yes
Reviewer 1 People/Groups People OnlySharePoint Group: Reviewers

No default view

Yes
Reviewer 2 People/Groups People OnlySharePoint Group: Reviewers

No default view

No
Cause Multiple lines of text No default view No
Resolution Multiple lines of text No default view No
Resolved Yes/No Default Value: NoNo default view No
Date resolved Date and Time Date onlyNo default view No

Before I start creating these columns I have to be sure that there is a term set with departments and a SharePoint group called Reviewers.

After I created all the columns I want to change the order because I want to include the Title field. To do this, I have to enable the managed of content types. I click at Advanced settings under General Settings. I now select Yes with Allow management of content types and confirm by clicking at Ok.

I now go to the content type Item to change the order. The columns need to be in the following order:

  • Notification date
  • Reported by
  • Department
  • Title
  • Description
  • Reviewer 1
  • Reviewer 2
  • Cause
  • Resolution
  • Resolved
  • Date resolved

The next step is to create the pages for the employees and the reviewers.

Custom pages
I open SharePoint Designer from the Site actions menu. I go to Site Pages and select the first template under Web Part Page. I name the page My notifications. I right click at the newly created page and choose Edit file in Advanced Mode. The following screen appears:

SP2010CompanyNotifcationCenterPart2_1

I make sure the PlaceHolderMain is selected. I click in the ribbon at Insert, Data View and select the Notifications list. I can change the columns I want to show by clicking at Add/Remove Columns. The following columns need to be selected:

  • Attachments
  • Notification date
  • Title
  • Description
  • Reviewer 1
  • Reviewer 2 (actually forgot this one in the previous article ;))

I now want to be sure that the user logged in can see his or her notification and not from someone else. I go to Filter and set the following filter:

‘Reported by Equals Current User’

The last configuration step is to group the notification based at the resolved status. I go to Sort & Group and select the Resolved column. I also set the Sort Properties at Ascending and under Group Properties I select Show group header and Expand group by default.

You can probably see the text Untitled_1 in the screenshot. You have to find this in the code and change it to My notifications. The last configuration is to set the Chrome Type of the notifications webpart at None. The page already has a title that is descriptive enough. I do this in the Web Part menu of the ribbon.

Let’s go and create the page for the reviewers. We perform the same steps but name the page this time My reviews. The following settings need to apply:

SP2010CompanyNotifcationCenterPart2_2

SP2010CompanyNotifcationCenterPart2_3

SP2010CompanyNotifcationCenterPart2_4

 

 

Again, rename the page from Untitled_1 to My reviews. I also removed the toolbar of the webpart. I did this in Design and Options. This works perfectly with the ribbon! You can also always preview your progress in the browser 🙂

The pages are set and now I am going to create an item and see what happens! I create a new notification with the account Jasper Oosterveld:

SP2010CompanyNotifcationCenterPart2_5

I know logon as Robert van Son:

SP2010CompanyNotifcationCenterPart2_6

Glad to see that it worked 🙂 You can see how easy it is to create a new page with SharePoint Designer and include lists. I used the ribbon to configure the page and webpart. Works really nice! I am impressed how easy SharePoint Designer is to use. In the last part of this series I want to show you how to create new list forms and how to create the workflow.

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