Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 20: Working with Information Components in SharePoint Products and Technologies 557
Note Portal site listings are the most important links in SharePoint Portal
Server. Portal site listing lists are specialized link lists where you post your
hyperlinks. Using the browser, you cannot customize or delete lists of portal
site listings. For example, when you choose to add a listing to a portal area,
this creates an item within a SharePoint list called Portal Listings that contains
a pointer. Similarly, when you upload a document to a portal site document
library and you select the Add listing for this document check box, or
when you choose to submit an item to a portal area, you are creating a portal
site listing that contains the URL of the document or item. Each link
within the portal site listing list has a number of attributes or properties,
and it is through these properties that a portal site listing is associated with
an audience. Therefore, portal site listings are tightly integrated with areas,
Topics, and audiences that allow users to find information. Listings are discussed
in greater detail later in this chapter.
■ Announcements. A place to post information for the team.
■ Contacts. Information such as name, telephone number, e-mail address, and
street address for people who work with your team.
■ Events. A list of important dates.
■ Tasks. A to-do list for team members.
■ Issues. A list you can use to manage a set of issues or problems. You can
assign, prioritize, and follow the progress of issues from start to finish.
■ Custom list. A list with a customized set of defined columns. When you
want to create a list that is unlike any of the built-in lists, create a custom list.
You can base them on the designs used for the built-in lists, or you can create
custom lists from scratch. To create a custom list, navigate to the Create page,
as described earlier in this chapter, and then click Custom List. Complete the
field properties Name (required), and in the Description box, type a description
of the purpose of the list. The content, or metadata, of these two fields is
important for search purposes. In the Navigation section, if you want a hyperlink
to this list to appear on the Quick Launch bar, click Yes, and then click
Create. Add columns to your list as described in Chapter 19, “Working with
Documents in SharePoint Products and Technologies.”
■ Custom list in datasheet view. Use a custom list in datasheet view when
you want to specify your own custom columns and you want to use a spreadsheet-like
environment. This is convenient for data entry, editing, and formatting.
Datasheet views require that you have a Microsoft Windows SharePoint
Services–compatible datasheet program installed, such as Microsoft Office 2003
and the Microsoft Office List Datasheet Component, which is installed by