Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

968 Part IX: Maintaining a Server in Windows SharePoint Services
We need to change some properties of the General Discussion Web Part so that
it is easy to identify. In the title bar of General Discussion, click the drop-down
arrow to show the menu and select Modify Shared Web Part. This should open the
General Discussions properties window on the right side of the page. To show this
as a true discussion, we’ll make the following changes:
1. Change the Selected View to Threaded. (You will receive a message “Switching
to a different view removes changes you made to this view, and may disable
Web Part connections that depend on columns in this view.” Click OK to close
this message.)
2. Change the Toolbar Type to Full Toolbar.
3. Scroll down to find the Appearance submenu, and click the plus sign (+) next
to it to open it. Change the title from General Discussion to Problem/Solutions
Knowledge Base.
4. Scroll down a bit further and change Frame Style to Title Bar and Border.
5. Scroll down to the Advanced submenu, and click the plus sign (+) to expand
it. Deselect the Allow Minimize, Allow Close, and Allow Zone Change
options. (This forces the Web Part to appear on the page and specifies that it
cannot be moved or closed by the user.)
6. Scroll to the bottom of the window, and click the Apply button.
7. Click OK to close the Web Part properties.
Add Data to the Web Part
The first thing we need to do is add some data to the Web Part so that we can see
something from the ASP.NET application. On the Problem/Solutions Knowledge
Base Web Part, click New Discussion. This opens the New Item page. For the subject,
enter How Cool Problem/Solutions, and for the text, you can enter anything
you want. The text you enter could be a description of the discussion, a list of
team members, and so on. Right now we’re just entering text to get the discussion
started.
Click Save and then click Close from the menu to save this discussion thread.
We need to add another item just for good measure. Click New Discussion in the
title bar of the Problem/Solutions Knowledge Base Web Part to open the New Item
page. Type some text. (What you enter is not important.) For the example, we’ve
typed in text describing a problem with the solution, and as you’ll notice, we’ve
taken advantage of the built-in text formatting.
Click Save and then click Close from the menu at the top, which returns you to
the new page. You should now see the two new discussion threads in your Web Part.
Using Text Formatting in the messages is particularly important. When the user
clicks the plus sign (+) next to the discussion to expand it, she gets to see the nicely
formatted information.