Setting up Team Discussion Board

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Introduction

SharePoint 2007 has a Team Discussion Board that is used to initiate discussion and get replies on topics of interest. This article outlines the steps required to setup a discussion board, managing permissions, version control, and also its limitations.

Create Discussion Board

Select ‘Site Actions’ > Create
Select ‘Discussion Board’ under ‘Communications’ tab
Enter ‘Name’ and ‘Description’ for the discussion board
Click whether to ‘Display this list on the Quick Launch’ – If this option is selected, the link to this list will be available in the Quick Launch
Specify whether to allow items to be added through e-mail.
Click the ‘Create’ button to complete

Adding Items

You have a basic discussion board with standard columns and views. Create additional columns and views as required (as explained later).

Click ‘Discussion’ in the ‘New’ poplist to create a new discussion topic
Enter in the ‘Subject’ and ‘Body’ fields
Click ‘OK’ – a discussion item has been created
To reply, click the discussion ‘item’ (under ‘Subject’)
Click ‘Reply’ and complete
To add a new item, follow the steps again

Adding Columns

You can add to these columns as required. For example, let us assume that an additional column is required to capture the person who is assigned to the item. Steps are as follows:

Click Settings > Discussion Board Settings
Click ‘Create Column’ under ‘Columns’ region – One can also ‘Add from existing columns’
Enter ‘Column Name’
Select a suitable information type for the column – In this example, ‘Person or Group’ is checked as we intent to assign the item
Complete appropriate ‘Additional Column Settings’ as required
Click ‘OK’

Views

The Discussion Board items can be viewed in ‘threaded’ or ‘flat’ view format. Additional views can be created as well. For example, let us assume that you would like to create a view named ‘My Feedback’ that would list all items created by you:

Click View > Create View
Choose a View Format or Start from an existing view
Enter ‘My Feedback’ in the View Name field
Select the ‘Columns’ that are to be displayed
In the ‘Filter’ region, Check ‘Show items only when the following is true’ radio button
Select ‘Created By’ in the ‘Show the items when column’ poplist
Select ‘is equal to’ in the next poplist
Enter [Me] in the field below – enter exactly as given including the square brackets
Click ‘OK’

Limitations

As it is a discussion board, one would like to report on the status as well. For instance, items that are still ‘Open’. This part is easily done by creating a new column, say, ‘Status’ and having Open and Closed as the choices. The challenge is reporting based on on ‘Open’ or ‘Closed’. The reason is the discussion board has a different Id for each item in the thread (same discussion, different threads!); hence, if you close the last threaded item, it does not cascade to the threaded one’s. If anyone has a workaround or pointers, please use the ‘Comment’ form below and it will benefit the users.
There is no ‘Print’ function to the list. Wish this had been taken care in SharePoint 2007 – but as of now there is no out of the box solution.
The Expand / Collapse feature, available in SP 2003, is no longer available. Hence, it is not possible to view all the discussion items with the threaded replies. One has to open each item to view the thread.

Limitations – Solutions /Workaround

For the Expand / Collapse items there is a webpart available. Refer to this blog for download details.
Please refer to this article for the steps to track feedback items in a Team Discussion Board by status i.e. Active or Closed.

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Creating SharePoint 2010 Team Discussion Board (273) – View online SharePoint 2010 courseware for creating a Team Discussion Board free!

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