Guest Author: Doug Cornelius
Website: KM Space

Goodwin Procter LLP has been a long time user of SharePoint as the platform for our intranet.  We started with the first version of SharePoint, migrated to SharePoint 2003 and recently upgraded to Sharepoint 2007.  In addition to the upgrade, we are also planning a later redesign of the intranet. Since we have the new platform in place, we have the opportunity to explore some of the new SharePoint 2007 features in our live environment.  As an Enterprise 2.0 evangelist, I am especially excited about the new option of using blogs and wikis.  There are a few other more subtle changes that bring lots of new functionality that was missing in the 2003 version.

One of the big changes is the ability for SharePoint Sites to have multiple Pages.  In previous versions of SharePoint there was a one Page to one Site limitation. Sure, you could go directly to underlying lists and document libraries instead of a Page.  But most users found it be un-friendly. Plus a Page gives you the ability to put the list information alongside text describing the list. You can also put multiple lists on a Page.

In SharePoint 2007 it is easy to create multiple Pages in a Site to host views of the underlying lists and document libraries.  Below are two examples that highlight the benefit of using multiple Pages in a Site.

How to Use Your Computer

The goal for this test project was to organize our user support information and tips in one area.  We wanted it to be easy to find the information and browse for the relevant information.  At the same time, we wanted the information to be easy to maintain.

We set up a new Site: How to Use Your Computer.  In that Site, we included a document library that contained our quick reference cards and other materials routinely handed out at training sessions.  In that Site, we created a separate Page for each of the major applications inside the firm.  We also created a blog under that site for the routinely distributed IT Tips and updates.

On the page for each major application, we pulled the document library items and the blog posts for that application. This is a view of the Word page.

It is very easy to set up a dozen or more of these Pages; each one focused on a particular application.  On the administration side, the user support group only has to publish items in two locations: the document library of user guides and the posts for the IT Tips blog.  Then those two locations push their contents onto the multiple Pages. The pages also give an great landing point for search results. If you search for “Word” this page comes back as the top search result.

Hospitality Practice

The Hospitality and Recreation practice was willing to be a guinea pig and try out some of the new features in SharePoint 2007.  The group was very motivated to collect copies of precedent agreements negotiated within the hospitality industry. They had a collection of franchise agreements, management agreements, comfort letters and purchase and sale agreements.

For the practice, it would be important to filter the precedent collections by a particular hotel company. It was straight-forward to create a separate list for each of the precedent collections.  I then also created a list of hotel companies that acted as the look-up for each of the precedent lists.  Below is franchise agreements Page.

With the Hotel Companies list on the page, I set up a connection with the document collection lists.  Then the user could filter the precedent lists to a particular hotel company by selecting it from the list. With multiple Pages, I can use that same Hotel Companies list on multiple Pages to filter the other collections.  On the management agreements page, I published that document precedent list and the same Hotel Companies list.

We can also re-slice the information from the lists onto additional pages. We created a separate page for information related specifically to Hilton Hotels.  The page displays filtered lists of the franchise agreements, management agreements, comfort letters and purchase agreements that are marked as “Hilton.”  We also display a list of wiki pages from the Practice Manual where “Hilton” is part of the content on that wiki page.

Summary

The use of multiple Pages in a Site makes easier to mix and match information from the lists in a Site and display them in more meaningful ways on a Page. You can give you users a better experience finding and consuming information. At the same time, you can make it easier for the site owners to make their information available. 

Other SharePoint Articles by Doug Cornelius