Screencast demo: A case study using Content Types

Doug Cornelius wrote a really nice case study article for EndUserSharePoint.com on how Goodwin Procter LLP is using pages and sites to manage document exposure. As I was reading it, I had the idea of extending his article through a screencast, Content Types Overview, demoing how Content Types might be used to coordinate a central documentation library.

The screencast is not a "How To" as much as a "Why". I will followup next week to show how I created the Content Types and then applied them to the documentation library. In the meantime, you might start thinking about why you might choose to use Content Types instead of simple columns in your libraries. I look forward to your feedback and comments on the screencast.

This Week's Recommendations

There were a lot of guest posts this week on EndUserSharePoint.com.

Taming the Elusive 'Calculated Column'
by Dessie Lunsford  
 Dessie helped me a while back when I was trying to figure out how to pull a substring out of one field and use it in another. This is an introductory post that will give you an idea of what a calculated column is. He will be following up with a series.

Exploiting or being exploited by SharePoint search
by Chris Quick 
 Chris is doing a series on search and starts off with a fun example of how to use Managed Properties. Don't know what those are? Read on...

Thinking SharePoint (and listen to your mother!)
by Paul Culmsee
 Paul's tongue in cheek style opens up a true Pandora's box. My favorite quote: "You still need to put your toys away and agree with everyone else where things should go!" He will continue the series on the Re-Thinking of SharePoint.

How do I get End Users to start using SharePoint?
by Chris Poteet
Chris tackled this question from one of our readers. Getting End User buy-in is one of the hardest parts of rolling out a new SharePoint implementation. Take a look and see if you come up with any ideas.

How can I restrict views to the contributor's content, only?
by Chris Poteet  
 Again, another reader question. This is one of the most frequently asked questions on the forums. Read the comments to see how others are handling it.

Pages and Sites in SharePoint 2007 (Case Study)
by Doug Cornelius
I used Doug's article as a jumping off point to create this week's screencast. In the same article, he speaks about using the Connection functionality of web parts to filter information on a page.

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