Using and Creating Views

Welcome to Spot on SharePoint, using and managing document libraries. Module 5, creating and managing custom views. Now that we’ve set up our document libraries, formatted the metadata columns, and made sure that we had all the values we wanted to show, it’s time to take a look at views. Views leverage all the work that we’ve done to this point to create customized ways to see the information that you’ve placed in your document library. You can have as many views in any library as needed, and they can filter, group, and sort your information using different values.

When you’re creating views in SharePoint online, you’re usually the administrator. By default, the system will provide you with the all documents view. It’s a standard grid like view. As an administrator, you’ll start creating business views where you’re grouping, sorting, and filtering out your content. But beyond that, your individual end users have the ability to create personal views of the information so they can take a business view and filter it further to what they themselves need on a day to day basis.

Let’s take a look at some examples. When we first enter our library, we’re in the All Documents view which is the default showing all of our columns in a grid like view. We can create a view from this interface simply by selecting the column and the action. In this case, I clicked on by depart on the department column and said group by department. This puts all my content into that grouping.

I can then go into my doc type and filter out certain values. In this case, policy, procedures, and work instructions. I can see right at the top what my filters and my groupings are and I can see an asterisk on all documents. If I select save view as and provide a new name, as an administrator, I can make that my new public view, Operations Manual by Department. Only administrators can make views public, but once they have made them public, anyone within the group with access to the library can move between the different views created.

So we now have all documents and operations manual by department. The next way that we can look at how you can create a view is in the back end. Click on the cogwheel and select Library Settings. This is going to allow us to have a lot more options in the way that we create our view. Scroll to the bottom and say create view.

I usually like to start from the all documents view because I know all my columns have been included. You’ll need to give the view a name, whatever it is that makes sense for you, I’m going to say By Department, Current Year. Now you’re gonna look at all your columns You can choose to add or remove any columns from the view Because we’re grouping by department, I’m not gonna leave it in the view as well And then we get our sorting First, I wanna sort by the name of the files in ascending order, so alphabetically but I can also sort in descending order. In my filter section, I’m gonna tell it to show only items where the current, due date is in this year. That’s how I’m gonna know that it’s the current year.

So I’ll select the due date column, and I’ll say is equal to or greater than the beginning of this calendar year, 0101 2020. You can change those values to anything that makes sense, And you can add additional sorting features to your view In this case, that’s what we want Now I’m going to select the group by And I’ll pick department I want it to be collapsed instead of expanded, and I want at least 100 items to be visible in each page. So I’m going to update that both for my collapsed view and in general. And now I have my by department current year showing me each item grouped by their department value and showing all the fields that I had chosen to have visible. Now let’s talk about personal views.

If I’m an employee and I’ve used the business view, but I want to get to something specific, I can actually go further. In this case, I only work with community engagement. So I filtered the by department current year to show just the content I want. And when I save save view as, I can give it its own unique name and uncheck the Make This Public. Most users won’t even be able to make it public.

But now that I’ve got my private view, I can actually drag that view URL onto my desktop. And now whenever I want, I can simply double click on that link, and it will automatically open up the customized view that I have created. But I still have access to view any of the other business views created by my administrator. Thank you for taking the time to watch our video. We hope that this has given you a better understanding of what views can do for you and how to create them.