Written By: Virgil Carroll
Posted: 9/11/2012
An easy way to display information in various forms is to use the content query web part (‘CQWP’). When using the CQWP tool it is important to avoid bunching too much information into one area. Keep information manageable so it is easy to read and understand.
Transcript+
Speaker 1: In this post, I want to talk a little bit about using the content query Web part wisely. One of the things that we tend to do, and actually one of the coolest features I personally think in SharePoint is the ability to use a content query Web part to roll up information from different sites that have similar types of content and display them to the end-user in one rolled up list. Obviously, one of the most perfect examples of that is a task where I could be assigned multiple tasks down the hierarchy of a site structure and have some kind of role up there. One of the things I've seen is that people don't really spend a lot of time doing anything with this. They don't really differentiate them. A lot times, this tend to come out a little bit blah in there and confusing.
What you see in front of us here is an announcement list. This is actually rolling up from multiple sites. One of the important things is that it actually, for this particular organization, Big Monkey Business, they have both internal and public announcements, otherwise internal that’s to the organization and public that is actually to their clients on a different client sites and that. They roll it all up into one announcement list.
This is something commonly you see where things that should maybe be segregated and separated out for a little bit more clarity are mashed up into one. I see the all the time with task lists where all the tasks are rolled up into one unified view and like that, instead of segmenting them out into different groups and that.
A really good easy tip is just to think about how to do this wisely and to really think about what you're doing. One of the things is to segment down the information better. Just because you can roll up 500 things doesn't mean that it makes sense to roll up those 500 things. Maybe it's making sense to roll up those 500 things, but segment them by metadata by something that can be there so that you can have a little bit more clarity around the information you're seeing. You see on this one actually where we're separating out, announcements that have been tagged as public, otherwise something that is going to be showing to the clients and to internal.
Now, this is a very simplistic perception of this, but overall, you think about it like let's say it was tasks and we had tasks that are starting, tasks in progress, tasks completed, instead of rolling it up into one big list, sometimes putting some separations. Sometimes, really understanding what the users really need can really help out.
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More About Virgil
Virgil Carroll is the owner and president of High Monkey – based in Minneapolis Minnesota. Virgil also wears the multiple ‘hats’ of Principle Human Solutions Architect and SharePoint Architect.
Virgil is one of those rare individuals who can dive deep into technical topics while speaking clearly to the business owners of a project and never forgetting that the end user experience has the highest priority. He calls it using both sides of his brain. Virgil is passionate about leveraging technologies ‘out of the box’ as much as possible with a focus on the strategic use of content to create websites that deliver the right content to the right audience on the right device at the right time. Virgil brings high energy, an ironic wit, and a sense of grounded perspective whenever he speaks to an audience. Virgil regularly speaks at conferences and user groups throughout the United States and occasionally in Europe.