SharePoint introduced Content Rating into SharePoint Server 2010.  This is a great feature that is available on all SharePoint Lists and Libraries, however it is limited to just one rating per item. With this limitation in mind, Bamboo has created a way to provide a rating on multiple factors when rating a document. In this example, you will learn how to rate documents on the following criteria:

• Is the content of the document accurate?
• Can an end user follow the document?
• Is the correct audience reached?

With Bamboo’s newest product, Bamboo Rating, users can create as many rating factors per document as are needed the business requirements.  Users can even show the overall rating of each document based on the average of all the individual factors.

So how do you achieve this?  Let me show you

1. Navigate to the SharePoint Library where the ratings will be applied.
2. Create a new column (this is slightly different between SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 environments).
   SharePoint 2007
   
   SharePoint 2010
   
3. A New Column form will appear. Enter a name for your first rating factor.  In this example, three separate rating columns will be created using the following names:
   • Accuracy
   • Ease of Use
   • Audience Appropriate
4. Select Bamboo Rating as the column type
   
5. Now you can configure the Bamboo Rating column.  In this example, I will be using 10-Point rating scale and set the Average Rating Decimal Places to 0 to keep the results simple.  I also left Allow Anonymous Ratings and Allow Individual Ratings to be Reset unchecked.  You may configure your Bamboo Rating columns with a different rating scale size, however, all included rating columns should be the same size and format.
   
6. Repeat steps 2-5 for each rating where you intend to collect data.
7. To receive overall average ratings, you will be creating two additional columns following the steps described below:
8. The first column to be created will return the average of the individual rating columns in the library.  This will allow users to Filter, Sort, and Group on overall document rating average.  This column will also be used to display the average in a string format of X out of 10
9. Create a new column in the library.
10. Enter a name for the value.  In this example, it is named Overall Average Rating.  For the type, select Calculated
    .
11. In the configuration of the column, you need to build a formula that adds each individual rating column together, then divide  the number of rating columns as in the example shown below

    =([Column1]+[Column2]+[Column3])/3

12. Next select the data type result be in Number format with Number of decimal places set to 0.
    
13. This will give you a numerical display of the average overall rating of the document.  However, when users view this rating, it may not be as clear, so we will display the average as X out of X.  To achieve this a second column of type Calculated needs to be created.  Following steps 9 and 10, create a new column of type Calculated.
14. The formula will vary depending on the name you provided in step 10.  An example of the formula is =[Overall Average Rating]&” out of 10″
15. Lastly select the data type result be Single Line of Text and save the column.
16. The final step is to hide the extra rating count columns.  Open the List View, this varies based on the version of SharePoint you are running
    SharePoint 2007
    
    SharePoint 2010
    
17. Unselected columns that end in “: Count” and the column created in step 12.

You are done!  The above solution is just to provide you an example of how you can use multiple Bamboo Rating columns in a single library.  You can easily take the same idea and apply it to lists. The possibilities are endless!

Are you ready to let users provide complete ratings on your SharePoint items? Follow these simple steps to try Bamboo Rating on your own SharePoint deployment with a 30-day fully functional trial: 

1. Open the Bamboo Rating product page and click the  button.
2. Once you complete the Checkout process, you will receive an email with details on downloading the installation package.
3. For installation, configuration, and usage instructions, view the Bamboo Rating online documentation.

As always, leave us questions or comments below.  We would love to hear what you think or fun solutions you came up with using Bamboo Rating!