It's Day 3 of Mindsharp SharePoint 2010 Power End User (Beta) class, and I have to say that I have really been looking forward to work this week (not that I don't normally, but training is a special treat)! I love learning new things, and there's definitely a lot to learn with SharePoint 2010 – kudos to Microsoft for lots of great changes.
Every Conceivable List and Library Setting (Part 2)
Our instructor, Kay McClure, started today off with a continuation of what I yesterday named Every Conceivable List and Library Setting. Today we covered all the settings in the Permissions and Management section, something I've neglected to look at much before.
Administrators might enjoy the new Generate file plan report option, which lets you get a great summary of the content and settings for your list or library, perfect for architecture reviews and audits. There's some especially useful info there if you are still using Folders STILL EVIL. Missing from the report was how much space a library was taking up in the database, something I'm sure administrators would like to see.
We segued to the Workflows topic when we got to the Workflow settings: There's a few tweaks to the user interface (check out the Workflow Visualization graphic), and a couple of new settings in the out-of-the-box workflows (like improved serial and parallel Approval), but it looks like you'll have to go to SharePoint Designer 2010 for the significant changes.
Shameless plug: If SharePoint Designer is too intimidating and you're not a developer using Visual Studio, consider a third-party workflow solution like Bamboo's Workflow Conductor instead – we have a SharePoint 2010 version coming soon.
Back in the Permissions and Settings list, we see more(!) Metadata settings. I'm looking forward to the Site Administration section, because I have a feeling that's really going to clear up some lingering questions I have on how all these new metadata settings features tie together. Those of you with regulatory and compliance concerns will definitely want to check out the Information Policy Management settings (also available in SharePoint 2007).
From there, we checked out some other list templates, and created some columns. Wow! The list of available column types is getting really long! I predict a UI change coming soon. There are some nice new options for most column types, like Enforce unique values and Column Validation. Kay gave a nice demo on creating and using Site Columns, and it served as a good reminder that we shouldn't always just create a new column in a list if a site column exists (or should exist). I daresay this feature is often forgotten, in favor of just creating columns for every list – which is really easy, requires less thought, and doesn't require a Site Owner.
Next up is Views, a pretty familiar topic. I like the new Inline Editing feature. There's also something new called Per-location view settings, which appears to let you specify which views are available for specific folders. (This seems like a somewhat random feature…if anybody knows more about this or can think of some good use cases, I'd love to hear your Comments below.)
I had to miss the lab on columns and views, but got back just in time to hear Kay start in on Content Types. Content types have become a recent infatuation of mine, and I think they are way underused. If you haven't already started using content types, make sure to read up on it. New and exciting for SharePoint 2010: Content Types (and Site Columns!) can be deployed and managed across site collections, using the Content Type Hub.
One last lab and we finished up a little early today.
Today's favorite topic? I know they've been there forever, but I really like Site Columns and Content Types, especially the new Content Type Hub (we didn't cover it in detail, but the course manual had a good write-up). The data junky in me picks the new Generate file plan report option as a close second.
