Building Dashboards for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Using SharePoint Designer 2007
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a natural platform for building Dashboards. In this Wrox Blox, I’ll show you how to extend what is provided for you in the out-of-the-box templates and give you all the tools you need to build powerful Dashboards on top of WSS.
Web Part Pages Overview
One of the most powerful features in SharePoint is the ability for users to create and manage Web Part Pages. My favorite demonstration to give to new users of SharePoint is to show them a page and then show them how they can drag and drop new Web Parts all over their page. When I show new users this ability, they tend to assume that it is only available on the pages that are created for them. Actually, users have the ability to create additional Web Part Pages in their SharePoint sites. Each Web Part Page can then show a unique and highly customized Dashboard View. There are two ways to create additional Web Part Pages, and each creates pages with their own unique properties.
Creating New Pages from the UI
The first option you’ll explore is the ability to create new Web Part Pages using only a web browser. This approach provides a great deal of flexibility because any user with “Contribute” permissions can add new Web Part Pages. The approach does have one limitation, however, which is that new Web Part Pages must be stored in an existing Document Library.
To see how this works, your first step will be to create ...
