Essential SharePoint 2007, 2nd Edition

Chapter 9. RSS, Rollups, and Site Maps

This chapter is about ways to share information and to provide overviews of content across sites. The topics covered here allow you summarize and drill down into content, regardless of where it is stored, through:

• RSS feeds and readers such as the RSS Viewer web part

• Rollups such as the Site Aggregator web part

• Site maps, such as the sited directory and table of contents web part

Most of the web parts discussed in this chapter are only available in MOSS, but I provide alternatives for WSS-only installations where possible. The ability to share and summarize content across sites is one of the big advantages of MOSS over plain WSS.

I also expand on the technique of creating custom web pages and targeting IFrames that I touched on in Chapter 6. The Site Aggregator web part encapsulates that technique, and it's a good skill to know when working across sites.

RSS at a Glance

RSS is a way to publish information through feeds and readers. Every list and library in SharePoint provides an RSS feed indicated by an icon in the Action menu (Figure 9-1).

Figure 9-1. Every list and library provides an RSS feed

If you click on View RSS Feed, SharePoint displays the current content of the feed with a link to "Subscribe to the feed." Click that link, and SharePoint adds the feed to your browser's list of feeds. Figure 9-2 shows the Internet Explorer 7.0 feed list.

Figure 9-2. Subscribe ...