SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide

Discussion Group Views

Discussion groups are basically just lists and, like other SharePoint lists, you can filter the view depending on how you want the list to be presented. Additionally, there are three unique ways to filter the view of a discussion board:

Subject view

This view is available only for the top-level folder of the discussion group and presents discussions by their metadata, such as the titles of discussions.

Flat view

This is the default view for SharePoint discussion groups. The title of the discussion is at the top, and each reply is shown in a tree structure, similar to Usenet Newsgroups. This view is available only in content folders, not at the top level.

Threaded view

Like the Flat view, this view is available only in content folders. In this view, you can see whether a reply was made to the original posted message or to a subsequent message.

When you create or modify a view, there are a number of elements you can edit in the view:

Name

Gives the name of the discussion board view. You can also make this or any other view the default view for the discussion group.

Audience

Lets you determine whether this is a public or personal view. This option can be set only when you create the view.

Tip

A public view can be seen by any user, but a personal view can be seen only by the person who configured it.

Columns

Lets you choose which columns of information appear in this view and in what order they appear.

Tip

You can choose to display such column content as Attachments, Subject, ...