Learn SharePoint In Series - Part Thirty Two - Introduction To SharePoint Views

In the previous article, I have explained what indexes are in SharePoint and how they work in SharePoint lists and libraries. We have also seen how to create and delete the indexes in SharePoint lists. So, moving one more step ahead in SharePoint Lists and Libraries configurations, let’s understand what are Views in SharePoint. In this article, I am going to introduce views in SharePoint. This concept is too vast to cover in the single article, so I will be dividing this topic into multiple articles.

In this article, I am going to cover the following topics,

• Background
• Views in SharePoint
• Needs of Views
• Types of Views
• Default Views available with SharePoint Lists and Libraries
• Summary

Background

I always love to compare any new technology with any existing technology so that the new learner can relate the things while reading the articles. In this article also I am comparing the concept with SQL Server. While using SQL server if you have more columns in the SQL Server table and you do not normally interact with all the columns but you frequently need a few columns, then in that case what you do? You create a SQL Server Table View. In the view, you select only frequently used columns and that makes your work easy.

Now, come back to SharePoint. While working with SharePoint we create SharePoint lists or library to store the data. We create metadata columns to the SharePoint list. Sometimes, the list contains too many columns. For example, consider the following list.

The list has 16 columns. Now, you don’t want to display all the columns in the list while displaying the contents. The solution is SharePoint Views.

SharePoint Views

There might be many definitions available for SharePoint Views, but I will describe SharePoint View in my own way. I will define SharePoint Views as “Configuring the SharePoint list to show the meaningful information by applying certain sorting, filtering, metadata selection is called as creating a list view in SharePoint”.

Need of Views

Consider a scenario where you have to display only top last top 10 maximum labeled price item in the list. If this is SQL Server then you will use SQL Query, but in SharePoint, this can be achieved without the help of any custom codes. We can create any view using GUI provided by SharePoint.

Types of Views

Type of view also has 2 more subcategories. First one is based on accessibility and another one is based on the data representation. If we talk about accessibility then we have 2 types of Views.

Public View

This view is visible to every user who has permission to the list.

Private View

This view is visible to the only user who has created it. Another user will not able to see the private views.

Based on the data representation there are the following types of Views,

• Standard View (Default in most of the list)
• Datasheet View
• Calendar View
• Gantt View
• Custom View defined using SharePoint Designer

For more information see the following image.

Default Views available with SharePoint Lists and Libraries

There are certain views that are by default created when you create a new SharePoint list or Library. Every view has its own view name with its own signature.

• Custom List

• All Items

• Document Library

• All Documents

• Calendar List

• All Events

• Current Events

• Calendar

• Contacts List

• All Contacts

• Discussion list

• Subjects

• Featured Discussions

• Management

• Recent

• My Discussions

• Unanswered Discussions

• Answered Questions

• Featured

• Issue Lists

• All Issues

• Active Issues

• My Issues

• Link lists

• All Links

• Picture Libraries

• Thumbnails

• All Pictures

• Slides

• Promoted Links

• Tiles

• All Links

• Tasks List

• All Tasks

• Calendar

• Completed

• Gantt Chart

• Late Tasks

• My Tasks

• Upcoming

This is a list of default views created with each of the list and libraries types. Note these views are default; it does not mean that we cannot modify them, we can always modify the default list or library views and customize as per our needs.

Summary

In this article, I have covered only a few basic topics related to views such as what are views, why we need views, available default views etc. In the next article, I am going to explain how to create a list view in detail with its property. We will take an example scenario and will create a view based on the scenario.

If you have any question or suggestion then please let me know in the comments section.