When group projects occur in the workplace, one of the old standbys for communication is the e-mail discussion. Members of a team send e-mails back and forth, going over various approaches and ideas. But e-mails can be cumbersome. Which message had the file you needed for the annual statistics? Who was replying to whom about next week's meeting? Did you hit "reply" or "reply all"?
One good way to avoid these logistical problems is to use SharePoint's discussion board feature. In a discussion board, all the comments are in one place, for everyone to quickly see and read. Discussions are threaded so their order and flow is easier to follow. By default, all new team sites created in SharePoint have a discussion board, but here's how to create one of your own.
Note: SharePoint's discussion board feature isn't a replacement for a full-fledged forum management or bulletin board system. It's effective for a relatively small number (less than 100) of original threads. Plan to create many individual discussion boards if you need a large number of topics. You may also want to consider a new SharePoint 2013 and Exchange 2013 feature called Site Mailbox. This allows your site to have an email box just like a user.
Discussion Board Topics in this Post:
- How to Create a Discussion Board
- Start a New Discussion Board
- How to Reply on a Discussion Board
- How to Edit a Discussion
- How to Delete a Discussion
- How to Remove a Discussion Board
Figure 1: The Your Apps Page
Figure 2: Adding the Discussion Board Dialog Box
Figure 3: The New Discussion Board Page
Figure 4: A New Discussion Board
Exception: If you cannot create a discussion board, there is an existing discussion board with the same name or URL or you do not have specific permissions to create a discussion board. Check the permissions settings to ensure you have the appropriate access rights.
Figure 5: The Discussion Entry Page
Figure 6: Add a New Document Dialog Box
Figure 7: Choose File To Upload Dialog Box
Navigate to the file, click on it to select it, and click Open. The Choose File to Upload dialog box will close, and the file will appear in the Choose a File field on the Add a document dialog box.
Figure 8: An Attached File in Add a Document Dialog Box
Figure 9: A New Discussion Listed on Discussion Board Page
Exception: If you cannot create a discussion, you do not have specific permissions to create discussions on a discussion list. Check the permissions settings to ensure you have the appropriate access rights.
Figure 10: The Discussion Page
Figure 11: The Discussion Page with New Reply
Exception: If you can't reply to a discussion, you have read-only permissions and do not have specific permissions to create a reply. Check the permissions settings to ensure you have the appropriate access rights.
Figure 12: An Editable Comment
- Edit the comment as needed and click Save. The edited comment will now appear in the discussion.
Note: If versioning is turned on for the list, prior versions of your comment will be available. Please see the task "Activate Version Control" for an example of how to access the version history of a SharePoint list item.
Exception: If you can't edit your response, you do not have specific permissions to edit discussions. Check the permissions settings to ensure you have the appropriate access rights.
Figure 13: Delete Item Confirmation Dialog Box
- Click OK. The comment will be removed from the discussion board.
Exception: If you cannot delete a conversation, you do not have specific permissions to delete conversations. Check the permissions settings to ensure you have the appropriate access rights.
- Start Internet Explorer and type the URL for your organization's SharePoint server. The Start page will open.
- Navigate to the site where you want to remove comments from a discussion board. The site's home page will open.
- Click the Settings menu gear icon, then the Site Contents option. The Site Contents page will open.
- Click the icon for the discussion board you want to join. The board's home page will open.
- Click on the List tab, and change the Current View to Management.
- Click on the More button next to the Discussion Thread that you would like to delete (as indicated by 3 periods ( . . . ).
- Click on Delete. A confirmation dialog box will open.
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