Sending an E-Mail to a SharePoint List


Windows SharePoint Services allows list managers to assign an e-mail address to some of the out-of-the-box lists that can be created from the Create page. Once configured, you can send an e-mail to the list. At first blush, e-mailing a Windows SharePoint Services list seems like an odd thing to do; yet, consider the following ways that this capability could be used.

  • image from book You are on an airplane working with an Office Word document. When you are finished, you e-mail the document to a specific document library. This e-mail sits in your outbox until the next time you connect to the Internet, at which time it is automatically sent to the document library. When Windows SharePoint Services receives the document, it is inserted into the document library for you.

  • image from book An e-mail distribution group is set up that includes all of the members of your team. The e-mail address of a discussion board is also included in the distribution group. Every message sent to the group is also inserted into the list. When team members visit the Windows SharePoint Services site that contains the list, they see the entire conversation that took place via email. They can even use the list to reply to the messages posted to the list.

Enabling a discussion board for e-mail is covered in Chapter 9, “Working with Surveys and Discussion Boards.”

The following table differentiates between those lists that can and cannot be e-mail enabled in Windows SharePoint Services (lists are in alphabetical order).

Open table as spreadsheet

E-mail-Enabled Lists

Lists That Are Not E-mail Enabled

Announcements

Agenda

Project Tasks

Blog Posts

Contacts

Survey

Calendar

Custom List

Tasks

Discussion Board

Decisions

Text Box

Document Library

Issue Tracking

Things To Bring

Form Library

Links

Wiki Page Library

Picture Library

Objectives

 

Before this e-mail feature can be used, the Windows SharePoint Services farm administrator must configure the Web application for outgoing e-mail. This can be done from the Incoming E-Mail Settings link in the Topology And Services area on the Operations tab in SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration. The screen looks like the following image.

image from book

In the following exercise, you will create a new e-mail-enabled picture library so that customers can e-mail pictures to you of potential product offerings. You will subsequently review the generated incoming e-mail settings. You will also update the incoming e-mail settings of an existing Announcements list so that people can e-mail general corporate announcements to the list. Once configured, you will e-mail each of these lists and review the results.

OPEN a SharePoint Team Site. The exercise will use the http://wideworldimporters site, but you can use whatever site you wish. If prompted, type your user name and password, and click OK.

BE SURE TO verify that you have sufficient rights to browse the site and create lists. If in doubt, see the Appendix on page 435.

1. On the Site Actions menu at the top right of the page, choose Create to display the list templates on the Create page.

2. In the Tracking group, click Picture Library to display the New List page.

image from book

3. In the Name textbox, type PotentialProducts to establish a display name for the new list.

Because there is no textbox to provide the URL name, this textbox also supplies the value that Windows SharePoint Services uses for the internal names.

4. In the Description textbox, type the description Pictures of potential products our vendors have emailed to us to help others understand the purpose for the new list.

5. Check that the option indicating that you want to Display this picture library on the Quick Launch is selected. This is a default setting.

6. The Allow this picture library to receive e-mail option is initially set to No. Change this setting to Yes. If this option is not available, a SharePoint administrator in SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration has either not configured SharePoint for incoming e-mail or has disabled incoming e-mail for your lists.

7. Enter an E-mail address, such as Products@wideworldimporters.com.

Of course, you only provide the part of the e-mail address that precedes the “at” sign (@). Take note of the entire e-mail address displayed on the screen, and use the address you see instead of Products@wideworldimporters.com for the rest of this exercise.

Important  

If the incoming e-mail settings for your Windows SharePoint Services farm have been configured to use the SharePoint Directory Management Service, any e-mail address you choose will be created for you in a designated Active Directory location. However, if the farm has not been configured to use the SharePoint Directory Management Service, an e-mail account for every e-mail address you choose must be established before messages sent to that account arrive at the list.

8. Leave the Version setting with the default value.

9. Click Create to complete the list creation. The PotentialProducts default list view page (AllItems.aspx) is displayed.

10. On the Settings menu, choose Picture Library Settings to see the auto-configured settings for this new list.

11. From the Communications area, click Incoming e-mail settings. Once again, if this option is not available, a SharePoint administrator needs to configure the farm for incoming e-mail in SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.

image from book

The options here are fairly easy to understand. For this exercise, you do not need to change any of them. Simply notice that the picture library has been configured to receive e-mail by using the e-mail address that you suggested. All e-mail attachments sent to the picture library are saved into the root of the library, but do not overwrite any files. If a duplicate is sent, the file is suffixed with an incremental counter (just like the file system). It does not save the original e-mail attachment. However, if this option is set to Yes, the e-mail is simply saved as a document attachment to the list item. If someone sends a meeting invitation to this list, it is ignored. Finally, only people with the ability to create new items in the list are allowed to send e-mail to the list; all other e-mail is ignored.

12. Click Cancel to continue.

13. From the Lists area of the Quick Launch, click Announcements to navigate to the Announcements list.

14. On the Settings menu, choose Picture Library Settings.

15. From the Communications area, click Incoming e-mail settings to alter the settings to allow e-mail announcements to be sent to this list.

image from book

16. Set the Allow this picture library to receive e-mail to Yes.

17. Enter an E-mail address, such as Announcements@wideworldimporters.com.

With the exception of attachments, the remainder of the settings are the same for a list as they are for a picture library. E-mail attachments sent to a library actually become list items. Therefore, you can choose what folder to put them into and whether to overwrite existing documents. E-mail attachments sent to a list simply become list item attachments, so they can either be attached or unattached to the list item-hence the diminished options for e-mail attachments on a list.

18. Change Save original e-mail to Yes and leave all other options set to their default values.

19. Click OK to save the changes.

20. Open Outlook 2007 and send one e-mail with a picture attachment to the Products e-mail setup and a second e-mail with an optional attachment to the Announcements e-mail setup mentioned earlier in this exercise.

21. Browse back to the PotentialProducts list to see that the picture attached to the list has been added to the picture library.

image from book

22. Browse back to the Announcements list to see that the second e-mail that was sent has been added to the list as well.

23. Open the announcement to see that the subject, body, and original message have all been captured on the announcement.

image from book

CLOSE the browser.




Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services Version 3. 0 Step by Step
Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services Version 3. 0 Step by Step
ISBN: 735623635
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 201

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