Creating Standard Lists

Lists are probably the second most useful feature of SharePoint, after document libraries. You can think of lists as really just glorified spreadsheets, with columns and rows of information. What separates SharePoint lists from spreadsheets, however, is the ability for users to collaborate with information in lists in a much more flexible fashion than they would be able to with spreadsheets.

To use a real-world problem as an example, it is common practice for many organizations to email spreadsheets containing timesheets, sales data, parts information, and so on, to members of their team, have them add information to those spreadsheets, and then have them email the spreadsheets back. At that point, some poor intern working in a basement cube has to input all that data back into an isolated database. SharePoint allows the users in the field to automatically enter this information into a simple list, thus saving an enormous amount of time and improving user collaboration. In addition, another benefit of lists is that they allow users to have alerts sent to them whenever information is added or modified.

Although other solutions are available that can perform these types of tasks, the huge advantage that SharePoint provides is that it can do this right out of the box, literally only minutes after you create a site. If you haven't already starting using lists to make your life easier, you should definitely look into it.

SharePoint includes the following default lists as part of a SharePoint site:

• Links A Links list can hold HTML links to web pages and other resources.

• Announcements An Announcements list can be used to inform your site's users of news, special events, and project status and to provide other short clips of information.

• Contacts A Contacts list contains data about members of your team or outside contacts, including phone numbers, email addresses, and other information.

• Events An Events list is used to post date-specific information about appointments, meetings, and the like. Items in an events list can be viewed in calendar format as well, giving your users a good overview of upcoming events.

• Tasks A Tasks lists is used to track the individual items a project or team is working on.

• Issues An Issues list can be used to track a set of problems on a project.

To create a simple list (for example, an Issues list), perform the steps outlined here:

1.	From the home page of the site, click the Create link on the top bar.
2.	Under the Lists section, select the type of list you want to create. For this example, we are creating an Issues list.
3.	Type in a name and description and whether you want the list to appear on the Quick Launch bar.
4.	Click Create. SharePoint will create a list, similar to the one displayed in Figure 19.3. Figure 19.3. Creating an Issues list.

Creating the list is only half the battle. To really get full benefit from the list functionality in SharePoint, you have to customize the list to be able to capture and display the type of information you want the list to contain. For more information on this, see Lesson 20, "Creating Custom Lists and Importing Spreadsheets."