Creating a Discussion Board

One of the most basic collaboration functions is the discussion board. SharePoint provides this capability with no programming required. Some site templates include discussion boards , or you can create a discussion board within a site you have already created, as shown in Figure 12.4.

Figure 12.4. Creating a Discussion Board

Users create new discussions (Figure 12.5) by clicking the New discussion link on the Discussion Board page. They respond to discussions by clicking the dropdown menu on the discussion topic. The text editor provided allows rich text, including fonts, colors, and other formatting. You can embed linked documents to a discussion entry as attachments.

Figure 12.5. Sample Discussion

To keep tabs on your discussion board, you can sign up for an alert. When you create the alert, you are prompted to choose the interval in which to receive alerts, whether instantly, daily, or weekly (Figure 12.6). You will be notified via email when new items are posted on the discussion board.

Figure 12.6. Subscribing to a Discussion

Discussions support multiple views. The user can choose the view from the left navigation bar. For example, you can view a hierarchy of the discussion or unfold it to a "flat" view.