SharePoint: What is the best way to create a discussion board/wiki mashup where some replies are not visible to everyone?
July 26, 2011 5:39 PM
SharePoint: What is the best way to create a discussion board/wiki mashup where some replies are not visible to everyone?
I have been asked to create a wiki-style discussion board that works as follows: salespeople and managers can share information and discuss accounts by posting info to the board. Once an account is assigned to a manager because it is a "problem account", salespeople would no longer be able to see any discussion items posted by managers on that particular account (they would only be visible to other managers), but salespeople can continue to discuss the account in that thread and see items posted by other sales people on that account. I've tried using a discussion board list in SP2007, but wasn't able to change permissions to a thread posting using a workflow. A wiki doesn't seem like it would work, either. This doesn't seem like it would be difficult to do in SharePoint, but I've looked at this for so long now that I have tunnel vision. Does anyone have any better ideas on how I can achieve this in SharePoint? We have a SharePoint 2007 production environment, and a SharePoint 2010 development environment that I can test in as well, if SP2010 would be the better way to go.
I have been asked to create a wiki-style discussion board that works as follows: salespeople and managers can share information and discuss accounts by posting info to the board. Once an account is assigned to a manager because it is a "problem account", salespeople would no longer be able to see any discussion items posted by managers on that particular account (they would only be visible to other managers), but salespeople can continue to discuss the account in that thread and see items posted by other sales people on that account. I've tried using a discussion board list in SP2007, but wasn't able to change permissions to a thread posting using a workflow. A wiki doesn't seem like it would work, either. This doesn't seem like it would be difficult to do in SharePoint, but I've looked at this for so long now that I have tunnel vision. Does anyone have any better ideas on how I can achieve this in SharePoint? We have a SharePoint 2007 production environment, and a SharePoint 2010 development environment that I can test in as well, if SP2010 would be the better way to go.
Views wouldn't work because they aren't a security mechanism. That wouldn't keep a sales person from switching to the manager view.
As for setting permissions of list items from the client, there isn't a good way to do that. There are people who have written Designer Activities that you can add to your environment that would let you create your workflow.
In SharePoint 2010, you might look at how capable the client object model is for what you wish to do (although this presumes your comfortable with client side Javascript).
Lastly, in either 2007 or 2010, you could use SharePoint lists for the data (topics, salesreplies, managerreplies) each with their own distinct permissions and then build a UI using a framework like jQuery and the SharePoint web services. This way you get full control over what is happening. Because of the permissions on the lists, users would never see a manager reply and only manager could add a manager reply to the system.
posted by mmascolino at 10:17 PM on July 26, 2011
As for setting permissions of list items from the client, there isn't a good way to do that. There are people who have written Designer Activities that you can add to your environment that would let you create your workflow.
In SharePoint 2010, you might look at how capable the client object model is for what you wish to do (although this presumes your comfortable with client side Javascript).
Lastly, in either 2007 or 2010, you could use SharePoint lists for the data (topics, salesreplies, managerreplies) each with their own distinct permissions and then build a UI using a framework like jQuery and the SharePoint web services. This way you get full control over what is happening. Because of the permissions on the lists, users would never see a manager reply and only manager could add a manager reply to the system.
posted by mmascolino at 10:17 PM on July 26, 2011
I'm sure you can...
...prevent a user from changing views
posted by the noob at 12:25 AM on July 27, 2011
...prevent a user from changing views
posted by the noob at 12:25 AM on July 27, 2011
But if you know the name of the view, you can type it in and get the other view.
Also, if the RPC interfaces to SharePoint are enabled then anyone with site access + Excel or Access or SharePoint Designer or web service programming knowledge can grab all the items from the list.
posted by mmascolino at 12:13 PM on July 27, 2011
Also, if the RPC interfaces to SharePoint are enabled then anyone with site access + Excel or Access or SharePoint Designer or web service programming knowledge can grab all the items from the list.
posted by mmascolino at 12:13 PM on July 27, 2011
Thank you both for your suggestions. I'm thinking the custom list solution is what we'll have to do.
posted by momzilla at 2:34 PM on August 10, 2011
posted by momzilla at 2:34 PM on August 10, 2011
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Have a value in the list - isProblemAccount or some such, if that is set to true then that entry isn't visible to in the sales people's view of the list.
posted by the noob at 8:46 PM on July 26, 2011