Introduction to SharePoint Lists

With Access 2007 you are now able to interact with SharePoint functionality; you can link, import, and export data to and from Office SharePoint Server 2007. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and brings together several products into one platform, including Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. This section will focus only on SharePoint functionality, specifically working with lists.

SharePoint lists are collections of items that are grouped together in a logical fashion. These items are then available to other SharePoint users to view. You can also create new lists based on an existing list type. The following are the different types of lists that can be created:

• Announcements – Used to broadcast short pieces of information to the rest of the SharePoint site users and can include an expiration date when the announcement will cease to be displayed.

• Contacts – A list of people and typical contact information including name, e-mail address, various phone numbers, address, and other miscellaneous information.

• Events – Used to capture specific point-in-time occurrences like meetings and deadlines. Information that can be captured with an event includes beginning date and time, ending date and time, descriptive information, and recurrence settings.

• Issues – Used to manage problems and issues. Information that can be captured with an issue includes name, to whom the issue is assigned, priority, status, and other miscellaneous information.

• Links – Used to capture links to network, intranet, and Internet resources.

• Tasks – Used to manage work assignments. Information that can be captured with an issue includes name, to whom the task is assigned, priority, status, and other miscellaneous information.

  In addition to the built-in types, you can create custom lists. When creating custom lists you may use several different data types. The follow table is a list of the SharePoint data types and the corresponding Access data type.