Jennifer Ann Mason

In a few of my classes lately, we have gone through an example of creating a simple Task Dashboard. I wanted to do a quick blog so my students would have something to reference if they needed it. This is a pretty basic example of using all OOTB (out of the box) features and combining them to quickly build a solution.

Scenario:

• We want to provide a way for users to easily see a summary of the current project tasks.
  
• We want them to be able to see the following information:
  
  • Open Tasks Assigned to Them
    
  • Overdue Tasks
    
  • Tasks Due This Week
    
  • Task Calendar
    
  • Tasks Assigned to Others
    

Solution:

To build this solution we will be using several different tools available in SharePoint, all included in the list below:

• Task List
  
• Task List Views
  
  • We will create views for each of the different ways we want to see the data displayed on our dashboard.
    
• Web Part Page
  
• List View Web Parts
  
• Custom Navigation
  

The first thing we will do is create our task lists and then configure all the views that we need. To create the list, go to View All Site Content, Create and then select the Task list.

Next, we will need to configure our custom views. To do this, we can select the view drop down and select to create new views.

Now, we just need to give our view a name and set the specific criteria.

Below is a table that describes the configuration for the different views we are creating for this example:

Now that we have the views created, we will create the web part page. We are creating this web part page to give us some more real estate to display the data. We could in theory add the web parts to the home page; however we want to be careful not to get our home page too cluttered. Since we don’t want to clutter the home page, the web part page is a good alternative. Once we have the page created, we will simply add it is a tab to our home site so users can easily access it. To create the web part page go to view all site content and then create (same steps that we used to create the task list). This time on the selection page we will choose to create a web part page.

On the creation page you will need to give the page a name, select a layout and also select the library that will be used to store the list. Every web part page you create must be stored in a document library. If you are going to create many pages, or if you think having the page in an existing library would be confusing, you could create a library dedicated to storing only web part pages.

Now that we have the page created, we can simply add our web parts to the page and select the view that we want to be displayed in each of the web parts. We can also modify the Title Bar properties to change the page title, image and add a caption.

Here are the steps that would need to be repeated for each web part you add to the page:

1. Add the Web Part
   
2. Modify the Properties to change the View and the Web Part Title
   

Here is a screenshot of the finished Dashboard page.

And here is the page in edit view to show how the web parts have been arranged on the page.

As a final last step, we are going to add a link to this page to the global navigation for the site. To access the settings, go to the site settings page and then select the navigation link. We are working with a site that has publishing enabled, so our link is for navigation. If you don’t have publishing enabled you will want to use the Top Link Bar link.

Once this step has been completed, you will be able to easily access the Task Dashboard using the global navigation.