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September 12, 2008

My wishlist for the next version of SharePoint (SharePoint 2009?)

Although there's no official news about the next release of SharePoint and Office 14, I'm looking forward to an improved feature set which hopefully will include some (if not all) of the items on my wishlist, shown below. This wishlist has been compiled from my own work with MOSS 2007 and what I've heard from clients over the past two years. I'll be updating it periodically.

Category

Description

 

Announcements List

Allow ability for recurring announcements.

 

Announcements List

Let me delete the Expired field w/out having to delete it from the content type!

 

Anonymous Submission

Anonymous list entry submission – user is authenticated, but login information is hidden from all, or there is the option to hide it.

 

Change Tracking

Allow ability to see who modified a view.

 

Columns / Fields

Allow conditional data on forms, i.e. if I choose a value from a drop-down menu in one field, display a filtered view of items in another.

 

Columns / Fields

Allow security trimming at the column level.

 

Columns / Fields

Allow a "label" type field in lists, for entering descriptive text, or a line separator, that cannot be changed. Or allow a spacer field that puts a section line between list items in a form.

 

Columns/Fields

Put descriptions below the field name rather than below the actual field (or let the end user choose where the description appears!

 

Columns/Fields

Allow ability to use "Today" in a calculated field, and provide other functions like Current Month. (Translation: solve that This Month's Birthdays issue once and for all!)

 

Columns/Fields

Allow filtering by date fields in Events! (Translation: don't make me have to create a calculated field for Start Date and End Date on every single events list that I want to filter!)

 

Columns/Fields

Allow ability to add free-entry list items to the choice list – i.e., when a user enters their own item in the "Other" field, it writes back to the list of choices so that this appears for other users.

 

Content Query Web Part

Solve the problem where announcements won't display in this web part if they do not contain an expiration date.

 

Content Query Web Part

Provide more than 3 filter fields! Why is this not unlimited like the list view filter?

 

Custom forms

Update custom forms dynamically when you change a field that is referenced on the form.

 

Document Libraries

Allow "only their own" read/edit permissions for documents.

 

Document Management / Metadata

Make it so that clicking "Cancel" while uploading (on the document properties page) actually cancels the upload.

 

Document Management / Metadata

Allow the ability to enter metadata on multiple-document upload.

 

Excel Services

Provide 3-D graphics for charts.

 

List Views

Allow permissions on views – so that views can be restricted to certain users or groups.

 

List Views

Allow a description field on views to describe what they are for, why they were created, etc.

 

Manage Content & Structure

Put a "Home" link on Manage Content and Structure!

 

Manage Content & Structure

Security-trim the functions like "Move" that end-users aren't allowed to perform (currently they try & receive an error message).

 

Navigation

Better visibility across site collections – include a dynamically-built & security-trimmed site map of site collections within the web app.

 

Picture library

Allow ability to Edit in Datasheet, plus get rid of the weird behavior w/r/t views

 

Ratings

Allow ability for end users to rate documents, list items, and pages.

 

Reusable Content

Provide a page layout that includes the Page Content control at the BOTTOM of the page. Companies want their standard message in the "footer," not at the top of the page!

 

RSS

Fix it! So that it works with internal SharePoint lists!

 

Search

Forge the relationship with Adobe already, so that the PDF ifilter is out-of-box!

 

Search

Allow refinement of search results.

 

Search

Allow partial word search.

 

Security/Permissions

Allow ability to report on rights for an individual or group across the entire portal.

 

Security/Permissions

Don't drop me into Members when I click People and Groups! It's not intuitive to the end-user. Show me the groups.aspx page by default (which you get when you click the More link.)

 

Security/Permissions

Allow the Site Collection Administrator to see newly-uploaded-and-still-checked-out documents that have been uploaded by any member of the site.

 

Security/Permissions

Provide better integration between AD and SP – for example, automated removal of users from SP when terminated from AD.

 

SharePoint Designer

SP designer needs collapsible sections like Visual Studio.

 

Site Columns

Provide a way to tell when a site column is in use in a list or library.

 

Site logo

Make the site logo linkable to home page or other desired URL – put this right in the GUI where the logo is referenced (and don't make us have to modify the master page to accomplish this).

 

Templates

Allow permissions on site templates and list templates – so that templates (custom or OOB) can be restricted to certain users or groups.

 

Templates

Build a template identifier into every list, site, column, etc. – what kind of X is it? (and not just in description field so it can be overwritten).

 

Web Parts

The site owner web part should pull site owner / creator automatically.

 

Web parts

Allow option to get rid of header row on list/library web parts (the gray row that displays column names).

 

XML Mapping

Excel document properties should be able to be accessed within the file the way they can in a Word document.

 

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Comments

Yes, yes, yes! I'll vote for all of them!

You've got a few SharePoint war wounds there! I like, be interesting to see what others come up with also.

A lot of these are things we have to work around to get workable solutions, what about things that we'd like to see that aren't even close to being coplete like Records Management/Wikis/Blogs to match other Vendor products.

Wow, a very long list of SharePoint features and mods in 2009.

Most of the items listed can be done with tweaks to SharePoint. Also, there are so many vendors that have powerful features to address it and I don't think Microsoft would want them to shut down. Instead, the next SharePoint 2009 or SharePoint 2010 would have new features in it.

good info,

i would also like to fine grain permissions on views as well. Currently you can only do it on the say document library level. Would be awesome to do it on the view level within something.

http://www.wiinjamod.com

very nice thoughts, very essential in sharepoint.

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