Tip re: Modifying the Microsoft Fantastic 40 Templates for SharePoint

I could not find a lot of information out there about modifying or customizing Microsoft's Fantastic 40 application templates, so I thought I'd share some basic lessons learned:

I have a client who wants to use the IT Help Desk template from the "Fantastic 40."  The prebuilt site has everything the client needs, with one small exception - this client has several offices around the world, and they want a "location" column added to the list so that the end-user can select their office.

What I learned is that you can add the field to the list all day long, but it won't show up on the form (either the New form or the Edit form).  I tried with site columns and regular custom columns to no avail.  I couldn't add it to the form using SharePoint Designer, either; it behaved as if the data in the list and the column I wanted to add were coming from two different sources.

Thanks to "Callahan's" reponse in this discussion thread, I understood that it is possible to add a field to one of these prebuilt lists - it's all about the content type.  However, I still got stuck for a while trying to find the content type to modify - it didn't appear in the Site Content Types Gallery either at the top level of the intranet or on the IT Help Desk site itself. 

In the end, these are the steps I took to get the desired column on the form:

1. On the Service Requests list settings, in the Advanced section, I checked "Allow management of content types."
2. This revealed the Service Request content type within the list.  I was then able to click on the content type name and add my "location" site column -
3. - But not before I had to go back to the list and delete the "location" site column that I had already added.  It did not show up in the list of available site columns for the content type until I did this.
4. Following "Callahan's" advice, I moved the column up in the order, and it appears on the New form (I admit I did not test first to see if the column appeared on the New form regardless of the order).

Comments

[mike ruzcih]

Where can you modify the New Item form from. I want to remove columns from the new item form, but leave them on the service request form. In particular the resoluction date.

[sadalit]

Mike, the instructions I use for modifying the New Item form are here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101191111033.aspx

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[Business plan]

Hi,
Really nice post! Thanks for sharing such an informative article. Keep up the good work.

[sadalit]

Hi Business Plan, thanks for your comment! I need to find out what MS is doing, if anything, about the application templates in the new 2010 version.

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