Accessing Documents/Folders of Document Library in two different ways

Question

I have a SharePoint related query in which customer wants to access the documents in document library in bi-directional way.

Ex.

There is a Document Library of Marketing in which there is a folder Objectives.similarly there is a document library of every department and each has same folder.

Customer want that he could access documents/folders form quick launch menu in the normal way but there should a top menu which has items eg Objectives and upon clicking it the folder of objectives in every library should appear.

quick launch->Marketing->Objectives->Test.doc

Top Menu -> Objectives->Marketing->Test.doc

Hope the requirement is clear to all of you.

Please let me know what are the options of doing it and one more thing its a WSS site.

Regards

Danish

Ali

Answer 1

Metadata is your friend, not folders. Create a column that would hold a choice field ("Marketing" and "Objectives") so when the user uploads the document they can pick one. Then create a view where it filters based on that column.

For example if the column was called "Department" with the choices you mentioned, create a view called "Marketing" and filter on the field Department when the value equals Marketing. Then create another view called Objectives and do the same thing except filtering on the field with a value of Objectives.

When a user clicks on the marketing view (you can add this to the Quick Launch) they'll only see documnents tagged with Marketing. Same with the other values in your choice field. If you want to use multiple values and let the user choose multiple items from the list then you'll have to create the filter as "FieldName contains choice value" and add as many options as you want.

I wrote up a blog post about using metadata instead of folders here: http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2006/01/03/434454.aspx

It might be useful. I think I'll write one one now on doing something more visual with examples.