Discussion Forums - View only own discussions, but view all replies?

Question

Good day again.

Earlier, I posted about creating a discussion board-based ticketing system on SharePoint Online 2013, where only the original poster (and certain assigned personnel) can view/reply to tickets.

At present, we have configured the boards (via "List Settings" > "Advanced Settings" > "Item-Level Permissions") such that normal users can only "Read items that were created by the user". The specified personnel are then given additional "Manage Lists" and "Override List Behaviors" permissions (on top of the normal Contribute permissions that normal users have), allowing them to view/reply to any ticket.

This has worked as expected for restricting access to the original tickets; the specified personnel can view/reply to any ticket, while normal users can only view their own. However, it has also prevented normal users from viewing any replies to their tickets except their own.

As we discovered, the "Read items that were created by the user" setting cannot be separately applied to the two content types (Discussion and Message) in the discussion board - turn it on, and normal users can only see their own tickets (discussions) and replies; turn it off, and they can see all tickets and replies.

Is there any way to set the boards such that normal users are restricted to their own tickets, but can view any replies to said tickets? As before, we are mostly restricted to OOTB SharePoint Online 2013 and Sharepoint Designer 2013.

Once again, thanks in advance for your assistance.

Answer 1

I have two possible options for you to consider:

1. Using the existing list, remove the permission setting, and filter the view to Created By equals [Me]. Then, edit the web part on the page and in the Advanced or Misc section (can't remember off hand) disallow the user to switch views. This is a soft security solution, which might work for say IT but probably not for HR.

2. Create a new list, and add a multi line text field. Then, allow it to append, which will keep a log of the value entered in that multi line text field, along with the user who entered it and a time-date stamp. Use the same permission setup as in your discussion list.

Hope those ideas help.