I am working on a new SharePoint project, where we need to define a site template that has 4 issue lists. And end users will be creating sub sites based on the template.
Now the problem I am facing is on how I will be managing the drop-down fields' choices, as I will have 2 types of dropdown fields:-
- “Shared dropdown”, such as Issue Status, Category. Where all lists created through the template will be having the same choices, for example status will be ; open, closed, pending & category will be internal, external, etc on all the lists. where these dropdowns will be managed by the site collection admin at the site collection level.
- The other type of dropdown are “lists Specific” will be list specific. Such as “Subsite Location” where each sub-site’s list will have unique choices. And those dropdown will be managed by the sub site admin at the list level.
Now I am not sure how I should be creating these 2 types of dropdowns. I tried the following 2 approaches, but each one have some drawbacks:-
1) To define the entire drop down fields either shared or list-specifc at the site collection level, and add them to a new content type that have the built-in Issue as it parent. But by doing so, will allow sub site admin to modify the dropdown lists on the list level even for the shared dropdown lists, and doing a site collection modification will override any list-level customization.
2) Second approach, for all the “List Specific” drop down to define the drop down as a list column and not as a site column. In this way all the new lists created through the template will have unique choices and cannot be override by a site collection modification. But still in this way sub site admin can modify both drop down lists at the list level.
So I cannot find a way to manage this? I mean SharePoint will always treat all drop down lists in the same way, where sub sites admin can modify all the dropdown lists at the list level,, while I only want them to be able to do so for specific dropdown fields?
Can anyone advice on this, i mean should i worry too much about this, or i can have all the fields as site columns and inform sub site admins that they should only modify certain fields, after that i need to inform site collection admin to not modify any list-specifc fields at the site collection level to prevent them from overriding any list specific modification ?
Thanks