Is there a way to show certain discussion board items at top all the time inside the "Recent" view

Question

I am working on a team site inside our on-premises farm 2013. and i have add a new "Discussion Board" list, then i edit the home page, and i add a new App part which represent the new "Discussion Board" list. and i chose to show the "Recent" view, as follow:-

now seems the Recent view will sort the items based on their last modified date, as follow:-

1. if a discussion item got a new reply, it will be shown first.
2. or if a new discussion item has been created it will also be shown first.

But our customer asked us if there is a way to force some items to always be shown on Top inside the Recent view.. as these announcements are important announcements, and they want them to always appear on top.. So not sure what are the possible appraochies to achieve this? now one possible appraoch is to create a new Discussion board list and add another app part which contain the important announcement items.. but my question is how i can do this within the same announcement list?

Answer 1

There is a way but it's take some tinkering and might break something related to the list so this is without any warranties.

Create a new Discussion Board and create a new column of the type Yes/No and call it something like Sticky/Important. Set the default value to No.

Open the site where the Discussion Board list exist in SharePoint Designer and navigate to Lists and Libraries and find the Discussion list that you created and select Add new view. Call it something like Admin or anything that you like. Do not set it as default view.

Now back in SharePoint, select the view you created and add the column you added in the first step and add it to the view and then add the column Edit (link to edit item). Scroll down to the Style section and choose Basic Table. This view is where you will be able to change the name for the discussion or make it sticky or not.

Save the view and then go back to SharePoint Designer, and look at the views, the default view for your discussion board should be called Subject. Click on the view and select to edit in Advanced Mode.

On line 33, there should be the listview GUID and some properties. Find the property called ReadOnly and change the value from FALSE to TRUE. Save the update in SPD and head back to SharePoint. Now you should be able to edit the view Subject, here you will change the sort order to first order by your column from the first step (Sticky) and select to Show the items in descending order.

Save the change to the view and create some discussions as a test. Check the Sticky checkbox for one of the discussions and they should now appear on top.

This is my result. To the left is my default view on the discussion board, and the right is the custom view (Admin) that i created where you can see the "Sticky" discussion where created before several newer discussions.

But as i said, this is pure tinkering and might break, so test it thoroughly before you actually decide to implement it to your customer.