Library views in Webpart

Question

Is there any way to create a webpart that would display library Views as a links and the views would be 'current user' views ?

Why I want to do this? The reason why is that I'm creating Library for like 300+ users from 15 ~20 departments. Departments already have their own libraries storing lots of documents in many folders but this is a problem for top management who wants to easy and quickly review the same type of documents across dept's in one place.

On the other hand users already used to folders and want this functionality. Problem is that I can't allow users to create folders in new library because 300+ people each creating folders of their own will soon be a problem and will make content not manageable.

What I was thinking is to allow users creating their own views and create web part with 'current user' views and put it on another page acting like page with folders. I mean it would have the same functionality as folders because users could have a list of views (like list of folders) and after click on the view link, content would appear (exactly the same way as after click on folder link). In the same time I could have all files in the same library and create some views for top management. Not sure if my approach is correct but this is how I see it.

What you think guys, what are your experiences with Libraries and such problems, how do you approach it, maybe there are different ways to solve my problem ?

Note: I'm using Sharepoint 2007 and I don't have privileges to add any custom webpart to the server. I'm only site admin allow also to use Designer 2007.

Thanks

Evo

Answer 1

Since you don't have access to do any custom server-side code, you are pretty much left with JavaScript. SharePoint has a Views.asmx web service that you can use to retrieve the data you need (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/views%28v=office.12%29.aspx). With the available SharePoint web services you can use JavaScript (and jQuery to make it easier) to call those services and display the data how you need to.

You can use this blog post as a reference on how to call SharePoint web services: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2009/04/09/calling-the-sharepoint-web-services-with-jquery.aspx. The MSDN article I referenced previously will give you specifics on the Views.asmx web service itself.