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I am using SharePoint 2010, I have admin rights in the site of my team, but I am not the SharePoint Administrator.

I need to have something similar to a Discussion board, where a person posts an issue, maybe a doubt, or a suggestion, and that will allow my team to answer with several posts.

But that at the same time it has a "general state". Say "Resolved", "Closed", something very basic.

Is there a way to accomplish this?

So far I have a Discussion board, and I added a new field "state", but the problem is the "state" field belongs to each post in the discussion board. So if I want to see the general state in the discussions List, I have to modify the original post, and that causes to show my image and name instead of the original poster's data.

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    Try using Issue Tracking list in SharePoint, where the team can chnage the state of the issue and put their answers in the comment field.
    – Karthik Jaganathan
    Jan 15, 2014 at 13:14
  • @KarthikJaganathan, I saw the Issue Tracking list, but, the comments don't have a nice format, and it doesn't look like a discussion.
    – Dzyann
    Jan 15, 2014 at 14:06
  • Some customization might help.. Coding :)
    – Arsalan Adam Khatri
    Jan 15, 2014 at 19:05
  • @ArsalanAdamKhatri I wish I could code, but I can't my possibilities are rather limited. Maybe is there some way to create a custom list or other custom thing to accomplish this?
    – Dzyann
    Jan 15, 2014 at 19:08
  • Seems like Karthik's comment is the only way than.. A comment field provides appending functionality which can be treated as a discussion.. You can try using SharePoint Designer to make it in nice format, try editing in XSLT etc?
    – Arsalan Adam Khatri
    Jan 15, 2014 at 19:12

3 Answers 3

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A discussion board comes with two content types: Discussion and Message. Discussion is the high-level content type, Message is all the replies. If you add your "State" or "Status" field or whatever to the Discussion content type, it will only apply to the question, not the responses.

  1. Create a Site Column called State, and give it whatever values you want.
  2. Create your Discussion Board.
  3. List Settings for the discussion board and, under Content Types click Discussion.
  4. Add the State site column.

When your user creates a new question, the only item in the list with the status attached to it will be the question.

A question?

Replies only have the Body field:

An answer.

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  • I still have to update the original post, but if i change the Discussion Board Creator instead of person that did the Last Update, is about what I need. Thanks!
    – Dzyann
    Jul 23, 2015 at 20:13
  • You can get more fancy than that with an additional content type and a workflow. Maybe a content type called New Question that's for your asking user that doesn't display the State field. A workflow to flip the content type to Working Question or something, which does reveal the state field. Then maybe a workflow that sends out an email to your answering users periodically to prompt them to flip the state field, when appropriate, to closed or whatever.
    – ChrisPEditor
    Jul 23, 2015 at 20:16
  • I don't know if i quite follow. Do you mean we could add an additional type that holds the State, that way we could change it without modifying our users actual post? In our discussion board is valid for us to modify the state of our users posts, so it is part of the workflow, they don't always need to be the ones doing it.
    – Dzyann
    Jul 23, 2015 at 20:42
  • Just idle musings. You could create a "New Question" content type using Discussion as the parent and have that be the default "New Item" on the board. For New Question, State defaults to Open and is hidden (so your asker doesn't see the State field at all). Then, a workflow kicks off on item creation to switch it from New Question to the stock Discussion content type. State is now visible and workable. You could have a second workflow that runs on item creation that nags your answering users once a week to update the status of open questions.
    – ChrisPEditor
    Jul 23, 2015 at 20:46
  • Oh, I see! Yes, that is an interesting idea, in this case it is not a good fit though, because there are several states, and the user is the one that selects it. However with the approach suggested by you on your answer the board is cleaner.
    – Dzyann
    Jul 23, 2015 at 20:56
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Try using Issue Tracking list in SharePoint, where the team can change the state of the issue and put their answers in the comment field. As Arsalan Adam mentioned in his comments you can use SharePoint Designer to change the format or even you can use InfoPath forms for creating and editing items in a SharePoint list, where you can format the forms to have the required fields to be visible in your required style.

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  • This is not the ideal solution, but I will take it as accepted because it seems there is no other way. Thank you!
    – Dzyann
    Jan 16, 2014 at 12:19
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You could use the regular discussion forum, and change the title of the discussion, or a category, for the state of each issue.

Example title: "[resolved] Problem with water cooler"

Example categories: [new], [resolved], [pending]

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