Well, I guess these are trends of the modern world and social media, but some of its elements made it to SharePoint lists and libraries. If you work with Date type columns a lot, you probably notice the different styles of date format we have as options. In this article, I would like to explain the two types and how to change them if necessary.

Standard Date Type

The standard date type displays the dates in the form we are used to seeing: Date/Month/Year (or Month/Date/Year depending on the region you leave in).

Friendly Date Type

There is another style available now in SharePoint called Friendly. It displays the dates you often see on social media: yesterday, tomorrow, etc.

How to change data formats in SharePoint lists and libraries

The behavior and default display of date fields depend on the type of Date column you have. There is also a way to change it. The same functionality is available on lists and libraries.

System Columns

For system date columns (i.e., Modified, Created), it defaults to Friendly date type.

To change the format from Friendly to Standard, you must go behind the scenes.

1. From the document library, click Gear Icon > Library Settings
2. Click More library settings
3. Click on the Modified or Created column
4. Change the Radio button to Standard and click OK
5. Your system columns will now display the Standard date and time in the document library

Custom Columns

When you create custom date type columns, they default to Standard format. However, you can change the type to Friendly right when you create a column.

1. Click Add column > Date and time
2. Give your Date column a name. You will notice it defaults to Standard.
3. This is what it looks like with the Standard date type
4. To change the format from one type to another, you can just use the modern interface to do so
5. And this is what a custom column looks like with the Friendly date type

The post Friendly vs. Standard Date format in SharePoint lists and libraries appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

One of the capabilities we recently got in Project for the Web is the ability to have custom fields within a project schedule. So today I want to explain how to create custom fields in Project for the Web.

What is Project for the Web?

Project for the Web is a Microsoft application available within Microsoft 365 that allows organizations to manage projects. It fills the gap between Planner, which is more of an informal task management application, and Microsoft Project, which is a desktop project management application that is sophisticated in terms of capabilities but also a bit confusing and not unintuitive to regular users. I actually compared the various task management options within Microsoft 365 in this article, so check it out.

Example of a schedule in Project for the Web

Built-in fields in Project for the Web

Project for the Web already contains some built-in fields (columns) that you can add/display on any project. Essentially, these are core columns/fields that are either necessary for the Project for the Web to work/function or allow for some additional capabilities in terms of project tracking.

Some built-in fields include Start, Finish, Duration, % completed, Assigned to, and a few others.

When you create a new project, some fields are displayed by default in a Grid, and you can always show/hide others by clicking on the + Add column.

How to create custom fields in Projects for the Web

Just like we can create custom metadata in SharePoint lists and libraries, we can also create custom columns in Project for the Web Task schedules. In Project for the Web, we call these custom metadata fields. Here is how to create a new custom field.

1. Click the Add column button, then + New Field
2. On the next screen, choose the type of column you want to create and its name
3. As of the writing of this post, only certain types of columns are supported (shown below)
4. For this article, I would like to add a Cost column (number field), to track the cost of each task on my schedule. The roll-up question is whether or not the numbers for the subtasks will be added together (rolled up/summed up) on the parent tasks.
5. In my case, I will choose to sum up all the subtask costs (roll-up). You may select other math functions as well (i.e., show the min or max, or an average of the task numbers).
6. Click Create to create the field
7. The custom field will now appear in the schedule
8. By the way, in case you chose roll-up, this is what it looks like. In my case, I chose Roll up Sum of all subtasks, so it totals up the numbers (costs in my case) for the parent task.

How to fill in information for the custom fields in Project for the Web

If you want to fill out the custom fields with specific task information, you do so by filling it out like any other field on a task. You have two options:

• Option 1: Complete the information by filling out a field in the Grid mode (like you do in Excel)
• Option 2: Click in the Task Details Panel and complete the information there

The post How to create custom fields in Project for the Web appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

When you create a Managed Metadata column, you have to point the column to a term set within a Term Store. As I documented in one of my previous posts, you can either create term sets globally, within the tenant-wide term store or locally at the site level. Each option has its pros and cons, so today, I want to compare the two.

Tenant-Level Term Sets

Tenant-Level Term Sets are created within the Term Store that is accessible via the SharePoint Admin Center. It can also be accessed by the site owners as we; however, for site owners to be able to adjust the values within the terms sets or create new terms sets, they need to be granted Manager or Contributor roles within the Term Store. Below I would like to list the advantages and disadvantages of this option.

Advantages

• By design can be accessed and seen by all the SharePoint sites within a tenant

Disadvantages

• For the site owners to create new terms sets, they need to be set up as group managers or contributors (by the SharePoint Administrator or other Group Managers of the term group)
• Requires SharePoint Admin Role to be set up/configured

Site-Levet Term Sets

As described in a previous post of mine, site owners can also create site-level terms sets as well. This though, becomes the only option if they can’t get access to the SharePoint Admin Center (which is a headache in larger organizations).

Advantages

• The only option for site owners to use when they can’t access their company’s SharePoint Admin Center
• Pretty straightforward to use

Disadvantages

• By design, term sets created at the site level are not visible to other sites within a tenant. For other sites to see the term sets, they need to be shared with other sites (manually). I described the mechanism here.

The post Site-Level vs. Tenant-level Term Sets appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

Today I want to describe a feature in modern SharePoint that allows you to connect two lists and libraries and dynamically filter them based on the value selected from one of the lists or libraries. I know this all sounds a bit confusing, so let Dr. Zelfond explain this.

Use Case

Perhaps it first makes sense to explain what I am talking about. Say you have two lists. One is a list of clients with the corresponding client information (client name, address, status, etc.).

Another list is a list of contacts for each client (client name, first and last name of contact, email address, and phone number).

I want to be able to view both lists at once on a SharePoint page, but the way I want this to work, I want to select a client name from the Clients list, and I want the second list to automatically filter the contacts based on client name selected from the first one. Thanks to the dynamic filtering option we now got in SharePoint Online, we can do this. Let me explain.

How to connect and dynamically filter lists and libraries in SharePoint Online

1. Edit the Page and add both lists to the page, side-by-side
2. Once added, it should look like this
3. Edit the page again, and select the list you want to be filtered based on the choice made in another list (in my case, Contacts). Click the pencil icon.
4. Next, enable the Dynamic filtering toggle. You will see several drop-downs appearing underneath. In the first drop-down, choose the column in the list you want automatically filtered. In my case, I want my Contacts list to be filtered by Company Name. Next, choose the list or library where you will filter the information. In my case, it is a Clients list. Finally, select a column that you will filter in that second list. In my case, it is Client Name. So essentially, the column in the first drop-down and the column in the third drop-down have to match in terms of the information they contain (Company Name = Client Name). Click Apply.
5. Republish the page

How dynamic filtering works

Now that we connected two lists via dynamic filtering let’s see how it works. Click on any row from List 1, and you will notice that List 2 is filtered based on the selection made.

Use Cases for using dynamic filtering

Dynamically connect a list to a list

You can quickly build a quick CRM within SharePoint, by connecting a list of clients with a list of contacts (just as I described above) and even deals/opportunities all presented on the same page.

Dynamically connect a list to a library

You can maintain a list of clients and then have a document library with, say, contracts, all tagged against a given client name, and then have those contracts filtered automatically based on a client selected from the list.

Notes

• You can dynamically connect two lists or two libraries or a list and a library
• The column headings do not need to match. For example, I can have a Client Name heading in list/library 1 and a Customer Name in list/library 2. The main thing is that the choices/information in those columns must match!
• Related to the above, the text/choices need to match 100% for this work. For example, if in list 1 you spelled out ABC Inc. and in list 2 you called the same company ABC, Inc. (with a coma), those do not match, and dynamic filtering won’t pick it up.

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