Saturday, May 12, 2012

Difference between Master Pages, Page Layouts and Content Type

Master Pages are used by all pages in the site and used specify the common elements that all pages in the site should have. The Master Page is nothing but a text file with .master extension. The key is Master Pages is used across all the pages in the site. In SharePoint every page need to have Master Page. By default SharePoint specify default.master as the Master Page. So whether you like it or not a page in SharePoint will have a Master page (even if you do not specify one).

The Page Layout is specifically used in the SharePoint Publishing Site. A page layout is a file with aspx extension. A page layout also will be associated with a master page and inherits elements from Master Page. A SharePoint publishing site will have Pages document library where the items contain the content of the page. Each page will have a content type and columns in the content type will be used to create the content of the page. The item in the pages document library will be associated with a content type (for contents) and page layout(to specify the layout).

Hope the above makes things clear.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

SharePoint Audience Targeting - In simple words

Sharepoint list items or documents can be made to appear(also known as targeting) only to specific people or group. The specific people or group are known as Audiences.

Audience targeting does not change the permission of the list item or documents. It only affects whether it is visible to a group of users or not.

Audience targeting can be used in the following three cases.
1.list items or document in SharePoint List or Document library
2.Web Parts
3.Navigation Links.

You start by selecting 'Enable Audience Targeting' in the Audience Targeting Settings of a list.After that when you create new item or edit an existing item a people picker field (titled 'Target Audiences') will appear and any user with Author access can specify Target Audience.

The target audience can be specified in a web part under 'Advanced' configuration options. A people picker field is available to select the users.