Cross List Web Part

Product info:

Developer: Bamboo Solutions

Designed for: MOSS 2007, WSS 3.0, SPS 2003, WSS 2.0

The Cross List SharePoint Web Part combines and presents data associated to a SharePoint List through Lookup columns. Lookup columns allow you to use information from a column in a second list as drop-down values for the lookup column in the parent list. The Cross List Web Part uses this association to allow you to pick not just the lookup column data, but any column data from the parent list and up to two lookup lists for presentation in a single list view. You can sort the data to target relevant information for your team as well as create a printer friendly view or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet of the list for reporting and analysis. The Cross List Web Part allows you to choose just the information you need and display the consolidated data into one "joined" view.

Organizations use SharePoint today to build quick and efficient collaboration portal web sites. As the use of SharePoint grows, IT is being asked to build new applications as an alternative to the traditional database, with the ability to integrate with legacy data to provide a single point of information access. One of the main attractions of SharePoint is the ability to quickly create standard Lists to support different types of tasks. Developers that are familiar with classic database design are using "lookup" fields within lists to architect relational structured data instead of using a flat data structure. SharePoint does not provide a capability to display data from multiple joined lists, even when look up fields are used as index keys into a foreign list.

Let's say you have a Task List (Parent List A), a User Information list (Lookup List B), and a Project List (Lookup List C). Your manager has asked you to provide a quick status on all tasks including the task name, assigned user name and the user's email address, the associated project name and project status. Using the Cross List Web Part and lookup fields, you can choose the data you need from the Task List as well as any data you need from the Project List and the User Information List (see diagram below) - not just the data from the lookup columns.