General List management:
- SharePoint lists are basically just Database Tables (or excel worksheets). You have control over how many columns exist, and what their types are.
- SharePoint columns are generally set to these core types: 1 line of text, multiple lines of text (w/ or wo/ rich formatting), numerical, dates, choices, user/group assignment, lookup
- SharePoint choice columns are flat choice lists, but a hierarchy can be simulated by having choices such as: Food, Food:Groceries, Food:Restaurant, Food:CoffeeShop. That would allow you to choose "Food" as the parent node OR "Food:CoffeeShop" if you wanted to choose the child node. Maintaining the values in a choice column requires hard-core list maintenance.
- SharePoint choice columns may allow "Fill-in" choices if desired where the user is given a chance to choose a value from the drop down selector, OR type in their own value. The fill-in choice is NOT automatically added to the choice list for general use (the user would have to type the exact same value each time they wanted to use it).
- SharePoint list attachments and folders can be enabled or disabled on any list. List attachments let you attach files to individual list items.
- SharePoint list views can present vastly different presentations based on the same underlying items stored in the list. One view is the default for the list, others may be created as necessary. All views must be configured with: what columns to display; what order to display the columns; how to sort/group/filter the items; other presentation and content choices. This is a huge benefit as it typically allow designs utilizing one underlying list for many purposes rather than requiring the difficult management of many seperate lists.
- SharePoint list web parts are used to put lists on a web part page. Each list web part could present a different view of the same underlying list. This is a huge benefit for presenting the user with many different views and rollups of one list on a single page.
Advanced List management:
- SharePoint lookup columns are like choice columns, but refer to another SharePoint list for values instead. Maintaining the values in a lookup column merely requires adding an entry to the referenced list. The referenced list could be ANY type of list: Custom List, Tasks, Contacts, Calendar, Document Library, …
- SharePoint Site Columns and Content Types allow list maintainers to define a set of fields that need to be entered and managed together in a list that supports several Content Types. For example, we could define 5 columns for a "design tool" Content Type and 8 columns for a "runtime tool" Content Type. When someone adds/edits/views a "design tool" item, the system will display the 5 columns defined for it. When manipulating a "runtime tool" item, it will use the associated 8 columns. This approach works best when there are overlapping sets of column definitions, otherwise if there were no commonality, they might as well just be separate lists.
- SharePoint list permissions can be set to allow/restrict access to the list as a whole.
- SharePoint list item permissions can be set to allow granular permissions per item. This must be maintained manually per item (high burdon).
- SharePoint list item permissions can be set to allow: Read access to everyone, or just a user's own items; Edit access to all, none, or just a user's own items.
- SharePoint list versioning and approval handling can be enabled or disabled on any list.
- SharePoint workflows are possible, but are pretty advanced.