SharePoint 2010 for Project Management, 2nd Edition

Discussion Boards

SharePoint provides discussion board capability (Figure 5-22) to enable asynchronous or offline communications (where the communication doesn’t happen in real time). This is similar to online message boards you may have seen on the Web. It is a very simple discussion board tool compared with other web-based discussion boards, but it provides threaded discussion capabilities, and participants can reply to any message in the discussion.

Figure 5-22. A SharePoint discussion board

Dux Quax: Getting Feedback with a Discussion Board

In a PMIS, a discussion board can be used for getting detailed feedback or comments. For example, after creating the project charter in Microsoft Word and storing it in a document library, I typically create a discussion called “What do you think of the project charter?”

Key resources can review the project charter and provide their feedback and comments about the document. Before I discovered discussion boards, I relied heavily on email, which is not the most efficient method.

Use the following steps to create a SharePoint discussion board:

1. From Site Actions, select View All Site Content.

2. Click Create.

3. Select Discussion Board, and click More Options.

4. Enter the Name and Description of the discussion board.

5. Specify whether you want a discussion board link to appear in the Quick Launch.

6. Click Create.