For those of you trying to get a better handle on organizing your department site, one challenge can be storing and accessing documents spread across the Portal. While SharePoint search works well for locating files across various sites and libraries, it would be nice to find a quicker way to see more files directly from your department site.
That's exactly where the Content Query Web Part comes in.
I'll use this blog to explain a simple scenario that should help you better understand the content query web part.
Let's say company policy with your new SharePoint Portal is to store all company resumes in one document library with the HR department instead of with each individual department. This makes sense, but you would really like to have access to all the engineering resumes directly from where you keep all your engineering documents, the engineering department site.
So what's one way you can do this? First we would take a look at how HR has set up their document library. Luckily, HR has set up their document library to use a Resumes content type. This content type also uses site columns that store key information such as Company Department, and Job Category. As HR uploads each new resume into SharePoint, they are making sure to add the Company Department and Job Category Meta Data to keep the resumes organized.
We're going to assume your department has permission to view resumes in this library and you decide to click over and take a look. Here's an example of how HR's document library might look using the Meta Data to help organize the documents:
This Meta Data not only helps HR organize their document library, it makes it much easier for you when you're setting up your Content Query.
Now that we've established how their library looks, we'll talk about setting up the content query on your Engineering Department's site.
First you will need to decide where it will go. Here I've added the content query web part to the top right hand side of the screen.
Using Modify Shared Web Part, I've also configured it to show the information from the correct document library by browsing to where HR stores resumes.
If you are familiar with how SharePoint let's you control a view on a document library using filtering and grouping, this is going to look very familiar to you. In this case I have configured the web part to filter out resumes and display those with a Company Department of Engineering.
I've also grouped them by Job Category.
The web part now displays all the engineering resumes from HR's library. New resumes will be displayed as added. It also is still enforcing the security on the original location. So if someone from the engineering department hasn't been given access to view resumes, they will not appear.
