Re: RFI - Moving files between folders in doc libraries - any improvements in this behavior?
- From: "Hollis D. Paul" <Hollis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 10:39:13 PST
In article <1131481894.629544.179030@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mark
Vogt wrote:
> The physical world still uses cabinets (folders), drawers (subfolders)
> and folders (subfolders) to organize content. Period.
> The Windows OS (and ALL other OSes for that matter) still uses the
> folder/subfolder metaphor as well. Period.
>
Maybe you ought to get out of your comfy chair at your desk and go visit
the main library in your city, or the research library at a major
university. You will find big rooms, their walls lined with shelves and
volumes of books. On the main floor, of a city library, will probably
current events gallery, in which the magazines and newspapers are
shelved, and reference materials. It is a flat filing system, that is
organized by the Dewey Decimal system view. Another gallery on the main
floor will be for fiction, again, a flat filing system organized by
Dewey Decimal view. I could go on, all the way up to the 7th floor.
Go to your Dentists's office and look in their records room. Volume
after volume of patients records with brightly colored tags and numbers
on the folded edge (ignore the fact that these are really vanilla
folders). Again it is a flat file system, organized by a numbering
system.
People are very familiar with these systems and know how to use them
will. In fact, it is the constraints of the computer displays that have
forced computer systems to use folders and consultants to come to
believe that the folder metaphor is the bee's knees of life. Not so.
In terms of web sites, SharePoint is a new creation. In prior IIS
sites, users did not have document libraries into which they can upload
their files. So a document library can be a new metaphor, and the users
will be able to adapt, as long as they don't have reactionary computer
geeks and consultants wailing at them that there are no subfolders.
Your users elected to use SharePoint because they could get this
wonderful facility without the usual development costs of putting up an
equivalent site in dot Net technology, all with just a part-time,
semi-proficient Access programmer, who is being phased out anyway. You
are doing them no service by emphasizing what SharePoint can't do. And
you can have your cake and eat it too--just name your views like
subfolders, and the users will see a list of subfolders on the left, and
contents of the directory on the right. Don't tell them it is really a
flat file, and they will use it like the subfolders you miss so much.
However, if this is a management driven request, then, by all means,
stick it to them, and tell them it will take some intricate coding to
get true sub-folder organization and display, or they need an expensive
third-party application. It is even more satisfying to bill managers
who want to manage URLs within a SharePoint Portal, and charge them for
trying to remove the bucket portions of URLs.
Hollis D. Paul [MVP - Outlook]
Hollis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mukilteo, WA USA
.
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