Web sites based on SharePoint™ Team Services from Microsoft are easy to create and provide great features for letting a team share information and files. You can add pages and customize the site using just a Web browser, but Microsoft FrontPage® 2002 gives you even more powerful options for customizing SharePoint team Web sites.

About customizing your SharePoint team Web site

Working with a SharePoint team Web site is a little different from working with Web sites created with FrontPage. You do not work on the site locally and then publish it to the Web server when it's done. With SharePoint Team Services, you create the team Web site first on the server, and then edit the content there. For more information on creating a SharePoint team Web site, see About Creating Web Sites .

Once the site is set up on the server, you can add content or change much of the content just as you would with a FrontPage Web site. For example, if you want to add a team logo to the home page, you simply delete the existing graphic and insert your own. You can change the cascading style sheet the site uses, or apply a theme. You can also add your own pages to the site, and create links to them in the top link bar and the Quick Launch bar. (If you add an interactive list, such as a document library, SharePoint Team Services automatically adds a link to the top link bar and quick launch bar for you.) For more information on basic Web customization, see FrontPage Help.

However, there is some content on the team Web site that you cannot edit directly. Information for interactive lists like announcements, events, surveys, and document libraries is maintained in the SharePoint Team Services database. This content is easy to distinguish from other site content, as it is set off with double angle brackets "<<Content>>".

In the figure below, #1 shows an area at the top of a page where you can edit the text directly. The area shown in #2 is maintained by SharePoint Team Services and so can't be edited.

The database information cannot be edited directly on the Web pages. You can, however, specify which database information about a list is displayed on the team Web site. For example, by default the announcements page displays the title of each announcement and the date it was last modified. By editing the list properties in FrontPage, you can also make the list display the body of the announcement text, the name of the team member who created the entry, and the date that the announcement expires. You can choose to hide or display any of the information fields that are set up for a list. There are other properties that you can customize as well. For any list you can specify:

• The type of list that it is
• Which fields are displayed
• The sorting order for list information
• Any filters you want applied
• The column layout
• The type of toolbar displayed above the list
• The number of entries that will be allowed in the list, and how many entries will be displayed at a time
• The text that appears when there are no entries in the list or all entries have been filtered out

You can also modify information about the forms provided for users to add, modify, and delete list entries.

About types of SharePoint team Web site pages

Before customizing lists and forms, you should be familiar with the kinds of pages that are provided with a SharePoint team Web site. By default, each Web site includes:

• The team Web site Home page (Default.htm)
• Pages for showing a view of a list, or an entry in that list
• Pages with forms that allow members to add or edit list entries

Each list has a set of files for showing views of the list and for presenting forms for adding or editing list items. For example, if you open a team Web site in FrontPage and view the folder list, you'll see that the events list includes these files to provide views of the list:

You can create a new list view from your Web browser using the team Web site pages. When you create a new view, SharePoint Team Services creates a new page. You can then customize that page in FrontPage.

By default these files provide forms for adding or editing events:

The files for each list are kept in a separate folder. Each document library has its own folder under the root directory of the team Web site. The folders for all other lists are found in the Lists folder.

Edit the properties of a document library or list view

1. On the FrontPage File menu, click Open Web.
2. Type the URL to the team Web site in the web name box, and then click Open.
3. Open the Folder List (if it's not already open) by clicking Folders on the View menu.
4. Double-click the folder with the view that you want customize.
5. Double-click the page with the view you want to customize.
6. Right-click the view on the page and then click View Properties.
7. Set the properties for the view. Do any combination of the following:
   • To display a view of another list or document library, click List, click the desired list, and then click OK.
   • To add or remove fields from the display, click Fields, add or remove the desired fields, and then specify the order in which you want them displayed.
   • To specify how the items are sorted, click Sort, add or remove fields you want to affect the sorting order, whether you want the field sorted in ascending (yellow triangle up) or descending (yellow triangle down) order, and then click OK.
   • To limit which items appear in the view, click Filter, click Add, specify the field and value that you want to use for displaying entries in the view, and then click OK. For example, for the events list, you may want to filter out any events that occurred in the past or that will occur more than a month in the future.
   • To change the layout of a view, click Options, click on the desired column format in the Choose a style area, and then click OK.
   • To specify the type of toolbar that will appear above the view, click Options, from the Toolbar type drop-down list click the desired toolbar type, and then click OK. You can specify a Full toolbar (which displays options for such functions as adding new entries and filtering the list entries), a Summary toolbar (which displays the list name and an option to create a new list item), or None.
   • To specify how many entries will be displayed in the view, click Options, and then either click Display all items together and limit the total number to and then enter the maximum number of entries you want to allow for the view, or click Click items in set of this size and then enter the number of entries you want to appear on the Web page at a time. Click OK.
   • To specify the message that will appear if there are no items in a view or if all items have been filtered out, click Options, enter the desired text in the Text to display if no matching items are found field, and then click OK.
8. Click OK.

Edit the properties of a form

1. From the FrontPage File menu, click Open Web.
2. Type the URL to the team Web site in the web name box, and then click Open.
3. Open the Folder List (if it's not already open) by clicking Folders on the View menu.
4. Double-click the folder with the form that you want customize.
5. Double-click the page with the form you want to customize.
6. Right-click the form on the page and then click List Form Properties.
7. In the List or document library to use for form box, specify the list or document library that you want this form to be used with.
8. In the Type of form to create region box, choose whether the form will be used to create a new list item, edit an existing one, or display a list item.
9. Enable or disable the option for showing the standard toolbar above the form, and then click Ok