After learning SharePoint with an expert on MicroJobs, I was able to dive in to SharePoint and create the foundation of my application. Following the design spec for my 30-Day Challenge, I understood that I needed to create 3 SharePoint lists within a SharePoint site to host all of the data being shared across my application.
I decided to create my SharePoint site using Microsoft Teams. This was a smarter way of having everything work as I believe it will future proof my project and make integration with Microsoft Teams much easier when it comes to building that section of the application.
When you create a new Microsoft Teams Channel, a new SharePoint Teams Site is created. You’ll be able to access the Document library of this SharePoint site directly from Teams using the Files tab inside your new channel. You can also head over to SharePoint itself, and that’s where you can go more in depth with your new SharePoint site.
The new Microsoft Teams Channel will also contain two other tabs in Teams: Posts & Wiki, however I don’t need these right now, so I’m going to focus on the SharePoint Sites and Lists for the remainder of this post.
Creating a SharePoint Site with Microsoft Teams
I start by creating a new Teams Channel to keep things organised for my project.
I click “Join or Create a team” then “Create Team”
I Click “Build a Team from scratch”
For the purpose of my project I will choose “Private”
Then give my new Team a Title and brief description.
Creating SharePoint Lists
Now my SharePoint is created and sitting alongside my Teams channel, I will head over to SharePoint where I can start creating the lists required following the Design Spec.
The design spec directs me to create 3 SharePoint lists. One for a list of the RSS Feeds, the second for the pulled articles to be placed and the third for a management list (we will get more into that later in my challenge).
Each list contains a wave of columns to store the relevant type of information. Here is how I created my lists and added the columns as required.
In SharePoint, I will select the “Site contents” tab.
Then I select the “New” tab at the top of the Site Contents screen and click “List”. This will allow me to create a new SharePoint List.
I now have a few options. I need to select ‘New’ and give the list a title and then click “Create”. In this case, I will be creating the Feed List from the design spec. At this point it’s important to mention that you can Import lists that you have created in Excel or clone an existing list that you have already created.
I now need to rename and create the relevant columns as specified. Click here to take a look at the design spec SharePoint Lists.
First on the list is ‘Site Name’ so I’ll rename the ‘Title’ column by selecting and going to “Column settings” and then “Rename”.
I can now begin creating new columns as specified using the relevant field types. As an example I will use the next one on the list.
I then click on “Add column” and select more (this will open a more detailed panel for your column field type and information. I personally prefer to use this method).
I now want to create the ‘RSS Feed URL’ column, which is specified as a Hyperlink or Picture type (of information). I can set this by naming the column as shown, and selecting the correct radio style button for the required information type. You can leave the other information on this page as default.
I will repeat the process for the rest of the columns that I need ensuring they are set to use the correct information type.
Now my Feed List is complete and ready for a flurry of information and I’m sure; countless testing, I first need to do the same process for the other 2 lists.
So here we have it. My 3 required lists ready to go in SharePoint and easily accessible from the SharePoint panel on the left.
Conclusion
For now, I believe this is all I need to do in SharePoint until I move into the later stages of the 30-Day Challenge. I have my 3 Lists in SharePoint ready to work with using Power Apps and Power Automate. I think the best path I should be moving on to is testing a few ideas in Power Automate to see if I can create a flow to automatically push and pull data between these SharePoint lists.