Whenever I begin a new portal design engagement, one of the most difficult concepts to communicate to the client's design/architecture group is 'Content-Driven Design'. The theory is simple - create an architecture and taxonomy around the information that is most important within your organization. What makes it difficult is the almost Pavlovian instinct to organize content based on company structure - breaking away from the org chart sometimes requires superhuman effort.
Fortunately, once the initial shock wears off, the light goes on and heads start nodding around the conference table. It doesn't take long for people who couldn't pronounce 'taxonomy' the week before to suddenly become content design experts. This only makes sense, as they already have a picture in their minds of how their company's information should be organized, they just need a push in the right direction to translate those thoughts into a good architectural design.
One of the most critical elements to a good content-driven architecture is the concept of "Author Once, Publish Everywhere". In this model, information is created and managed in the most granular context applicable to it's function but published in the context where it is most often consumed. For example, an HR policy would most likely be created and stored in an HR team site, somewhere within the overall departmental hierarchy. This allows team members to collaborate effectively on documents that pertain to their job function while permitting the greatest degree of security and oversight. Users, on the other hand, shouldn't be poking around in the HR team site, they should be browsing a portal area that is generally classified to contain that type of information (such as 'Employee Resources' or 'New Hire Information').
Unfortunately, this design methodology reveals an inherent weakness in SharePoint - the inability to distribute list content throughout the portal. In the SharePoint structure, lists can only be viewed in the context in which they were created (in our example, the HR documents could only be viewed within the HR team site). SharePoint does not ship with out-of-the-box capabilities to create list items in one area/site and view them in another.
To meet this requirement, we created a web part which allows list content in any area or site to be viewed in another area or site by users with sufficient permissions to view items in the source list (they must at least be a 'Reader'). We've used it in numerous client engagements and it is a critical component in our Content-Driven Design methodology. Just add the web part to a page, give it the portal/site url, list name, and view, set the display options (toolbars and column titles), and voila - list content for everyone, everywhere!
The web part can be downloaded here. The zip file contains a ReadMe document with instructions on installing the CAB file (in case you haven't done it before) along with information on deploying it to a portal/site page and configuring the various options.
As always, post any questions, comments, or suggestions to this post.
Enjoy!
