A SharePoint Workflows tutorial by Peter Kalmström
The
SharePoint Search displays title hits on top, so for the
search to work well it is important that title columns in
lists and libraries are filled out with terms that give
relevant information. For many organizations it is a problem
that the titles are not accurate, which leads to few or
inaccurate search results.
As the title field does not have the same importance in
a file system as it has in SharePoint, files that are imported
into SharePoint libraries will often lack titles or have
irrelevant titles. And when new documents are created in
SharePoint, users often avoid filling out the title
for a file, as they are not used to doing it and it is not
mandatory.
Another problem with the title field is when a template
has a title. New files created from that template will inherit
the same title, if it is not changed by the creator, and
that will result in many documents with different content
but the same title.
In the demo below Peter Kalmström, CEO and Systems Designer
of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, shows how to create
a SharePoint workflow that sets the title to the same as
the name of the list item or file. The name is hopefully
relevant, so this workflow solves the problems with non-existing
as well as irrelevant titles.
Peter creates a SharePoint 2013 list workflow, but you can
do this workflow with nearly the same steps if you use a
SharePoint 2010 workflow instead.
A SharePoint 2013 list workflow that sets the title
to the same as the name
Open the site in SharePoint Designer 2013 and select
the list or library where you want to use the workflow.
Create a new SharePoint 2013 workflow and give it
a name.
At Transition to stage, type 'go' and select 'End
of Workflow'.
Select the Condition to 'If any value equals value'
and set the Values to Title 'not equals' Name.
Select the Action 'Set Field in Current Item' and
set the Field to Title and the Value to Name.
Set the workflow to start automatically when an
item is created or changed.
Publish the workflow
The list workflow described here is directly connected to
a library. In the
next article we will create a similar workflow that
is reusable, so that you can use it for many lists and libraries.
In the next demo we also show how you easily can get the
workflow to run in a library with existing files that need
titles but no other changes.
The
SharePoint Search displays title hits on top, so for the
search to work well it is important that title columns in
lists and libraries are filled out with terms that give
relevant information. For many organizations it is a problem
that the titles are not accurate, which leads to few or
inaccurate search results.
