Add Like and Ratings to Discussion Board in SharePoint

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This SharePoint tutorial, we will discuss on discussion board web part in SharePoint. How to add Like and Ratings to Discussion Boards in SharePoint 2013/2016 or SharePoint Online. Like is a very useful social networking feature. By using this person can like your discussion or replies also.

We will also see how to fix error Discussion Board App missing in SharePoint 2013 and also we will also see how to attachments does not open when attached with a discussion boards in SharePoint.

Table of Contents show

Discussion Board web part in SharePoint:

SharePoint provides an out of box web part as “Discussion Board” by using which we can start a forum-style discussion. This is a web part, so we can just add the web part to our SharePoint site like we add any other web part.

How to create a Discussion Board App in SharePoint

Now, we will see how to create a Discussion Board App in SharePoint Online or SharePoint 2013/2016 etc.

Open any of your SharePoint sites, click on the Settings or Gear icon and then click on Add an App. Then select Discussion Board App template, then provide a name and then click on the Create button.

Discussion Board in SharePoint

This will create a discussion board web part or app in the SharePoint site.

Add Like and Ratings to Discussion Board in SharePoint

We can enable the like and rating feature from the SharePoint discussion board list settings.

Open the Discussion board, then from the Ribbon click on List and then List Settings. This will open the list settings page.

Then from the list settings page click on Rating settings under General Settings. Then in the Rating settings page, Select the “Yes” radio button in Allow items in this list to be rated? And then select Like Radio button. Similarly, you can select Star Ratings also if you want to give Ratings instead of like. Then click on OK.

ratings in Discussion Board in SharePoint 2013

Then if you open any item then one Like button will appear like below:

Like in Discussion Board in SharePoint 2013

Once you click on Like then 1 like will be counted which appears like below:

Discussion Board in SharePoint 2013

If you want to unlike the same item, you can unlike that also which works almost like Facebook like or unlike.

Similarly when you select Rating instead of Like then when you open the item it will appear like below:

Discussion Board in SharePoint Online

Discussion Board App missing in SharePoint 2013

Here we will discuss how to bring back the Discussion Board App in SharePoint 2013.

Recently I was trying to add a Discussion Board list app to one of the subsites in SharePoint 2013 by going to Settings and then Add an App, but I did not find the App in the Apps list.

The solution is to activate the “Team Collaborations List” feature in the site. Once you activate the feature then below list and document libraries will appear.

Discussion Board App missing in SharePoint 2013

Below are the list and libraries which will appear once you activate the “Team Collaborations List” feature:

Libraries:

  • Form Library
  • Picture Library
  • Document Library

Lists:

  • Announcements
  • Calendar
  • Contacts
  • Custom List
  • Custom List with Datasheet View
  • Discussion Board
  • External List
  • Issue Tracking List
  • Links
  • Project List
  • Survey
  • Tasks

Now, you should be able to see the discussion board app in SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint Online.

Attachments does not open when attached with a discussion boards in SharePoint

The lists can be configured to open documents in client mode but this doesn’t happen with discussion boards and other collaborative lists that do not have a special provision for attachments.

Error messages may say that the features included in the files are not supported by the web browser.

Reason:
Uploaded excel files may contain macros or other calculations that needs an Excel client. In SP 2010 all the office documents open in the client by default so either make the settings suggested below or turn on a feature to open all documents in a client by default.

Go to Site Actions -> Site settings -> Site collection Features -> Open documents in Client Applications by default

You may like following SharePoint tutorials:

This SharePoint tutorial, we learned discussion board in SharePoint, how to add discussion board app to a SharePoint site? Also we saw how to enable likes and ratings in discussion board in SharePoint.

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