Using SharePoint List Data across Sites

Question

Hi, all.

I have (arguably) a philosophical question about sharing data across sites within SharePoint Online. I am not talking about just surfacing data form other sites; I want to USE data from other sites.

I work in a large company, and I've inherited some long-extant sites that have become the authoritative source for internal information. This information isn't very complex; it mostly comprises lists of Purchase Orders, Project IDs, etc.

What I want to do, moving forward, is leverage these lists so that the information can be used on other sites. I have a "senior leadership" site in mind, where management wants to see a dashboard that reflects milestones that were achieved and which are tracked on a different, internal SharePoint site; a list of all Projects that are not yet Complete; and even the ability to (for example) select a PO# from a pick-list and display all of the invoices submitted to that PO. I would also like to be able to leverage simple lists such as "Project IDs" and "Purchase Order IDs" for data validation on multiple sites, without worrying about keeping multiple lists in sync.

So, the question is What is the best approach for leveraging SharePoint list data across several sites, with the goal of using it for pick-lists and lookups as well as surfacing and formatting the data in web parts?

Thanks in advance for any help and guidance.

Answer 1

Using page view webpart to surface the list data in another site.

Display a list/library from one site to another site with SharePoint online

But if your document libraries/lists are from several different site collections, the method won't work under this scenario.

i knew Msft would suggest the page viewer web part - I didn't, because all it does is add an iframe to the page. That means that of course contrary to Alex's comment above, it WILL work across site collections, but will look....awful.

Answer 2

Hi Mboonie63,

Thanks for your query in this community.

I've go through your request description, unfortunately, as webbrewers3 mentioned, in SharePoint Online you could "surfacing" the data list in the sites which are under the same site collection. For instance: You have a Site collection and serval sub-sites under it. Then you could check the following thread. Using page view webpart to surface the list data in another site.

Display a list/library from one site to another site with SharePoint online

But if your document libraries/lists are from several different site collections, the method won't work under this scenario. We are deeply sorry about the inconvenience. Given this situation, we would kindly suggest you share your idea in SharePoint UserVoice, which is a specific platform for us to collect user's request.

Your suggestion will help us improve our Products and give users a better experience.

Regards,

Alex Chen

Answer 3

Assuming these are "classic" sites in the same collection, the options are:

content query web part

content search web part

custom "roll your own" data view web part