Forum Discussion
Editing Site Columns on Sub-Sites Doesn't modify the parent Site Column
This is very disappointing.
I am worried about sub-site admins modifying site columns by adding or modifying "choices" to the list at a sub-site level. The system will quickly break down if every sub-site admin starts managing the company wide site columns at their sub-site levels.
The result will be every sub-site/document library having different choices on what are supposed to be company wide standard terms.
If you are concerned specifically about Choice columns, you might consider using a site column of type Lookup, instead. Place the lookup target list of choices at the top level and don't allow sub-site admins write access to it.
RichardSharp11 So I have set up several columns this way but I'm noticing one serious missing problem. When you place the lookup site column on the document libraries you can't set the default value. I think the default value has to be set on the top site collection level.
Is there a way around this? Maybe a work flow? ..... would probably be too hardcore to set up for every doc library....
First: if you're not using content types already, do so--that'll make your deployment of site columns a lot faster and easier to control from the top-site/source level.
Second: thinking about why lookup columns can't have a default value, I think Microsoft is anticipating that consequences could arise from allowing that. If you had a default value in place from your lookup list, then that value changed, your default value in the list/doc library using that list now has an invalid default value.
RichardSharp11 Thanks!
That is a great idea..... I'll have to redo a bunch of my columns but this is probably the best solution.
In other news I found out why Microsoft is probably not implementing a solution for this. http://sharepointpromag.com/blog/3-approaches-restricting-access-sharepoint-columns-and-metadata from 2012 claims that column level permissions would be a major drain on performance of the database.
