Connect SharePoint Online Lists

If you've connected SharePoint Online (SPO) libraries to Qorus, then you already know that you can create SPO library content sources that point to multiple libraries, or even to different folders in different libraries. 

When it comes to SPO lists, things are quite different.

Lists house content and data in tabular format, a lot like Excel. The 'content' that you may want to re-use in your documents is not contained within the body of a file, but rather within a list column. There's no concept of a file name or a file title either in a list, just the data contained within its rows and columns. Plus, different lists can have vastly different column structures. 

And so for all these reasons, SPO list content sources can only point to one list at a time. You can however create as many SPO list content sources as you would like, one for each list. 

Before you can connect any SPO libraries or lists to Qorus, you need to have at least 'Contribute' rights to these places in SPO, and you also need to belong to the Qorus Admin role. 

Here are the main steps when creating a new SPO list content source: 

1. Add a new SPO list content source
2. Copy and paste the link to your SPO site in the connector settings
3. Set any advanced options (optional)
4. Choose the list you'd like to connect to
5. Configure the list settings: 
   • The columns Qorus should search
   • The columns Qorus should use to create search filters
   • The column Qorus should use for displaying titles in the search return
   • The column that contains the content that Qorus should insert when you click on 'insert'

1. Add a new SPO list content source

First, you'll need to be logged into Hub Central. You can access the login page by visiting the following link: https://www.qorushub.com/

In Hub Central, go to the 'Content Sources' page under 'Manage'. Then click on 'Add', and then on 'SharePoint Online List': 

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2. Copy and paste the link to your SPO site in the connector settings

On the next page, give your SPO list content source a name, and then copy and paste the URL of your SharePoint site into the 'Site' textbox: 

If you're not sure where to get the URL of your SharePoint site from, visit the 'home' page of your SharePoint site, and copy and paste the URL directly from your browser's address bar:  

When you're ready and if you don't plan on setting any advanced options, click on the 'Next' button (bottom right) to go to the next step.

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3. Set any advanced options (optional)

Click on 'Show Advanced Options' to see the options available. These are all completely optional. If you'd prefer to skip ahead to the next step, click here.

Search location image

The only advanced option available for SPO list content sources is to set a 'search location image'.

By default, Qorus will display the SharePoint logo next to SharePoint Online content sources in the Search pane. You can however add your own custom images for each content source, making it easier for users differentiate between content sources, especially if you have many connected to your Qorus Hub. 

To do that, click on the box indicated below: 

Then, select an image from your computer. We recommend an image that is 50 pixels by 50 pixels for the best results: 

When you're ready, click 'Next' to proceed to the next step.

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4. Choose the list you'd like to connect to

Qorus will search for lists within your SharePoint site, and present those to you next. Here you'll need to select the list you'd like to connect to this content source. We'll be using the 'Sales FAQs' list for this example: 

When you're ready, click on 'Next'. 

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5. Configure the list settings

As you probably know, there are many different types of columns that can be set up within a list, including choice, number, currency, text, hyperlink, dates, and much more. 

Qorus can work with the following three types of columns: 

• Single line of text (also known as a 'Text' column)
• Multiple lines of text (also known as a 'Note' column)
• Managed Metadata (also known as a 'Taxonomy' column)

If this is all new to you, or you'd like to learn more about these column types, there's a great Microsoft Support article that explains it all right here.

In the 'List Settings' page, we'll to tell Qorus what to do with the all compatible list columns it has found within the selected list: 

If we take a look at this list in SharePoint, you'll see that the list column names in this view correspond to the ones we're seeing on this screen: 

Please note that while the 'Version' and 'Compliance Asset ID' columns are not shown in this list view, they do exist in this list, and that is why we're seeing them in Hub Central, but not in SharePoint. 

Next we'll need to configure: 

• The columns Qorus should search
• The columns Qorus should use to create search filters
• The column Qorus should use for displaying titles in the search return
• The column that contains the content that Qorus should insert when you click on 'insert'

The columns Qorus should search

To specify the columns that Qorus should search, use the checkboxes that appear under the heading 'Search'. You can make all the columns searchable if you wish, or you can get very granular and specify just a few:

The columns Qorus should use to create search filters

To specify the columns that Qorus should use as search filters, use the checkboxes below the 'Filter' heading. 

With SPO list content sources, Qorus can use both single line of text (or simply 'text') columns as filters, as well as managed metadata (or 'taxonomy') columns as filters.  You'll notice that it's not possible to choose a multiple lines of text (or 'note') column here. That's because, as the name implies, these columns can contain whole paragraphs of text, and could be quite long - making them an impractical choice for search filters. 

The column Qorus should use for displaying titles in the search return

With lists, we're working with data contained within a tabular structure, and not with actual files. For this reason, we'll have to tell Qorus which column to use in lieu of a file title, when displaying search results. 

Here you can only pick one, and we'd recommend choosing a column that makes it easy to identify what the list content is about. 

In this example, the values in the topic column are unique and describe the contents of the list item well, making them a good choice to display as the 'title' in search results: 

The column that contains the content that Qorus should insert when you click on 'insert'

Then, the last thing to do, is tell Qorus which of these columns contains the body of content. You can only pick one:

In this example, the 'Boilerplate Text' column is the one that contains the 'answers' in this FAQ list. When clicking on 'insert' in the Qorus Add-ins, it's the contents of this column that we'll want to use: 

And that's it. When you're done, click on 'Finish'. Click here to learn more about how Search works in Qorus, and here to learn about the different insert options available. 

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