SharePoint 2013 Quick Actions

One trick for working with your users is to put the tasks they need to complete right in front of them. The easier you can make things work for them, the better things will be for the adoption of the solution. Using SharePoint Designer 2013 you can easily help users by creating Quick Actions for them. These are basically shortcuts that allow them to quickly kick off a workflow or navigate to a specific page. Below is an example of a Quick Action that was added to the display view of an item:

Quick Actions

There are three actions that you can create within a quick action, including:

• Navigate to a Form (example:DispForm.aspx)
• Initiate a Workflow
• Navigate to a URL

These are the common actions that you can use for a quick action, but there are various locations where the Quick Action would appear.

Location	Description
List Item Menu	This would be displayed on the list drop down item (when you select the item (…) ellipse )
Display Form Ribbon	This would be displayed when you select the view properties page for the item.
Edit Form Ribbon	This would be displayed when you select the edit properties page for the item.
New Form Ribbon	This would be displayed when you select the New Item page.
View Ribbon	This would be displayed on the Items ribbon of the list view. This would allow you to click the check mark next to an item in the full list (tabular view) and then select the quick action from the Ribbon.

Image & Rights Masking

When you create a quick action you can assign an Image to the Quick Action that will be displayed (provided the Master Page isn't hiding it). You are allowed to upload a 32 x 32 or 16 x 16 image. The best way to do this is to upload the image to one of the site libraries and then just link to it. It is very important that you use an image with the exact measurements as any other size image will not load.

Rights masking is a way that you can display the action to only users that have the same role as the one you list. This is a way that you can hide the actions from people who can just read the site while still showing custom actions to the site administrators. For a list of all available masks you can check out this article from TechNet -http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spbasepermissions.aspx

Examples & Ideas

This approach can really help you add something a little extra to your solution to help your users make the most of it! Here are some ideas for ways that you could utilize this approach:

• Provide a Link to a Page with Additional Detail on the View Item. This would allow users to select a button from the Ribbon if they needed additional information (and would help keep the display page cleaner).
• Provide a link to the most common workflows that users would need to start.
• Provide a link for workflows that only the admins could see. This would make things easier for them while at the same time not showing additional buttons for all the users.