I just wanted to share this. First of all, I am a lazy dog. I hate doing things twice and forget about maintaining information in more than one place. I refuse. Anyway, to that end...
We wanted to maintain a Release Log in one spot for our DNN modules, but display the entire Release Log on several different pages on our portal. We decided to use the DNNForum so people could also subscribe to receive Release Log notifications, inconjunction with the Reports module. Sounds easy enough, right? Make posts in the "Release Log" forum and use the Reports module to display the post on different pages. Well, we ran into trouble with rendering the HTML from the Forum_Posts table in the Reports module so it would display on the page the way we wanted. NOTE: In order for you to accomplish this you must have Host account.
Here is how we did it.
1. Setup a DNNForum module on a page.
2. Create a normal forum named "Release Log" under any group and add a few posts to it.
3. Create HTML Render SQL function and SQL view of Forum "Release Log"
Use Host> SQL to execute this script to create function and view in your SQL database
http://www.dnnspired.com/portals/7/HTMLDecode_SqlScript.zip
5. Setup Reports module on page you want to display "Release Log"
6. Enter SQL in Reports module to select records from your View with WHERE clause to filter on ForumID.
"select Updated from {databaseOwner}[{objectQualifier}DS_ForumReleaseReport]
where ForumId = 97"
That's it. We are using this view to collect all "Release Log" posts and then using the Reports module we filter the "Release Log" posts on the ForumID for each page where we want to display the "Release Log".
Now when you make post to your "Release Log" people can be notified through Forum subscriptions and view the "Release Log" on pages you choose without having to open each forum thread and the beautiful thing is you only have to maintain your "Release Log" in one spot.
You can see this in action here:
Release Log Forum: http://www.dnnspired.com/Support/Forums/tabid/326/forumid/97/scope/threads/language/en-US/Default.aspx
Reports module showing Release Log: http://www.dnnspired.com/Modules/CustomPageOptions/tabid/517/language/en-US/Default.aspx (click on release log tab)
You can tweak your view to work on any forum name. And with a little more tweaking to the view you can make the posts records display in your Reports module with hyperlinks to the respective forum thread, too.
Happy DNNin' to all.