One of the great benefits of using SharePoint is the ability to organize and retrieve the information you need. Views are one of the primary ways to do that. The metadata in lists and libraries can be utilized to sort, group, and filter data. Here are a few areas of the edit view options that you can customize your views with:
Columns
In this section, you can select which columns you want to display in your view as well as what order they display in. Simple but effective for only displaying relevant information to the user. Since you can create multiple views that display different columns, you can tailor views to individual needs. You might have one view that has most of the columns showing so that you can see all of the data at once, one view for a report that contains only a few key columns, and possibly one view that has fields related to a workflow for a quick view of the workflow’s progress. This is also why collecting more metadata is generally better, since you can just hide any columns you don’t want users to see by not including them in your views.
Sort
Here, you can specify the order of the items or documents in a list or library. You can sort by up to 2 columns and in either ascending or descending order. Keep in mind that this is just the default way the list or library will be sorted. The user can always use the filters at the top of the column in order to do ad-hoc sorting.
Filter
Filters can be used to show certain data based on conditions you specify. By default, two filters are shown, but you can add more conditions to filter by. You can also use the values [Today] and [Me] in these conditions. For example, you could create a filter in a library that only shows documents created by [Me], which would show only documents created by the user that is currently logged in. The same can be done for checked out items as well. There are many ways to apply filters in your views and the key to using them is the metadata you gather about each item or document.
Group By
You can group by up to two columns in a list or library. You can also choose whether to have them expanded or collapsed by default as well as specify the number of groups to display on the page. This is helpful for organizing the data in a way that makes it easier to locate items and documents. You can also use grouping as a way to achieve a similar organizational structure as folders but have the advantages of metadata. Instead of putting documents into a folder, you would create a choice column and have the availble choices be the “folder” names. Then you would group by that column.
Totals
Totals are mainly used for numeric fields and can be used to display totals for column values similar to Excel. You can also show averages, minimum values and maximum values with this option.
Item Limit
You can specify how many items to display in a particular view. You can either display documents in batches of a certain size or cut off the items after a certain number completely. This can reduce the number of items on a page to help with load times. This is also very useful for controlling views in web parts, as described later.
Some other options you can set in views include: Style, Folders, and Mobile options. These allow you to customize your views in many ways. Users with the proper permissions can also create their own personal views that are only visible to them. This is helpful for keeping the view menu managable for users while still allowing them the flexibility to have their own views.
Views can also be applied to web parts. When editing a web part, you can select a view that you created to be applied to that web part.
You can use this to customize the web parts on a page to create a dashboard of relevant information. You can create many useful web parts this way, such as one that shows items modified by the logged in user in the past day, items that are approaching a due date, tasks that are marked as high priority, etc. The sky is the limit!