The Right Way to Use the Rating Field in a SharePoint List or Library

How to Enable Rating in SharePoint?

It's very straight forward to enable rating in SharePoint lists/ library.

If you wish to utilize Ratings on a SharePoint list or library, you might think that you can do so by simply adding the “Rating (0-5)” site column to your existing list, library or content type. In fact, SharePoint will allow you to do that, however doing so may or may not provide the intended results.

As you may already know, the proper way to enable ratings is from the list’s settings page.

1. Once created, open the list select "List Tools" Tab -> List Tab -> List Settings.
2. Under General Settings, select Click on the “Ratings settings” link.

   

3. Under Rating Settings, section select "Yes" for "Allow items in this list to be rated?"

   

4. Now a new field "Rating (0-5)" is added to the list. But the actual field name is "AverageRating".
5. Add some items in the list.

   

6. When move mouse over the Rating field, it'll show message to add rating. You can select the rating as required.

Knowing that the Rating feature relies on the User Profile Service, I checked in Central Admin under “Manage Services on Server” and verified that this service was running. I found an article which mentioned a specific timer job called “User Profile Service Application - Social Rating Synchronization Job” which is required for ratings to work. So I checked my Timer Job Definitions and could not find this Timer job. While this timer job is not specifically needed for the ratings stars to turn yellow, I took this as a hint that something was not quite right with the rating feature.

This job executes every 1 hour by default. If required, it can be executed manually by "Central Administration -> Monitoring -> Timer Jobs -> Review Job Definitions -> User Profile Service Application – Social Rating Synchronization Job -> Run Now" or change the "Recurring Schedule" as required.

Once the Synchronization job executed, then users can see the average ratings (Blue Stars).

Before Synchronization Job Execution

After Synchronization Job Execution

Move mouse over blue star ratings to know your rating (only if you have already given a rating).