24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 1 1 MA TE RI AL Getting Star ted with Microsoft Office SharePoint Ser ver HT ED The goal of this book is to provide you with the knowledge you need to become the master of your organization’s SharePoint environment. Along those lines, this chapter introduces you to the new and exciting features and capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
4499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 2 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Introducing Por tal Technologies and SharePoint Before getting started on the technical tasks associated with managing and working with SharePoint content, it is important to understand the purpose and common usage scenarios for the technology. Organizational stakeholders often suffer from what’s been termed information overload.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 3 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2. Portal technologies allow information workers to handle day-to-day tasks from a single starting point where previously things were spread out across multiple places and applications. 3.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 4 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 If you’re familiar with SharePoint Server 2007’s predecessor, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you might appreciate a quick look at the changes in the new version.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 5 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SharePoint, the following section discusses some comparisons between WSS and SharePoint. To start you off, you should remember the following: ❑ Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, often referred to as WSS, has the core document management and collaboration platform features. With WSS, the average information user can build webbased business applications without numerous technical resources.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 6 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server ❑ ❑ ❑ Users can immediately apply professional looking site themes. ❑ Customized workspaces have prebuilt application templates for most common business processes, such as workflows.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 7 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server teams. From these results, the company identified the common issues each team shared and created a site hierarchy that best represented the organization’s corporate culture and business processes.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 8 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SharePoint Primary Features SharePoint provides enterprise tools that connect people, processes, and information in a central location. The following sections outline some of the more commonly used Enterprise features in SharePoint. ❑ ❑ ❑ Web Content Management: You use familiar applications, such as email or a web browser to create and publish web content.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 9 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Tech Consulting, to show how SharePoint operates. Rossco Tech Consulting has expanded operations to support a major software manufacturer. This means providing English-, French-, and German-speaking customers with an Internet support portal where they can access up-to-the-minute information on the manufacturer’s various software offerings.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 10 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server ❑ Automating Operations: Taking advantage of SharePoint’s workflow features, Rossco created a strict content approval process that routed documents from approver to approver before they were finally publishing them to the Internet-facing portal.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 11 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server explain how you can use document libraries within your SharePoint sites to further customize them to meet your team’s needs. Web Parts When you create a list or library, SharePoint automatically generates a corresponding Web Part that you can later add to a Web Part page.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 12 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Content types make extensive use of global properties known as site columns, which means you can associate metadata with your items to more easily find it. Columns are properties that help define an item, similar to the way you can use a field in a form.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 13 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server One major difference between SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is related to the default setting of the Collaboration Portal. In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, the portal was completely separate from the site collections beneath it. In SharePoint 2007, the portal is part of the same site collection as the remainder of the sites created beneath it.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 14 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 6. For URL name, select sites from the list of paths and enter intranet. If no other sites exist in your web application, you can also create your intranet portal site at the root of the web (such as http://servername). Only one site collection can exist at the root of a web. 7. You have a variety of choices for the site template.
24499c01.qxd:WroxPro 4/30/07 3:56 PM Page 15 Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server create and publish branded web content without knowing code. You can then host these websites on an intranet environment or an extranet so partners or clients can access information. Chapter 13 shows you how to create and manage web content. ❑ Excel Services: Microsoft Excel popularity means many organizations support thousands of spreadsheets full of business information.
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