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Chapter 1

Getting to Know Your Team Site

In This Chapter

▶ Requesting a new team site and opening it in the browser

▶ Participating in a team site

▶ Changing your team site’s home page

ne of the fundamental kinds of Web sites that SharePoint 2010 allows

you to create is a team site. A team site is a SharePoint site that you

can use to collaborate with your coworkers. If the team site is hosted in your

company’s extranet or by a public hosting company, you may even be able to

collaborate with people outside your organization. In most cases, an adminis-

trator will create a team site for you.

Many kinds of teams can use a SharePoint team site to collaborate. For

example:

✓ Department members can use document libraries to upload document

files and enter meetings in a team calendar.

✓ Project members can use a team site home page to post announcements

and track important dates.

✓ Corporate communications can use a team site to store the documents

and track the tasks required for preparing the company’s annual report.

You need to know your way around some of the basic features of a team site,

which is exactly what I show you in this chapter.

Requesting Your Team Site

Most organizations have a process for requesting a team site. I’ve seen

everything from the simple process in which you send an e-mail addressed

to someone in your IT department to very detailed wizards that walk you

through the site creation process. One company requires that you write a

justification for why you want the team site and then submit prototypes.

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COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL

Summary of content (12 pages)

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Chapter 1 In This Chapter RI ▶ Requesting a new team site and opening it in the browser AL Getting to Know Your Team Site ▶ Participating in a team site MA TE ▶ Changing your team site’s home page O TE D ne of the fundamental kinds of Web sites that SharePoint 2010 allows you to create is a team site. A team site is a SharePoint site that you can use to collaborate with your coworkers.
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12 Part I: Collaborating with Team Sites Whatever you have to do to get your SharePoint 2010 team site, get one. At a minimum, you need to provide your SharePoint administrator with this information to get a team site: ✓ The site name: The friendly caption that appears in the header of your site and in any site directory where your site may be listed. ✓ The site template: The template determines what kind of site SharePoint makes for you. SharePoint includes dozens of predefined site templates.
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Chapter 1: Getting to Know Your Team Site Viewing Your Team Site in the Browser You access your team site using a Web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. You need the Web address or URL of your team site, which you can get from your SharePoint administrator. You also need a network user account with permissions. In my case, the Web address for my team site is http://myteamsite To access your team site: 1. Open your Web browser. 2.
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14 Part I: Collaborating with Team Sites Choosing between IE and Firefox Which browser should you use with SharePoint? Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers have some differences; for instance, some pages look better in Firefox than in Internet Explorer. Because Firefox was designed to be OS-agnostic, it supports Mac users as well as PC users. If any of your SharePoint user audience uses Macs, I recommend developing your SharePoint sites to display in Firefox.
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Chapter 1: Getting to Know Your Team Site Uploading documents Most teams need to share documents. You probably use e-mail to send documents as attachments. With your new SharePoint 2010 team site, you can upload your files to the team site and send your team members a link to the document. SharePoint 2010 uses a special kind of container — a document library — for storing files. Your team site has a document library dubbed Shared Documents where you can put documents you want to share with others.
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16 Part I: Collaborating with Team Sites 5. Type the filename, title, and any keywords that you want to tag the document with in the Name, Title, and Enterprise Keywords text boxes, respectively. See Chapter 2 for details on working with document properties. 6. Click the Save button to save the properties you’ve entered for the document. The uploaded document appears in the document library. Adding calendar items SharePoint 2010’s team sites provide you with a calendar for tracking your team events.
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Chapter 1: Getting to Know Your Team Site Figure 1-3: Adding a new calendar event to your team’s calendar. For example, SharePoint 2010 lets you tag things so that you can find them later and that people with whom you share your tags and notes also can see them. So for example, if you find a document that you like and want to encourage others in your network to read, you can apply a tag to the document and then that tag is associated with you so others viewing your profile can see the tag.
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18 Part I: Collaborating with Team Sites 2. Click the I Like It button on the Document tab, as shown in Figure 1-5. SharePoint briefly displays the Add Tag confirmation message, and the item is saved to your tags and notes, visible to your colleagues in your profile Tags and Notes tab. Figure 1-5: Click the I Like It button. To view your tags and notes: 1. Click the arrow beside your name in the upper-right corner of the page and choose My Profile from the drop-down list. Your profile page displays. 2.
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Chapter 1: Getting to Know Your Team Site Figure 1-6: The Tags and Notes profile page. Customizing Your Team Site Most teams want to change their team site right away. As the site owner, you’ll likely be asked to make these changes. Some of the changes you can make include adding and removing text and images from the home page and adding new lists and libraries. You can even change the site’s color scheme and logo, which I discuss how to do in Chapter 19. For now, stick to changing the home page.
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20 Part I: Collaborating with Team Sites Document libraries and lists display commands on the Ribbon that provide additional configuration options. These commands are contextual because the commands that appear depend on the context of where you are in the site. Figure 1-7: Use the Ribbon to access menu commands. Modifying the home page A SharePoint 2010 team site creates a home page that you can modify to better meet your team’s needs.
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Chapter 1: Getting to Know Your Team Site With the page in Edit mode, you can place your cursor anywhere inside the rectangular boxes in the page’s body to edit the content. For example, to change the default text that appears on the home page, with your page in Edit mode, do the following: 1. Place your cursor in front of the Welcome . . . text. 2. Delete the placeholder text and type your new text. 3.
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22 Part I: Collaborating with Team Sites 3. Click the button for the content item you wish to add (see Figure 1-9): • For a table, click the Table button and then select the number of rows and columns you want in your table. • For an image, click the Image button and then select whether you want to upload the image from your local computer or from another Web address. See Chapter 21 for more details on working with images. • For hyperlinked text, click the Link button to add it to your page.