Essential SharePoint

Types of Sites

Authorized team members can create new sites in SharePoint very easily—in fact, just a few clicks in Word creates a new document workspace site almost instantly. To help impose a unified look, SharePoint includes site templates that influence the type of site created. SharePoint comes with eight different templates, but there are only three types you need to worry about for now, as shown in Table 1-1.

Table 1-1. Main types of SharePoint sites

Template	Use to	Contains these lists
Team site	Create, organize, and share information among team members. This is usually the root site for a department or project team.	Document library, Announcements, Events, Contacts, Quick links
Document workspace	Collaborate on one or more documents. This is the template used when a shared workspace is created in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.	Document library, Tasks, Links
Meeting workspace	Schedule and track an in-person meeting. This is the template used when Outlook creates a meeting workspace.	Objectives, Attendees, Agenda, Document library

Most groups or departments will have a team site as their main top-level site, then use document workspaces and meeting workspaces to organize projects and meetings within the group. Figure 1-7 shows the default sites created by the three main site templates.

SharePoint sites have three key navigation areas, as illustrated in Figure 1-8:

Quick launch area

Located on the left of page; links take members to content within the site. When you create a new list or library in a site, SharePoint asks whether to include it in Quick launch.

Links list

Located on the right of page; navigates down to document and meeting workspace sites within a team site. You can also add links to external sites or other locations in the Links list.

Navigation bar

Located at the top of page; navigates to the site's home page or to the team site from a document or meeting workspace. The navigation bar also includes Help and administrative links.