Why did I write this book? Actually, it took an army to write this book (read all of the names on the front cover if you don’t believe me). While I’m credited as the “lead author,” the experience and expertise of everyone who authored content for SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide is what is at the center of this work. Without all the combined talent represented by all of these writers, this book would be a shadow of what it is.
The fact that so many people have been involved in this project is what makes it “definitive.” One or two authors can contain a fair amount of experience and background in a particular area or topic, but 11 subject-matter experts can cover a huge cross-section of understanding.
In this case, that “cross-section of understanding” is about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, which in many ways is a completely different breed of cat from its predecessor. For example, MOSS is fully integrated with a number of other Microsoft products including the rest of the Office 2007 suite. If you’ve taken a look at the interface for Office 2007 (“the ribbon,” for instance), you know that it’s not just Office 2003 with a couple of extra widgets added.
The same is true of SharePoint 2007. A few of the features are relatively unchanged, such as SharePoint’s discussion boards (unfortunately), but there are a great many additions, improvements, and just plain differences. If your company has migrated to or is thinking of adopting SharePoint 2007, you need to be ready for this change. MOSS 2007 isn’t just SharePoint Portal Server 2003 with a few widgets added. It’s a very different thing.
SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide gives you the theory and practice you need to either leverage your current SharePoint skills for this product or to ramp up to using MOSS 2007 as your first SharePoint experience. If you want to tap into the background and knowledge of almost a dozen SharePoint subject-matter experts and Microsoft MVPs, this is the book you’ll need.
Who is the book written for?
If you administrate SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and are considering upgrading to MOSS 2007, this book is for you.
If you administrate MOSS 2007 and need to learn more about how to manage the application and its features, this book is for you.
If your company is considering purchasing MOSS 2007 to use for business collaboration, and you are either part of the evaluation team or are targeted to administer SharePoint 2007, this book is for you.
If you have a background in site or server administration or supporting Microsoft Office products, and you’d like to expand your knowledge to SharePoint 2007, this book is for you.
If you’re a .NET or Microsoft Office developer and would like to learn what tools you’ll need to build a SharePoint development platform, this book isn’t for you. Although some portions of the book touch on this area, it isn’t written specifically for programmers.
What can I say? SharePoint is vast. In many ways, this makes it a challenge to properly organize content written for this product. Nevertheless, the authors made a valiant effort to put the information together in a way that would make the most sense. The first four chapters cover what you will need to know in terms of changes to the WSS architecture, installation procedures, and issues related to MOSS 2007 in a server farm. The bulk of the text covers the services and features offered by SharePoint, including interoperability with other Microsoft Office applications. The final part of the book includes upgrading, web content management, web services, and the SharePoint object model.
- Chapter 1, Introducing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
This chapter formally introduces MOSS 2007 including its two-pronged purpose: facilitating collaboration between geographically dispersed team members and managing business content in an effective and secure manner. SharePoint’s six key components are presented: Collaboration, Portal, Enterprise Search, Enterprise Content Management, Business Process and Forms, and Business Intelligence.
- Chapter 2, Changes in the WSS Architecture
MOSS 2007 is built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and all of the updates to WSS 3.0 are contained in this chapter including ASP.NET 2.0, master pages, page templates, event handlers, and many others.
- Chapter 3, Installing SharePoint 2007
What book on a technology would be complete without a chapter providing an in-depth look at how to install it? This chapter focuses on the pre-installation and installation tasks of installing MOSS 2007 on a standalone server, and gets you on your way to using SharePoint quickly.
- Chapter 4, Configuring a Multiserver Farm
Whereas Chapter 3 described all of the tasks necessary for installing MOSS 2007 on a standalone server, this chapter will show you the installation procedure for installing SharePoint in a multiserver farm. Topics include availability, scalability, and Multiple Web Front Ends (WFE).
- Chapter 5, Designing SharePoint Sites
The primary interface for working with SharePoint is the web site, and this chapter goes into constructing sites and site collections in MOSS. Concepts introduced are the portal site, top-level sites, and subsite collections.
- Chapter 6, Understanding the Datasheet and Explorer Views
While sites and site collections are the framework of SharePoint, some of the basic building blocks within that framework are lists and libraries. This chapter introduces two views that create an alternate interface for examining that structured data—the Datasheet and Explorer views—and demonstrates some of the powerful features associated with each.
- Chapter 7, Applying Templates, Page Layouts, and Themes
This chapter builds on the basic site and site collection structure in SharePoint and describes how to use site templates, page layouts, and themes to apply the “look and feel” you want your SharePoint sites to have. This is especially important when businesses want to brand their sites and give them their own unique corporate identity.
- Chapter 8, Creating Web Parts
A large part of SharePoint functionality comes in the form of Web Parts and Web Part pages. This chapter presents the various Web Parts that come out of the box with MOSS and that allow you to manage forms, images, lists, and content types such as HTML and XML.
- Chapter 9, Creating and Managing Document Workspaces and Libraries
In SharePoint, documents can be contained and manipulated in document libraries. Major collaboration efforts on shared documents can also be handled by using Document Workspaces, which act as specialized sites within SharePoint. This chapter focuses on these technologies and their significance within the corporate environment.
- Chapter 10, Creating and Managing Meeting Workspaces
While it may seem obvious that business meetings have an inherent collaborative nature, SharePoint Meeting Workspaces provide the platform to truly organize collaborative business efforts. This set of specialized sites allows you to control all aspects of single and recurring meetings from invitation to tracking and follow-up of assignments.
- Chapter 11, Creating and Managing Discussions
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and discussion forums have long been traditional methods of creating and managing interactive communications among large numbers of people on the Web. SharePoint comes with its own built-in discussion group site that allows you to create and moderate discussions among SharePoint users.
- Chapter 12, Creating and Managing SharePoint Groups and Users
SharePoint 2007 wouldn’t be much good without a collection of users to access and utilize its many services. This chapter goes into adding authenticated users to SharePoint site access groups, how to assign user permissions using groups, and performing routine user and group management.
- Chapter 13, Creating and Managing Picture Libraries
Like documents, graphics and images are managed using specialized libraries within SharePoint. You can collect all of your business-relevant graphics and figures in one location and then use Image Web Parts to display them on sites and web pages in your corporate site collection. Any graphic image can be stored in and accessed from a library, including PowerPoint slides.
- Chapter 14, Creating and Managing Lists
From SharePoint’s perspective, all information consists of lists. You are provided with a number of default lists that allow you to store and manipulate information including announcements, contacts, discussion boards, links, and calendars. This chapter describes the full complement of lists in SharePoint, their capacities, and how they are managed.
- Chapter 15, Business Intelligence and SharePoint
Business Intelligence, or BI, is one of the major new features in SharePoint 2007. This chapter describes the Report Center, Dashboards, Excel Services, external data sources, Filter Web Parts, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and how each of these elements works together to provide a unified method of viewing and manipulating corporate information in new and meaningful ways.
- Chapter 16, Sharing Contacts and Meetings with Outlook
While Chapter 10 introduced the default set of meeting workspaces in SharePoint and how they help teams collaborate, this chapter expands on this concept by introducing the interoperability between SharePoint and Outlook messaging and calendaring features.
- Chapter 17, Creating, Editing, and Managing Word Documents with SharePoint
The previous chapter showed you how Outlook and SharePoint interoperate. This chapter continues with that theme by showing you how other applications within the Microsoft Office 2007 suite work with SharePoint. Here, you’ll learn the different ways in which Word and SharePoint interact, including document versioning, workflow, and content type management.
- Chapter 18, Creating, Editing, and Managing Excel Documents with SharePoint
Excel Services was introduced in Chapter 15 as part of SharePoint’s Business Intelligence capacities. This chapter puts the spotlight on Excel and SharePoint interoperations, including such features as Excel Calculation Services (ECS), Excel Web Access (EWA), and Excel Web Services (EWS).
- Chapter 19, Creating in SharePoint Designer 2007
While previous versions of SharePoint used Microsoft FrontPage as the designer tool of choice, MOSS 2007 utilizes SharePoint Designer to take the basic web design of SharePoint to the next level, including working with Master Pages, customizing sites, and building applications.
- Chapter 20, InfoPath and SharePoint
While prior chapters have shown you how SharePoint works with other Microsoft Office 2007 suite software, this chapter introduces the interoperability between SharePoint and Microsoft InfoPath 2007. Learn how to create XML-based forms directly within SharePoint using InfoPath Forms Services.
- Chapter 21, Designing SharePoint My Sites
SharePoint My Sites are like giving each SharePoint user his own small site collection. My Sites utilizes personalization and audience features to allow users to create an environment where they can access and work with their own documents, lists, and other data, regardless of where that data might be located in the site collection. Utilizing the audiences feature, administrators are able to target user-specific information directly to the appropriate groups using their My Sites.
- Chapter 22, Applying Security to Your SharePoint Site
Security is a fact of life in any computerized system. SharePoint is designed to contain and manipulate a wide variety of enterprise-level data, including mission-critical information. This chapter shows you the features in MOSS that allow you to ensure the safe storage and presentation of information, allowing only the correct audiences to view and act upon documents and data.
- Chapter 23, SharePoint Administration
You may think by now that you have been getting a lot of information about administering SharePoint, but this chapter presents the various backend tools used by MOSS administrators to manage the application as a whole—including the SharePoint products and technologies configuration wizard, Central Administration web site, and command-line utilities.
- Chapter 24, Upgrading from SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Previously you learned how to install MOSS as a fresh installation in either a standalone server or multiserver farm environment. This chapter will show you how to take SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and upgrade it to SharePoint 2007, including upgrade prerequisites and different upgrade procedures.
- Chapter 25, Using Server-Side and Client-Side Web Parts
Chapter 8 introduced the different default Web Parts that you can use in SharePoint 2007. This chapter will take you behind the scenes and explore the nature of Web Part design and utilization, including specialized ASP.NET Server Control, Web Part customization, and personalization.
- Chapter 26, Using SharePoint Web Services
This chapter takes the lid off of SharePoint web services, showing you how MOSS utilizes this set of standards and protocols to enable the exchange of information with dissimilar systems using XML. Included is relevant information on the Business Data Catalog (BDC) and XML and Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Web Parts.
- Chapter 27, Using SharePoint Server for Search
Search in MOSS 2007 offers many significant improvements over SharePoint Portal 2003, and starting with the Office 2007 release, it is also available as a standalone product. Search is an increasingly important tool for the end users, as more and more data is stored in repositories that are indexed by MOSS Search. This chapter shows you the improved capacities in MOSS 2007 Search and why they are important to you.
- Chapter 28, Using the SharePoint Object Model
MOSS 2007 is an extension of WSS and provides extended features, such as enhanced portal capabilities, improved search, and the Business Data Catalog (BDC). Because both WSS and MOSS are based on ASP.NET, you can tweak, tune, customize, enhance, and extend the core SharePoint platform to meet your organization’s needs. In this chapter, you will learn about the SharePoint Object Model, which defines how SharePoint works and provides you with the core API for modifying SharePoint for your needs.
- Chapter 29, Web Content Management
Web Content Management (WCM) is a set of features integrated into SharePoint 2007 that allows nontechnical users to create and manage content-centric web sites, providing the ability to author, review, and publish content over the Web. These features were part of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 (MCMS), which has been incorporated into Office SharePoint Server 2007. This chapter shows you how to use the rich set of features for web-based content management in SharePoint.
You’ll need access to a computer or server running Windows Server 2003 with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 installed. For many of you that will mean working in an environment running MOSS 2007 on either a single server or in a server farm. You can also acquire evaluation copies of Windows Server 2003 and MOSS 2007 from Microsoft and install them on a computer that meets the hardware requirements for this software. You can find the instructions for installing SharePoint Server 2007 on a standalone computer at http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/bd99c3a9-0333-4c1c-9793-a145769e48e61033.mspx?mfr=true, or you can check out Chapter 3 for a detailed walkthrough.
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
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Constant width boldShows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.
Constant width italicShows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values.
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I’d like to thank Colleen Gorman, with whom I spent a great deal of time working through this book, and Jeff Pepper, who got me into this in the first place. They were both great to work with, and I hope I get the opportunity to do more books with them in the future. I also want to thank Adam Witwer (who I’ve interacted with just once) and John Osborn, who have both been the driving force behind getting the book through its final stages. John’s done a great job getting 11 different authors who all live and work who-knows-where to get together and put the final touches on their words. The same goes for Rachel Monaghan, Laurel Ruma, and Jessamyn Read, who have had the same task related to our graphics and screen captures.
There’s just a tremendous amount of work to be done by the editorial staff when a book is about to go to print, and I admire the efforts of those mentioned and everyone at O’Reilly for all they do. Lest I forget, thank yous go out to Jawahar Puvvala and Rob McGovern as the technical editors who kept us on our toes, and to Caitrin McCullough for all the hard work she’s done as Editorial Assistant for this text. You’ve all been a pleasure to work with. Cheers.
—James Pyles
Murray Gordon wishes to acknowledge his family—Tim, Jerri, and Mary Greta—who have always been there for him. Also huge thanks to Cecil Duffie, CEO, and Robert Moore, CFO, of Cambar Solutions for bringing him to Charleston to work in such a great city with such a great team of industry and technology experts.
Michael Lotter wishes to acknowledge his wife, Heather, for her patience with the tremendous amount of travel and the long weekend hours while at home. Without her he wouldn’t be where he is today. He would also like to thank his parents for teaching him that nothing is impossible if you work hard enough and never give up, and in addition, O’Reilly Media, Inc. and Bob Fox for providing him the chance to write a chapter for this book.
Christopher Pragash would like to thank his wife, Pushpa Babitha, for her patience and help in writing the chapters for this book.
Christopher Regan would like to thank his family and fiancée, Ashley, for their unwavering support during these incredible times. Without them, he would have given up a long time ago. In addition, he would also like to thank Jason Medero for convincing him of the power of SharePoint years ago and risking it all to build something terrific. Finally, he would like to recognize the entire B&R Business Solutions team, for their dedication and passion toward all of the work they perform—they are an incredible group and are capable of amazing things.
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