SharePoint User's Guide

Preface

Today's business environment requires fast, efficient, and effective communication between employees. Windows SharePoint© Services provides you with a web-based mechanism for enabling and encouraging communication by allowing you to quickly create web sites (or portals) where you and your team can work together.

For example, using Windows SharePoint Services, you can create a web site that describes a corporate meeting and lists the names of the meeting moderator and attendees, as well as providing the following features:

• A tool for inviting attendees and confirming attendance

• A list displaying the agenda for the meeting

• A set of directions (and possibly a map) showing how to get to the meeting

• A place to store meeting notes

• A way to list and assign tasks generated by the meeting

The best part is that all you have to do is decide which of these features you want on your meeting site. Windows SharePoint Services takes care of generating all the code needed to build the site and then renders it automatically. All you have to provide are the meeting details.

Perhaps you need to create a team collaboration site for a committee charged with deciding the best practices of your company. Windows SharePoint Services gives you the tools you need to build a team site that contains:

• A document library for storing all drafts of your best-practices document

• A discussion board for collecting questions and comments

• A notice board for announcing when the next draft of a document will be released

You can also control the security on your site so that anyone can view the draft documents, but only committee members can make changes. Once again, Windows SharePoint Services provides all the functionality, and all you need to provide are the site layout, content, and security settings.

Who This Book Is For

This is a book for SharePoint users that shows you how to perform the most common Windows SharePoint Services tasks. If you are a newcomer to Windows SharePoint Services, you can read the book from cover to cover. You can also open the book to the section that describes the task you need to perform and follow the step-by-step procedures provided.

Windows SharePoint Services is a set of tools that can be used by anyone. However, in order to use SharePoint effectively, you should have a basic understanding of Microsoft applications, including Office. For certain features of Windows SharePoint Services, you may need to be familiar with basic web page terminology. If you are going to develop your own site, you may also need some experience with HTML design and Microsoft FrontPage.