OReilly essential sharepoint microsoft office document collaboration in action may 2005 ISBN 0596008805

That's why it created Windows SharePoint Services--a set of collaboration tools that helps organizations increase individual and team productivity by enabling them to create web sites fo

By Jeff Webb

Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: May 2005 ISBN: 0-596-00880-5 Pages: 336

Table of Contents | Index

Want to work more efficiently and effectively? Want to improve productivity? Microsoft is betting that you do That's why it created Windows SharePoint Services a set of

collaboration tools that helps organizations increase individual and team productivity by enabling them to create web sites for information sharing and document collaboration Through these team-oriented web sites, users capture and share ideas, and work together

on documents, tasks, contacts, etc. either among themselves or with partners and

customers And if you have Windows 2003 Server, then you already have SharePoint, since it's built right in But before you can enjoy the benefits of SharePoint, you need to know how to turn it on, set it up, and get your applications working with it.

Essential Sharepoint will help you do just that It's not only the most complete guide for

setting up and using these increasingly popular sites, but it also explains in detail the integration that makes SharePoint exciting Everything you need to know about SharePoint

By Jeff Webb

Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: May 2005 ISBN: 0-596-00880-5 Pages: 336

O'Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, orsales promotional use Online editions are also available for

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of thisbook, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for

errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use ofthe information contained herein

ISBN: 0-596-00880-5

[M]

For Sophiayou are talented, beautiful, smart, and fun to be with.

If you don't have SharePoint Services, you need it Even if youwork alone from your home office as I do, SharePoint is too

useful to pass upand it's free (well, kind of) SharePoint

Services is part of Windows 2003, so if you already have

Windows Server 2003, you can download the installation fromMicrosoft and install it fairly easily

If you don't have Windows Server 2003, you can sign up for afree 30-day trial through one of the SharePoint hosting

providers, which operate much like other web-hosting services.With the free trial, you get an account and some server space.You can administer your site yourself through a web-basedinterface, and after the free trial period they'll bill you monthly

SharePoint is a server product that is used by a wide range ofpeople This book was written to serve readers based on theirvarying roles in your company The following table identifiesthese roles and recommends specific chapters that may be ofinterest

9 if you're not a programmer! Still, I wanted to provide a bookthat gives readers room to grow and that does more than

reorganize information that is already available for free in Help

or on the Internet

Many SharePoint tasks involve navigating through several webpages I provide the navigation path based on the links on eachpage For example, "choose Site Settings Go to Site

Administration Delete this site" means click Site Settings

on the navigation bar, click Site Administration on the next page, and finally click Delete this site Each of these links

takes you to a new page, and sometimes you have to search abit to find the next link I use this abbreviated style because Ithink the alternatives are more wordy, but not much clearer

If you get lost trying to follow the path, you can enter the

address of the page directly in your browser's Address bar Thefigures that accompany tasks show the addresses of most

important pages For example, this is the address of the pageused to delete a site:

http://wombat1/newsite/_layouts/1033/deleteweb.aspx

In this case, you'd want to replace //wombat1/newsite/ with theaddress of the site to delete Using the address bar is also ahandy shortcut for repeating a task on multiple sites: to deletemultiple sites, just change the site name as described and

repeat for each site you wish to delete

The code examples are available on my web site at

http://www.usingsharepoint.com/Samples You may want tobookmark that site in your browser so you can see the

examples in action while you're reading In addition, there is aversion of code samples that can be installed on your own

server as a template at

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/essentialsp

Although installing the samples yourself is a little complicated, itgives you complete access to the source and lets you make

changes You don't need to install the samples right away,

though: get comfortable with SharePoint first

You are free to use the samples in this book in your own workbut not to claim them as your own Ditto for sections of text inthis book It is always polite to credit the source of your quotes

so that other can find (and possibly buy) the book if the find ituseful If you have questions about your use of samples, pleaseemail permissions@oreilly.com

In addition to the help that can be found through my web siteand those of O'Reilly, Microsoft, and Google, here are someotherSharePoint resources:

This book follows certain conventions for font usage

Understanding these conventions up front makes it easier touse this book

Plain text

Indicates menu titles, menu options, menu buttons, andkeyboard accelerators (such as Alt and Ctrl)

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames,program names, file extensions, pathnames, directories,and new terms where they are defined

Constant width

Is used for all code listings, commands, options, variables,attributes, properties, parameters, values, XML tags, HTMLtags, the contents of files, the output of commands, andanything that appears literally in a SharePoint page

Constant width italic

Indicates text that should be replaced with user-suppliedvalues

Please address comments and questions concerning this book tothe publisher:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/essentialsp

To comment or ask technical questions about this book, sendemail to:

bookquestions@oreilly.com

For more information about our books, conferences, ResourceCenters, and the O'Reilly Network, see our web site at:

http://www.oreilly.com/

When you see a Safari® Enabled icon on the cover ofyour favorite technology book, that means the book is availableonline through the O'Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf

Safari offers a solution that's better than e-books It's a virtuallibrary that lets you easily search thousands of top tech books,cut and paste code samples, download chapters, and find quickanswers when you need the most accurate, current information.Try it for free at http://safari.oreilly.com

They've been patient with my programming jokes, take me tothe beach on weekends, and find me when I'm lost

Finally, I must thank everyone in the SharePoint community Noindividual can do as much as those working together, and thenewsgroups and sites mentioned earlier help all of us I

encourage you to ask and answer questions whenever possible.

Several key people facilitate these discussions tremendously,and I'd like to acknowledge Mike Walsh and Ian Morrish for alltheir work I hope they are well-rewarded

SharePoint is a component of Windows 2003 that lets you shareMicrosoft Office documents with others through web pages.Unlike most web sites, SharePoint sites are designed to be

highly dynamic Team members can easily upload documents,add public announcements, send alerts, track work items, andcall meetings right from within Office products

SharePoint solves four problems:

It's difficult to keep track of all the documents in even asmall office

of each reviewer's response, and reconcile conflicting

comments

That approach works because your boss, Ed, and Jane are greatcoworkers, check their email often, and communicate well witheach other, and because the proposal is well-suited for this

approach It's pretty easy to throw a wrench into that machine,however Say, for instance, your proposal isn't a Word

document, but rather a set of drawings, a spreadsheet of testresults, and a list of links to related products How do you routethat? How do you collect comments?

Or say your project has multiple authors and multiple files Each

of these complications increases the vulnerability of the

process, and improvised solutions start to break down: zippedfiles bounce back from mail servers, comments are lost or not

SharePoint is a big improvement over improvised solutions, butthe degree of improvement is affected by two conditions:

SharePoint affects work processes, so you need to thinkabout how to influence process effectively before it can

help

SharePoint is closely tied to Office 2003; although you canuse earlier Office versions or even other applications, thelatest Microsoft suite provides the greatest benefit

If you can live with those two caveats, then we can get started.Otherwise, you'd probably better put this book back on the shelf

so someone else can buy it

For a list of SharePoint features supported by Office 2000 and 2002 (XP), see Appendix B

Documents store and share information, but there are two

aspects that documents sometimes ignore: content modificationand change tracking To see this handled well in a web-baseddocument library, visit the W3C web site, which indicates

SharePoint lets you create the same type of document libraries,histories, discussions, and lists by gathering the work from

around your office and making it available from a web page

Figure 1-2 shows the SharePoint workspace I used to createthis book

animal 1-1 W3C uses diff-marked web pages to

share changes

publisher via SharePoint

I didn't put as much thought or effort into my site as the W3Cdid, but the two sites have a lot in common They both:

measure my progress against the schedule.

The main difference between my site and the W3C site is thatmine contains mostly Word documents, while their site is mostlyHTML files That means my users must have Word to view thefiles in Figure 1-2, but it also means that those users can openthose files directly from the web site and make changes if theyhave permission

In fact, my editors don't even need to open my site to makechanges They can open the Word files listed in Figure 1-2 andsave them to their own computers as linked documents; thenwhenever they open their local copy, it is automatically

refreshed with changes from the SharePoint site Similarly, anychanges they make to the files are sent to SharePoint when

they close their local copy, as shown in Figure 1-3

Figure 1-3 illustrates a distributed file system where O'Reilly(my publisher) can share access to the files I am working on,even though I live in Florida, and they are in Massachusetts andCalifornia (and sometimes in between)

The files are synchronized over the Internet whenever the file isopened or closed If Simon (my editor) finds himself somewherewithout a good network connection, however, he can cancel theupdates but still work on the fileas long as he promises to

synchronize it later!

For me, SharePoint replaced zipping files and emailing them as they were completed, reviewed, or changed, because very large zip files sometimes bounced back from the mail serverputting the "dead" in deadline.

SharePoint documents

SharePoint provides several types of collaboration tools, asshown in Figure 1-4:

Announcements

Use to keep teammates informed

Alerts

Notify team members if a document changes

SharePoint creates web sites That means your documents can

be made public over the Internet, shared within a private

intranet, or both My site is public, but access to certain areas isrestricted so that no one steals my chapters

I assigned different permissions to different members of mysite As site administrator, I have full control; Simon and Johnare contributors and can make changes; my technical reviewerscan read files; and so on Once the chapters are complete, Imove

animal 1-4 SharePoint sites provide tools to

communicate with team members

Membership is a key aspect of SharePoint In most

organizations, individuals may belong to many different teams.Some teams are organizational (company, division, department,etc.) while other teams span organization lines (project teams,task forces, and so on) SharePoint accommodates both

structures well; there's a lot more on this in Chapter 2

SharePoint sites are organized into folders, just like any otherweb site, but there are some terms SharePoint uses that should

be explained up front:

Virtual server

The root location for one or more web sites SharePoint canhost multiple virtual servers on a single server Each virtualserver can have its own domain name For example,

www.usingsharepoint.com and www.mstrainingkits.com arehosted on the same SharePoint server

animal 1-5 Adding members and setting permissions from a web page in SharePoint

List

SharePoint: announcements, contacts, discussions, andother types of content are implemented through lists Userscan also create lists using Excel and link the contents ofthose shared lists to other documents in Word and Excel

View

The way a list is displayed The default view of a list is todisplay the data in columns that can be sorted or filtered,but you can also display lists in calendar form or as a

spreadsheet-like data grid Views can include criteria todisplay only certain columns or rows and may group items

Authorized team members can create new sites in SharePointvery easilyin 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 differenttemplates, but there are only three types you need to worryabout for now, as shown in Table 1-1

Most groups or departments will have a team site as their maintop-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 mainsite templates

SharePoint sites have three key navigation areas, as illustrated

in Figure 1-8:

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

Links list

Located on the right of page; navigates down to documentand meeting workspace sites within a team site You canalso add links to external sites or other locations in theLinks list

Navigation bar

Located at the top of page; navigates to the site's homepage or to the team site from a document or meeting

workspace The navigation bar also includes Help and

administrative links

animal 1-7 Team, workspace, and meeting sites

workspace sites

animal 1-9 Web parts on a home page

page that contains zones where you can drag and drop webparts The home page of each site is a web part page Web

parts often present data from lists within the site In fact, all ofthe lists in a site show up as web parts when you create a newweb part page, as shown in Figure 1-10

animal 1-10 Designing a web part page