Introduction to SharePoint

Introduction to SharePoint

SharePoint is an extensible web based platform which contains various products and technologies aimed at development of corporate portals. These products and technologies are referred to as SharePoint Products and Technologies.

 It allows individuals in an organization to easily create and manage their own collaborative Websites

• Simplifies how people find and share information across boundaries and enabling better informed decisions
• Seamlessly integrates with Windows and MS Office

Does not refer to a specific product or technology

• Using the word “Microsoft SharePoint” is like using the word “Microsoft Office”

Advantages of SharePoint Products and Technologies (High level features)

• Rich UI
• Easy site editing and branding
• Ribbon Interface.
• Better Site Provisioning

o    Quick development

o    No DBA required

• Better document Management
• Better Versioning
• Document Libraries
• Document Column (Attachments)
• Check in / Check out
• Document Workflow (Approval)
• Document View within browser
• Permissions
• Automated Email and SMS Alerts
• Easy Customization options: “My Site” (using WebParts)
• Built In Indexing & Search Engine
• Integration with Active Directory
• Integration of MS-Office Products
• Reports in PDF, Word and other formats
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Task Manager

Six Pillars of SharePoint 2010

1.       Sites 2.       Communities 3.       Content 4.       Search 5.       Insights 6.       Composites

1.       Sites: Building and Managing Internal and External Websites

Think of SharePoint 2010 Sites as a “one-stop shop” for all business Web sites. It provides a full set of tools that people can use to create any kind of site, plus a single infrastructure that simplifies site management. From a team site for colleagues, to an extranet site for partners, to an Internet site for customers, people can share and publish information using one familiar system.

The 2010 release does bring a number of Web Content Management improvements:

• A more intuitive content authoring/editing experience, with a similar look and feel to MS Office
• Better support for websites that need to be available in multiple languages
• Better organizing and categorizing of content
• Improved search, particularly via FAST Search, including more relevant results and more ways to view the results
• Integration of Web Analytics to see how your website is performing
• Personalization via Audience targeting
• Cross browser Support — view your site on most of the popular browsers today

2.       Communities: Creating a Social Collaboration Environment

Social capabilities like Facebook and Twitter are becoming normal for many of us. Now all this social media stuff is moving into the workplace. It all boils down to providing a modern approach to working together, collaborating and sharing knowledge.

So these capabilities need to be a component of every piece of software we use. SharePoint 2010 works towards this goal by supporting:

• The ability to create detailed user profiles (think employee Facebook pages)
• Use of modern tools for sharing and collaboration including blogs and wikis.
• The creation of special interest groups (Communities) to share knowledge or work on projects
• Interactivity via commenting and discussions around content items, and social tagging/bookmarking of content
• The creation of separate personal spaces or dashboards called MySites where you can keep track of your own content, and the work you are doing in certain communities, projects and more

3.       Content: Managing Your Documents, Information and Records

As part of Content functionality in SharePoint, you have direct integration with your MS Office environment, so you can work on your documents in a familiar environment.

SharePoint 2010 provides the tools to help you work with both document and record management:

• Manage all of your organization's documents and other information including controlling who can read and update them.
• Categorize them for easier search and retrieval.
• Mark them as official records and lock them down from further changes.

4.       Search: The Google for Your Organization's Private Info

SharePoint 2010 has two levels of search: the built in functionality which is greatly improved from SharePoint 2007 and FAST Search, offering additional functionality. Out of the box SharePoint search includes the ability to:

• Search for information and people, including particular expertise
• Index content and data stored outside of your SharePoint database
• Refine search results based on taxonomy and metadata (how content is organized and classified) 

The addition of FAST Search brings enhancements, including:

• View thumbnails and previews of content within the result set
• Refine results based on user profile or audience
• The ability to refine search results with filters like Site, Author, Result Type and more

5.       Insights: Digging for Business Intelligence

A key goal in any business is staying ahead of the competition. Increasingly, the class of software called Business Intelligence plays an important role here. Business intelligence software is all about helping you make decisions and find problems.

With this release you can:

• Use tools like Excel to gather and analyze data that is stored in SharePoint
• Use SharePoint's native Excel Services engine to crunch data and build web-based reports
• Pull together information from different systems and present it in SharePoint
• Create dashboards, scorecards, and other views — making key performance indicators widely accessible to information workers and process managers

6.       Composites: Integrating Your Business Systems

Another big improvement for SharePoint 2010 relates to its ability talk to — pushing and pulling data to/ from other business systems. Instead of having to work in multiple systems, you can create composite applications in sharepoint.

Data integrations are key for management dashboards and project management, but also for employees who may not need full access to the business application. It's important to note that SharePoint 2010 can both view and update external data via its Business Connectivity Services (BCS).

Version History of SharePoint

Version	Year	Product Names
1.0	2001	STS (SharePoint Team Services)	SPS 2001(SharePoint Product Services)
2.0	2003	WSS 2.0	SPS 2003
3.0	2006	WSS 3.0	MOSS 2007
2010	2010	SharePoint Foundation Server	SharePoint Server 2010

Role of SharePoint Server in a LAN Network.

Components of SharePoint

SharePoint Foundation Server (Closest equivalent of WSS in 2007)

• Creating team sites and collaborating on content within lists and libraries, or features such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, alerts, and easy browser-based customizations.
• It provides developers with a great platform to build from. Out of the box, it handles storage, web presentation, authorization, user management, and has an interface into the Windows Workfow Foundation and because all of this functionality is easily accessible through the object model, APIs, and web services, it can greatly accelerate a developer’s job. Rather than build all of those infrastructure pieces for every web-based product, developers can leverage SharePoint Foundation and concentrate on just building the solution.

Sharepoint Server 2010

·         It extends Foundation server which is automatically installed with SharePoint Server 2010

·         Its available in two editions: Standard Edition & Enterprise Edition

o    Standard introduces core functionality like social, search, and advanced web and enterprise content management.

o    Enterprise focuses primarily on adding functionality through new service applications, introducing business intelligence, line of business integration, reporting, and some Office client services such as Visio.

Search Server

• Foundation server cannot pull search results from multiple site collection and cannot add external content sources like file share or Exchange public folders
• Search Server 2010 Express (SSX) is a free product from Microsoft that essentially takes SharePoint Foundation and adds to it the intranet searching capabilities
• While Search Server 2010 can be configured to avoid any single point of failure, including the Search components
• It can be deployed on only one server in the FARM and it’s not free

Fast Search Sever:

• Visual search and best bets
• Extreme scale, with a billion documents possible
• Enhanced multiple language capabilities
• Better handling of unstructured data through metadata extraction
• Better handling of structured data such as numbers, dates, etc.

SharePoint Online (SharePoint Cloud)

• Another push for SharePoint from Microsoft will be SharePoint in the cloud, hosted by Microsoft. If you are looking to deploy SharePoint using this model, the entire server infrastructure is hosted and maintained for you. This model removes the administrative overhead of SharePoint and lets the business focus just on using the power that is SharePoint.

Email and Text Message (SMS) Service

• Can be used for alerts

Application Servers

• Query Server: its responsible for responding to user search requests
• Index Server: Also referred as Crawl Server.
• Excel Service: It’s about supporting excel service in client browser.
• Usage and Health Data Collection: It enables the collection of all the diagnostic and usage data from your entire SharePoint farm in one database.

 Developers View of SharePoint

In Configuration we create: Web Part Pages New Sites and Site Collections Columns, Lists and Libraries In Customization we Customize styles and master pages Modify List Forms Create Workflows which do not require coding In Solution Development Define custom site and list definitions Create Controls, Web Parts and Pages Build Advanced Workflows