INTRODUCTION

THE THREE AMIGOS ARE BACK together to write another SharePoint Administration book. It feels kind of crazy to know we are done with this process for a third time. With the 2007 edition we had almost no clue what we were doing but we knew that the topic was important. The 2010 edition was painful but a great adventure; when we started I never imagined we could fill that many pages. Now, with the 2013 edition, you will find the same voice and humor, but many changes and updates relevant to the newest version of SharePoint.

This book, like our other two, is written from the point of view of real administrators who perform the tasks it describes; it is not an academic exploration. This is the same way we teach training and give presentations at major conferences around the world — focusing on real-world SharePoint. We are often asked, “Will this book/training/presentation help me prepare for the SharePoint certification exams?” — and we always have the same answer: “Does that matter if you cannot do your job well?” This book is focused as much as possible on helping you administer SharePoint effectively and efficiently. If you do a good job learning and using SharePoint, things like passing the exams will follow naturally. In case you are wondering, two of us have already passed some of the exams and one of us is a slacker and hasn’t taken any yet.

Some of the changes in this edition of the book include the following:

• Coverage of the new features, obviously. Highlights are found in the Office Web Apps chapter, since they are now for everyone, and Search is 100% all new so that chapter requires some studying. The App model is also interesting; as admins we aren’t creating apps but there is some work required to get the pieces in place. I wish I could tell you the jokes are all new but we like to be green so you will see some “recycling” of material. Don’t worry they aren’t all repeats but don’t be surprised when it happens.
• More focus on step-by-step. For example if you look at Chapter 8, where we cover Business Intelligence, it is almost entirely instructions for configuring the different tools and then the examples so you can confirm everything is working. Readers from the 2010 book really pushed us for more of this level of content.
• Less focus on features that rolled up from 2010 mostly unchanged. A great example is Managed Metadata. With SharePoint 2010 this feature was new so it got broad coverage. In this edition, Managed Metadata is mentioned where appropriate but no deep dive. You might notice there is no longer a chapter on navigation and governance, because we tried to spread out the governance love so it is embedded in all of the chapters instead of bringing all of those thoughts into one place.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

Although we are seasoned pros who have been dealing with SharePoint for 10 or more years, we don’t make such assumptions about you. We cover topics with a wide-enough brush that if you are new to SharePoint you can connect the dots. If you are an old pro, you can still find the nuggets new to 2013 that you crave thanks to organization and headings. The sweet-spot reader for this book is someone who has read our book Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration (Wrox, 2010) and has some hands-on experience with SharePoint administration, although that isn’t required. If you are new to our style of writing you will just have to learn to appreciate the personality of the book while you learn to love SharePoint — and by personality we mean Shane’s really funny jokes and comments, and Todd’s and Steve’s weak attempts at humor. The book has some “Easter eggs” too, so be sure to look at those screenshots closely.

WHAT THIS BOOK COVERS

SharePoint 2013 administration!

Oh, you wanted more detailed information? OK then. This book is primarily focused on traditional SharePoint administration topics, but it also includes other topics that might not seem related to administration per se. Yes, you should read those too. Topics like using Office 2013, branding, and development are covered in such a way that you will learn the key components and be able to speak intelligently about them. You might not finish the business intelligence chapter ready for a career change, but you will leave it knowing the full power of the BI stack and what you need to do as an administrator to enable that functionality. So, read all of the chapters, pretty please.

HOW THIS BOOK IS STRUCTURED

The book is divided into chapters, but not parts. In general, you can read them in any order you want, because they are mostly self-contained, with plenty of cross-references added when needed. There are a few things to consider, though, while you think about which chapters to read when. Although all the chapters stand on their own, Chapters 2 through 4 are very complementary for understanding and building a new 2013 SharePoint farm. Chapter 7 covers Windows PowerShell for SharePoint, and that is one you should read early and often. Almost every chapter in the book includes some PowerShell, so if you are unfamiliar with it then jumping ahead to that chapter will be helpful. Other than that, each chapter’s title makes it clear what is covered.

WHAT YOU NEED TO USE THIS BOOK

The only thing you need to read this book is a comfy chair and some free time. If you want to follow along with the examples, some virtual machines would probably be handy to build out your farm. Of course, if you are the brave (or reckless) type, you can always just test on your production farm. Let’s hope that isn’t the case, though. Try this stuff out somewhere else first.

This book is written to show you as much of SharePoint 2013 as possible. That means topics range from SharePoint Foundation to SharePoint Server Enterprise. We also cover Office Web Applications, SQL Server Reporting Services, PowerPivot, and PowerView. Some of those are pretty pricey, but because they are either in use or being evaluated in many farms we see in the wild, we thought they were important to cover. The best thing we recommend to fully enjoy this book? A TechNet subscription. Then you would have all of this software at your fingertips to follow along.

CONVENTIONS

To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what’s happening, we’ve used a number of conventions throughout the book.

As for styles in the text:

• We italicize new terms and important words when we introduce them.
• We show keyboard strokes like this: Ctrl+A.
• We show filenames, URLs, and code within the text like so: persistence.properties.
• We present code in two different ways:

We use a monofont type with no highlighting for most code examples.
 
We use bold to emphasize code that's particularly important in the present context.

SOURCE CODE

As you work through the examples in this book, you may choose either to type in all the code manually or to use the source code files that accompany the book. All the source code used in this book is available for download at www.wrox.com. Each chapter that has companion code will indicate that at the beginning of the chapter. Once at the site, simply locate the book’s title (either by using the Search box or by using one of the title lists) and click the Download Code link on the book’s detail page to obtain all the source code for the book.

Once you download the code, just decompress it with your favorite compression tool. Alternately, you can go to the main Wrox code download page at www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/download.aspx to see the code available for this book and all other Wrox books.

ERRATA

We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, such as a spelling mistake or a faulty piece of code, we would be very grateful for your feedback. By sending in errata you may save another reader hours of frustration and at the same time you will be helping us provide even higher quality information.

To find the errata page for this book, go to www.wrox.com and locate the title using the Search box or one of the title lists. Then, on the book details page, click the Book Errata link. On this page you can view all errata that has been submitted for this book and posted by Wrox editors. A complete book list, including links to each book’s errata, is also available at www.wrox.com/misc-pages/booklist.shtml.

If you don’t spot “your” error on the Book Errata page, go to www.wrox.com/contact/techsupport.shtml and complete the form there to send us the error you have found. We’ll check the information and, if appropriate, post a message to the book’s errata page and fix the problem in subsequent editions of the book.

P2P.WROX.COM

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At http://p2p.wrox.com you will find a number of different forums that will help you not only as you read this book, but also as you develop your own applications. To join the forums, just follow these steps:

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