Introduction

I’ve concentrated in this Introduction on just four things.

First, on the target audience for the book because I think that it is important that people don’t read this book with the wrong impression about who it will be useful for.

Second, I’ve tried to make it completely clear that this is a book about SharePoint Foundation 2010 the product. Yes, people about to use SharePoint Server 2010 should find it useful, but it’s not a book about SharePoint Server 2010.

Third, I wanted to give you a quick reference here to what is covered in the hours. Hour titles are one thing, but a bit more meat was necessary and needed to be in a single place for easy reference.

Fourth, in saying what a cheap machine I used for this book, I wanted you to be aware that despite the official Microsoft line that you need really powerful machines with fast expensive processors, lots of internal memory, and fast SSD drives, it’s possible to take a portable computer from a rack in a department store and use that for running SharePoint Foundation 2010. So don’t let those official Microsoft guidelines put you off working through this book on a personal machine.

Target Audience for This Book

This book has been written as a training guide for three main groups of people:

Users and administrators who need to learn the basics of SharePoint 2010

Programmers who are now required to write SharePoint 2010 programs and need a basic introduction to what SharePoint 2010 supplies out-of-the-box before they do so

Users of Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 who can make use of the options in those products in connecting to SharePoint sites

The book’s main focus is to provide basic information on SharePoint 2010 for users and administrators with the Teach Yourself approach. Users can find the administration sections interesting, whereas administrators need to know that because this is a general book rather than a specialist administration book, it covers the basic issues well but only dips into those administration options required to follow the other hours of the book. Programmers can gain knowledge of unique situations and features, and Office users can appreciate hours on the interaction of Office products with SharePoint systems, which most books fail to cover; SharePoint Foundation 2010 is entirely sufficient as the SharePoint end of the combination. Because users often work in environments with back versions of Office, the differences in Office 2007 and Office 2003 are often indicated.

What This Book Covers and What It Doesn’t

The book is almost entirely about SharePoint Foundation 2010 (SPF 2010), with some comments on additional functionality available only with SharePoint Server 2010 (SPS 2010).

Reading this book can be advantageous for the target audience if they have (or will have) SPS 2010 because that product is SPF 2010 with additional (and usually complicated) functionality.

It is easier to acquire the basics of SharePoint Server 2010 by initially excluding all the additional complications that SPS 2010 offers. In addition, using a SharePoint Foundation 2010 installation makes it much easier for people without their own SharePoint test environments to create them without needing to spend a fortune on hardware.

This book looks at some of the things that you can do with SharePoint Designer 2010, such as creating workflows that provide more than the basic workflow included in SPF 2010. This book does not go into many details of how to use SharePoint Designer 2010 to customize a SPF 2010 site. In other words, if you are looking for a book on “branding” SPF 2010 sites, you should look elsewhere.

Another area of improvement to the built-in SPF 2010 website that is not covered here is the use of Visual Studio 2010 to create completely new functionality. Share-Point experts are usually divided between the Development experts who know a lot about SharePoint programming (typically using Visual Studio 2010) and the administration experts who know a lot about installing and using SharePoint (and typically little about development). There are (many) specialist books on Share-Point Development more suitable for SharePoint programmers, and adding a mini section on Visual Studio here would serve little useful purpose.

Organization of This Book

This isn’t a reference book with every list type and parameter described, focusing on a few more commonly used elements in some detail.

The chapters in each section of the book were written in order. Because this book was written with a working SharePoint test system, some sites or lists in a few places might not match what you actually see on your computer. Don’t bother about this because everything you need will be visible.

Hour 11, “Using What We’ve Learned So Far in a Site,” considers a universally understood solution area and how the things you have learned up to this hour can be applied to that one solution area. The idea is to provide an example of the thinking that goes behind the creation of a site. Apart from this one example (and it is just an example, nothing more), the book offers building blocks you can use in any kind of SharePoint site that you need to create. Learning what sort of things to use for that sample solution area should help you in creating sites for your real-world scenarios.

This book is divided into five sections:

Part I, “The Basics,” (Hours 1–12) covers the basics.

Part II, “Search,” (Hours 13–14) covers the built-in search function and how to enhance that with Search Server 2010 Express.

Part III, “Working with Office Products,” (Hours 15–20) covers the combination of Microsoft Office products and SPF 2010.

Part IV, “Workflow and SPD 2010,” (Hours 21–23) deals with adding workflows (in general and with SPD 2010) and some other nonbranding functions available when using SPD 2010.

Part V, “Other Available Functions and Methods,” (Hour 24) reviews the other functions and methods available to enhance your sites and includes some useful book references for further reading.

The hours include the following:

Hour 1, “Introducing SharePoint Foundation 2010,” introduces SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Hour 2, “Installing SharePoint Foundation 2010,” gives details of how to install the standalone (basic) installation of SPF 2010 on a single server running Windows Server 2008 R2.

Hour 3, “Adding Users and Giving Them Rights” discusses the various types of users, creates users required later, and then gives them rights to access the SPF 2010 site.

Hour 4, “Using the Administration Site,” looks at the (Central) Administration site and looks at some common actions using it.

Hour 5, “Planning a Site’s Structure,” describes the different types of sites and how (and when) to create them.

Hour 6, “Using Libraries and Lists,” is an introduction to libraries and lists and to the relationship between a list and the web part of a list (List View Web Part).

Hour 7, “Creating and Using Libraries” looks at the different types of libraries and at how to add files to Picture Libraries and Document Libraries.

Hour 8, “Creating and Using Views and Folders,” describes how to create and use views and why you shouldn’t use folders.

Hour 9, “Looking at List Types and the Included Web Parts,” continues looking at lists and then looks at the web parts that come with the product that aren’t directly related to Lists.

Hour 10, “Learning About Authentication and Access Rights,” includes more information about authentication and shows how you can change the user being used to access a site or a web page.

Hour 11, “Using What We’ve Learned So Far in a Site,” takes a practical working case in which SPF 2010 is used and shows how data is collected and then used to build a suitable site structure.

Hour 12, “Using Wikis and Blogs,” looks at the standard Wiki and Blog functions provided by SPF 2010.

Hour 13, “Using SPF 2010 Search and Installing Search Server 2010 Express,” covers the standard SPF 2010 search function and then installs the free Search Server 2010 Express product to (in Hour 14) improve the search function.

Hour 14, “Improving Searches,” shows the additional possibilities for search offered when Search Server 2010 Express has been installed on top of SPF 2010.

Hour 15, “Using Different Versions of the Main Office Products with SPF 2010,” looks at how various versions of the main Office products work with SPF 2010.

Hour 16, “Using Outlook 2010 with SPF 2010,” describes what functionality is available when Outlook 2010 is used with SPF 2010. Brief mention is made of the differences when using the earlier versions of Outlook.

Hour 17, “Sharing OneNote 2010 or OneNote 2007 Notebooks with SPF 2010,” describes how you can store OneNote 2010 and 2007 notebooks in a SPF 2010 site.

Hour 18, “Sharing Access 2010 Tables with SPF 2010,” describes the various methods available of combining Access tables with SPF 2010.

Hour 19, “Producing a Report from a Single SPF 2010 List,” describes how to use the Report Wizard in Access 2010 to create reports from a single SPF 2010 list.

Hour 20, “Creating a Report from Several SPF 2010 Lists,” shows how you can produce reports that combine the data from two or more SharePoint lists.

Hour 21, “Creating Workflows in SPF 2010,” gives a general overview to work-flows with SPF 2010 and shows how to create the built-in three-stage workflow.

Hour 22, “Using SharePoint Designer 2010 to Create Workflows,” shows how to use SharePoint Designer 2010 to produce more complicated workflows than those described in Hour 21.

Hour 23, “Using SharePoint Designer 2010 to Solve Common User Requests,” looks further into some standard SharePoint Designer 2010 possibilities.

Hour 24, “Learning to Add Even More Functionality to Your SPF 2010 System,” looks at several additional possibilities for enhancing SPF 2010 sites and also at additional functionality available only by upgrading to SPS 2010.

Hardware and Software Used in This Book

A cheap, commercial HP portable with a middle-of-the-road AMD processor, 4GB, and 500GB hard disk was bought and used for both the usual client (Office 2010) software and for the VM (running SPF 2010) because my existing portables had 2GB memory that led to slow (but not impossible) usage.

The 32-bit operating system that came with the machine was replaced with 64-bit Windows 7 (to make all the 4GB memory usable).

VM Workstation 7.0 was used for the virtual machines.

64-bit Office 2010 installed in Windows 7.

Windows Server 2008 R2 installed in the Virtual Machine (VM).

SharePoint Foundation 2010 was installed in that VM.

Screenshots were created using SnagIt! from TechSmith (installed in Windows 7; http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp).

A 3-year-old portable running Vista and (only) Office 2007 was used for the Office 2007 tests in the Office + SharePoint hours.

A 6-year-old portable running XP Pro and (only) Office 2003, both updated to the latest possible level, was used for the Office 2003 tests.