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.
About This Book
This book provides step-by-step instruction on how to perform the most common tasks you’ll encounter in putting Windows SharePoint Services to work for you and your business. Each of the chapters in this book will help you learn some of the basic functionality that can be incorporated into a team site.
Chapter 1, introduces you to the SharePoint environment and terminology. The purpose of Chapter 1 is to familiarize you with the topics that are presented in greater detail in subsequent chapters
Chapter 2, outlines the standard built-in Web Parts and their functionality. It also explains how to manage site permissions and versioning control and how these features can be applied to a team site.
Although the standard Web Parts allow you to build an extensive team site, you may require additional functionality. Chapter 3, introduces the topics of linking external content, using connectable Web Parts, and creating custom Web Parts. Note that although these topics are introduced, actually creating custom Web Parts is beyond the scope of this book.
Adding content to your site is only part of building an effective Windows SharePoint Services solution. You must secure your team site and libraries to ensure users can only view the information they are supposed to see. Chapter 4, introduces the topics of user and site group management, security architecture, and how to assign roles to groups and objects.
SharePoint Services can be integrated with Microsoft Office 2003 to add even more functionality to your team site. Chapter 5, details the steps to configure your team site to determine online presence. By using online presence, you can send team members real-time messages, as well as set meetings and appointments. SharePoint Services allows team members to work collaboratively on documents in shared workspaces.
Although most end users will not be required to deploy SharePoint Services, Chapter 6, outlines the software and hardware requirements required to deploy SharePoint Services. Chapter 6 also details the required steps to install SharePoint Services and integrate SharePoint Services with SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Now that you know what this book is about, we should explain what this book is not about. This book is not a developer’s guide or a complete reference guide. The topics presented are intended for inexperienced users. The material is not intended for people already familiar with all aspects of the SharePoint Services environment.
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
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Indicates menu titles, menu options, menu buttons, and keyboard accelerators (such as Alt and Ctrl)
- Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, and directories
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Constant width Indicates commands, options, switches, variables, attributes, keys, XML tags, HTML tags, macros, the contents of files, or the output from commands
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Constant width bold Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user
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