A basic SharePoint site is known as a team site. When you install SharePoint, a default top-level team site is automatically created. This first team site provides you with a starting point for creating additional team sites or workspaces.

A basic team site incorporates many individual collaboration tools, or Web Parts, including:

Every item in this list is a Web Part. Web Parts are reusable components that you can add to team sites and workspaces. Web Parts provide most of the functionality within any SharePoint site. Web Parts are discussed in Chapters Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.

A team site increases team productivity by giving team members a central web site for document management, team discussions, surveys, alerts, tasks, and lists. Figure 1-1 displays a typical team site.

Figure 1-1. A sample team site

Note that the team site is divided into several distinct content zones, allowing for easy navigation and organization. Each content zone contains related elements. For example, the left-most zone is colored blue and contains navigation links, whereas the middle zone contains two Web Parts (Announcements and Events). You can organize your site in the manner that best suits your particular team. Organizing a site and its zones is discussed in Section 1.2.

A document workspace is a specialized team site designed to facilitate collaboration on shared documents. A document workspace lets you create:

Naturally, you can add any other Web Parts that you might need to the site as well.

Document workspaces look very much like team sites. If the members of your team use Office 2003, they can also access and work with the documents in a document workspace using Office applications such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Integrating Office applications with SharePoint is discussed further in Chapter 5.

A meeting workspace is used to create and manage meetings. Meeting workspaces provide users with the ability to:

Meeting workspaces use a different structure than document workspaces and team sites. By reducing the navigation and the options for displaying content, meeting workspaces make organizing and discussing a meeting easier for participants. Figure 1-2 displays a sample meeting workspace.

Figure 1-2. A sample meeting workspace

Note that the meeting workspace lacks the left navigation bar and the middle and right content zones found at a team site. Instead, the workspace is designed specifically for presenting information about a meeting, including the attendee list, directions to the meeting, the meeting agenda, a “things to bring” list, and other meeting-specific content.

In order to work with a SharePoint site, you must first know how to get to it from a web browser. Without knowing its direct link, finding the site can be challenging. SharePoint solves this problem by providing a page that lists all available sites.

From the Manage Sites and Workspaces page, you can access:

To access this page:

Figure 1-3 shows the list of all sites and workspaces at the Infusion Development intranet site.

Figure 1-3. Sites and Workspaces main page

Once you have found a specific site, you can click the title of the site, which will forward you to the home page. Figure 1-4 displays a typical team site home page, in this case the site used by the writers of this book.

Figure 1-4. Team site home page

SharePoint separates a site into three distinct navigation areas. While the content in these areas may change, their location will usually remain the same.

Main content

With the top and the lefthand side of a page devoted to site navigation, the remaining part of the page contains the main content of the site. The main content of a site is always changing, depending on which page you are viewing.

The home page main content area provides sections that a user typically needs to access immediately. For example, in a meeting workspace, the main page contains sections for attendees, agendas, objectives and documents.

With sufficient privileges, you can add and remove these sections in your personal view or for all users. Customization is discussed later in this chapter.

From the home page, you can navigate to pages that display a single item or Web Part. For example, from a “Writers Team” site, you might link to a page displaying a discussion on a particular book project, as shown in Figure 1-5.

Figure 1-5. A page displaying a discussion board item

Single-item pages display a limited set of choices. For example, on the discussion board page, you can only perform tasks that relate to the discussion, such as viewing an existing thread or creating a new discussion.

Other secondary pages contain Web Parts that have a wider range of choices. Figure 1-6 shows a Documents and Lists page. This page displays the libraries and lists that are available to users. Once you select a specific library or list, you will see a new page that looks more like a single-item page.

Figure 1-6. Options available on the Documents and Lists page

Not only can you select a specific library or list, you can also sort the items in each section by description, number of items, or last modified date.

Previous versions of SharePoint handled searching using Internet Information Services (IIS) catalogs. IIS catalogs index documents within a file system, limiting your search to those documents rather than all of the content in the site. To fix this limitation, Windows SharePoint Services stores all content, documents, and settings in a database. Now, instead of using IIS catalogs to search, SharePoint uses the full-text searching capabilities of the database. Searching the database ensures that all content, documents, and settings are searched.

Searching a site

With searching enabled, a new search text box appears on the top right of all site pages. To execute a search, enter a search string in the text box and click on the arrow button. Figure 1-7 shows the results of a search on the Search Results page.

Figure 1-7. The Search Results page

You can click on any result to access the returned item. If you performed the search within a subsite, you can search for additional results by clicking the “Search for <search string> on <main site title>” link. This will expand your search to include all the sites within SharePoint.

A site template provides a default structure and starting point for creating a team site. Some companies use a site template to ensure that a consistent style is maintained throughout all of its SharePoint sites. Even after a template is implemented, you can still make modifications to the site by adding additional Web Parts or by changing the site layout.

A SharePoint team site comes equipped with eight predefined templates. You can use any of these templates for your own site, or you can create a new site template for your own use. Windows SharePoint Services includes the following default site templates:

Anyone with permission to create a new site can create one with a site template. To implement a site template:

Figure 1-8. Template Selection screen

If the eight default templates are not sufficient to meet your needs, you can create a custom site template. The process of creating a custom site template requires that you have administrator-level permissions for the site.

To create a custom site template:

Through your personal view you can change the layout of Web Parts on a team site page. Whenever you view the page, you will see it displayed the way you have specified. Other users who view the page will either see their own personal view, or the default view.

SharePoint allows you to:

To modify the layout of a page:

Figure 1-12 shows a team site home page displayed in design mode. Notice that while in design mode, the main content is surrounded by two frames: Left and Right. You can move any Web Part from the Right side to the Left side by simply dragging and dropping.

Figure 1-12. Page layout modification mode

In design mode you can also modify the settings of a Web Part. If you have the proper site permissions, you can change the appearance, layout, and custom features of any Web Part. To modify a Web Part:

Figure 1-13. Web Part modification

All the modifications you make are only visible when you view the page. None of your personal modifications will change the view other users see.

Themes allow you to apply a uniform site style across an entire site. Only users assigned to the web designer or administrator site group can create a theme and apply it to a site. When a theme is applied to the site, every user will see the same theme.

Themes are custom style sheets that, when applied to a site, change the colors, fonts, and overall appearance of the site. SharePoint ships with twenty default themes that you can choose from. You can also create a custom theme through Microsoft FrontPage and add it to the list of available themes. Creating a theme is beyond the scope of this book and requires advanced development knowledge.

To apply a theme to a SharePoint team site, perform the following actions:

Figure 1-14. Applying a theme

To remove a theme, follow the first two steps mentioned above. At Step 3, select No Theme (Default) and click the Apply button.

As a user, you can set an alert to notify you by email if a particular piece of content changes. You can create an alert to track the following items:

For example, a user may decide to sign up for an alert on a discussion board. If any other user posts a response to a discussion item, or creates a new item, the first user receives an email notification. This feature is particularly useful for discussion board moderators.

Viewing your alerts

Once you have created an alert for yourself, you may need to delete the alert or change the settings of the alert. SharePoint lists all of your alerts for a site on the My Alerts page. To view your alerts for a site:

1. Click on the Site Settings link on the top menu bar.

2. Select “My alerts on this site” under the Manage My Information section. After selecting “My alerts on this site,” the My Alerts on this Site page is displayed. Figure 1-16 shows the My Alerts on this Site page.

Figure 1-16. Viewing all alerts

On this page, you can add, edit, and delete your alerts.

Adding an alert

To add an alert to your My Alerts page, click the Add Alert button.

Clicking the Add Alert button brings up the New Alert page displayed in Figure 1-17:

1. Select which list or document library for which you wish to create an alert. Alternatively, you can view the items in the list or document library to add an alert for an individual item.

2. After selecting the list or document library, click Next.

3. Follow Steps 3-5 in the section " Section 1.6.4.1 " to fill in the form, then select OK.

Figure 1-17. Creating a new alert from View Alerts screen

To edit the settings of an alert:

1. Click on the name of the alert you wish to edit.

2. You can modify the same options that you set during the creation processed outlined in the section Chapter 1.

3. Click OK to save the changes or Delete to delete the alert.