Sams Teach Yourself SharePoint 2007 in 24 Hours: Using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Softcover

Mike Walsh has been a SharePoint MVP since October 2002. He works as a Technology Consultant for Logica in Finland, having spent all but one year of his working life living and working in various European countries outside his native Britain. Mike became an MVP for the SharePoint Team Services (STS) product through actively sharing his STS knowledge in the newsgroup for that product. He has continued to be active in SharePoint newsgroups and (now) forums, mainly for Windows SharePoint Services for both versions 2.0 and 3.0. He has worked on the Ask the Experts stand at several Microsoft European conferences over the years. He was an early beta tester for both Office 2003, including WSS 2.0, and Office 2007, including WSS 3.0. This is Mike’s first full book. He has earlier written a chapter of a book that was a joint effort by a number of SharePoint MVPs.

Introduction

This book is based on my experience in using the various versions of Windows SharePoint Services throughout the years and on my experience of reading and answering innumerable messages in the SharePoint newsgroups and thus being aware of common problems and misunderstandings.

This book reflects those years of experience by giving considerable space early on to issues that have consistently confused people over the years and by including occasional notes and hints where my experience from the newsgroups tells me such asides will be useful.

Two main products fit the SharePoint 2007 description: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).

This book concentrates almost exclusively on the "smaller" of those two products (WSS 3.0). Apart from it being considerably cheaper (WSS 3.0 itself is free) than MOSS 2007, it is simpler to learn and—despite some Microsoft peoples' attempts to pitch MOSS 2007 as the only useful SharePoint product—is a full and useful product in its own right.

Even if you intend to move to MOSS 2007, everything you learn about WSS 3.0 will be of use to you. After all, MOSS 2007 is based entirely on WSS 3.0. MOSS 2007 is a superset of WSS 3.0.

This book covers all the different aspects of working with WSS 3.0, with one exception—programming. Programming is something that probably over 90 percent of users of SharePoint systems never consider doing and which is in any case well covered by several specialist "development" books.

Target Audience for This Book

This book is for beginners in SharePoint 2007. By the time they finish reading it, however, they are likely to be intermediate level.

You will find this book useful whether you are a budding SharePoint administrator, a user who will have some administrative responsibilities, a user who will provide content, or a user who will mostly use content provided by others.

You will also find this book helpful if you have ASP.NET 2.0 programming skills but no SharePoint experience. If this describes you, this book will help you better understand the background that those SharePoint development books often assume. It will also give you a feeling for what you don't need to program because it's already either included or is available elsewhere.

The full-time administrator will in time need to follow up with a specialist book on administration, but for many of the other reader groups (except the programmer!) this book will be enough for their needs for quite a while and maybe forever.

Organization of This Book

Instead of making this a reference book with every exhaustive lists and every parameter described, I've written this book as a teaching tool based on my experience of using SharePoint products for more than six years. Instead of dealing with everything, I have picked out a few more commonly used elements and described them. This approach, in turn, has given me the space needed to discuss topics that many books of this size don't cover, such as using add-in products, sample templates, and third-party web parts with SharePoint sites.

This book gives you an overview of the building blocks that are available to you when creating your own sites. I use these building blocks throughout this book to build and add to a set of test sites.

I developed those sites while writing this book, and I wrote the book in order. Therefore, if you follow it in order you will recognize in your test system most of the screen shots included in this book.

In the long term, this method of instruction will work better for you than if I just focused on one solution area. About halfway through this book (Hour 11, "Using What We've Learned So Far in a Site"), however, I do consider one such solution area and how the things we have learned up to and including Hour 10, "Learning About Authentication and Access Rights," can be used to create sites suitable for that solution area. After all, the real world is out there, and even quality building blocks need to be used in such a way that they suit the demands of that real world. Learning what sort of things to use for that sample solution area should help you when you need to create sites for your own real-world scenario.

Each hour breaks down as follows:

• Hour 1, "Introducing SharePoint 2007." This hour introduces SharePoint.

• Hour 2, "Installing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0." This hour starts with an already installed Windows 2003 Server (Standard Edition) and shows the steps that you take to first prepare for WSS 3.0 and then install WSS 3.0. (Details of how to install Windows 2003 Server are in Appendix A; details of how to install Windows 2008 Server and prepare it for WSS 3.0 are in Appendix B.)

• Hour 3, "Adding Users and Giving Them Rights." This hour discusses the various types of users; creates users required later and then gives them rights to access the WSS 3.0 site.

• Hour 4, "Using the Administration Site." This hour looks at the Administration site and goes through some actions that usually need to be done there.

• Hour 5, "Planning a Site's Structure." This hour describes the different types of sites and how (and when) to create them.

• Hour 6, "Using Libraries and Lists." This hour is an introduction to libraries and lists and to the relationship between a list and the web part of a list.

• Hour 7, "Creating and Using Libraries." This hour 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." This hour 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." This hour continues looking at lists and then looks at the web parts that come with the product that aren't directly related to lists (see Hour 6).

• Hour 10, "Learning About Authentication and Access Rights." This hour has more information about authentication and shows how you can change the user being used to access a site or web page.

• Hour 11, "Using What We've Learned So Far in a Site." This hour takes a practical working case where WSS 3.0 could usefully be used and shows how data is collected and then used to build a suitable site structure.

• Hour 12, "Using Wikis and Blogs." This hour looks at the standard Wiki and Blog functions provided by the product and then shows how the Blog functions can be extended by use of a free add-on product.

• Hour 13, "Using WSS 3.0 Search and Installing Search Server 2008 Express." This hour covers the standard WSS 3.0 function and then installs the free Search Server 2008 Express product in order to (in Hour 14) improve the search function.

• Hour 14, "Improving Searches." This hour shows how to use Seacrh Server 2008 Express to improve the search function of the standard WSS 3.0.

• Hour 15, "Using Different Versions of the Main Office Products with WSS 3.0." This looks at how the 2003 and 2007 versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint work with WSS 3.0. Time is in particular spent on Document Workspaces.

• Hour 16, "Using Different Versions of Outlook with WSS 3.0." This hour describes what functionality is available when Outlook 2003 is used with WSS 3.0 and compares this with the much greater functionslity available when using Outlook 2007 with WSS 3.0.

• Hour 17, "Sharing OneNote 2007 Notebooks and Access 2007 Tables with WSS 3.0." This hour describes how you can create shared OneNote 2007 notebooks that can be stored on a WSS 3.0 site and accessed and synchronized from different client PCs. It also considers the relationship between Access 2007 tables and WSS lists.

• Hour 18, "Using Access 2007 Tables to Produce Reports from WSS 3.0 Lists." This hour uses Access 2007 tables that have been created from WSS lists in order to provide reports on WSS 3.0 lists. Both simple (wizard driven) and complicated (manual, combining two lists) reports are explained.

• Hour 19, "Creating Workflows in WSS 3.0." This hour briefly mentions the different methods of creating workflows and then concentrates on the three-stage workflow included in WSS 3.0.

• Hour 20, "Using SharePoint Designer 2007 to Create Workflows." This hour follows Hour 19 and shows how to use SharePoint Designer 2007 to produce more complicated workflows than the ones described in Hour 19.

• Hour 21, "Using SharePoint Designer 2007 to Create Data View Web Parts." This hour shows how Data View web parts are created and used.

• Hour 22, "Making Safety Copies of Your Data and Using Them." This hour takes an end-user (or part site administrator) view of various methods of saving copies of part of a WSS 3.0 installation.

• Hour 23, "Enhancing Your WSS 3.0 Sites—Microsoft Official Possibilities." This hour looks at how to install and use (foreign) language templates; application templates and also what is required when using InfoPath 2007 to add value to a WSS 3.0 site.

• Hour 24, "Enhancing Your WSS 3.0 Sites—Using Third-Party Web Parts." This hour looks at two commercial web parts and one free web part all of which enable you to enhance your WSS 3.0 site at little or no cost and without writing any code yourself.

Online, you can find some appendixes (http://www.informit.com/title/ 9780672330001):

• Appendix A, "Full Installation Details for Windows Server 2003." This appendix gives the full details for how to install Windows Server 2003 so that you can (in Hour 2) prepare for and install WSS 3.0. It is provided for people who have not in the past installed Windows Server 2003.

• Appendix B, "Installing WSS 3.0 on Windows Server 2008." Installing Windows Server 2008 and preparing it for the installation of WSS 3.0 is sufficiently different to installing and preparing Windows Server 2003 to make this appendix (which also includes less detailed WSS 3.0 installation information than Hour 2) essential if you have never installed Windows Server 2008.

• Appendix C, "Creating a Virtual Machine." This appendix shows how to install a virtual machine system. Even if you do not install this particular virtual machine system (Parallels), you should find it useful when installing any of the other virtual machine systems (listed in the text).

Hardware and Software Used to Write This Book

Finally, a brief word about my working environment when writing this book:

• I had a desktop running XP Pro and Office 2003, on which I wrote the chapters (using the publisher's Word 2003 template) and which I also used as a client PC when writing the sections on using Office 2003 applications with WSS 3.0.

• I had a portable running Vista Ultimate and Office 2007, which I used as a client PC both for normal browser access to the WSS 3.0 site and for writing the sections on using Office 2007 applications with WSS 3.0.

• I had a MacBook (OS X Tiger) running the Parallels virtual machine software. I had a Parallels VM on which I had installed WSS 3.0+SP1 on top of Windows Server 2003 R2. I also used the MacBook to create the VM running Windows Server 2008 (and WSS 3.0), which was needed for the on-line Appendix B.

The screen shots were mostly done using the SnagIt product from TechSmith (http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp). The SnagIt Editor, which is part of that product, was used to reduce the size of some screen shots. I heartily recommend SnagIt to you. I had it installed on both my client PCs.

Other screen shots were done using the free Macintosh utility Portrait, which comes with the Macintosh operating system, OS X. These were typically screen shots of actions performed on the server.

That's it. Good luck with your exploration into SharePoint 2007!

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