CHINMAYA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

KANNUR
SEMINAR REPORT
on
SHAREPOINT
Presented by
NEENU. P
FOURTH SEMESTER MCA (2014-2015)
SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
AND
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
1
CHINMAYA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY KANNUR
SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
DECLARATION
I NEENU P, FOURTH Semester MCA, student of Chinmaya Insti-
tute of Technology, do hereby declare that the Seminar Report entitled
SharePoint is the original work carried out by me under the supervision
of Mr.Shajeer M P towards partial fulllment of the requirement of MCA
Degree.
Signature of the Student
Kannur
Date:
2
CHINMAYA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
KANNUR
SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the Seminar Report titled SharePoint was pre-
pared and presented by NEENU P of the School of Computer Science and
Information Technology, Chinmaya Institute of Technology in partial ful-
llment of the requirement as a subject under the University of Kannur
during the FOURTH Semester.
Faculty in Charge
Kannur :
Date:
3
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
First of all, I express my sincere thanks to Principal Dr. K K Falgunan for giving
permission to conduct this seminar and giving lot of encouragement and I express
my thanks to Mr.Srivathsan KR, Director Chinmaya Institute of Technology.
I am thankful to all faculty members in MCA department for their cooperation
towards this seminar presentations. I am also thankful to Mr.Shajeer M P in
MCA department for their cooperation towards this seminar presentations.
At last, but not the least I would like to express my thanks to omnipotent
god give the strength to conduct the seminar, and also sincere thanks to my
friends,who have participated in the seminar and encouraged me much.
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ABSTRACT
SharePoint isnt something you buy and install on your own desktop but
rather a back-end system that ties all your employees PCs and mobile
devices together, allowing them all to communicate and synchronize their
eorts. The basic goal is to make it possible for a company with a hundred
employees spread all over the region to work with the same level of agility
and coordination as a company with ten people working out of a single
oce. Most of the Organizations use SharePoint to create websites.We can
use it as a secure place to store, organize, share, and access information
from almost any device. All you need is a web browser, such as Internet
Explorer.
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CONTENTS
SlNo Title PageNo
1 Introduction 7
2 What is SharePoint? 8
3 SharePoint Online 9
4 Microsoft oce SharePoint Server 10
5 WorkFlows 12
6 Microsoft SharePoint Designer 16
7 Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 20
8 SharePoint Wheel 23
9 SharePoint Applications 24
10 Core Functionality 25
11 Architecture 27
12 The Amazing Benets of Microsoft SharePoint 29
13 Conclusion 32
14 References 32
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1.INTRODUCTION
SharePoint isnt something We buy and install on Our own desktop but
rather a back-end system that ties all Our employees PCs and mobile de-
vices together,allowing them all to communicate and synchronize their ef-
forts. The basic goal is to make it possible for a company with a hundred
employees spread all over the region to work with the same level of agility
and coordination as a company with ten people working out of a single
oce.
Most of the Organizations use SharePoint to create websites. We can
use it as a secure place to store, organize, share, and access information
from almost any device. All We need is a web browser, such as Internet
Explorer. Microsoft SharePoint is a Web application platform developed
by Microsoft. First launched in 2001, SharePoint has historically been
associated with intranet, content management and document management,
but recent versions have signicantly broader capabilities.
SharePoint comprises a multipurpose set of Web technologies backed by
a common technical infrastructure. By default, SharePoint has a Microsoft
Oce-like interface, and it is closely integrated with the Oce suite. The
web tools are designed to be usable by non-technical users. It also has sys-
tem integration, process integration, and workow automation capabilities.
Enterprise application software often provide some SharePoint integra-
tion capability, and SharePoint also incorporates a complete development
stack based on web technologies and standards-based APIs. As an applica-
tion platform, SharePoint provides central management, governance, and
security controls for implementation of these requirements. The SharePoint
platform integrates directly into IIS - enabling bulk management,scaling,
and provisioning of servers, as is often required by large organizations or
cloud hosting providers.
According to Microsoft, SharePoint is used by 78 percentage of Fortune
500 companies. Between 2006 to 2011, Microsoft sold over 36.5 million user
licenses. Microsoft has two versions of SharePoint available at no cost, but
it sells premium editions with additional functionality, and provides a cloud
service edition as part of their Oce 365 platform . The product is also
sold through a cloud model by many third-party vendors.
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What is SharePoint?
SharePoint Online delivers the powerful features of SharePoint without the
associated overhead of managing the infrastructure on Our own. Flexible
management options ensure that We still retain the control We need to
meet the compliance requirements of Our organization. We can purchase
SharePoint in the cloud as a standalone oering or as part of an Oce 365
suite where We could also get access to Exchange, Lync, the Oce clients
and web apps.
Cross device availability
Easily access and interact with Our SharePoint newsfeed, wherever We
go using the SharePoint mobile apps available across various devices.
Enterprise grade reliability and standards
Safeguard Our data by hosting it in geographically distributed datacen-
ters with continuous data backup, premier disaster recovery capabilities
and a team of experts monitoring the servers around the clock.
Easy to Manage
We can get setup in virtually no time! The powerful admin console
allows Our organization to easily manage capabilities, policies and security
for all the content and features within SharePoint. Automated maintenance
of the servers ensure that We are always up to date with the latest features
with minimal downtime.
Microsoft will oer a set of online services that should support compa-
nies of all sizes. A new licensing model that oers services on a per-user
subscription basis is provided. Current customers with Software Assurance
can purchase these per-user subscriptions at a discount.
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There are four online services available either separately or as a suite:
SharePoint Online
Exchange Online
Oce Communications Online
Oce Live Meeting
SharePoint Online Standard
This is the version most companies small to mid-size will likely use. Its a
hosted version of SharePoint oering functionality such as Portal, Collab-
oration, Search, Content and Business Process Forms.
It contains all the standard templates for things like wikis, blogs and
surveys and all the standard document and list library capabilities. Inte-
gration with Oce, search, email alerts, oine access to documents from
Outlook, RSS feeds, single-sign on and lots more.
This is a secure hosted environment using Microsoft Forefront anti-virus
scanning. It has a 99.9availability with nancially backed Service Agree-
ments. Web and phone based support are included for Tier 2 support for
IT Administrators.
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Microsoft Oce SharePoint Server (MOSS)
Microsoft Oce SharePoint Server (MOSS) is the full version of a portal-
based platform for collaboratively creating, managing and sharing docu-
ments and Web services. MOSS enables users to create SharePoint Por-
tals that include shared workspaces, applications, blogs, wikis and other
documents accessible through a Web browser. The free version, Windows
SharePoint Server (WSS), usually referred to as simply SharePoint, is
available as a free download included with every Windows Server license.
MOSS is used by many enterprises as a content management system
(CMS). Partially as a result of the tight integration with Microsoft produc-
tivity applications included in Oce, such as Word, many administrators
have found MOSS useful in organizing and aggregating an enterprises data
into Web-based portal with dened taxonomies that structure the infor-
mation. MOSS includes additional features as an inducement for system
administrators to upgrade from WSS, including knowledge management,
organization of business processes and enterprise search. Both versions
include support for many Firefox.
Fundamentally, MOSS provides an integrated platform for building
customized Web-based applications and portals in Windows Server envi-
ronments. To address the needs of remote workers and telecommuters, as
well as system administrator concerns for data security, MOSS can be con-
gured to return separate content depending on whether access is gained
from intranet, extranet or Internet locations. Active Directory groups or
HTML forms authentication can also be added to MOSS, granting multiple
permissions to multiple parties or through alternate providers.
Users log on to Web portals to edit and create shared documents.
These SharePoint portals are ASP.NET applications that are hosted on
a server and use a SQL Serverdatabase. MOSS provides Web browser-
based management and administration tools that allow users to create and
edit a document or document library independently. Collaborative editing
of this kind is aided by integrated access and revision controls, allowing
administrators to freeze certain documents or restrict user privileges where
required. MOSS also uses embeddable widgets in shared Web pages to add
additional functionality. Widgets include:
Shared Workspaces And Personal Dashboards
Navigation Tools
Lists
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Automatic Alerts, Including Email And Integrated RSS
Shared Calendar And Contacts
Discussion Boards
Users build SharePoint pages is by combining selected widgets into a Web
page. Any Web editor that supports ASP.NET can be used for this pur-
pose, though Microsoft has released a WYSIWYG HTML editor, Microsoft
Oce SharePoint Designer (MOSD), which was specically designed for
this purpose.
Critics of SharePoint point out that certain features of MOSS 2007
only work with the newest version of Microsoft Oce, thereby forcing IT
managers to upgrade their software. SharePoints lack of support for non-
Microsoft formats, like les saved using Quark or Adobe Acrobat (.PDF),
is also a cause of concern for some administrators evaluating the suite as a
potential enterprise- wide CMS.
The previous versions of SharePoint are SharePoint Portal Server 2003
and SharePoint Portal Server 2001.
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Workows
Workows help people to collaborate on documents and to manage project
tasks by implementing business processes on documents and items in a Mi-
crosoft Oce SharePoint Server 2007 site. Workows help organizations
to adhere to consistent business processes, and they also improve organiza-
tional eciency and productivity by managing the tasks and steps involved
in business processes. This enables the people who perform these tasks to
concentrate on performing the work rather than managing the workow.
What are workows?
Workow is sometimes described as a series of tasks that produce an out-
come. In the context of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies,
workow is dened more narrowly as the automated movement of docu-
ments or items through a sequence of actions or tasks that are related to a
business process. Workows can be used to consistently manage common
business processes within an organization by enabling the organization to
attach business logic to documents or items in a SharePoint list or library.
Business logic is basically a set of instructions that species and controls
the actions that happen to a document or item.
Workows can streamline the cost and time required to coordinate com-
mon business processes, such as project approval or document review, by
managing and tracking the human tasks involved with these processes. For
example, in an Oce SharePoint Server 2007 site, you can add a work-
ow to a document library that routes a document to a group of people
for approval. When the document author starts this workow on a docu-
ment in that library, the workow creates document approval tasks, assigns
these tasks to the workow participants, and then sends e-mail alerts to
the participants with task instructions and a link to the document to be ap-
proved. While the workow is in progress, the workow owner (in this case,
the document author) or the workow participants can check the Work-
ow Status page to see which participants have completed their workow
tasks. When the workow participants complete their workow tasks, the
workow ends, and the workow owner is automatically notied that the
workow has completed.
Workows not only support existing human work processes but also
extend the ways in which people can collaborate and work with documents,
lists, and libraries. Site users can start and participate in workows by
using customizable forms that are accessible from the document or item
in a SharePoint list or library. Additionally, the workow functionality in
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Oce SharePoint Server 2007 is tightly integrated with the 2007 Microsoft
Oce system.The following workow tasks can be performed either in an
Oce SharePoint Server 2007 site or directly within certain client programs
that are part of the 2007 Oce release:
View the list of workows that are available for a document or item.
Start a workow on a document or item.
View, edit, or reassign a workow task.
Complete a workow task.
Workows that are included in Oce SharePoint Server 2007
An Oce SharePoint Server 2007 site includes several workows that ad-
dress common business scenarios:
Approval
This workow routes a document or item to a group of people for approval.
By default, the Approval workow is associated with the Document content
type, and thus it is automatically available in document libraries. A ver-
sion of the Approval workow is also associated by default with the Pages
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library in a publishing site, and it can be used to manage the approval
process for the publication of Web pages.
Collect Feedback
This workow routes a document or item to a group of people for feedback.
Reviews can provide feedback, which is then compiled and sent to the per-
son who initiated the workow. By default, the Collect Feedback workow
is associated with the Document content type, and thus it is automatically
available in document libraries.
Collect Signatures
This workow routes a Microsoft Oce document to a group of people to
collect their digital signatures. This workow must be started in a client
program that is part of the 2007 Oce release. Participants must complete
their signature tasks by adding their digital signature to the document in
the relevant Microsoft Oce program. By default, the ollect Signatures
workow is associated with the Document content type, and thus it is
automatically available in document libraries. However, the Collect Sig-
natures workow appears for a document in the document library only if
that document contains one or more Microsoft Oce Signature Lines.
Disposition Approval
This workow, which supports records management processes, manages
document expiration and retention by allowing participants to decide whether
to retain or delete expired documents. The Disposition Approval workow
is intended for use primarily within a Records Center site. Three-state
This workow can be used to manage business processes that require or-
ganizations to track a high volume of issues or items, such as customer
support issues, sales leads, or project tasks.
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Group Approval
This workow is similar to the Approval workow, but it uses a designated
document library and oers a personalized view of the approval processes
in which a user is participating. This workow provides a hierarchical orga-
nization chart from which to select the approvers and allows the approvers
to use a stamp control instead of a signature. This solution is available
only for East Asian versions of Oce SharePoint Server 2007.
Translation Management
This workow manages the manual document translation process by creat-
ing copies of the document to be translated and assigning translation tasks
to translators. This workow is available only for Translation Management
libraries.
Each of the above workows can be customized for our organization
in several ways. For example, when you add a workow to a list, library,
or content type to make it available for use on documents or items, you
can customize the tasks lists and history lists where information about the
workow is stored.
When a site user starts a workow on a document or item, the user may
have the option to further customize the workow by specifying the list of
participants, a due date, and task instructions.
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Microsoft SharePoint Designer
Microsoft SharePoint Designer (SPD), formerly known as Microsoft Oce
SharePoint Designer, is a specialized HTML editor and web design freeware
for creating or modifying Microsoft SharePoint sites, workows and web
pages. It is a part of Microsoft SharePoint family of products. It was
formerly a part of Microsoft Oce 2007 family, but has never been included
in any of the Microsoft Oce suites.
SharePoint Designer and its sister product, Microsoft Expression Web are
successors of Microsoft FrontPage. While Expression Web serves as the
full-featured successor to FrontPage, SharePoint Designer focuses on de-
signing and customizing Microsoft SharePoint websites. For instance, it
only includes SharePoint-specic site templates. The rst version, Share-
Point Designer 2007, retains more FrontPage features than Expression Web
(such as web components, database, marquee, hit counter, navigation bars
and map insert.) SharePoint Designer 2007 was initially a commercial soft-
ware product. On March 31, 2009, however, SharePoint Designer 2007 was
made available as a freeware.
On April 24, 2009, Microsoft released SharePoint Designer 2007 Service
Pack 2. On April 21, 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 was released and
made available for download. On October 24, 2011, Microsoft released
SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 3. SharePoint Designer 2010, the
successor to SharePoint Designer 2007, was released to web on April 21,
2010 in two avors for IA-32 andx64 CPUs. Unlike its predecessor, how-
ever, it does not operate in absence of Microsoft SharePoint Server or Mi-
crosoft SharePoint Foundation and therefore cannot be used as a generic
HTML editor. On October 30, 2012, Microsoft released SharePoint De-
signer 2013.
SharePoint Designer shares its codebase, UI and HTML rendering engine
with Expression Web, and does not rely on Internet Explorers Trident
engine. It features a workow designer that allows users of SharePoint
to create workow so that workow can automate the process with the
concept and objects such as list item, content type, and list column within
SharePoint server. Starting from SharePoint 2013, it provides text-based
designer and visual designer for non- developer users.
Microsoft SharePoint Designer - is a large, sophisticated desktop applica-
tion from Microsoft. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 is the tool for
customizing sites based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010. It provides features
for:
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Creating or Editing master pages and page layouts
Creating or Editing CSS (cascading style sheets)
Designing or Editing workows
Connecting SharePoint to dierent external data sources using BCS (Business
Connectivity Services).
Creating or Modifying lists, libraries, and views of data.
SPD has undergone lots of changes. Users who open the product will note
that SPD is now focused only one thing: SharePoint. With SPD 2010,
it is possible to make most settings changes to a SharePoint site directly
from the tool itself. Previously, in SharePoint 2007, if you wanted to make
a change to the settings of a list, you needed to open a web browser, go
to the list settings page for the list, and then make the Change. Most
changes that we previously made through the web browser can now be
centrally accessed and changed through SPD 2010. This is a big help if you
are trying to make several changes to dierent aspects of your site. The
new user interface not only makes it easy to make the changes, but also
makes the process of making the changes far more ecient than in the past.
SPD 2010 will continue to be a free product, which makes it an invaluable
tool for any SharePoint developer, even if you just use it as a simple web
design or SharePoint debugging tool.
Note: You should be connected to a site to use SPD 2010. It was possi-
ble to edit local copies of master pages or page layouts with SPD 2007, but
it is no longer possible in SPD 2010. For example, you cant e-mail yourself
a copy of a master page and edit it at home if you dont have access to a
SharePoint server. If you try to edit the le without rst opening a site,
you will get an error.
Who are the users of SharePoint Designer?
SharePoint Designer is powerful tool and it is important for any user of the
product to have a basic level of training to ensure that using the product in
accordance with the internal governance policies of the users organization.
SPD is ideal for following users:
Information Workers: This are the primary audience for this tool, SPD en-
ables users to manage and customize their sites without having to depend
on the IT department to make the changes for them. Information workers
are normally Business users, Power users, SMEs (Subject matter experts)
17
for their particular areas and they are using SharePoint to organize, col-
laborate and improve business process. As these users are not developers,
SPD enables them to create custom, no-code solutions to business plat-
forms without the need of developer.
Developers: SPD is very handy tool for developers to learn a number of
reasons. When any new requirements are provided to developers and they
are asked for estimation, they must know the various approaches. It is
often quicker and easier to build a solution in SharePoint Designer than to
develop a custom application. It is also useful tool for developers to quickly
prepare prototype of functionality before developing it.//
Administrators: Administrators are the ones who are responsible for the
servers. With SharePoint Designer 2010, they are the ones who have the
rights to control who can use SPD. If user requests the permission to use
SPD 2010, it is important that administrators understand what they are
agreeing to. What do you want to allow? What do you want restrict?
To make the best decision, it is important that administrators have an
understanding of SPDs capabilities.
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Microsoft SharePoint Workspace
Microsoft SharePoint Workspace, previously known as Microsoft Oce
Groove, is a discontinued desktop application designed for document col-
laboration in teams with members who are regularly o-line or who do not
share the same network security clearance. It is no longer included with
Microsoft Oce 2013, which includes Microsoft SkyDrive Pro (soon to be-
come OneDrive for Business) instead. The latter does not fully replace
the former.
Grooves uses have included coordination between emergency relief
agencies where dierent organizations do not share a common security
infrastructure and where oine access is important, and amongst teams
of knowledge workers, such as consultants who need to work securely on
client sites. It is also used as a staging system for documents in develop-
ment, where content can be developed then transferred to a portal when
complete.
Groove was initially developed by Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie, and
developed by Groove Networks of Beverly, Massachusetts, until Microsofts
acquisition of Groove Networks in March 2005. Grooves basic set of ser-
vices (including always-on security, persistent chat, store-and- forward mes-
saging delivery, rewall/NAT transparency, ad-hoc group formation, and
change notication) may be customized with tools.
Tools are mini-applications that rely on Grooves underlying function-
ality to disseminate and synchronize their contents with other members
copies of the workspace. Groove provides various tools that can be added
to (and removed from) a workspace to customize the functionality of each
space (for example a calendar, discussion, le sharing, an outliner, pic-
tures, notepad, sketchpad, web browser, etc.). Tools that members use in
a workspace often drive the nature of the person-to-person collaboration
that ensues. In Groove 2007, the SharePoint Files tools can be used to
take SharePoint 2007 document libraries oine.
Groove 2007 includes a presence subsystem, which keeps track of which
users in the contact store are online, and presents the information in the
launch bar. If Groove server is used, a user is considered online when
they log on to the server. In absence of a server the Device Presence
Protocol (which comes in dierent variants for LANs and WANs) is used.
Groove also allows sending instant messages to peers. All session and user
information is stored by the Groove client at client side.
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Groove Virtual Oce 3.1 was the last version before Microsofts acqui-
sition of Groove Networks.
The following versions have been released since:
Groove 2007 (Included in Oce 2007 Ultimate and Enterprise editions and also
available as a separate product), released January 27, 2007.
SharePoint Workspace 2010, released July 15, 2010.
Microsoft claims the name change is a natural progression since Groove is
to SharePoint what Outlook is to Exchange. Microsoft asserts that features
have been added to make it easier to deploy and manage. Microsoft claims
that SharePoint Workspace will make it easier to access SharePoint con-
tent (or content from any server that implements the publicly documented
protocols).
Microsoft Groove Server is a tool for centrally managing all deployments
of Microsoft SharePoint Workspace in an enterprise. It enables using Ac-
tive Directory for Groove user accounts, and create Groove Domains, with
individual policy settings.
Installing SharePoint Workspace on client computers , SharePoint Workspace
is part of the Oce Professional Plus 2010 suite, and its designed specif-
ically to support remote and oine SharePoint users who need to work
oine or have minimal access to SharePoint servers.
With SharePoint Workspace, an end user can easily connect to a desig-
nated SharePoint site, get a local copy of selected SharePoint libraries and
lists, and add or modify library or list content within a private SharePoint
workspace. Content in a SharePoint workspace automatically synchro-
nizes with the associated SharePoint site when users are on their network,
or it can be manually synchronized on demand. No browser access needed
and no need for VPNs or special IT setup.
If Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is running in your orga-
nization, you can use Group Policy to manage and customize a SharePoint
Workspace deployment according to your IT practices, just as with other
Oce applications. Alternatively, you can use the Oce Customization
Tool. The most important policy youll want to consider for SharePoint
Workspace deployment is one that blocks the use of peer workspaces.
SharePoint Workspace typically lets users create collaborative Groove
workspaces and Shared Folders where they can share information with
trusted invited peers. Groove workspaces are separate from SharePoint
workspaces and do not support connections to SharePoint sites. But if
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your org prohibits or discourages this type of activity, be sure to include
the Prohibit Groove workspaces policy in your Oce ProPlus 2010 deploy-
ment.
Other important policies to consider are one that requires Secure Socket
Layer (SSL) protection for SharePoint Workspace client connections to
SharePoint Server 2010, and one that prevents Windows Search 4.0 from
crawling SharePoint Workspace content.
Once employees start using SharePoint workspaces for contributing
SharePoint content, theyll barely notice that theyre using another app.
Soon theyll be creating multiple workspaces for accessing multiple Share-
Point sites. And because working with SharePoint content in SharePoint
a workspace not only solves the oine problem but is typically easier and
faster than accessing it through a browser (think, image rendering or sav-
ing changes on a distant server), your calls from remote users trying to get
at their SharePoint content should be a thing of the past.
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SharePoint Wheel
SharePoint functionality built into the SharePoint platform. The wheel
represents six fuzzy sensible capabilities:
Sites: The SharePoint foundation essentially allows customers to supply
sites (public or private) without a need for specialized understanding.
SharePoint is developed to become the place for control of websites in an
organization.
Content: SharePoint provides a location to put articles such as information,
records, or general information. This can be used and customized within
a web technique or using a customer application (typically Microsoft Of-
ce) via esteem computer or Mobile phone. SharePoint 2010 also provides
contingency modify ability with Workplace 2010.
Search: SharePoint provides a variety of look for capabilities, such as in
records, in exterior content (such as system stocks or community websites),
and in person information.
Insights: SharePoint provides information incorporation, information run-
ning, and report design to enable enterprise selection. SharePoint can
include with SQL Server Conrming Services to surface enterprise intel-
lect.
Composites:SharePoint provides a program foundation according to ASP.NET
3.5 enabling no-code progression of complicated business issues using Share-
Point Developer. SharePoint also allows customized value to be designed
using [Microsoft Vision Studio] 2010.
Communities: SharePoint goals to support the development of areas within
a company - these areas may form around groups, tasks, customers, regional
places, etc. SharePoint also provides public features and public incorpora-
tion.
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Applications
The most common uses of SharePoint include:
Intranet portal
A SharePoint intranet or intranet portal is a way to centralize access to
enterprise information and applications on a corporate network. It is a tool
that helps a company manage its data, applications and information more
easily. This has organizational benets such as increased employee engage-
ment, centralizing process management, reducing new sta on- boarding
costs, and providing the means to capture and share tacit knowledge (e.g.
via tools such as wikis/blogs).
Enterprise content and document management
SharePoint is often used to store and track electronic documents or images
of paper documents. It is usually also capable of keeping track of the dif-
ferent versions created by dierent users. In addition to being a platform
for digital record management systems that meet government and industry
compliance standards, SharePoint also provides the benet of a central lo-
cation for storing and collaborating on documents, which can signicantly
reduce emails and duplicated work in an organization.
Extranet sites
SharePoint can be used to provide password-protected, web-facing access
to people outside an organization. Organizations often use functionality
like this to integrate third parties into supply chain or business processes,
or to provide a shared collaboration environment. SharePoint provides an
Alternative Access Mapping, or AAM, which allows the same site to be
surfaced via a number of dierent URLs, each URL can have its own au-
thentication technology allowing the same site to be both an intranet on
one network while an extranet to outside users.
Internet sites
Using the Publishing features, SharePoint can be used to manage larger
public websites .
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Software Framework
SharePoint is built upon the ASP.Net framework and provides an ad-
ditional layer of services and codebase to greatly reduce the amount of
custom development required to provide a working solution. It may also
be referred to as a web application framework.
Core Functionality
Sites
A SharePoint Site is a collection of pages, site templates, lists, and li-
braries congured for the purpose of achieving an express goal. A site may
contain sub-sites, and those sites may contain further sub-sites. Typically,
sites need to be created from scratch, but sites can also be created accord-
ing to packaged functionality. Examples of Site templates in SharePoint
include: blogs, collaboration (team) sites, documents, and meetings.
Lists and libraries
Lists and libraries have the same properties. This could be considered
similar to a database table. For instance, We can have a list of links called
my links, where each item has a URL, a name, and a description.
Lists have many features such as workows, item-level or list-level per-
mission, version history tracking, multiple content-types, external data
sources and many more features. Some of these features depend on the
version of SharePoint that is installed.
SharePoint supports the creation of multiple views of a list or library,
including Gantt chart and calendar views. Views can dene columns to
show, rankings, aggregation and establish criteria for inclusion in the list.
Views can be personal or distributed to a group of users.
From 2007 on, lists also support item (document or record) level secu-
rity permissions, where each list item can have a unique permission level.
This feature can cause problems in viewing large lists and Microsoft rec-
ommends that for 2007 a list have no more than 1,000 unique permissions
dened, and in 2010 that limit is 5,000.
A Library is a list where each item in the list refers to a le that is
stored in SharePoint. Libraries have all the same behaviors as lists, but
because libraries contain les, they have extra features. One of these is the
ability to be opened and modied through a compatible WebDAV client
(e.g. Windows Explorer).
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Microsoft SharePoint comes with some pre-dened list and library def-
initions. These include: Announcement Lists, Blogs, Contacts, Discussion
Boards, Document Libraries, External Content (BCS) lists, Pages, Surveys,
and Tasks. Some of these pre-dened lists have additional integration. For
example, lists based on the contact content-type, and lists created using
the calendar list template can be synced directly with Microsoft Outlook.
Web-parts
Web-parts are sections that can be inserted into Pages in SharePoint sites.
These sections are UI Widgets whose typical uses are
Displaying content dened in the web-parts settings (e.g. custom content or an
iframe)
Displaying items from Lists/Libraries (this can be customizable in SharePoint
Designer, using XSLT and CAML)
Providing access to features in the SharePoint platform (e.g. Search)
Providing a user interface into other products (e.g. Microsoft Reporting
Services, Microsoft Oce PerformancePoint Server or a variety of third party
systems).
Web-parts based on completely custom code can be built in Microsoft
Visual Studio 2010 and uploaded by end-users to SharePoint as packaged,
sandboxed features. Due to the prevalence of SharePoint, third-party ven-
dors often provide SharePoint web-parts for intranet sites. Web-parts also
support connections to other web-parts on the page, providing the ability
to construct relatively complex pages without the need to build additional
code. SharePoint Web-parts We formerly implemented separately from
ASP.NET Web-parts, but as of SharePoint 2007, SharePoints Web-parts
are now based on it.
Pages
SharePoint has three primary page content-types: Wiki pages, Web-part
pages, and Publishing Pages. Unlike prior versions of SharePoint, the de-
fault page type is a Wiki Page, which enables free-form editing based on
the ribbon toolbar. It is possible to insert Web-parts into any page type.
Search
SharePoint Foundation contains a limited search engine. Microsoft pro-
duces a free product called Microsoft Search Server Express to complement
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SharePoint Foundation. Dierent SharePoint search versions oer dier-
ent features, including the ability to search within documents and except
in cloud environments across external data sources (such as le systems).
We can read a SharePoint Enterprise Search features deep comparison.
Architecture
The SharePoint platform is a exible, n-tier service-oriented architecture
(SOA). It can be scaled down to operate entirely from one machine, or
scaled up to be managed across hundreds of machines.
Farms
A SharePoint farm is a logical grouping of SharePoint servers that share
common resources. A farm will typically operate stand-alone, but it can
also subscribe to functionality from another farm, or provide functionality
to another farm. Each farm has its own central conguration database,
which is managed through either a PowerShell interface, or a Central Ad-
ministration website (which relies partly on PowerShells infrastructure).
Each server in the farm is able to directly interface with the central cong-
uration database. Servers use this to congure services (e.g. IIS, windows
features, database connections) to match the requirements of the farm, and
to report server health issues, resource allocation issues, etc.
Web applications
Web Applications (WAs) are top-level containers for content in a Share-
Point farm, and are typically the interface through which a user interacts
with SharePoint. A web application is associated with a set of access map-
pings or URLs which are dened in the SharePoint central management
console, then automatically replicated into the IIS conguration of every
server congured in the farm. WAs are typically independent of each other,
have their own application pools, and can be restarted independently in In-
ternet Information Services.
Site collections
A site collection is used to provide a grouping of SharePoint Sites. Each
web application will typically have at least one site collection. Site col-
lections may be associated with their own content databases, or they may
share a content database with other site collections in the same web appli-
cation.
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Service applications
Service Applications (SAs) provide granular pieces of SharePoint function-
ality to other web and service applications in the farm. Examples of service
applications include the User Prole Sync service, and the Search Indexing
service. An SA can be turned o, exist on one server, or be load- balanced
across many servers in a farm. SAs are designed to be as independent as
possible, so that depending on the SA restarting an SA, experiencing an
SA failure, or misconguring an SA may not necessarily prevent the farm
from operating. Each SA enabled on the farm typically has its own process
that requires a certain amount of RAM to operate, and typically also has
its own conguration database and Active Directory (AD) service account.
SharePoint Server and SharePoint Enterprise include all the SharePoint
Foundation SAs, as well as additional SAs.
Administration and security
The modular nature of SharePoints architecture enables a secure least-
privileges execution permission best practice.
SharePoint Central Administration (the CA) is a web application that
typically exists on a single server in the farm, however it is also able to
be deployed for redundancy to multiple servers. This application provides
a complete centralized management interface for web and service applica-
tions in the SharePoint farm, including AD account management for web
and service applications. In the event of the failure of the CA, Windows
PowerShell is typically used on the CA server to recongure the farm.
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The Amazing Benets of Microsoft SharePoint
Now that we know what SharePoint is, let us dive into its benets. As a
business owner, we need to know what is in it for Our business and how
will it be advantage if compared to its competitors. Microsoft made Share-
Point, and that alone proves that We will be getting Our moneys worth. ,
here are some amazing benets of Microsoft SharePoint 2010. SharePoint
is an enterprise information portal. It can be congured to run to intranet,
extranet, or internet sites. A SharePoint portal is usually comprised of
both SharePoint and Windows SharePoint Services. Integrate SharePoint
with Microsoft Oce and well have Our teams share and collaborate infor-
mation in a fast, and easy to use manner.
Sharing is easy
Sharing is easy with Microsoft SharePoint. Our colleagues can share ideas,
discover answers, and We can keep track of what Our coworkers are work-
ing on with SharePoints social features. It is easy to publish content from
SharePoint to any oce applications with just a few simple clicks. More-
over, We can take SharePoint with We wherever We are. Share updates,
activities, and keep in touch with Our colleagues using just a mobile phone
or a tablet.
Organize projects faster
Keep Our projects on track using Outlook and Microsoft Project. We
can set up a new team site, set up meeting notes, and even bring together
emails of Web teams all in one place. Whats more, We can sync Web con-
tent from SharePoint to Our Desktop using SkyDrive. Our content and
documents are automatically backed up and We can view it even if We are
oine.
Connect in places You never knew existed
With SharePoint, We can connect with people across the organization.
It makes it a lot easier to discover documents, peoples interest, and past
projects they have worked on. Then turn these raw data into interactive
reports using Microsoft Excel.
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Apps on the cloud
Our team can build apps using the most common web technologies preva-
lent today (JavaScript, HTML, and oAuth) using the new Cloud App
Model for SharePoint. When its done, make it available for everyone to try
or buy through the public store or in Our corporate catalog. With familiar
design tools, We can create dynamic intranet or internet sites and share it
to everyone in just a few clicks. SharePoint not only reduces Our overall
cost, but extend the boundaries of Our business through sharing and the
cloud. Therefore, with SharePoint, We can spend more time in delivering
innovation to Our business than managing Our business infrastructure.
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Conclusion
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is a powerful portal solution that provides
a single point of access to people, teams, knowledge, and applications. It
helps you put information to work, connect people and spaces, and target
and personalize information. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 builds on and
enhances Windows SharePoint Services by providing enterprise features
and services, such as global search, personalized portals, information deliv-
ery, and support for enterprise application integration and single sign-on.
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is a reliable, scalable, and easy-to-deploy
and manage platform for developing customized portal solutions. With
SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you can tie together disconnected islands
of data, integrate technology with business processes, and target and per-
sonalize information for groups and individual users, so your users can
be more productive and eective in their work. SharePoint Portal Server
2003 achieves this while taking advantage of your existing infrastructure
investments and keeping the total cost of ownership low.
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References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicrosoftSharePointWorkspace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharePointFoundation
http://www.etechspider.com/
http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/denition/Microsoft-Oce-
SharePoint-Server-MOSS
http://oce.microsoft.com/en-in/sharepoint-foundation-help/what-is-
sharepoint-HA010378184.aspx
http://blog.integgris.com/post/43668178155/the-amazing-benets-of-
microsoft-sharepointsthash.10yiLmx6.dpbs
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