Saturday 12 April 2008

SharePoint Course.

I've been on a MOSS course the past couple of days, which has been good...

Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 Chalk Talk

The facilitator was Mick Badran,
blogs.breezetraining.com.au/mickb/


Course Outline

Day One
  • Module 1: Platform Overview

  • Module 2: Server Topology and Administration

  • Module 3: Collaboration



  • Day Two
  • Module 4: Search

  • Module 5: Web Content Management

  • Module 6: Business Data Catalog


  • These are my random notes taken during the two days.

    • 81m licences in 2007 expected 170m in 2008
    • http://www.wssdemo.com/default.aspx
      • list of publishing sites for references on what you can do with WSS publishing.
    • Search - there are web services that you can consume in your own web app.
    • Talks about importance of classifying documents with extra meta data.
    • free MSFT search product "Search Server Express" that you should use if deploying just WSS search
    • there are 9 different web parts providing search functionality
    • Sharepoint is base for other MSFT products eg Performance Point
    • BDC - link up other sources of information into your portal
    • magnifying part of screen zoomit.exe
    • wss comes free with Win 2003 licence
    • MOSS has 153 features some of which turn on/off on installation
    • "SPLA" licencing can be against features for eg. you can have 20 enterprise licences and n other licences on the same deployment
    • could manage licencing through groups but is basically on a trust basis
    • about 20 different licensing programs available - so if licensing is issue with partner then contact MSFT for information
    • Win 2008 - runs faster
    • 64 bit better again, supports more users
    • Application Pool - set memory recycling - max virtual memory should be 700M on 32 bit
    • once MOSS successfully installed you do have Central Admin web site up and running
    • Advice - alwasy install in farm mode as you then have option to grow
    • Sharepoint solution can have 1 or more fetures to be developed within them
    • Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint
    • Site Features not only apply to new creations but also apply to all past ones as well
    • you can have dependencies between features
    • 2 main areas of Central Admin site - Operations and Application Mgmt
    • Biggest benefit to V3 is "Site Features" eg
      • Master page deploy
      • publishing
      • 3rd party
    • Partners might create site features as a good differentiator.
    • Sharepoint Solution Generator allows you goto exisiting sharepoint installation and pick out libraries/sites/whatever that you might want to generation a solution from
    • WSP View in VS2005 - windows sharepoint project
    • Reporting Service Integration Features
    • Sharepoint Capacity Planner - used to give guide line on how many servers you require on your system.
    • 3rd party - wan accelerators
    • one way to deply would be to save site as template then you can move this template around
    • use Kerberos (not NTLM) security - will save effort down the track
    • Sharepoint workflows are document centric - they are built on WWF
    • User Profiles can be sucked down from AD
    • Audiences - based on series of rules - ie yrs of svc, first name beginning with A
    • when selecting web part you can set display only for 'target audience'
    • 'target audience' could also be an AD group
    • set environment variable to 12 for the long folder name
      • program files\common files\msft shared\web server extensions\12\
    • can then use %12% in explorer
    • logs folder has the logs
    • bin folder has psconfig.exe
      • enables you to name your admin database without a GUID in the db name
    • with sharepoint v3 you can incorporate sharepoint url into your own separate web application
    • run 'winword' for office word
    • my site url gets written to AD only time sharepoint writes to AD
    • my site url also gets written to registry
    • Open docs in word and have sharepoint lists available to open doc from - these lists can be controlled in 'Published links to Office Client Applications under SSP admin
    • Usage reporting - turn on SSP admin
    • Word 2007 - 'Research Window' can integrate Sharepoint searching into this search tool - by adding a service. moss/vti bin/search.asmx
    • can leverage this search service in your own apps
    • each person under my site is their own site collection
    • you can switch a web sites SSP but you would lose what the original SSP stores, eg index,audiences,my site
    • in central admin web site, sites are site collections, webs are sites, also known as sub sites
    • due to size/usage/load you may choose to have a site collection in its own content db
    • you can 50,000 site collections in a content db.
    • site collection is smallest granular unit you can move from 1 content db to another.
    • Incoming Email Settings - enable sites on this server to receive email
      • ie email a doc to a list
      • this doesnt need exchange - its just a drop folder for email
    • does need configuration on exchange server
      • eg create a moss sub domain - mylist@moss.mycompany.com
    • Directory Mgmt service will enable AD tie in that will mean address list in outlook will have document lists email address
    • under doc lib settings you will have communications --> incoming email settings
    • alternate access mappings - gives you url rewriting
    • a lot of users dont know enought about lists - havent used the 'actions' menu
    • there are maybe other company polikcy/politics that affect way you would do collaboration
    • smallest unit of division you can move is a site collection
    • within site collection certain things inherited like
      • regional settings
      • quotes
      • recycle bin settings
    • 'Site Collection Administration' area in Site Admin is only available at the root subsite
    • If for example
      • Add 15 cols to your doc library in your root site
      • the cols will be inherited down at sub site level, but you still need to add those 15 cols into the doc lib at that level
      • instead at 15 cols to content type at root level
      • you then just need to at single thing at sub site level
    • rule of thumb is always create stuff at root level even if you think you are only going to use it at a single sub site.
    • Managed Paths - tell browser things under this address are/are not sharepoint sites
    • MAjor version increases whenever doc is published and approved
    • minor version increases when doc is checked in
    • if you have do with version 0.2, a user with read priv for that library wont see anything
      • if the doc is version 1.5, a user with read priv will beable to read v1.0
    • if the search indexer is under an admin account they will beable to index V1.5 and see a snippet of V1.5 in the search results but if you just have read priv when you click on the link it will take you to V1.0
    • to stop above point happening you should set up crawl rule
    • users docs default is 90 days in their recycle bin
    • sites/subsites dont go into recycle bin
    • add network place
      • paste url of doc lib and you get webdav view of doc library
    • stsadm tool can be used to increase defaut content limit of 10MB when creating document library template by UI interface 'exporting template'
    • you could also use sharepoint designer if content is larger than 10Mb
    • Prune your doc versions - find out requirements for company - what is cut off time - then move content to an archive
    • Document Library is implemented as a feature
    • you can turn of any menu settings for you doc lib
    • you can only have 1 indexer machine per SSP
    • if you add a new property - eg content type, then you need to do a full index for that property to be searchedon
    • search was rebuilt from ground up concentrating on importance of relevance
    • Foxit software - pdf plugin for crawling
    • make site 'authoritative' and it will bump up in the rankings
    • 'search for "hammer and nail" will normally never be found as "and" is noise word
    • can map properties from sources to be certain thing in index - eg search for name = 'friday'
      • source = people = map first/last name to name
      • source = files = map filename to name
      • source = sps sites = map page title to name
    • can set best bets to expire
    • index engine known as gatherer service
    • can set best bets to expire
    • configuring search
      • sps3://moss/ - tells crawler to activate SP APIs and get more goodies out
    • Incremental Index - doing this often - every 5 mins perfectly possible
    • to add pdf icon add to images folder in '12' folder
      • and modify doc icon xml file
    • Scopes can be used to generate diff search page and search results page
    • search for "author:Paul" any property can be searched in same way as author
    • 'Form Web Part' can be used to do searching if you want.. doesnt matter what form is used just pass query to searchresults.aspx with 'k=' is querystring
    • WCM - telerik have some free useful controls
    • Content types,master page, layout page combine to give you your WCM
    • WCM needs 'Office Sharepoint Publising Infrastructure' feature turned on
    • when publishing public sites - look at core.js (400k) to see if you still need it all
    • BDC Action could be developed to write back to LOB system
    • sharepoint exams have lots of Q about BDC API
    • SSO is enterprise feature
    • App Def file is an xml file
    • BDC MetaMan 3rd party tool allows write to LOB
    • other tools on codeplex and the net
    • you could point VStudio at xsd filer and then get intellisense

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