Tuesday 1 July 2008

Last Months SharePoint Bootcamp Course

During 27-30 May I was on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Bootcamp course, the instructor was Mick Badran again which was good. This time the course was longer and included lab work which is definitely an easier way to learn.

Some random notes from the week;
  • its possible to map Features to Delegate controls
  • admin tools --> active directory users and computers -- > 'saved queries' --> use to build LDAP queries.
  • key focus points to take away include
  • Content Types - good to attach workflow to a content type not a type
  • VS Extensions for SharePoint - has solution generator, can point to a site and generate a solution for it.
  • SharePoint Exporer - codeplex tool
  • Silverlight.Net - SharePoint starter kit for SilverLight
  • SPLA Licensing - Leasing payments, usually no contracts, you pay for usage. eg SharePoint user = $50 per month. If you have a floor of 80 people, 200 need MOSS usually Microsoft answer is whole floor requires MOSS - with SPLA licensing you can pay for just the 20 MOSS you require. SPLA Licensing is also good for seasonal pressures.
  • Enterprise Content Management not really covered in this course, its more of a niche thing, its UI section of product
  • Pretty much anything you do in SharePoint browser UI can be done via developer API
  • www.wssdemo.com
  • Enterprise Search Resource Kit - get from Microsoft Rep.
  • SharePoint Team Services - previous version of SharePoint
  • MOSS can be installed on top of WSS
  • Outlook 2007 allows you to edit portal calendar within Outlook
  • Word 2007 Research pane you can search your portal
  • 64 bit good, especially for SQL
  • No IIS configuration is necessary for SharePoint, its all in web.config
  • at site collection level you can nominate a content database
  • Joel Olsons blog - Sharepoint capacity and performance white paper
  • you can have 50,000 site collections per server
  • SharePoint Designer - gives the ability to work with DataView web parts
  • SharePoint Designer - recognizes the master page, VS doesnt due to way SharePoint does it
  • SharePoint Designer - doesnt lend itelf well to deployment
  • Development team should be using virtual servers
  • Subversion with cruise control for auto builds
  • rename a .docx file to .zip and open it to see folder structure of file
  • Forms Services can be a stand alone add-in to WSS
  • add the '12' directory to your favourites
  • add the 'bin' directory to your environment variables can then use cd %12%
  • always install WSS in farm mode - it gives you the option to extend, if you dont you cant switch to farm later
  • its WSS that is farm aware not MOSS
  • central admin database gets created on install
  • PSConfigUI.exe is wizard that create Sharepoint admin database, so you can give your own db name
  • 3rd party web parts can be used to write back to AD
  • Permissions - keep it simple - keep the same default groups
  • Permissions - you can use the AD groups you already have within SharePoint
  • Upgrading - make sure first step is back up your content db
  • reason to move content into sharepoint is if it lacks a sensible structure
  • if directory has '_' in front of it then stuff runs in elevated mode, ie has high priority set, _layouts
  • Master page - to minimise processing you can put unused content place holders into a visible=false panel
  • SPContext class can be used when coding web parts to get handle on SharePoint context
  • For 'complicated' web parts you can configure it, then save it , then add it back in as a new web part already configured for the user
  • On deployment, modified pages are considered as 'customised' pages and are treated differently
  • VS Extensions for SharePoint should be used for packaging and deploying web parts
  • Heather Soliman blog - has css snippets with what they affect within SharePoint
  • keep away from site definitions as much as possible - these were used in V2 for customisations
  • 'MasterPage' pack is a download available from Microsoft.
  • deployment is a significant part of the total amount of work that needs to be done

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