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