Presenting SharePoint Foundation 2010
Silverlight Integration and Cross-Domain Data Access
Windows PowerShell for SharePoint
In today’s world, organizations are looking for an advantage over their competition. These organizations have increasingly turned to technology to gain that edge. About 10 years ago, Microsoft introduced a suite of tools that have evolved to become known as Microsoft SharePoint. Using these tools, organizations can share, exchange, and distribute information to their employees, partners, shareholders, and customers. Microsoft’s SharePoint technology has also given organizations throughout the world the means to implement information systems that increase productivity and enhance organizational collaboration, while giving users the tools they need to accomplish their jobs more quickly and efficiently.
SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the entry-level component of the SharePoint family of technologies; it’s the starting point for organizations that want to begin using SharePoint. As time goes on, an organization might require additional tools and features. At that point, it might decide to go forward with a complete SharePoint Server 2010 configuration. Even though this book will look at the abilities, features, and functions of SharePoint Foundation 2010 specifically, Foundation is the baseline for SharePoint Server 2010; as such, the content of this book is still relevant to you, even if you are currently running (or foresee going to) SharePoint 2010 Server.
With SharePoint Foundation 2010, you will be able to store and access content while simultaneously linking your organization’s departments and teams together in a way that offers users a familiar, web-based experience. The beauty of SharePoint Foundation is that it can be utilized as a hybrid solution to meet a number of needs within your organization. Whether you are new to Microsoft SharePoint or are a seasoned veteran to this technology, Microsoft has worked hard to introduce a solution that ensures your organization will benefit from its implementation.
When your organization deploys SharePoint Foundation 2010, it can take advantage of a set of robust tools to create solutions that will help people stay connected, regardless of size, geographic location, and (most important) the available IT budget. And whether the organization is a Fortune 500 company, a startup, or a home-based business, it can utilize the features and functions immediately and effectively.
SharePoint is designed around an easy-to-use web-based interface that is fully integrated with Microsoft Office. As such, users do not need to learn a new piece of software—they can use their existing knowledge and apply it to the SharePoint environment. Always remember, SharePoint is designed to adapt to your organization, not the other way around.
SharePoint Foundation 2010 is built on the Windows Server 2008 platform, meaning if you have a Windows Server 2008 server, you can run SharePoint. Also, as an added benefit, Microsoft offers SharePoint Foundation 2010 as a free product, which you can easily download from the Microsoft website. By doing so, Microsoft has truly engineered a software platform that is accessible to any organization.
If your organization requires functionality, such as enterprise-wide records management, Excel Services, InfoPath Form Services, Business Intelligence capabilities, and My Sites, then SharePoint Server 2010 is a platform that you should definitely consider. If your goals are less complex, then SharePoint Foundation 2010 is a robust and cost-effective platform that should be strongly considered; We encourage organizations that are new to SharePoint or that have an existing SharePoint 2007 (WSS 3.0 or MOSS) implementation to “get your feet wet” by implementing SharePoint Foundation 2010.
SharePoint Foundation 2010 is amazingly powerful, flexible, and easy to use. The remainder of this chapter provides a brief overview of SharePoint Foundation 2010, what is new in comparison to previous SharePoint versions, how to customize and enhance it, how it works with the Microsoft Office system, and how to develop entirely new SharePoint applications. Subsequent chapters will explain these topics in much greater detail.
Note
You can download SharePoint Foundation 2010 at www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=49c79a8a-4612-4e7d-a0b4-3bb429b46595&displaylang=en.
At a high level, SharePoint Foundation 2010 aims to assist organizations in the following six areas:
Sites These provide an infrastructure that your organization can use for all of your business websites. Through these sites, you can share documents with colleagues, shareholders, partners, and customers. You can also use these sites to manage projects and publish information to external entities.
Communities These are places within SharePoint that are used by teams and individuals for collaborating on ideas and work in ways that are familiar and useful to them. Communities also assist your colleagues to accomplish their task assignments more quickly than they could in the past.
Content Organizations produce a lot of content in the course of conducting business. In the past, this content was mostly utilized and then forgotten. Through content management practices, your organization has powerful tools in place for the production of content; more important, you can set up retention policies, automated records management tools, and compliance measures. All of these tasks can be done through the familiar interface of the Office platform.
Search No matter how well your content is produced or stored, it is meaningless if your organization cannot locate the correct content when it needs it. With SharePoint’s uniquely powerful search tools, you can “cut through the clutter” and find content based on relevance, refinement, and social cues, thus providing the results that you want and need.
Insights Organizations have data and Business Intelligence (BI) stored away in numerous databases, reports, spreadsheets, and business applications. SharePoint 2010 provides a way for an organization to finally tap into these rich information resources to locate the information it needs to make better business decisions.
Composites Business solutions are always needed and are retooled based on business needs at the time. With SharePoint Composites, your organization can custom build both coded and no-code solutions to rapidly respond to business needs.
Together, each of these areas combine to be known as the SharePoint Circle, which is depicted in Figure 1-1.
In the sections that follow, we’ll take a look at each area individually.