A successful SharePoint environment is the result of a close interaction between the site users, site owners, and supporting technical staff. This chapter introduced you to some of the concepts that you need to understand for advanced business uses of SharePoint.
The SharePoint list items that you add and the documents that you upload all reside in a SharePoint site. Every SharePoint site is part of a Site Collection, which is a hierarchy that starts with one top-level site at the root of a tree, and sites which can grow from it. Site collections are accessed through web applications and contained in content databases. Web applications and content databases run on the servers that make up the SharePoint farm that hosts it all. Service Applications provide supporting resources to the farm.
Your day-to-day work is done on the site and Site Collection level. Understanding the full structure can inform your design decisions when you would like to improve your SharePoint installation.
Search is a very powerful tool provided by SharePoint Technologies. While SharePoint Foundation 2010 provides search out of the box, you have a range of possibilities for enhancing the search by adding other products in the family. Search Server Express 2010 is a free download that provides enhancements in the number of items that can be searched and the ways you can search them. Upgrading from the Express version and licensing the full version of Search Server 2010 will provide capabilities closer to the search features provided by SharePoint Server 2010. One popular search feature you get in SharePoint Server but not in SharePoint Foundation is People Search.
The last search product that is covered in this chapter is FAST Search for SharePoint 2010. It is the top-of-the-line Enterprise Search product from Microsoft and it can be used to provide search results from SharePoint Foundation 2010 websites.
Regardless of the search product that you choose, it is important to pay attention to how well your searches perform and follow up on issues such as stale results.
It’s also important that SharePoint identify your site’s users and understand the options for securing your site content. SharePoint Foundation 2010 adds a few authentication options for your web applications. Choosing authentication methods for your web applications requires identifying who your users are and what level of access they need. The authentication methods you may choose from include classic Windows integrated, claims-based with Windows or without, and anonymous authentication. Authorizing the users to perform actions in SharePoint is mostly controlled in the Site Collection. However, User Policies can effect permissions globally and are not visible outside the web application settings. Working closely with IT, you can ensure a secure experience for the visitors to your site and the content you host in SharePoint.
You probably have been using some tool to share files and other information with others before moving to SharePoint Foundation 2010. Any sites that you have running in Windows SharePoint Services Version 3 can be upgraded in place or by copying the content databases to SharePoint Foundation. If you’d like to migrate data from other sources, you might choose to manually move the most important pieces over yourself. If you have a lot of data, you might consider purchasing a third-party tool to help you move into SharePoint Foundation 2010.
This chapter has been an introduction to administration settings made beyond the Site Collection. In the chapters that follow, you will find other ways with which you will interact with SharePoint Administration outside site settings available to an advanced business user. For example, you will find information on importing BDC models in Chapter 9. Chapters Chapter 15 and Chapter 16 both cover creating customizations for SharePoint that can be added to the Farm by an administrator. Chapter 15 focuses on SharePoint Designer, and covers some settings exposed only to technical staff.