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About Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Ishai Sagi covers all the basics of SharePoint, including what it is and an explanation of libraries, views, alerts, tagging, workflow, and more.
This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • What Is Microsoft SharePoint 2010?
  • Difference Between SPF and SharePoint Server
  • What Is a Site?
  • What Is a Personal Site?
  • What Is a Ribbon?
  • What Is a List?
  • What Is an External List?
  • What Is a Document Library?
  • What Is a Wiki Page Library?
  • What Is a Form Library?
  • What Is an Asset Library?
  • What Is a Slide Library?
  • What Is a Picture Library?
  • What Is a View?
  • What Are Web Parts?
  • What Are Alerts?
  • What Is a Site Column?
  • What Is a Content Type?
  • What Is Tagging?
  • What Is Managed Metadata?
  • What Are Versions?
  • What Does Check-in/Check-out Mean?
  • What Is a Workflow?

What Is Microsoft SharePoint 2010?

SharePoint is a Microsoft platform that allows people to build websites. SharePoint 2010 is the fourth version of SharePoint from Microsoft, and it is also known as SharePoint v4 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010. It is very different from the versions that came before it.

SharePoint allows people to create websites with different content and different purposes. Its many built-in features and components make it a comprehensive solution that can fit many needs.

One common use of SharePoint in organizations is to create sites that are used for team collaboration. These collaborative sites, also known as team sites or group work sites, enable team members to better work with one another. They can use the site to share documents, assign tasks, track team events on a shared web calendar, and much more. This use is known as a team collaboration system.

Many companies use SharePoint for their central document storage, replacing network folders. This use is known as an electronic document management system.

Another common use is as a corporate portal where the corporate employees can go and download forms, read corporate news, fill in surveys, and search for documents. This use is known as an electronic content management system or an intranet.

Finally, some companies choose the SharePoint platform as the platform for their Internet sites—where visitors from around the world can visit the company's website and read about the company's products, register for events, and do whatever it is the site has been configured to allow them to do. This use is known as a web content management system.

This variety of possible uses of SharePoint indicate the flexibility of the SharePoint platform. It is highly customizable—which means that one SharePoint site (for example, the one shown in Figure 1.1) may look entirely different from another SharePoint site (such as the one shown in Figure 1.2). This book shows mostly basic SharePoint sites (sites that have not been customized), and the sites that you will be using may look significantly different. It is important to keep that in mind when following the instructions in this book, as some of the things mentioned in this book and shown in the figures may differ from site to site.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.1 A standard SharePoint site.

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.2 A customized SharePoint site.

The SharePoint platform is also known as SharePoint Foundation. This book uses SPF when referring to a SharePoint site that is built based on this platform.

The SharePoint product family has other products that can be added on top of SPF to enhance the sites in different ways. One of these products is called SharePoint Server, and even that has two versions—standard and enterprise—each adding more features. Often the term SharePoint is used to refer to either SPF or to the two extended versions SharePoint Server—and this can be a bit confusing.

Because the SharePoint Server products are extensions of SPF, sites built using those products have all the capabilities of SPF sites, but with extra features. Some of the differences between SharePoint Server and SPF are explained in the following section.

SharePoint sites have many built-in features that make them useful, flexible, and customizable—features such as security management, lists of information, document libraries (places to store and manage files and documents), views, alerts, and searches. All these and more are explained in this chapter.

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