Chapter 2: SharePoint Products and Technologies Overview


The term SharePoint refers to more than just a portal solution. In fact, the term alone does not refer to any particular product or technology. Instead, it is a catchall term that refers to several different aspects of web-based collaborative solutions. In this chapter, I'll review all of the different products and technologies that are both specific to the term SharePoint as well as related to collaborative solutions in general. This review will help you become familiar with the vocabulary I will use throughout the rest of the book.

Windows Server 2003 Information Worker Infrastructure

With Windows Server 2003, Microsoft has made the productivity of knowledge workers its highest priority. To that end, Windows Server 2003 contains many features designed explicitly to help knowledge workers. The collection of these knowledge worker technologies is known as the Information Worker Infrastructure (IWI). IWI is a set of technologies only loosely related to SharePoint solutions; however, several of these features are worth mentioning because they can be integrated with the collaborative solutions described in this book.

Shadow Copy Folders

In most organizations today, file management is a nightmare. Few organizations beyond the Fortune 1000 truly have a document management system. Instead, most have a set of file servers and mapped network drives that are a chaotic collection of randomly named folders.

On most of these file servers there are few, if any, restrictions on who can create folders, what the names will be, or where files are stored. The result is that end users have a difficult time locating the files that they need to do their job. In fact, most of the time, users simply e-mail documents around the organization ”a testament to how difficult it is to find them.

Improving file management, search, and retrieval is a major goal of this book. It is also a major push for Microsoft. Hence, the IWI infrastructure emphasizes file storage improvements. The first of these improvements you'll investigate is the ability to Shadow Copy shared folders.

Shadow Copies are designed to allow end users to recover lost files without any help from a system administrator. A Shadow Copy folder saves the original file and the subsequent changes on a shared file system. Once the changes are saved, end users can recover deleted files and previous file versions with no help from the system administrator. Recovering a lost file or previous version is done by right-clicking a shared file or folder and selecting Properties. From the resulting property sheet, end users can restore files.

To enable Shadow Copies, follow these steps:

  1. Open Start Administrative Tools Computer Management.

  2. In the Computer Management screen, right-click Shared Folders, and select All Tasks Configure Shadow Copies.

  3. Check the box labeled "Enable Shadow Copies".

Folder Redirection

No matter how hard administrators try to centralize computing, end users still use their client machine for many critical tasks. One of the most common uses of the client machine is to save files. The My Documents folder is viewed by most end users as their own personal file system, even when network administrators provide individually mapped network shares to end users.

The Folder Redirection feature of Windows Server 2003 now allows network administrators to redirect client-side folders like My Documents to a server share. This allows the end user to continue to save files into My Documents while guaranteeing that they are properly backed up and shadowed . When redirection is coupled with client-side caching, users can see their documents whether they are connected to the network or mobile.

To enable Folder Redirection, follow these steps:

  1. Open Start Administrative Tools Active Directory Users and Computers on a domain controller.

  2. In the Active Directory Users and Computers screen, right-click the domain or organizational unit (OU) from which you want to redirect the folders and select Properties.

  3. In the Properties dialog, select the Group Policy tab.

  4. Create a new group Policy by clicking the New button and naming it Folder Redirection Policy .

  5. Open the new Group Policy object by clicking the Edit button.

  6. In the new Group Policy object, expand the tree User Configuration Windows Settings Folder Redirection.

  7. Right-click the My Documents folder and select Properties.

  8. On the Target tab, check "Basic - Redirect everyone's folder to the same location."

  9. Under Target Folder Location, select "Create a folder for each user under the root path" and type a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path for the redirection.

Encrypting File System

Along with improved file management, Windows Server 2003 also supports the encryption of files and folders. Encryption can be applied to files or folders through the Properties dialog. Although encryption is seamless to authorized users, it will prevent unauthorized intruders from viewing the file.

To enable File and Folder Encryption, follow these steps:

  1. From Windows Explorer, right-click the file or folder you want to encrypt. The property sheet for the file or folder will appear.

  2. On the General tab, click the Advanced button.

  3. On the Advanced Attributes screen, check the "Encrypt contents to secure data" box.

Distributed File System

One of the biggest headaches for end users is the collection of mapped network drives that make up the enterprise file system in most organizations. These drive mappings tend to be cryptic and understood only by network engineers . The situation gets even worse if an end user deletes one of the mappings. The result is panic on the part of the end user as files appear to be lost or dependent applications no longer function correctly.

The Distributed File System (DFS) is intended to simplify and consolidate the end-user view of the network file system. DFS allows network administrators to create virtual drives that consolidate several public shares under a single name . This new namespace can look like a single resource to the end user, even if it crosses different servers.

To set up DFS on the server, follow these steps:

  1. Open Start Administrative Tools Distributed File System.

  2. From the Distributed File System screen, select Action New Root from the menu. The wizard will help you create a new root.

  3. After you create a root, you can map multiple shared folders to it to simplify the end-user view of network drives.




Microsoft SharePoint[c] Building Office 2003 Solutions
Microsoft SharePoint[c] Building Office 2003 Solutions
ISBN: 1590593383
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 92

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