Chapter 1: Introduction to Microsoft SharePoint 2007

Overview

I am extremely happy you are reading this book. It tells me that you are planning to install SharePoint 2007 or at least are curious about it. Congratulations! This is a very good move! This is the third generation of SharePoint, and it is so much better than its predecessors. In fact, at the TechEd 2006 conference I heard a Microsoft representative talk about how they build a new software application: "First we do a lot of planning, analysis and of course guessing at what the customer wants in such a product; this results in version 1.0. Of course, we quickly realize that we missed a number of things, so we learn from that, rebuild the product, and then release version 2.0. This version will most likely also miss some important features, which our customers tell us in a very frank and honest way. So, we sit down again, add the missing features, plus a lot more, and fix weaknesses, and then we release version 3.0. And this time we usually get it right!"

If we apply that logic to the different SharePoint versions, we see that in 2001 Microsoft released version 1.0 of SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2001. In 2003 Microsoft released version 2.0, which was known as Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Finally, in late 2006 they released version 3.0, which is known as Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. If you ask someone who has been working with all these versions, they will tell you that Microsoft's story about software versions is indeed true; version 3.0 of SharePoint, also known as "SharePoint 2007," is a fantastic application. It has almost everything you would want in such a program. I love it, and I am sure you will it too!

So what is SharePoint 2007, and what can it do for you? That is the subject for this book. You will learn step by step how to install, configure, and maintain a SharePoint environment, regardless of the size of your company. You will also learn how to take advantage of all the cool features it includes, such as extended integration with products like MS Word and MS Outlook. And, hopefully, you will find this book easy to understand, and sometimes even fun to read. The objective in this chapter is to show you why SharePoint is such an interesting product and to give you some ideas of what you can do after installing it.