What Is Windows SharePoint Services?

Windows SharePoint Services is a component of Microsoft Windows Server 2003. It is provided as a free download and gives you a powerful toolset for organizing information, managing documents, increasing the efficiency of business processes, and providing robust collaboration environments.

Windows SharePoint Services helps teams stay connected and productive by providing an infrastructure that allows easy access to the people, documents, and information they need. With Windows SharePoint Services, teams can create Web sites to share information and foster collaboration with other users. You can access content stored within a SharePoint site from a Web browser and through desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office.

Tip 

Windows SharePoint Services, Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Designer 2007 are known collectively as Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies.

Team Collaboration and Sharing

SharePoint sites provide places to capture and share ideas, information, communication, and documents. The sites facilitate team participation in discussions, shared document collaboration, blogging, building knowledge bases using wikis, and surveys. The document collaboration features allow for easy checking in and checking out of documents, document version control, and recovery of previous versions, as well as document-level security.

Tip 

A blog, or Web log, is an online diary. A blog site allows the diarists, called bloggers, to post the articles, whereupon readers can comment on them.

Wiki (pronounced wee-kee) is a Web environment that allows Web browser users to quickly and easily add and edit text and links that appear on the Web page. The term wiki originates from the Hawaiian word wikiwiki, which means “quick.” A wiki site can be used, for example, to build a knowledge base, a community resource, or an online encyclopedia.

For more information about blogs and wikis, refer to Chapter 10, “Working with Wikis and Blogs.”

A SharePoint site can have many subsites, the hierarchy of which, on Web servers, resembles the hierarchy of folders on file systems-it is a tree-like structure. Similar to storing your files in folders on file systems, you can store your files within SharePoint sites. However, SharePoint sites take file storage to a new level, providing communities for team collaboration and making it easy for users to work together on documents, tasks, contacts, events, calendars, wikis, and other information. This team collaboration environment can greatly increase individual and team productivity.

The collaborative tools provided by Windows SharePoint Services are easy to use so that you can share files and information and communicate more effectively with your coworkers. You can create and use SharePoint sites for any purpose. For example, you can build a site to serve as the primary Web site for a team, create a site to facilitate the organization of a meeting, or create a wiki site to capture team knowledge. A typical SharePoint site might include a variety of useful tools and information such as shared document libraries, contacts, calendars, task lists, discussions, and other information-sharing and visualization tools.

SharePoint site users can find and communicate with key contacts and experts, both with e-mail and instant messaging. Site content can be easily searched, and users can receive alerts to tell them when existing documents and information have been changed or when new ones have been added. Custom business processes can be attached to the documents. You can customize site content and layout to present targeted information to specific users on precise topics.

In this exercise, you will locate your SharePoint site and familiarize yourself with its home page.

OPEN the browser.

BE SURE TO know the location of your SharePoint site. If in doubt, check with your SharePoint administrator.

1. In the browser Address bar, type the URL, or location, of your SharePoint site: ">http://<yourservername/path>.

The yourservername portion of the URL is the name of the SharePoint server you will be using for the exercises in this book. The path portion might be empty or might include one or more levels in the site hierarchy on your SharePoint server.

Important  

For exercises in this book, we use a site located at the server wideworldimporters. Its URL is http://wideworldimporters. However, in your environment, you will be using a different site installed on a different server. You will need to use your site location ">http://<yourservername/path> in place of http://wideworldimporters throughout the book.

2. If prompted, type your user name and password.

3. Click OK.

The home page of your site appears. Although it might look somewhat different than the typical SharePoint team site that Wide World Importers starts with, it is still likely to include links to a variety of information, as well as the information-sharing tools provided by Windows SharePoint Services.

On the left side of the page, you might see links to one or more of the following: View All Site Content, Documents, Lists, Discussions, Sites, People and Groups, and Recycle Bin. The panel that contains these links is referred to as left navigation. It enables you to navigate straight to the information and tools that you require.

The area on top of the page is referred to as top navigation area. This area contains a top link bar that appears at the top of each page. It consists of several tabs with links, such as the default tab Home. It may also include other tabs with links to the subsites of this Web site; such as, for example, the second tab on the left that says Travel. In our example, since the Wide World Importers staff travel extensively worldwide, this is the link to a subsite that provides Wide World Importers employees with the necessary information and guidelines for arranging business travel.

On the right of the top link bar, there is a link to a menu called Site Actions. This menu provides access to various actions that allow you to change the site, including site configuration.

Important  

Your screen might not include links to all parts of the site, such as the Site Actions link, because this is the way that security measures on your server have been set up. SharePoint site users only see the parts of the site that they can actually access: if you don’t have access to a part of the site, the link to it is not displayed. To obtain additional access, contact your SharePoint administrator.

4. In the top right corner of the page, click the round Help icon with the question mark. Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 Help and How-to launches in a separate window.

Familiarize yourself with the Help and How-to Contents, and then close the window.

CLOSE the browser.

For more information on SharePoint site navigation, refer to Chapter 2, “Navigating a SharePoint Site.”

Windows SharePoint Services User Permissions

In Windows SharePoint Services, access to sites is controlled through a role-based system that uses permission levels. Permission levels specify what permissions users have on a SharePoint site. These permissions determine what specific actions users can perform on the site; in essence, each permission level is a collection of permissions. Windows SharePoint Services has five default permission levels, as shown in the following list.

• Read   This permission level gives read-only access to the Web site.

• Contribute   In addition to the Read permission level, the Contribute permission level allows you to create and edit items in existing lists and document libraries.

• Design   In addition to the Contribute permission level, the Design permission level allows you to create lists and document libraries, approve items, and edit pages in the Web site.

• Full Control   This permission level gives full control.

• Limited   The Limited permission level allows access to a shared resource within a site, such as a specific list, document library, folder, list item, or document, without giving access to the entire site.

Important  

You will need Read or Contribute permission levels for most of the exercises in this book. We will instruct you to verify whether you have a sufficient permission level before introducing those exercises in which a higher level of access, such as Design or Full Control, is needed. If you are not sure what permissions are set on your SharePoint site, check with your SharePoint administrator.

For more information about permission levels, refer to Chapter 3, “Creating and Managing Sites.” A full list of permissions and their associated permission levels is provided in the Appendix.