Authors: Errin O'Connor, Penelope Coventry, Troy Lanphier, Johnathan Lightfoot, Thomas Resing, Michael Doyle
Publisher (in conjunction with Microsoft Press): O'Reilly Media (http://microsoftpress.oreilly.com)
Full details of the book available at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780735627246.do
Published: September 2011
Print ISBN 13: 978-0-7356-2724-6 and Print ISBN 10: 0-7356-2724-X
EBook ISBN 13: 978-0-7356-6378-7 and EBook ISBN 10: 0-7356-6378-5
Formats:
Print: softcover
eBook (formats: DAISY, ePub, Mobi, PDF)
Safari Books Online
Pages: 800
Prices:
EBook: $39.99
Print & EBook: $54.99
Print: $49.99

Inside and Outside Knowledge of SharePoint Foundation 2010

No less than half a dozen authors have worked together to write a book about SharePoint Foundation 2010, Microsoft’s technology that can be used to build and deliver a host of web solutions. This group of authors points out that SharePoint Foundation 2010, available as a free download, “forms the basis for a number of other SharePoint products such as SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 365, which incorporates Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 cloud-based solution, called SharePoint Online.” Not surprisingly these six authors have titled their comprehensive book “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out.” Each of these authors imparts into the book their own unique knowledge of, and experiences with SharePoint, that have been gathered from a variety of business environments. And collectively that knowledge and those experiences encompass different aspects of the technology including its architecture, design, development, implementation and consulting with it, as well as training other professionals to master its features.

For these authors, the importance of SharePoint Foundation is that it “helps teams stay connected and productive by utilizing an infrastructure with which they can easily access the people, documents, and information that they need. With SharePoint Foundation, teams can create websites 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.”

The 16 chapters that comprise the book can be informally divided into two major parts. The book’s authors point out that the early chapters of their book “concentrate on what you can achieve by using the browser; later chapters detail features from the perspective of the power-end user, administrator, and developer.”

A good example of the type of material to be found in the first part of the book is its fourth chapter titled “Creating Sites and Workspaces by Using the Browser.” The chapter’s opening paragraph sets the scenario perfectly by stating that “before you can begin to add content and collaborate with others in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, you need a site or workspace. There are several methods by which a user can accomplish this, but the most straightforward and intuitive way is via the browser. The browser is a tool with which all computer users are acquainted. With the familiarity of the browser and intentional ease-of-use design, you can begin creating sites in no time at all.”

A chapter that typifies the sort of material covered in the second half of the book is the chapter titled “Managing Site Settings.” By the time you have read this far into the text, the book’s authors are confident that you will now know how to “add items to a library, build new documents and list items, change existing items, and even administer the document and item libraries on your Team Site.” So in this chapter, the book’s authors challenge you “to take your SharePoint skills to the next level. You’ve been asked by your management team to build a team collaboration site. You send in a Help Desk ticket to build the site, and IT responds by making you the site owner – perhaps even the Site Collection administrator. But wait … is this going to be a problem? Not for you – you’re going to learn about being both site owner and Site Collection administrator in this section. Specifically, you are going to learn about site settings within a SharePoint Foundation 2010 site/Site Collection.”

Note: For a list of the titles of all the chapters of the book, including titles of major sections within each chapter, go to the book’s publisher site at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780735627246.do and click the “Table of Contents” link.

“Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out” has been written for a range of professionals who fall into one or more of the following categories:
•    Either business users or IT professionals who have some prior experience with SharePoint Foundation 2010 and who are now looking to extend their knowledge of the technology. But even for relative newcomers to the technology, it is reassuring to read in the book’s opening chapter that “SharePoint is designed around an easy-to-use web-based interface that is fully integrated with Microsoft Office. As such, users do not need to learn a new piece of software – they can use their existing knowledge and apply it to the SharePoint environment.” If however you are still somewhat concerned that you don’t possess the wherewithal to come to terms with SharePoint, the book’s authors offer additional reassurance by assertively stating that “SharePoint is designed to adapt to your organization, not the other way around.” [Their italics, not mine.]. In order to maximize the use of their book, its authors also recommend that “you will need access to an installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010 or have the ability to install it on a server or in a virtual environment.”
•    Personnel requiring assistance with the administration of SharePoint Foundation 2010, from either a business user perspective or from an IT professional perspective. For instance, the second chapter of the book is titled “Administration for Business Users”, and covers topics such as installation and configuration decisions; the SharePoint structure; security; upgrades and migration.
•    Business and IT professionals who want a book that they can rely on as a reliable, ongoing reference source.
•    Both advanced users and IT professionals who need to keep in mind the “bigger picture” of how SharePoint technology can fit into, and continue to positively influence, the business direction of their company or enterprise.
•    And finally, the last chapter of the book will especially appeal to those professional programmers wanting to broaden their skill base to include the development of SharePoint solutions using Visual Studio 2010. To fully benefit from this chapter however, it is imperative that its readers have previously had some exposure to .NET programing in particular, as well as to some form of web-based programming in general. The book’s authors explain that, “in a SharePoint environment, writing your own code usually means writing solutions such as Web Parts, custom workflows, and master pages. These items integrate smoothly with the rest of your SharePoint site, taking advantage of its existing appearance, organization, security, and data management. What’s more, these solutions are reusable. You can write them once and use them for as many pages as you would like or even set up your organization’s own codeplex-type site to share the solutions for SharePoint that you and others have developed.”

A word of warning though: this particular book should only be regarded as suitable reading for anyone already at ease with the technology. The book’s authors stress that their book “touches only briefly on some of the basic topics that you’ll find covered in more detail elsewhere (such as in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Plain & Simple, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Step by Step, and Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 Step by Step).” Their objective with the book was to “focus on techniques and topics that are likely to appeal to readers who have already mastered the many basics of SharePoint 2010.” Given that proviso, they firmly believe that “whether you are a business analyst, site owner, a server administrator, or a developer, there is something in this book for you.”

Scattered generously throughout the 800 odd pages of “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out” are a number of different types of breakout boxes. These boxes have been designed to capture the immediate attention of the book’s readers, and to alert them to additional content such as tips, notes, advice, points worth a special emphasis, and warnings, plus background information. For instance, the authors have labeled one type of box as “Inside Out” boxes. These particular boxes contain “the book’s signature tips. In these tips, you get the straight scoop on what’s going on with the software – inside information about why a feature works the way it does. You’ll also find handy workarounds to deal with software problems.” An example of an “Inside Out” box, from the second chapter of the book which you may recall deals with administration issues for business users, cautions readers that “manual migration might sound hard, but it can be a great option. It could be easy to dismiss manual migration as an unacceptable option for moving your content. After all, it can be hard enough to motivate yourself to do repetitive manual work for any period of time – motivating a team can be harder, still. If your team is excited about the new capabilities of the platform, as many are, this one time division of labor can pay off with big dividends. Often, the time saved in the future with modern tools provided by SharePoint 2010 can be a great reward when you’ve become frustrated with the technology you’ve been using for a long time to update your old site. Keep in mind that even with automated migration tools; you will want to do extensive testing to ensure that your content has moved over correctly. When you move over content manually, you can be confident that everything you’ve moved over went to the right place.”

You can read a limited amount of content of your choosing from the complete text of “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out” online by registering for a free trial of the “Safari Books Online” service – details for doing so are provided on the book’s publisher site at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780735627246.do. Note that by becoming a paid subscriber to this service, you can then read the full content of this particular book online, as well as search and access thousands of other technology, digital media and professional development books.