Introduction

When we sat down to write the original SharePoint 2003 Unleashed book a few years back, we could not have anticipated how quickly the product would take off and how much interest the IT industry would end up taking in SharePoint products and technologies. In the interim years, as we worked with the product in companies of all sizes, we learned first hand what the product did well and where it fell short, and we further refined our knowledge of SharePoint best practice design, deployment, and administration.

Our exposure to the latest version of SharePoint started well over a year before its release, in the pre-beta stages when Office 12 was still being developed. We developed experience deploying it for early adopters and providing input to the SharePoint development team through the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program, which Michael is a member of. Colin was consulted by Microsoft as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to assist with the official Microsoft test design process. The richness of features and the capabilities of the 2007 version of SharePoint became evident to us during this time, and we used our hands-on experience during the beta stages of the product to begin writing this book. This book is the result of our experience and the experiences of our colleagues at Convergent Computing in working with SharePoint 2007 products and technologies, in the beta stages and in deployment.

One of the main challenges in writing this book was to try to cover the expanded range of features (which effectively doubled since the 2003 product line) in a way that provides value to the widest range of readers. We wrote this book to be topical, so that you can easily browse to a particular section and follow easy-to-understand, step-by-step scenarios. By following these examples, you will better understand the feature in question and learn specific business applications of that feature. In addition, if you are looking for a good overview on SharePoint 2007, the book can be read in sequence to give you a good solid understanding of the full design and implementation process. We have also included content on related Microsoft products (such as Exchange Server 2007, Internet Security and Acceleration [ISA] Server 2006, and the suite of Office 2007/2003 client products) because we have found that most organizations use some or all of these products, and understanding how they integrate with SharePoint is important to a successful implementation.

Topics in the book are divided into four sections, each with topics in similar categories:

• Part I: SharePoint 2007 Overview, Planning, and Implementation—This section gives an introduction to both SharePoint 2007 products, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. In addition, best practices for the design, architecture, deployment, and migration are outlined.
• Part II: Using SharePoint 2007 Technologies—This section delves into the specifics on using SharePoint for document management and collaboration, with chapters devoted to understanding how to work with the individual Office client products. In addition, information on using records management and search capabilities in SharePoint is provided.
• Part III: Managing a SharePoint Environment—This section covers specifics on administering, monitoring, and maintaining a SharePoint farm. Specifics on how to secure, back up, and restore SharePoint are also provided in this section.
• Part IV: Extending the SharePoint Environment—The final section of this book discusses some of the ways in which SharePoint can be further extended. Advanced topics are provided, such as how to secure SharePoint for remote access, how to enable enterprise presence capabilities, and integration with Exchange Server. In addition, advanced workflow and business intelligence features of SharePoint are covered in this section.

If you are like many out there recently tasked with administering a SharePoint environment or just looking for ways to bring document management and collaboration to the next level, this book is for you. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed creating it and working with the product.