Introduction
A part of Microsoft Office 2013, Microsoft SharePoint 2013 is a server-side product that provides a powerful toolset for organizing websites and content, sharing knowledge, connecting with others, providing robust collaboration environments, managing documents, and finding information and people. Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Step by Step offers a comprehensive look at the capabilities and features of SharePoint 2013 that people will use most frequently.
Who this book is for
Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Step by Step and other books in the Step by Step series are designed for beginning to intermediate-level computer users. The examples shown in this book teach skills that can be used in organizations of any size. Whether you are new to SharePoint, or you are already comfortable working in SharePoint and want to learn about the new features in SharePoint 2013, this book provides an invaluable hands-on experience so that you can create, modify, and share sites, documents, and other content and capabilities, and collaborate with others with ease.
How this book is organized
This book is divided into 15 chapters. The first four chapters address foundation skills such as navigating a SharePoint site, working with documents and information in lists and libraries, and creating and editing webpages. Chapters Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 show you how to create and manage SharePoint sites, and how to make lists and libraries work for you. Chapters Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 focus on SharePoint 2013 social capabilities such as newsfeeds, community sites, blogs, and wikis. Chapter 9 drills into search functionality and discovering information and people. Chapters Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 show how to use the business process features, such as tasks and workflows. Chapters Chapter 12–14 cover using SharePoint with Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Access, the power of business intelligence, and using SharePoint with Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Lync. Finally, Chapter 15 drills into the content management capabilities of SharePoint 2013.
The first part of Chapter 1 contains introductory information that will primarily be of interest to readers who are new to SharePoint or are upgrading from Microsoft SharePoint 2010 or an earlier version. If you have worked with a more recent version of SharePoint, you might want to skip past that material.
This book is designed to lead you step by step through all the tasks that you’ll most likely want to perform with SharePoint 2013. If you start at the beginning and work your way through all the exercises, you will gain enough proficiency to be able to work efficiently with most capabilities in SharePoint 2013. However, each topic is self-contained, so you can jump in anywhere to acquire exactly the skills that you need.
Download the practice files
Before you can complete the exercises in this book, you need to download the book’s practice files to your computer. We recommend you copy the practice files to a separate folder, for example, DocumentsMicrosoft PressSP2013SBS, or any folder where you can access the practice files easily.
These practice files can be downloaded from the following page:
Important
The SharePoint 2013 software is not available from this website. You must have access to a SharePoint 2013 installation on the server before performing exercises in this book. Alternatively, you can use Microsoft SharePoint Online for most exercises in this book.
The following table lists the practice files for this book.
Chapter | File |
No practice files | |
Chapter2 Team Site.wsp Chapter2 Travel Subsite.wsp Chapter2 Facilities Subsite.wsp WideWorldTravelGuidelines.docx | |
OakChest.docx OakDesk.docx OakEndTable.docx OakNightStand.docx WideWorldInvoice.dcox WideWorldPurchaseOrder.docx | |
Wildlife.wmv pjcov.jpg | |
No practice files | |
Global Proposal.docx | |
Sales.jpg | |
No practice files | |
Chapter9 Starter.wsp Oak Chest.docx Oak Desk.docx OakEndTable.docx OakNightStand.docx Oak chairs are best with Oak tables.docx Our Oak furniture range consists of both Oak chairs and Oak tables.docx | |
No practice files | |
No practice files | |
ExpImpoWideWorldImporters.accdb Furniture_Price.xlsx MoveWideWorldImporters.accdb Sales_Figures.xlsx | |
SalesData.xlsx | |
Chapter14 Starter.wsp | |
Holiday budget planner.docx ProductProposalFinancials.xslx ProductProposalPresentation.pptx ProductSheet.docx |
The exercises in this book cover features across the three SharePoint 2013 solutions. Each solution provides a different set of features and functionalities, depending on the client access licenses (CALs) activated in your organization, as follows:
SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise CAL
SharePoint Server 2013 Standard CAL
SharePoint Foundation 2013
Note
SEE ALSO For SharePoint 2013 feature availability in each of the solutions, refer to Appendix B.
All the exercises in the book will work in SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise. Any exercises that cover features available in SharePoint Server 2013 Standard can be completed if you are using this solution. However, you will not be able to complete an exercise that covers a feature that is not available in SharePoint Server 2013 Standard. For example, the business intelligence features are only available in the SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise, and therefore the exercises in Chapter 13, require SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise.
Any exercises that cover features available in SharePoint Foundation 2013 will work if you are using this solution. However, you will not be able to complete an exercise that covers a feature that is not available in SharePoint Foundation 2013. For example, promoting search results is an available functionality in SharePoint Server 2013 Standard and Enterprise, but it is not included in SharePoint Foundation 2013; therefore, the exercise on influencing the search results ranking in Chapter 9, requires SharePoint Server 2013.
Note
SEE ALSO For a list of the SharePoint 2013 solutions—Foundation, Standard, or Enterprise—that you can use to complete each exercise, refer to Appendix C.
Using the practice files
You need to download the practice files to a location on your hard disk before you can use them in the exercises.
Important
The location for practice files that we use in this book is DocumentsMicrosoft PressSP2013SBS. If you install the practice files to another location, you may need to substitute that path within the exercises.
The practice files for this book are stored on your hard disk in chapter-specific subfolders. Each exercise in a chapter includes a paragraph that lists the files needed for that exercise and explains any preparations needed before you start working through the exercise.
Whenever possible, we start each chapter with a standard SharePoint 2013 team site, which occasionally must be a top-level team site. If you follow all the exercises in all the chapters, you may choose to start with a new team site for every chapter.
However, for a few chapters, there are additional settings that are needed for a practice site. This is where the starter .wsp files will come in handy.
If you have sufficient rights, you can create a new practice site (see the following Using the WSP templates section) from the chapter’s starter .wsp file, which is provided in the practice folder for this chapter. The starter .wsp files contain the lists, libraries, files, and pages that you will require during the exercises. There are three chapters that require the creation of a site based on the .wsp file: Chapter 2, Chapter 9, and Chapter 14. Exercises in Chapter 2 use two subsites in addition to the standard team site, and the practice folder for the chapter contains two .wsp files for the subsites, which are clearly marked.
Using the WSP templates
To create a practice site for a chapter based on a starter .wsp file, perform the following steps.
Important
Verify that you have sufficient rights to upload to the site template gallery of a site collection. If in doubt, see Appendix A.
In the browser, open the top level SharePoint site of the site collection where you would like to create the practice site. If prompted, type your user name and password, and click OK.
On the top right of the screen, click the Settings button, and then select Site settings. The Site Settings page of the top level site is displayed.
In the Web Designer Galleries section, click Solutions. The Solution Gallery is displayed.
Click the Upload Solution button on the left of the Solutions ribbon. The Add Document dialog is displayed.
In the Add Document dialog, click Browse.
In the Choose File to Upload dialog, go to the practice files folder ChapterNN (where NN is the chapter number) and click the .wsp file that you want to use to create the new site, and then click Open.
In the Add Document dialog, click OK to upload the file.
In the Solution Gallery - Activate Solution dialog, click the Activate button. The Solution Gallery is displayed. Validate that the template has been uploaded and activated.
You can now create a new practice child site based upon the uploaded WSP template.
Browse to the SharePoint site that you want to be the parent of the new practice site.
Click the Settings button, and then click Site contents.
In the Site Contents page, scroll to the bottom of the page and click new subsite.
In the New SharePoint Site page, in the Title text box, type a logical name for the new site. You could simply provide the chapter number if you like, for example, Chapter09.
Optionally, in the Description text box, type a description, such as SharePoint SBS Chapter 9 Practice Site.
In the URL name text box, enter the same name that you typed in the Title text box.
In the Template Selection section, click the Custom tab and select the ChapterNN Starter template, which is now available.
Under Navigation, select the No option for displaying the link to this site on the top link bar of the parent site.
You can leave all the other options at their default values and click the Create button.
The new practice site has been created and its home page is displayed.
Removing the WSP site templates
To remove the chapter starter WSP template from the Solution Gallery, perform the following steps.
Important
Verify that you have sufficient rights to delete WSPs from the Solution Gallery of a site collection. If in doubt, see Appendix A.
In the browser, open the top level SharePoint site where you previously uploaded the .wsp files. If prompted, type your user name and password, and then click OK.
On the Settings menu, click Site settings. The Site Settings page is displayed.
In the Web Designer Galleries section, click Solutions. The Solution Gallery is displayed.
In the Solution Gallery - Solutions page, hover the mouse over the template that you want to remove, and then click the arrow that appears on the right to display the context menu. On the context menu, click Deactivate.
The Solutions Gallery - Deactivate Solution dialog appears.
In the Solutions Gallery - Deactivate Solution dialog, on the View tab, click Deactivate.
In the Solution Gallery - Solutions page, once again, hover over the template that you wish to remove, and then click the arrow that appears on the right to display the context menu. On the context menu, click Delete. In the confirmation message box, click OK to complete the removal of the site template.
The Solutions Gallery - Solutions page is redisplayed. Verify that the practice site template has been removed.
Repeat steps 4–6 to remove each practice site template that you no longer require.
Deleting a practice site
If you created a practice site that you no longer require, you can delete it. Perform the following steps to delete a practice site.
Important
Verify that you have sufficient rights to delete a site. If in doubt, see Appendix A.
In the browser, open the SharePoint site that you want to delete. If prompted, type your user name and password, and then click OK.
On the Settings menu, click Site settings. The Site Settings page is displayed.
In the Site Actions section, click Delete this site. The Delete This Site confirmation page is displayed.
Click the Delete button to delete the site.
The site has been deleted.
Your companion ebook
With the ebook edition of this book, you can do the following:
Search the full text
Print
Copy and paste
To download your ebook, please see the instruction page at the back of the book.
Getting support and giving feedback
The following sections provide information about getting help with SharePoint 2013 or the contents of this book, and contacting us to provide feedback or report errors.
Errata
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http://aka.ms/SP2013SbS/errata
If you find an error that is not already listed, you can report it to us through the same page.
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