Site Settings Compared in SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010

After a site collection has been created by the farm administrator, the site administrator will then have a selection of tools at his disposal. Table 18.6 shows the site collection administration tools available to site admins of SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise site collections.

Table 18.6. Site Collection Administration Tools in SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise

From a complexity standpoint, SharePoint Foundation 2010 can be seen as a better choice for organizations that don’t have experienced SharePoint administrators on staff, or where staff members are overwhelmed with daily activities and pursuing training is not a viable option. It can also be noted that a number of the tools not available in SharePoint Foundation 2010 could be very valuable for SharePoint administrators, such as Audit Log Reports and Site Collection Policies.

Figure 18.10 shows the AuditSettings.aspx page available to site administrators in SharePoint Server 2010 Standard or Enterprise. The audit log can audit events such as opening or downloading documents, viewing items, editing items, deleting items, searching site content, or editing users and permissions. This is a more complete list of activities that can be audited than the basic tools available in SharePoint Foundation 2010, which provides access to just the very limited Web Analytics tools found on the Site Settings page. Note that a SharePoint Foundation 2010 farm administrator can access more complete reports from the Central Administration site (discussed previously in the “Comparing the Monitoring Tools in SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise” section), but in most organizations, the number of users allowed to access the farm-level management tools is very limited.

Figure 18.10. Configure Audit Settings page in SharePoint Server 2010 Standard.

Site collection policies can be created by a site administrator in SharePoint Server 2010 Standard or Enterprise and can include retention policies, auditing, use of barcodes, and use of labels. These are powerful tools that can be very valuable or even essential to more complex document management solutions. For example, a retention policy created in a site collection policy causes a stage to activate a certain amount of time after the created date, last modified, or declared record date of an item, and allows the site administrator to determine what action is triggered at that stage, with the following options: move to recycling bin, permanently delete, transfer to another location, start a workflow, skip to next stage, declare record, delete previous drafts, and delete all previous versions. A site collection policy can be a handy house-cleaning tool, enabling all earlier versions of a document to be deleted after a period of time since the last modification (for example, one year).

Additional tools available within a publishing site in SharePoint Server 2010 Standard or Enterprise include the following:

• Site Collection Cache Profiles

• Site Collection Output Cache

• Site Collection Object Cache

• Content Type Service Application Error Log (Enterprise only)

• Variations

• Variation Labels

• Translatable Columns

• Variation Logs

• Suggested Content Browser Locations