Acknowledgments
Michael Noel: It’s almost become cliché for me to swear off writing these books and, at the exhaustive end of each one of them, harbor fantasies of disappearing into the woods to live in a cave in the companion of various woodland creatures. But inevitably time passes, a new version of SharePoint is released, and I get the crazy idea to torture myself once again with the bleary late-night lab work, marathon writing sessions, and subsequent tearing of hair and wringing of hands. So once again here I stand at the end of this process, bloodied and bruised, glancing furtively back at the carnage behind me and reflecting on the madness of it all. In this moment of clarity, I can see clearly that I could never have made it to this point without the help of the phenomenal team I have helping me along the way.
First and foremost, the biggest inspiration and help to me along the way is provided by my wonderful family. To my wife Marina: You are my reason for living, my muse, my love, and my best friend. I could not have gotten to where I am without your help and your unconditional love. To my daughter Julia: You are an inspiration to me and I know you will accomplish great things in life! And to some of the most amazing in-laws a man could ask for: Val and Elizabeth Ulanovsky. 
! And of course to my parents, George and Mary: Thank you for a childhood of happy memories and great opportunities!
On a professional level, big thanks to Rand Morimoto, a great inspiration to me who has worked with me on many of these books over the years. And thanks as well to the other consultants and engineers at Convergent Computing whom I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with all these years. At the same time, special professional thanks to my coauthor Colin Spence, a brilliant writer without whom I wouldn’t have been able to even think about finishing this book.
Extra helpings of praise and thanks must also go out to the many great SharePoint folks I’ve met all around the world, in every continent and from every walk of life. This crazy tool brings the most amazing people together, and I am truly lucky to have had the chance to meet all of you, commiserate with you about technology, and get to know you all on a personal level. Way too many people to list here, and I apologize in advance for leaving so many of you out, but I must at least personally thank: Abir Yahyaoui, Agnes Molnar, Alexander Romanov, Alistair Pugin, Alyona Diachenko, Amina Idigova, Andrew Connell, Anton Vityaz, Asif Rehmani, Baraah Omari, Betim Drenica, Bil Simser, Bramley Maetsa, Brian Farnhill, Brian McElhinney, Bjørn Furuknap, Chandima Kulathilake, Chris Givens, Dan Holme, Dan McPherson, Debbie Ireland, Dmitri Plotnikov, Dux Sy, Elaine Van Bergen, Elias Mereb, Eric Harlan, Gavin Barron, Gus Fraser, Hélio Sá, Huthaifa Afanah, Ilia Sotnikov, Ivan Pabaded, Jeremy Thake, Joel Oleson, Jose Francisco Rossi, Laura Rogers, Mai Desouki, Mark Miller, Mark Rackley, Mark Rhodes, Mohammed Zayed, Muhanad Omar, Nadya Belousova, Nick Hadlee, Oksana Prostakova, Paul Culmsee, Paul Swider, Ricardo Munoz, Rob LaMear, Roux Visser, Saed Shela, Salman Ahmad, Sefora Toumi, Serge Tremblay, Sergey Slukin, Todd Baginski, Todd Klindt, Toni Frankola, Veronique Palmer, Wictor Wilén, Yulia Belyanina, Zlatan Dzinic, and of course all the wonderful folks who have attended my sessions over the years!
Last but not least, thanks to one of the best editors anyone could ask for, Neil Rowe: You are not only a classy editor, I can honestly count you as a good friend. Thanks for putting up with us once more on one of these crazy tomes!
Colin Spence: My father wrote a book called The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci that I read a long time ago. It is a historical account of a Jesuit priest who visited China in the 16th century and taught young students tricks to increase their memory skills. This process involved the creating of virtual rooms in a mental construct (a “memory palace”) as a means of remembering and organizing large amounts of information. The concept has stuck with me over the years and I find is applicable to the process of writing something as complex as a 1,000-page technology book. Each chapter is a room of sorts that contains information on a focused topic, and these rooms need to form a structure which needs to be “stable” and complete for the book to have integrity. I’ll end the metaphor there (since I tend to stretch metaphors too far), but looking back over the writing process over the last decade, I can definitely see the evolution of the book into an entity that will hopefully meet the expectations of its readers.
I have found that once the structure of the SharePoint Unleashed book was fully vetted, which to me took place in the last edition on SharePoint 2010, the project became a lot less daunting. It was, however, still a massive, yearlong undertaking, even with the structure in place and the “veteran’s” perspective of having worked with the material previously. The challenge became one of ensuring value in every chapter, focusing on what “really matters” to a very diverse audience.
Fortunately, I’ve worked with hundreds of companies interested in SharePoint products over the years, and have seen many different sizes and shapes of SharePoint environments. Increasingly, I’ve been involved in more projects that use SharePoint as a development platform for workflows, forms, full blown applications, business intelligence, and many other purposes. These continuing experiences from my “day job” have assisted immensely in the tuning of the content contained in this Unleashed book. A key learning point for me has been the importance of “right-sizing” the SharePoint solution to an organization’s unique needs and internal resources. It doesn’t help a company by selling them on the most complex features in SharePoint that are clearly beyond their ability to develop, let alone support.
It also helps that I’ve had a lot of assistance in the process of writing this fifth book in the series. At the beginning of the timeline, I have to thank Rand Morimoto, who got me involved in the writing process all those years ago, and understands the impact on my “day job” as one of his partners and practice leads. Tremendous thanks to Michael Noel, who has gone through this process with me numerous times now and who understands the functionality and integration points of SharePoint at a level that I never will.
Neil Rowe at Sams Publishing continues to make the process a breeze logistically as we moved through the process of creating an Unleashed tome yet again. Many thanks also to the team at Sams Publishing/Pearson Education who assisted with the editing, formatting, and fine-tuning of the content.
In addition, I’d like to thank my loving wife Nancy and our toddler Logan for their support. Because all this work needed to be done after hours from my home office (“the cave”), my wife needed the patience of a saint to deal with my permanent status of unavailability for normal activities (such as walking the dog and eating dinner), and assorted mood swings, rants, and diatribes. Often, I think, the writing process is tougher for her than me, so I thank her from the bottom of my heart! I could tell that Logan understood as well, when I patted him on the head and slunk off to the cave.
There are also several contributing writers who assisted with a number of the chapters in my half of the book. These include: Ulysses Ludwig, Ben Nadler, Anthony Adona, Alex Kirchmann, Ken Lo, and Mona Zhao. Their individual experiences, skill sets, and insights on what was most important in different topic areas were invaluable:
Ulysses Ludwig and Ben Nadler enabled me to confidently expand the scope of the book to cover the topics of application development and business intelligence in more detail. I consider Ulysses to be my right-hand man in the day-to-day delivery of services to clients and can confidently say he is the most accomplished SharePoint developer and expert I know. Ben’s expertise with PerformancePoint and Business Connectivity Services was once again very welcome. Jonathan Chen played double duty as both technical editor and contributing writer as we wrapped up the book, for which I am grateful.
Anthony Adona assisted with ensuring the Using Libraries and Lists in SharePoint 2013 chapter truly met the needs of end users and administrators alike, while Alex Kirchmann provided his experience with metadata and content types. Ken Lo and Mona Zhao assisted with some of the finer points of Office applications’ integration with SharePoint and SkyDrive Pro. I can’t list all the other friends, clients, and sources of knowledge that assisted in this final product, but my thanks go out to you as well!