INTRODUCTION
On a weekly basis, some poor IT workers — both IT pros and developers — are saddled with new projects and or technology they know nothing about and are asked to run with them. They’re expected to be successful with little guidance, direction, or training. They’re also expected to pull off these tremendous feats of IT power with little to no leeway time.
In the IT world those to whom this happens are the unsung heroes. They are the backbone of every IT organization. Fortunately, in today’s connected world numberless resources are available for you to read, download, and use to further your knowledge and answer your questions. But these resources can only help if you know what you’re looking for. If you’re new to a platform like SharePoint 2010, you’ll find it has hundreds of new and improved features. You have new terminology and new concepts; without knowing at least a little you may be lost in a sea of blogs, wikis, and search results. If you’ve picked up this book because you fall into this category, you’re in luck. If you are looking at SharePoint 2010 and do not even know where to begin, or if you’re overwhelmed by all the features and pieces that make up SharePoint 2010, rest assured that the authors of this book have picked the some of the key features you should understand to get you going.
WHOM THIS BOOK IS FOR
This book is designed to get you started with SharePoint 2010. The authors have picked some of the most important areas of 2010 in order to arm you with knowledge of those areas that can make the biggest impact on the success of your SharePoint 2010 deployment. This book is not intended to provide you with a step-by-step process for installing, configuring, and deploying SharePoint 2010. Nor will it walk you through all the different configuration options for a SharePoint farm. However, it will expose you to key features of SharePoint 2010, explain them, strive to show their value, and show how their use can contribute to your success in your SharePoint implementation. Microsoft has provided tremendous resources for your planning and installation of SharePoint 2010. For starters, see the planning guide on TechNet at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee667264.aspx.
At the end of this book you probably won’t be a SharePoint expert. You will, however, be well on your way to having a good understanding of the platform that is SharePoint. You should also have an appropriate amount of information to feel more confident in going out and implementing SharePoint in your organization. Once you’re done reading, we hope you’ll follow the book’s guidance in your SharePoint implementation. You should be in a position to understand what features or technology areas within SharePoint you need to dig into. Your organization may need to take your use of SharePoint search to a much deeper level; if so, you may need to get a book, or even several books, dedicated to search. Technical depth is not the goal of this book; rather, the goal is to get you started with SharePoint with a focus on some of the most important pieces available.
WHAT THIS BOOK COVERS
This book is all about SharePoint; however, it is not everything you need to know. It covers the following topics:
- SharePoint introductions and basics
- SharePoint branding (look and feel)
- SharePoint development
- Business Connectivity Services (BCS)
- SharePoint social features
- SharePoint workflow
- SharePoint search
The last six of these are distinctive areas within SharePoint — hence, the title of this book: SharePoint 2010 Six-in-One. These areas were felt to be of vital importance to getting true value from your SharePoint deployment. They are a start on your journey, after which you can chose to dive in deeper or move on down a different path. Either way, the sections about these six areas should be a great beginning.
HOW THIS BOOK IS STRUCTURED
This book is broken down into sections. Each section addresses a specific topic chosen by the authors because that topic is important to your success with SharePoint.
In the first section you are introduced to the basics of SharePoint, and then you will be empowered to customize the look and feel of your implementation to gain greater use and adoption.
Next you are given insight into the developer mind as well as an introduction to how development within SharePoint works. From there, you are introduced to a new and powerful feature within SharePoint called Business Connectivity Services (BCS).
After this it’s time to take a softer approach to SharePoint and think about social communications and how your users can journey into social networking, MySite communication, tagging, and ratings.
An area within SharePoint 2010 that has gotten wide attention is workflow. The next section walks you through the basics of workflow to give you a better general understanding of this subject. You are also introduced to all of your options and given advice on planning your workflow strategy.
Once you have all this down, it’s time to journey into the world of search, which opens up your SharePoint implementation to a greater degree, allowing users to find content they are looking for anywhere in the SharePoint farm or even beyond.
Finally, you are given information that ties all these topics together and gives you references to help you with your next steps.
WHAT YOU NEED TO USE THIS BOOK
We hope you’re planning on following along, experimenting with examples, and trying different approaches on your own. To do this you’ll need to have SharePoint 2010 installed and working. Some sections may allow you to use SharePoint Foundation, but most of the real power comes with SharePoint Server Standard or Enterprise.
For a full list of features broken down by edition, see the following link: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Editions-Comparison.aspx.
To take full advantage of all sections you may also need SharePoint Designer, which is a free utility from Microsoft. To download this go to the following link: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/product/related-technologies/pages/sharepoint-designer.aspx.
For getting in and developing solutions for SharePoint 2010 you will also need to get Visual Studio 2010, which you can find at the following site: www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/.
CONVENTIONS
To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what’s happening, we’ve used several conventions throughout the book. Two of the most frequent are shown here:
Boxes with a warning icon like this one hold important, not-to-be-forgotten information that is directly relevant to the surrounding text.
The pencil icon indicates notes, tips, hints, tricks, or asides to the current discussion.
As for styles in the text:
- We highlight new terms and important words when we introduce them.
- We show filenames, URLs, and code within the text like so: persistence.properties.
- We present code in the following way:
We use a monofont type with no highlighting for most code examples.
SOURCE CODE
As you work through the examples in this book, you may choose either to type in all the code manually, or to use the source code files that accompany the book. Most of the source code used in this book is available for download at www.wrox.com. When at the site, simply locate the book’s title (use the Search box or one of the title lists) and click the Download Code link on the book’s detail page to obtain the source code for the book. Code that is included on the website is highlighted by the following icon:
Listings include a description and in some cases the filename in the title. If it is just a code snippet, you’ll find the filename in a code note such as this:
Code snippet filename
Because many books have similar titles, you may find it easiest to search by ISBN; this book’s ISBN is 978-0-470-87727-2.
Once you download the code, just decompress it with your favorite compression tool. Alternatively, you can go to the main Wrox code download page at www.wrox.com/dynamic/books/download.aspx to see the code available for this book and all other Wrox books.
ERRATA
We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or in the code. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, like a spelling mistake or faulty piece of code, we would be very grateful for your feedback. By sending in errata, you may save another reader hours of frustration, and at the same time, you will be helping us provide even higher quality information.
To find the errata page for this book, go to www.wrox.com and locate the title using the Search box or one of the title lists. Then, on the book details page, click the Book Errata link. On this page, you can view all errata that has been submitted for this book and posted by Wrox editors. A complete book list, including links to each book’s errata, is also available at www.wrox.com/misc-pages/booklist.shtml.
If you don’t spot “your” error on the Book Errata page, go to www.wrox.com/contact/techsupport.shtml and complete the form there to send us the error you have found. We’ll check the information and, if appropriate, post a message to the book’s errata page and fix the problem in subsequent editions of the book.
P2P.WROX.COM
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At p2p.wrox.com, you will find a number of different forums that will help you, not only as you read this book, but also as you develop your own applications. To join the forums, just follow these steps:
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