Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Unleashed

SharePoint provides a cost-effective, easy-to-implement solution for organizations interested in enhancing team collaboration, document management, and search functionality and in providing a portal to access corporate resources and intranet/extranet environments. The SharePoint 2007 family (consisting of Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) build upon these features and toolsets and introduce a staggering array of new tools and capabilities that undeniably make SharePoint 2007 an enterprise-class solution.

 

This new edition walks IT professionals, website designers, SharePoint administrators, and SharePoint power users through the design, implementation, and customization process. Exciting new capabilities such as workflow, records management, web content management, business processes, and business intelligence features are covered in depth. Best practices are provided for planning the architecture, scaling to meet the organization?s needs, migrating from SharePoint 2003, and managing the farm or multi-farm environment.

 

Part I: SharePoint 2007 Overview, Planning, and Implementation provides an introduction to SharePoint 2007 technologies and covers the architecture process. Details on installing SharePoint 2007 and processes for migrating from SharePoint 2003 are included.

 

Part II: Using SharePoint 2007 Technologies covers the core feature set of SharePoint 2007 that power users and administrators will need to master, including libraries, lists, designing and managing pages, workspaces, and sites.

 

Part III: Managing a SharePoint Environment provides best practices on managing and administering the SharePoint infrastructure, securing the environment, maintaining and managing the environment and databases, and backing up and restoring the SharePoint 2007 environment.

 

Part IV: Extending the SharePoint Environment goes into detail on the topics of configuring email-enabled content, Exchange Server integration, enabling presence information with Office Communication Server 2007, and securing remote access with ISA Server 2006. In addition, chapters are included on using SharePoint Designer 2007.

 

Introduction

Part I SharePoint 2007 Overview, Planning, and Implementation

1 Introducing SharePoint 2007

2 Planning and Architecting a SharePoint 2007 Deployment

3 Planning Redundancy and Scaling the SharePoint Environment

4 Planning the SharePoint 2007 User Environment

5 Installing Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

6 Migrating from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007 

Part II Using SharePoint 2007 Technologies

7 Using Libraries and Lists in SharePoint 2007

8 Managing Libraries and Lists in SharePoint 2007

9 Designing and Managing Pages, Workspaces, and Sites in SharePoint 2007 

10 Using Word, Excel, and Excel Services with SharePoint 2007 335 

11 Leveraging Additional Office 2007 Products in a SharePoint 2007 Environment 

12 Implementing Records Management and Enabling Web Content Management in SharePoint 2007

13 Benefiting from the Enhanced Search Capabilities in SharePoint 2007

14 Managing and Administering SharePoint Infrastructure

15 Securing a SharePoint Environment 

16 Maintaining and Monitoring SharePoint 2007 Environments and Databases

17 Backing Up and Restoring a SharePoint Environment

Part IV Extending the SharePoint Environment

18 Configuring Email-Enabled Content and Exchange Server Integration 

19 Enabling Presence Information in SharePoint with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

20 Providing Secured Remote Access to SharePoint Using ISA Server 2006

21 Using Designer 2007 to Extend SharePoint 2007 Workflows and Customize the User Experience

22 Exploring Business Process and Business Intelligence Features in SharePoint 2007

Index

User review
Excellent intro and reference for SharePoint 2007 administrators.
This is a very impressive single volume introduction and reference for Microsoft SharePoint 2007 administrators. It has little for SharePoint developers, however, and they would probably be better served by a separate volume in the Unleashed series.

Authors Noel and Spence have done a truly excellent job in gathering information on SharePoint 2007 and putting it into easy-to-find, easy-to-read form. There is no question that you could find everything in this book somewhere else, such as in the SharePoint 2007 Help file or in Microsoft's extensive web sources. But you'd burn up a lot of time in finding and compiling it.

The writing style is clear and unadorned. The approach is very logical, beginning with an overview of SharePoint 2007 and a discussion of planning and implementation. The orientation is for larger installations, though the small business user is well served here.

The second part deals with using SharePoint 2007 technologies. It is very well done with a thorough exposition of SharePoint's capabilities and uses. It is the kind of writing that can be the basis of presentation to management and users. Good stuff.

Part three deals with managing a SharePoint environment.

The final part is concerned with extending the SharePoint environment, through remote access, integration with Microsoft Exchange Server and other uses.

Overall, from an administrative perspective, I'd say this is the best general introduction and reference on Microsoft SharePoint 2007 I have found to date. Nothing really here for the developer, but I'll take a look at the other volume for that.

Jerry


User review
Starting from nothing
I found this book immensely helpful as a complete novice. Knowing nothing about SharePoint in any flavor this book filled in the gaps. It did not take long before I was able to get a Sharepoint site up and running effectively. I have been in the computer industry as a developer for 20+ years, which makes the detail coverage of the architecture and services involved just right for me. Once you get familiar with the product you will probably want to pursue a pure reference/maintenance book.

User review
Didn't help me very much
Despite the praise by others (and that is why I bought it), I was disappointed to find that this book is like many other computer books these days: a lengthy but shallow description of the product that it covers, but with little insight into the practical problems or the non-obvious aspects of the product. There was very little in this book that I had not already figured out by simply sitting down and using SharePoint for a few hours.

Instead of devoting hundreds of pages to showing you what is in the product and simply repeating much of what you can find in the help text, I would have liked (and was expecting) *insight*, but found little.

Here's one example: I created a new page in SharePoint and added some web parts to it. You don't need this book to tell you how to do that - it's all explained in the help text, or is enough logical that you can easily figure it out with a little experimenting. With a little more reading of the help text you can also figure out how the Filter web parts work, which are very useful and powerful. But one type of Filter is called a List Filter, and the help text just gives a 2-sentence explanation of what it does, which wasn't enough for me to figure it out how to use it. And that's all this book provides, too. For an expensive book to just repeat what you can see simply by running the product is of no value to me - or anyone. I would have liked at least a page that shows how the List Filter part works, a brief example, and a paragraph describing the limitations (of which there are some, and they are important to know).

I could provide many similar illustrations, but you get the idea. It really seemed to me that this book was written by someone who hadn't spent much time actually using SharePoint for any serious purpose.

And this book is not alone. I have purchased or paged through several other competing books on SharePoint and they suffer the same defect.

Summary: If you are just starting out with SharePoint, the 2007 version of the product is reasonably self-explanatory, at least if you have a logical mind and are willing to spend a little time experimenting and consulting the help text. This book adds little to that. And once you are beyond that point, this book adds nothing. It's your time and money.

User review
Very detailed
My teacher recommended this book and it's now my bible. I just started building a WSS 3.0 environment and the book explains each feature in detail. Also, the author includes what that feature couldn't do in Sharepoint 2003 and the extras added in MOSS. So you learn the past, present and future of each feature. Great job explaining the whole picture.

User review
Difficult to navigate
With this much information packed into one book, it's crucial that information can be easily found when looking up something. This book is never presenting the information where you'd expect, and the index is horrible - I haven't found anything I was looking for yet by using the index.
It's not about presenting everything - it's about presenting everything so that you can find it when you need it.
Maybe adding a Google feature would do the trick,,.