Beginning SharePoint 2010 E-Book

Amanda Perran

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1031

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Two SharePoint MVPs provide the ultimate introduction to SharePoint 2010 Beginning SharePoint 2010: Building Team Solutions with SharePoint provides information workers and site managers with extensive knowledge and expert advice, empowering them to become SharePoint champions within their organizations. * Provides expansive coverage of SharePoint topics, as well as specialty areas such as forms, excel services, records management, and web content management * Details realistic usage scenarios, and includes practice examples that highlight best practices for configuration and customization * Includes detailed descriptions and illustrations of SharePoint's functionality Designed to mentor and coach business and technical leaders on the use of SharePoint in addressing critical information management problems within their organizations, Beginning SharePoint 2010 is sure to become the premiere handbook for any active or aspiring SharePoint expert.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Credits

About the Authors

About the Technical Editors

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Who This Book Is For

What This Book Covers

How This Book Is Structured

What You Need to Use This Book

Conventions

Errata

p2p.wrox.com

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Introducing SharePoint

What Is SharePoint 2010?

Comparing SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server

SharePoint Components Overview

Summary

Chapter 2: Working with SharePoint Lists

Understanding List Elements

Discovering SharePoint List Column Types

Understanding the Standard List Templates

Working with Lists

Summary

Chapter 3: Working with Libraries

Understanding Libraries and Documents

Understanding SharePoint Library Templates

Summary

Chapter 4: Managing and Customizing Lists and Libraries

Creating an Environment That Reflects Your Business

Best Practices for Building a Dynamic System for Managing Content

Working with Columns

Creating and Customizing Views

Working with Custom Lists and Libraries

Summary

Chapter 5: Working with Workflow

Understanding Workflow

Working with Workflow Templates

Creating Custom Workflow Solutions

Workflow Tasks and History

Office Client Integration

Workflow Administration

Summary

Chapter 6: Working with Content Types

Content Types Overview

The Anatomy of a Content Type

Base Content Types

Managing Content Types

Summary

Chapter 7: Working with Web Parts

Using Web Parts

About the out-of-the-box Web Parts

XSLT List View Web Parts

The Web Part Gallery

Summary

Chapter 8: Sites and Workspaces

Site Collections and Sites

Managing Site Collections and Sites

Understanding the Templates

Creating Custom Templates

Working with Content Offline

Summary

Chapter 9: Branding and the User Experience

Why Organizations Brand

Best Practices for Enhancing the User Experience

Changing the Site Logo

Working with Themes

Working with Master Pages

Summary

Chapter 10: User Management, Audiences, and Profiles

Understanding User Access Management and Personalization

Managing Access in SharePoint

Understanding the Different Levels of Access in SharePoint

Understanding User Profiles

Working with Audiences

Summary

Chapter 11: Personalization and Social Networking

Personalization Overview

Understanding My Sites

Tagging and Note Boards

Manage Content Rating

Social Computing Web Parts

People Search

Blogs and Wikis

Understanding Audiences

The Outlook 2010 Social Connector

Summary

Chapter 12: Forms Management

What Is InfoPath?

Creating and Customizing an InfoPath Form

Core Concepts

Working with Form Templates

Customizing a Form Template

Advanced Form-Publishing Options

Summary

Chapter 13: Getting Started with Web Content Management

Web Content Management

Publishing Features Overview

Working with Variations

Page Layouts and Content Types

Understanding Document Conversion

Enabling Publishing on a Team Site

Summary

Chapter 14: Records Management

What Is Records Management?

Implementing a Classification Plan

The Records Repository

Records Retention and Expiration

Holds

Summary

Chapter 15: Business Connectivity Services

Configuring a BCS Application

Working with BCS

For the Administrator

Developing Custom Solutions for BCS

Summary

Chapter 16: Business Intelligence and Insights

Getting Started

Excel Services Overview

Chart Web Part

Understanding Status Lists

Working with Visio Services

PerformancePoint Features

Getting Started

Summary

Chapter 17: Working with Search

Understanding SharePoint Search

Working with Search

Search Services Configuration

Search Analytics

Summary

Chapter 18: Implementing a Governance Framework

Governance Overview

Understanding the Pillars of a Governance Framework

Best Practices for Effectiveness

Summary

Appendix A: Installing SharePoint Server 2010

Choosing Your Installation Type

Appendix B: Exercise Solutions

Chapter 1 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 2 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 3 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 4 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 5 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 6 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 7 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 8 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 9 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 10 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 11 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 12 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 13 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 14 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 15 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 16 Exercise Solutions

Chapter 17 Exercise Solutions

Index

Beginning SharePoint® 2010: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint

Published by

Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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Copyright © 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

ISBN: 978-0-470-61789-2

ISBN: 978-1-118-02191-0 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-02190-3 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-02288-7 (ebk)

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For Dylan… May you stay forever young!

—Amanda and Shane Perran

For Dr. Metzgar, thanks for being that teacher who I will never forget because the lessons you taught are so applicable to my everyday life.

—Jennifer Mason

For Charlotte and Kristen, you are the most wonderful and sweet little girls, and I love you with all my heart.

—Laura Derbes Rogers

Credits

ACQUISITIONS EDITOR

Paul Reese

SENIOR PROJECT EDITOR

Adaobi Obi Tulton

TECHNICAL EDITORS

Martin Reid

Charlie Lee

PRODUCTION EDITOR

Daniel Scribner

COPY EDITOR

Foxxe Editorial Services

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Robyn B. Siesky

EDITORIAL MANAGER

Mary Beth Wakefi eld

FREELANCER EDITORIAL MANAGER

Rosemarie Graham

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF MARKETING

David Mayhew

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Tim Tate

VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE GROUP PUBLISHER

Richard Swadley

VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER

Barry Pruett

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Jim Minatel

PROJECT COORDINATOR, COVER

Katie Crocker

PROOFREADER

Word One, New York

INDEXER

Robert Swanson

COVER DESIGNER

Michael E. Trent

COVER IMAGE

© Trevor Fisher/istockphoto.com

About the Authors

Amanda Perran is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Microsoft SharePoint Server located in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. She has been working as a consultant and trainer with SharePoint since the release of the first version of the product in 2001. Amanda is a regular speaker and presenter at user group meetings, webcasts, and Microsoft events on topics such as Microsoft SharePoint, InfoPath, and Project Server. She is the co-founder of SharePoint Nation, www.sharepointnation.org, which is a virtual user group for SharePoint. You can follow her on Twitter as @amandaperran.

Shane Perran is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Microsoft SharePoint Server located in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. He has been designing online user experiences for over 15 years. His strong passion for visual presentation, web standards, and usability has paved the way for a successful transition into the SharePoint Products and Technologies space where, over the past seven years, Shane has become highly involved and recognized in the SharePoint customization space. He is the co-founder of SharePoint Nation, www.sharepointnation.org, which is a virtual user group for SharePoint. Shane's SharePoint Customization Blog at www.graphicalwonder.com is a popular stop for customization enthusiasts across the globe. You can follow Shane on Twitter as @shaneperran.

Jennifer Mason has dedicated the last seven years to working with SharePoint. She started out as an intern focused on SharePoint and eventually began working as a full-time SharePoint consultant. She is currently working as a Senior SharePoint Consultant with the team at SharePoint911. Her focus has been on strategy, project planning, project management, governance, and best practices for implementing business solutions using SharePoint Technologies. She has worked with a range of companies at different points in the life cycles of their SharePoint implementation. She is passionate about SharePoint, and loves using the out-of-the-box features to bring immediate ROI to the organization. Jennifer is involved in the SharePoint community and is one of the founding members of the Columbus Ohio SharePoint Users Group (BuckeyeSPUG). You can learn more about Jennifer by viewing her blog at http://sharepoint911.com/blogs/jennifer. You can follow Jennifer on Twitter as @jennifermason.

Laura Derbes Rogers is a Senior SharePoint Consultant at SharePoint911. Her background is in server administration, and she has been an MCSE for 11 years, working in SharePoint for the last 6 years. She is enthusiastic about accomplishing business solutions in SharePoint by using the out-of-the-box capabilities without writing code. She specializes and trains others in SharePoint workflows, data view web parts, and InfoPath. Laura is a regular speaker at several different SharePoint conferences, loves sharing ideas on her SharePoint blog at http://sharepoint911.com/blogs/laura, and has recorded a set of screencasts about data view web parts. Laura is a graduate of Louisiana State University, and currently resides in Birmingham, Alabama with her husband, Chris, and two lovely daughters. You can follow Laura on Twitter as @WonderLaura.

About the Technical Editors

Martin WP Reid is a systems analyst at the Queen's University of Belfast, one of the leading U.K. universities. In addition to administrating large SharePoint systems, Martin is particularly interested in SharePoint as an end-user tool to help information workers get the job done without having to wade through technical manuals. Martin is currently working on a 30,000 user SharePoint 2007 system. Martin has authored several technical books, including Microsoft SharePoint 2007 for Office 2007 Users, published by Wrox. He has been a technical editor on many technical books for Wiley.

Charlie Lee is a SharePoint Subject Matter Expert working for Capgemini UK. He also runs a web application development consultancy specializing in SharePoint services and contributes to the SharePoint community whenever he can. He has a wealth of experience with real-life issues with WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007, SharePoint Foundation, and Server 2010. He lives and works in the U.K. with his beautiful wife and two amazing children.

Acknowledgments

IT IS COMMON FOR AUTHORS to thank their spouses or partners for their understanding and support during the book-writing process. In our case, this was a project by a husband-and-wife team, which meant that the late nights, deadlines, and missed holidays were spent together, side by side, for better or worse. Of course, we would have it no other way.

We would like to thank our families for their love, support, and encouragement throughout this book and all the other challenges and surprises that life can bring.

We are excited to have Jennifer Mason and Laura Derbes Rogers join us on this book. It is an honor and a pleasure to share a title with such talented individuals. We are so happy to have you each onboard with us for this book and look forward to any future opportunities to work together again.

As always, we would like to thank Jim Minatel for introducing us to the Wrox team so many years ago. Thank you to Paul Reese for spearheading this project and for always keeping things moving along. Thank you to Adaobi Obi Tulton for your constant grace under pressure and excellent editing skills. It was an extreme pleasure to work with you on this project and we hope our paths cross again. Thank you to Martin Reid and Jeri Freedman for your diligence and attention to detail throughout the editing process. Each of your talents contributed significantly to this project and we are so very grateful to each of you.

Finally, to Dylan. Thank you for constantly being that light at the end of the tunnel and helping to always keep life in perspective.

—Amanda and Shane Perran

WRITING A TECHNICAL BOOK has been a longtime dream of mine. It is one of the things that I have always had on my “list” of things I had wanted to accomplish throughout my career. Along the way, so many different people have invested in my future and I wouldn't be who I am without their influences.

First, I would like to thank my family for investing so much into my education and supporting me through many different changes and moves. Mom and Dad—I wouldn't be what I am today without you and I am blessed to have you in my life. Bob and Jane—thanks so much for being my “other parents”; your support means more than I could ever thank you for!

Dr. Metzgar, thanks so much for all the encouragement, knowledge, wisdom, and friendship you gave me while I was at Liberty. You taught me so many things that I can honestly say I still apply on a daily basis. I definitely wouldn't be here without your support and investment.

Shane and Nicola—you two might be the best people in the world to work for! Thanks so much for all you have done for me. I don't think it would be possible to work with a better group of people than the ones I work with at SharePoint911. I thank each of them for all the support they give me.

Laura, Shane, and Amanda, this is has been a great experience and I am honored to have written alongside you. I am looking forward to working together again on future projects.

Finally, I would like to thank the team at Wrox that helped bring this project together. Paul Reese for inviting me to join this project and Adaobi Obi Tulton for all the hard work you have done to get this book ready to go. You have shown great patience and understanding, which has been appreciated! Thanks also to Martin Reid and Jeri Freedman for all your efforts throughout the editing process. I hope that we will all be able to work together again in the future.

—Jennifer Mason

WORKING ON THIS BOOK has been quite an experience, and there are several people who I would like to thank. The major influencers in my life exist on both the personal and the professional sides.

First of all, my husband, Chris, has been amazing and supportive. His sarcasm and wit have always kept me laughing despite any book-deadline stresses. Speaking of family, I thank my daughters for always been so loving, smart, delightful, and happy. I love my sweeties! Thanks to my parents, Greg and Caroline, who have always been encouraging and supportive, and to my artist brother, Clark, and his family.

Thank you so much to Jennifer Mason for being a brilliant and driven businesswoman and friend, and thanks to Shane and Amanda Perran for being so inspiring to work with. Thanks for including me in this endeavor; it has been amazing. You three are such outstanding SharePoint gurus, and I sincerely look forward to spending more time with you and joining you in any future endeavors that may arise.

Of course, I would also like to extend my thanks to the Wrox team, especially Paul Reese and Adaobi Obi Tulton. It has been a pleasure working with all of you on this adventure of a book. I think you all have been wonderful and professional, and I hope that we cross paths again soon.

Lastly, I would like to thank those of you in my life who have been part of the path that I have taken to become a SharePoint professional, in chronological order. Thanks, Susan Cargile, for assigning me the task of first installing SharePoint in 2004. Who knew, right? Bill English, Brett Lonsdale, and Mark Miller, you have been major influences on me and the direction that my career has gone. Last, but certainly not least, I'd like to thank Shane Young and all of my colleagues at SharePoint911. You all are family to me, and I truly enjoy working with you. The personalities in this company are awesome, and we always have so much fun together.

—Laura Derbes Rogers

Introduction

MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT SERVER 2010 has improved and changed dramatically over previous versions of the product. The capabilities of the platform have expanded greatly, with significant enhancements made to the Web Content Management, Social Media, Business Connectivity, and Records Management features of the platform. However, the value of this tool to an enterprise will depend primarily on the ability of individuals in the organization to understand the features and capabilities of the platform and effectively map those to specific business requirements.

This book is designed to mentor and coach business and technical leaders in an organization on the use and configuration of SharePoint to address critical information management problems. It gives detailed descriptions and illustrations of the product's functionality and also includes realistic usage scenarios to provide contextual relevance and a personalized learning experience to the reader.

Who This Book Is For

The mission of this book is to provide extensive knowledge to information workers and site managers that will empower them to become SharePoint Application champions in their organizations. This book should be the premiere handbook of any active or aspiring SharePoint expert.

To complete the exercises in this book, you should have a basic comfort level using Microsoft Office client applications to create content, and a general understanding of how to interact with a website through the browser. This book is intended as a starting point for any SharePoint 2010 user, whether that user has never used SharePoint before or has some familiarity with a previous version and just wants to understand the differences with the new release.

What This Book Covers

SharePoint 2010 represents the latest release of Microsoft's portal and collaborative technology platform. This book covers in detail many of the features of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 that will assist you in creating an effective collaboration, content management, business intelligence, business process, or social media solution for your organization. It addresses core functionality that has existed in SharePoint within previous versions as well as new concepts that have been introduced in this latest release.

How This Book Is Structured

This book covers the essential elements of using and configuring SharePoint 2010 as an effective tool for business. Each chapter focuses on a dedicated topic and provides hands-on exercises to assist with your learning experience. The following is a short summary of each chapter of this book.

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010—This chapter serves as an introduction to SharePoint and lays the foundation for important terminology and concepts explored in the following chapters of the book.Chapter 2: Working with SharePoint Lists—This chapter introduces one of the core mechanisms for sharing and organizing content in a SharePoint site. You will review what lists are and how they are used, and then explore the various templates that exist in SharePoint 2010.Chapter 3: Working with SharePoint Libraries—After reviewing some of the fundamental concepts relating to lists, the chapter introduces the other major storage mechanism in SharePoint, known as libraries. This chapter discusses some of the various templates that exist for libraries.Chapter 4: Managing and Customizing SharePoint Lists and Libraries—SharePoint templates for lists and libraries provide a great starting point for collaboration and information sharing. This chapter shows how you can extend these base templates to address an organization's specific requirements for a collaborative site or information management tool.Chapter 5: Working with Workflow—This chapter discusses the templates that SharePoint provides for workflow, and demonstrates how to create custom workflow solutions using the SharePoint Designer application.Chapter 6: Working with Content Types—Most organizations have information and documents, which often utilize consistent templates, processes, and policies each time they are created. Therefore, SharePoint has content types, which allow an organization to package templates and information to ensure that reusable components are rolled out in the organization to enforce consistency and ease of use. This chapter demonstrates what content types are and explores how they can be used through some hands-on examples.Chapter 7: Working with Web Parts—Web parts are an important element in SharePoint because they enable teams to present information on their sites to users in many different ways. This chapter explores the various groups of web parts that exist in SharePoint 2010, and gives examples on how specific types of web parts can be configured and used to present information in a desired manner.Chapter 8: SharePoint Sites and Workspaces—The fundamental components of any SharePoint environment are the sites and workspaces that it contains. These collaborative work areas contain all the components discussed in previous sections and represent how each of those items comes together to provide an effective environment for collaboration, communication, and document management. In this chapter, topics such as site templates and features are covered.Chapter 9: SharePoint Branding and User Experience—Many organizations wish to change the look and feel of SharePoint to suit their specific corporate brand. This chapter explores the various options for changing the look and feel of a SharePoint environment as well as best practices for enhancing and improving user experience.Chapter 10: Managing User Permissions and Security—Effective management of users is of ultimate importance to any information system. The two primary tiers of effective user management include securing content and personalizing information on the portal. This chapter explains in simple terms how to effectively secure a SharePoint environment at the site level, the list or library level, and down to the unique content items stored on a SharePoint site. In addition, the chapter gives an introduction to personalization to ensure that readers understand how to effectively target information to users in a portal.Chapter 11: Personalization and Social Networking—Social networking has been an area of major enhancement in SharePoint 2010. In this chapter, you will learn how to make the most of the social networking tools that exist in SharePoint such as My Sites, tags, blogs, wikis, and ratings.Chapter 12: Forms Management—Microsoft InfoPath is the ideal companion to SharePoint for many business solutions. This chapter introduces readers to creating simple business applications using Microsoft InfoPath, including creating template parts, creating flexible form interfaces, and connecting to business data.Chapter 13: Web Content Management—This chapter provides an overview of the web content management capabilities of the system, including the use of publishing sites and features, the automatic provisioning of multilingual content through variations, and the creation of custom page templates known as page layouts.Chapter 14: Records Management—This chapter provides an overview of and introduction to the establishment of a records management practice in your organization using SharePoint 2010. The chapter covers topics including term sets, archive-based records management features, as well as in-place records management features.Chapter 15: Business Connectivity Services—This chapter introduces the concept of business connectivity services, explaining important concepts such as security, external content types, and working with business data.Chapter 16: Business Intelligence and Insights—This chapter demonstrates how to improve the overall decision making of an organization by providing access to important information, utilizing browser-based worksheets and visual indicators of performance information, and building personalized interactive dashboards.Chapter 17: Working with Search—An information system is only useful to an organization if stakeholders can easily access and locate the information it contains. This chapter discusses the search engine capabilities of the SharePoint platform, including methods that improve the search experience through the use of effective queries, configurations, and analytics.Chapter 18: Implementing a Governance Framework—This chapter explores the definition of governance as well as the effective steps and best practices toward designing a governance framework for your organization.

What You Need to Use This Book

To effectively complete the examples in this book, you should have access to a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 environment or site collection and have administrative rights to the server. If you do not have administrative rights, your server administrator may have to assist you with some exercises in this book.

You should also have a client computer running either Windows 7 or Windows Vista along with Microsoft Office 2010 Professional or Professional Plus, SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint Workspace 2010. While many exercises can be completed with earlier versions of Office, certain exercises related to workflow, forms, and Excel Services are dependent on features only available in the Professional versions of 2010.

Conventions

To help you get the most from the text and keep track of what's happening, we've used a number of conventions throughout the book.

Try It Out

The Try It Out is an exercise you should work through, following the text in the book.

1. It usually consists of a set of steps.

2. Each step has a number.

3. Follow the steps through with your copy of the database.

How It Works

After each Try It Out, the example will be explained in detail.

Warning

Boxes with a warning icon like this one hold important, not-to-be-forgotten information that is directly relevant to the surrounding text.

Note

The pencil icon indicates notes, tips, hints, tricks, or asides to the current discussion.

As for styles in the text:

We italicize new terms and important words when we introduce them.We show keyboard strokes like this: Ctrl+A.We show file names and URLs within the text like so: persistence.properties.

Note

Because many books have similar titles, you may find it easiest to search by ISBN; this book's ISBN is 978-0-470-61789-2.

Errata

We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text. However, no one is perfect, and mistakes do occur. If you find an error in one of our books, like a spelling mistake or instructions that do not lead to the intended results, 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 have 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 http://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:

1. Go to p2p.wrox.com and click the Register link.

2. Read the terms of use and click Agree.

3. Complete the required information to join, as well as any optional information you wish to provide, and click Submit.

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Note

You can read messages in the forums without joining P2P, but in order to post your own messages, you must join.

Once you join, you can post new messages and respond to messages other users post. You can read messages at any time on the web. If you would like to have new messages from a particular forum emailed to you, click the Subscribe to this Forum icon by the forum name in the forum listing.

For more information about how to use the Wrox P2P, be sure to read the P2P FAQs for answers to questions about how the forum software works, as well as many common questions specific to P2P and Wrox books. To read the FAQs, click the FAQ link on any P2P page.

1

Getting Started with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

What You Will Learn in This Chapter:

The differences between SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010Common usage scenarios for SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010An overview of important SharePoint concepts and features

The goal of this book is to provide you with the knowledge to set you on the way to becoming a SharePoint master. An important part of understanding how best to manage and utilize SharePoint Server from either a developer or IT pro perspective is first to understand the core capabilities of the product and how they can be extended to meet your organization's business needs. Along those lines, this chapter introduces you to the new and exciting features and capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. With it, you will learn how to put the platform to work for your organization to create scalable business solutions with and without the use of custom code. In this chapter, you learn about the following topics and concepts:

Introducing SharePoint

Before getting started on the technical tasks associated with managing and working with SharePoint content, it is important to understand the purpose of all common usage scenarios for the technology.

Organizational stakeholders often suffer from what's been termed as information overload. Because computers play such an integral part in any business, not surprisingly, more and more of the information that is created, consumed, and shared in an organization is digital. The more business that you conduct and the more successful your business becomes, the more information you have to manage. Usually, you have some form of document for just about every process and transaction that plays out during the day-to-day operations of your company. From proposals to legal documents, from sales receipts to human resources policies, the amount of information required for a company to function is staggering.

To manage your information overload, SharePoint offers tools with which you can build business applications to better store, share, and manage digital information. With it, you can create lists, libraries, and websites for your various company teams to help run your business processes more efficiently. By locating your organization's important business data in a single location, it becomes much easier and intuitive for users to find the right information when they need it rather than searching through disparate locations such as email, computer hard drives, or file shares.

What Is Portal Technology?

A corporate portal is a gateway through which members can access business information and, if set up properly, should be the first place an employee goes to access anything of importance. Portals differ from regular websites in that they are customized specifically around business processes. In SharePoint, a portal may actually consist of numerous websites, with information stored either directly on those sites or in other systems, such as file shares, business applications, or a regular Internet website. This allows SharePoint to be the central location users may visit to find information regardless of its actual storage location. Because making informed business decisions is key to becoming and remaining successful, it's important that the information you place on a portal be secure, up to date, and easily accessible. Because a business's marketplace may span the globe, an organization also needs to have the information that reflects the needs of employees from multiple specific regions.