SharePoint - Just a User

Asked By Linda RQ

19-Aug-07 06:59 PM

Hi Everyone,

Our workplace will be using sharepoint on Tuesday.  I basically take care of
one of the departmental websites.  Our IS department is setting up the
program.  This group seems to be geard toward setting up the system.  Where
would be a good place to start for a user?

Thanks,
Linda

19-Aug-07 11:57 PM

The first thing is to find out *which* SharePoint product and version
you are going to be using.

The second thing would probably be to find a suitable book (being able
to answer which depends on the answer to q1). Information for this level
of work isn't often provided in the Microsoft documentation and in blogs.

Mike Walsh
WSS FAQ http://www.wssfaq.com
no questions by e-mail please

20-Aug-07 09:04 PM

Thanks.  We go live tomorrow so perhaps I'll be a little more clear on what
I need and I'll check the usual way of clicking on help/about, if that's not
locked down.  I am not exactly clear on what sharepoint is. I am not real
good at just pointing an clicking on what I'm told to which is what the
training was, I like to understand what's going on behind the front end.

Linda

21-Aug-07 03:59 AM

Hi Linda, you will have to excuse these SP newsgroups, cutting edge is just
that!

Im a dumb "user" what is Sharepoint?

Sharepoint is built using XML. XML is a lot of things but in simple terms
anything and everything can understand XML. Its a bit like English rather
than say Welsh, its a much more common code and is easier to understand by
the majority of programs. It also tells the user/program about itself and
not just a copy of the content.

Sharepoint is so simple as to be complicated, we are so use to complex stuff
these days that you half expect "something else to be going on in the
background" but unless you understand XML and Metadata then for your
purposes you need only understand the following:

1) LISTS
2) LIBRAYS
3) WEBPARTS
4) PAGES

In fact even this is disengenuous, the difference between a LIST and a
LIBRARY is only the expected file type, that is LIST=table(xls) and
LIBRARY=file(doc)

Both store and display FILES and/or file content.

WEBPARTS are more interesting, they come in a number of flavours but I will
summarise.

WEBPARTS are literally WINDOWS into LISTS and LIBRARY's. You can add them to
a PAGE and modify what they show of your LISTS/LIB's

You can add more than 1 and you can connect them to filter/view LIST/LIB
data in different ways.

There is of course lots of other stuff, Linking to outlook and workflows and
charts etc but start simple and ask your IT team to give you a subsite to
play with. Have a look on the internet and search Sharepoint for more
answers, the point being that the process of learning is just that, you cant
be told eveything, you have to understand something. Hope Ive helped a
little.

21-Aug-07 04:14 AM

Maybe we'd better wait for someone else who's read it to comment, but in
my less than humble opinion my chapter one of the "Real World SharePoint
2007" does a fair job of explaining the basics including the often
forgotten (or wrongly interpreted) relationship between Lists/Libraries
and the web parts of them (which you mention in this post).

(Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470168358?tag=heme0f)

Unlike the rest of the book, that chapter is intended for people
completely new to SharePoint.

Mike Walsh
WSS FAQ www.wssfaq.com / wss.collutions.com
no private e-mail questions please

28-Aug-07 10:21 PM

Whoops, I didn't mean to start a ruckus. We went live last week and now I
have an idea of what SharePoint is...A type of database/application to where
our IS department customized the "shell" to what we want to use for our
intranet.  When they migrated my previous personal/department website over,
they didn't bring my subcategories so all my documents were all just
floating around in the main category.  The Names of my files looked really
terrible because the way our SharePoint was set up was to show the url/file
name and not the "friendly title" of the document.  My managers do not name
their documents very nicely despite my constant nagging, so it was ugly
until I renamed them all (took me about 10 hours) but much of that time was
navigating around and figuring what views had categories/subcategories
available to change.  The best view to rename the documents was not the view
that my categories were in, what a pain but it looks better now and I found
some nice features.  I am sure in 6 months it will all be better.  I will go
to the bookstore and look at your book, I don't probably need to understand
lists/libraries but I think I would like to.  Maybe I could get a new job
one day helping the IS department. <g>  I did send them a 3 page diary of my
trials trying to fix my website portion of SharePoint.  The title was "Diary
of a frustrated Content Coordinator".  They have not enabled a lot of the
features, I kept getting "you do not have permission".....kind of reminds me
of buying a Corvette and only driving on streets that you can go 20mph on.

At any rate, thanks Mike and Jonathon,
Linda

29-Aug-07 12:22 AM

I'm just browsing through SharePoint 2007 for Dummies in order to make a
blog review of it. It's probably the only full book out there for people
who have never used a SharePoint product before and first signs are that
it's not bad at all.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470099410?tag=heme0f


Mike Walsh