SharePoint 2010: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
I found this article on Microsoft Gallary published by Sidhanta and thought of creating a wiki article , so that other can contribute on it also. Url: **http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Frequently-Asked-Questions-47c9a997#content
- What is SharePoint ?**
- Microsoft SharePoint is a web application platform developed by Microsoft. First launched in 2001, SharePoint is typically associated with web content management and document management systems, but it is actually a much broader platform of web technologies, capable of being configured into a wide range of solution areas. SharePoint is designed as a broad, central application platform for common enterprise web requirements. SharePoint's multi-purpose design allows for managing and provisioning of intranet portals, extranets, websites, document & file management, collaboration spaces, social tools, enterprise search, business intelligence, process integration, system integration, workflow automation, and core infrastructure for third-party solutions. SharePoint's core infrastructure is also suited to providing a base technology platform for custom developed applications.
2. Who uses SharePoint and why
- Microsoft SharePoint enables organizations of virtually any size—from a family of four sharing photos to a corporation of 10,000 sharing data -- to complete mission-critical tasks in a cutting-edge, collaborative workplace environment that is both flexible and secure.SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the answer for collaboration within your business, your home, or a community group. It’s user-friendly and great for sharing anything: file storage, contacts, calendars, a wiki, an intranet site, photo albums, schedules, sales leads—anything. Clearly, while some SharePoint customers represent smaller organizations, deployments are also popular among mid-sized organizations, large departments and even large enterprises, which typically use SharePoint Server 2010. According to a 2009 survey by the consultancy InfoTrends, almost half of mid- to large-sized enterprises use SharePoint—rates that beat all of the other document and content platforms such as EMC, IBM, Open Text, Oracle, Hyland and others. Of these SharePoint customers, the largest companies create more than 100 SharePoint sites every month and already have more than 200 sites to manage on average (about a quarter of which are inactive or not in regular use). Although SharePoint use varies considerably across and within company size segments, nearly all organizations that have deployed it rely on it primarily for basic collaboration and document management. Other key uses include "team" site creation, network file storage and basic workflows (i.e., review and approvals). If SharePoint can meet the toughest, mission-critical standards of these companies, imagine what it can do for your organization.
3. What is special about SharePoint 2010
With SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft overhauled its popular MOSS 2007 to bring customers numerous enhanced capabilities such as:
Collaboration and social computing. Extends the collaboration features of SharePoint Foundation to bring users into a whole new sense of community.
- Use "My Sites" personal profiles to network with colleagues
- Post status updates, note board comments, blogs, sites documents, photos and more
- Use tag profiles to see what’s being used and followed
- Monitor your colleagues through activity feeds
Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Helps organizations manage the entire life cycle of content—from creation, to editing and collaboration, to expiration—on a single, searchable, unified platform.
- Consolidate, manage and search for diverse content through new document management features
- Improve information search/ discovery through metadata management
- Use workflow tools to move documents in a structured way
- Store and protect data to satisfy compliance/ legal requirements
- Establish audit trails and legal holds
- Publish Web content with a user-friendly authoring tool and built-in approval process
- Support rich media in a new Asset Library
- Use Web templates to apply consistent branding to Web pages
- Monitor sites through built-in Web analytics features
- Use a single deployment and management infrastructure for intranet, extranet, and Internet sites—as well as for multilingual sites
Enterprise search. Delivers a powerful search infrastructure that complements other business productivity capabilities such as ECM and collaboration to help people get better answers faster and amplify the impact of knowledge and expertise.
- Refine your search through interactive navigation
- Extend your search across more content sources, content types and enterprise apps
Business intelligence. Extend business intelligence capabilities to make the right data available to everyone who needs it.
- Increase visibility into key organizational objectives and metrics
- Extract and present data from a variety of sources to facilitate analysis/decisions
- Implement interactive dashboards with scorecards, reports and trend-finding filters
- Publish, share and manage Excel workbooks and rich charts on a SharePoint site
Portals. Build and maintain portal sites for every aspect of the business such as enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet Web sites and divisional portal sites.
- Connect individual sites, company-wide
- Access existing business apps, expertise and information across an organization
- Use portals to enhance My Sites capabilities
- Personalize the portal for individual users with content targeting
Business process and forms. Integrate and streamline your business processes through workflows to cut the cost of coordinating common business processes.
- Expedite project approval or document review through task tracking
- Use predefined or customized workflows to support unique processes
- Create browser-based forms
4. How do I access SharePoint?
In the site Click Sign In in the upper right corner of this window. Signing in will allow you to use Search to find SharePoint sites and documents you are authorized to access. When you navigate to the SharePoint site, there is no longer an index of SharePoint sites. To search for sites that you have access to, you must first sign in by clicking Sign In (top right).
If you are logged into the site, your username will replace Sign In and you can enter search terms to find sites that you have access to. If you are not logged into site, enter your username and password. After logging in, you can enter search terms and the sites that you have access to will show up.
5. How do I log into my SharePoint site?
When accessing SharePoint, you may be prompted to enter your username and password.
6.How do I use My Site to view all the sites that I have access to?
If you are in the member group of a site, it will show up in the Memberships tab of My Site. For example if you are just in the Owners group the site will not appear in your mysite. Best practice; if you are a site Owner, also add yourself to the Members group.
Open My Site by clicking the down arrow beside your name at the top right of a SharePoint web page. Click the My Profile tab >Memberships and the sites you have access to will show up.
7.How do I tag a site or make notes about it and view all the tags and notes that I have made?
Open My Site by clicking the down arrow beside your name at the top right of a SharePoint web page. Click the My Profile tab > Tags and Notes. Click on a tag to return to that SharePoint site.
8.What is checkout and how do I see who has a document checked out?
Checkout informs users if a document is being edited by another user. Also, if you hover over the type icon (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) with your mouse, you can see who is editing it and contact them and ask them to check it in.
9.How do I check a document in after I have checked it out?
Hover over the document, click the down arrow to the right of the document name and click Check In.
10.Why is a new document that I uploaded to a document library that has checkout enabled not visible to other users?
If you upload or create a new document in a library where checkout is enabled, other users will not be able to view this document until you check it in after creating it in the library.
11.Will my bookmarks/favorites from SharePoint 2007 still work in SharePoint 2010?
Yes
12.Will all my sites and documents from SharePoint 2007 be available in SharePoint 2010?
Yes
13.How do I view all site content in the new SharePoint environment?
Click All site content at the bottom left of the quick launch. Sites and sub sites, document libraries and Lists (Calendars, Contact Lists, Wikis) are listed here for easy navigation.
14.How do I check my alerts on the SharePoint 2010 site?
Click the down arrow beside your name (Top right) > My Settings >My Alerts
- To set new alerts for changes to a document:
Navigate to the Document > Document Pull down (to the right of the document name) > Alert Me - To set new alerts for changes to a document library:
Navigate to the Library > Library tab > Alert Me > Set alert on this library