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Evaluating The Features of SharePoint 2010
Evaluating The Features of SharePoint 2010
Evaluating The Features of SharePoint 2010
Module Overview
Lesson 1
Evaluating the Features of SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the Internet.
Behind this simple value proposition is a complex and powerful platform that delivers rich
functionality to address a vast range of business needs. In this lesson, you learn just how much
technology is wrapped up by those 13 words, and you dissect the technical capabilities and
features that are driving enterprises around the world to adopt SharePoint 2010.
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
Describe the value proposition of SharePoint 2010.
Describe the SharePoint 2010 platform.
Describe the key SharePoint products and technologies.
Describe the key SharePoint capabilities, such as sites, communities, content, search,
insights, and composites.
The value proposition for SharePoint is, SharePoint is the business collaboration platform for
the enterprise and the Internet. Microsoft invested heavily in the development of SharePoint
Server 2010 to deliver features that enable an enterprise to do the following:
Deliver the best productivity experience. The end-user experience of SharePoint Server
2010 builds on familiar user interfaces and tools.
Cut costs with a unified infrastructure. SharePoint 2010 performs roles that have been,
in many enterprises, provided by other disparate systems. Now those roles can be
consolidated on to SharePoint 2010.
Rapidly respond to business needs. SharePoint 2010 provides a diverse feature set
addressing many business collaboration scenarios, with out of box functionality, a rich
collection of community-generated solutions, and extensibility to support custom solutions.
Introducing SharePoint 2010
Microsoft describes SharePoint 2010 as a series of benefits and features that support those
benefits. Features are grouped into categories called capabilities that deliver solutions to
related business scenarios.
SharePoint is a platform that itself extends and depends on many components of the broader
Microsoft technologies suite.
This visualization of the platform shows the dependenciesboth required and available
between components of the technology stack. Each component of the platform contributes
specific features and functionality.
Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 provides the core operating system
functionality, including the security subsystem.
The Microsoft .NET Framework provides the framework for SharePoint, which is a .NET
application running within Internet Information Services (IIS).
SharePoint Foundation 2010 delivers fundamental SharePoint functionality including service
management, security, integration with Microsoft Office client applications, and core
collaborative features such as lists and libraries.
SharePoint Server 2010 builds on SharePoint Foundation, adding social networking,
enterprise search, business intelligence, and other features.
The features provided by SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server
2010 are detailed later in this module.
SharePoint uses identity services that can include the Active Directory directory service or
other Claims-based authentication providers. Some of these identity services, such as formsbased authentication, rely on the .NET Framework.
SharePoint content is stored in Microsoft SQL Server.
SharePoint is a highly extensible platform. Independent software vendors (ISVs), the
community, customers, and Microsoft itself deliver solutions that depend on SharePoint
Foundation or SharePoint Server.
Sites
The sites capability includes functionality that delivers and personalizes content to users,
provides manageability and scalability to administrators, enables developers to customize and
extend SharePoint, and allows an enterprise to implement SharePoint along with other
solutions or to consolidate the functionality provided by disparate collaboration solutions into
SharePoint.
Content Delivery
The sites capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to deliver
content to users:
Core content structures
Web applications, site collections, sites, lists, libraries
Services to render content
Multiple browsers
Mobile browsers
Accessibility standards (WCAG 2.0)
Rich Web experience
Ribbon user interface (UI): Familiar Office UI
Web Edit: Rich content editing
My Sites
User tagging
Content targeting
Multilingual support
Documents, lists, libraries, sites, and users can be tagged. These tags can then be used to
associate a user with content that is of interest to that person.
Content targeting is the ability of an administrator to push content to one or more users
based on those users shared characteristics, including their group membership.
SharePoint provides multilingual support. SharePoint can support content, services, and tags
in a wide range of languages. A site can be rendered in a particular language to a user in that
users language and can be switched to another language on the fly.
Manageability and Scalability
The sites capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to ensure
scalable, manageable deployment in an enterprise:
Central management
Governance, security, and compliance at multiple levels of every feature
Operations management
Deploy, secure, configure, backup, monitor, audit, and update.
Central Administration (UI) and Windows PowerShell support
Tools and guidance
Enterprise scalability, manageability, and availability
Capacity
Topology
Performance
High availability
SharePoint is centrally managed using the Central Administration site and Windows PowerShell.
It supports governance, security, and compliance at multiple levels, for almost every feature.
SharePoint Server 2010 provides greater scalability, manageability, and availability.
Customization and Extensibility
The sites capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to enable an
organization to customize and extend SharePoint:
Theming and branding
Out of the box solutions, templates, and Web Parts
Custom solutions: From no-code to Microsoft Visual Studio
Workflow, SharePoint Designer, InfoPath Services, Microsoft Visio Services, Microsoft
Excel Services, Microsoft Access Services
Microsoft .NET, Microsoft Silverlight
Business Connectivity Services: Interact with line-of-business data
SharePoint and client object models
Web services, application programming interfaces (APIs; SharePoint and client object
models), REST
ISV and community solutions
Codeplex: http://www.codeplex.com
Manageability: Constrain, debug, manage application life cycle
Following are some important points related to customization and extensibility:
Themes and branding features support customizing the look and feel of SharePoint sites.
You can deliver rich functional solutions using out of the box solutions, templates, and Web
Parts.
SharePoint is a platform on which you can easily create and deploy solutionsfrom simple,
no-code solutions to more complex solutions developed with Visual Studio.
SharePoint provides ways to interact with line-of-business applications and data sources. One
of the most important data connection and interoperability features is Business Connectivity
Services.
There is a vast ecosystem of community and ISVs who support and extend SharePoint.
With SharePoint, an enterprise can govern and manage code customizations and extensions.
Interoperability and Platform Consolidation
The sites capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to support a
variety of relationships with other systems in an enterprise:
Interoperability
Platform consolidation
Replace point solutions
Integrated capabilities: One platform for intranet, extranet, and Internet
SharePoint provides a unified infrastructure that delivers a broad range of functionality that
might take several tools from other vendors to deliver, at which point you have to know how to
integrate them. This infrastructure gives you a way to deploy, secure, manage, maintain, back
up, and monitor operations.
Question: What are the business outcomes supported by interoperability?
Question: What are the business outcomes supported by platform consolidation?
Additional Reading
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Sites (SP2010_Sites_Datasheet.pdf) at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197249&clcid=0x409 .
Communities
Enterprise Collaboration
The communities capability offers the following components, features, and
functionality to enable collaboration between users:
Lists
Fundamental construct in which content is stored
Out of box lists: Calendar, contacts, tasks, announcements, surveys
Libraries
Fundamental construct in which documents are stored
Version control, check in, check out, document workflows
Through such mining activities, SharePoint can suggest keywords and colleagues to
help users refine their profile.
Content
A fundamental output of users and business collaboration activities is content. The content
capability delivers functionality that supports the management of content throughout its life
cycle. SharePoint interoperates with or replaces other content management systems.
Support for Content and Interaction with Content
The content capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to support a
tremendous range of content and a diverse set of modalities with which to interact with
content.
Support for a tremendous range of content
Documents
Records
Web content
Rich media: Audio, video
Interaction with content
Viewing
Editing
Coauthoring
Output (Word Automation)
Following are some important points related to support for content and interaction with
content:
Users can store just about any type of content in SharePoint, including content that has been
traditionally stored in distinct systems.
SharePoint provides numerous modalities in which users can interact with content, including
viewing (in the browser or in client applications), output, editing, and even concurrent
coauthoring, with the Office Web Apps.
Question: What business outcomes does SharePoints support for a variety of content types
and modalities of interaction with the content facilitate?
Following are some important points related to document and records management:
Document and records management features are integrated into every site.
You can specify document routing rules that allow documents to be dropped into a library
and then automatically moved to the appropriate library based on metadata and business
logic.
You can create document sets, which are collections of documents that can be treated as a
unit, with a collective version history and metadata that applies to the collection.
You can specify metadata, retention schedules, record declarations, and legal holds and
apply them consistently. SharePoint provides for multistage disposition of documents. Policies
can be location-based.
SharePoint can automatically apply metadata based on a documents location and other
business logic.
Question: What are the business outcomes supported by SharePoints support for a variety of
content types and modalities of interaction with the content?
Definition of Content and Metadata
The content capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to define
content and metadata, and thereby to create and manage content:
Structured and unstructured content
Blogs, wikis, discussion forums
Defined content types with metadata, workflows, templates, and rightsmanagement
Managed Metadata Service
Tags: Taxonomy & folksonomy
Multilingual metadata
Enterprise content types
Use of metadata
Tagging content: Manual and automatic
Visibility of tags: Item, site, client
Metadata-driven navigation
Search refiners
Following are some important points related to definition of content and metadata:
SharePoint supports content that is unstructured and free-form, such as blogs, wikis, and
discussion forums, as well as highly structured content and everything in between.
The Managed Metadata Service (MMS), new in SharePoint 2010, provides a central repository
and management capability for what are generally called tags. Tags are arranged in a
hierarchical structure that can be delegated to appropriate business owners. Tags can be
centrally driven (taxonomy) or user submitted (folksonomy) or both, and tags are enabled for
multiple languages.
The MMS also deploys content types across sites, site collections, Web applications, and
farms so that an enterprise can maintain better control over the definition of and metadata
associated with content, as well as information management policies for that content.
You can use metadata (tags) in numerous ways, and SharePoint 2010 provides a variety of
methods with which to tag content and view tags. You can even have tags applied to content
automatically, based on the items location or other rules. Additionally, you can use metadata
to create dynamic navigation and to provide search refiners.
Manageability and Extensibility
The content capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to enable
an organization to manage and extend SharePoint:
Manageability
Deploy across sites, site collections, Web applications, and farms
Secure, configure, and audit use of metadata
Remote binary large object (BLOB) storage
Integrate with other systems and legacy repositories
Open, highly documented, extensible platform
Support for interoperability standards
XML, SOAP, RSS, REST, WebDAV, and WSRP
Some important points related to manageability and extensibility of the content capability are
as follows:
The MMS and other services related to the content capability are manageable and
governable across your entire enterprise.
SharePoint can store content in remote systems, including the file system, using remote
BLOB storage.
SharePoint is a platform that you can extend in numerous ways, and it supports many
interoperability standards.
Question: What are the business outcomes supported by extensibility and interoperability in
the content capability?
Additional Reading
Microsoft SharePoint Server Content (SP2010_Content_Datasheet.pdf) at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197250&clcid=0x409.
Search
Users can browse SharePoints content structuressites, lists, and librariesfor content, but of
course searching is often a more effective means of locating content.
The search capability is self-explanatory and is detailed in Module 11.
People and Expertise Search
The search capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to search for
people and expertise:
Unlock knowledge not found in documents
Communications
Behaviors
Relationships
Organization chart browser
Search
Nickname and phonetic matching
Recently authored content
People- and expertise-specific refinement
Responsibilities, memberships, past projects, interests
Following are some important points related to people and expertise search:
You can connect with people and expertise by using search skills, tools, and experiences that
you typically apply to searching for content.
With people and expertise search, you can unlock the knowledge that is not stored in
traditional content and the value that is found in people-to-people connections and social
behavior.
SharePoint 2010 features an organization browser that exposes a visual, navigable view of
organizational relationships.
In addition to looking for people and expertise, you can use people and expertise metadata
to improve the relevance and refine the results of traditional content searches.
Content Sources, Indexing, and Query
The search capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to make
content available for effective and efficient searching:
Content sources and indexing
Support for 400+ structured and unstructured content types
Advanced content processing with strong linguistics
Eighty-five languages
Ability to build and manage connections to external content repositories
Common connector framework
Query
Search scopes
Enhanced query syntax
Thesaurus and noise words
Phonetic and nickname people search
Query suggestions (Did you mean?)
Following are some important points related to content sources, indexing, and query:
SharePoint is able to connect to and index a staggering range of content sources and
content, and with the common connector framework, a developer can build connections to
other content sources that can then be managed and queried like out of box content sources.
The query experience is rich and is supported with features that significantly improve your
ability to find the information you are looking for.
Results and Relevance
The search capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to produce
accurate and helpful results:
Results are security trimmed.
Results are federated.
Results have improved relevance based on usage and history.
Results are presented in context to the user and the users profile.
Social distance
Related searches.
Following are some important points related to results and relevance:
Users see only results for content to which they have access.
SharePoint search results are federated, meaning that you see a unified list of results from all
query services.
Search results are relevant, presented using algorithms that include clickthrough behavior,
usage, history, the users own profile, and social distance.
SharePoint even lists related searches along with search results, thereby pointing you toward
search queries that may help you find the information you need.
User Search Experience
The search capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to provide
users with a rich search experience:
Results
Hit highlighting
Results summaries
Visual search
Thumbnails
Previews
View in browser
Refinement panel and sorting driven by metadata
Includes social distance, other people, and expertise metadata
Exact result counts with refiners (FAST)
Search from the desktop, browser, or Windows mobile device
Following are some important points related to user search experience:
Search results are rich, with hit highlighting, summaries, and visual search features including
thumbnails, previews, and view-in-browser.
Metadata-driven refinement including social metadata provides navigation, sorting, filtering,
and narrowing down your results. Adding FAST provides exact result counts.
Users can search SharePoint from the desktop using Windows 7 federated search, from one
of several browsers on several platforms, or from a Windows mobile device.
The search capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to enable an
organization to manage and extend SharePoint:
Infrastructure
Scalability: Improved topology, algorithms, and performance
FAST integration
Manageability
Tune index and query behavior: Relevance, best bets
Monitor user search behavior
Extensibility
Leverage the query object model and Web Parts
Create search-driven applications to enrich platform
Integrate with and aggregate other systems and information
Following are some important points related to manageability and extensibility of the search
capability:
SharePoint search is highly scalable.
FAST enhances the out of box SharePoint search experience with numerous performanceenhancing and value-added features.
SharePoint provides a unified administrative and management experience.
SharePoint is extensible to support federation, aggregation, integration, and custom search
applications.
Additional Reading
SharePoint Search Datasheet (SP2010_Search_Datasheet.pdf) at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197251&clcid=0x409.
Introducing SharePoint 2010 1-31
Insights
The insights capability encompasses functionality that you can use to connect to data sources
and present the data in meaningful ways that support decision making. It is the capability that
most closely aligns with what the industry refers to as business intelligence.
Information Sources
The insights capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to connect
with information from a broad range of data sources:
SharePoint
Business Connectivity Services: External data and systems
PerformancePoint Services: Interactive scorecards and dashboards
Visio Services: Browser-based rendering of Visio diagrams, including filtering, interaction with
objects, and connections to data
Excel Services
Secure, manage, and share Excel workbooks
Rendered in the browser
Embed workbooks in apps, desktop, blogs, and wikis
Programmability: JavaScript object model and REST API
PowerPivot, SQL Analysis Services
Following are some important points related to information sources:
With self-service access to information, users can discover and manage their aspect of the
business with access to the right information.
Business Connectivity Services connects you with external data and systems.
PerformancePoint Services provide interactive scorecards and dashboards.
Visio Services provides browser-based rendering of Visio diagrams and includes filtering,
interaction with objects, and connections to data sources.
With Excel Services, you can secure, manage, and use Excel workbooks as interactive reports
rendered in the browser. You can embed workbooks in applications, blogs, and wikis and on the
desktop. New programmability features include JavaScript object model and REST API.
PowerPivot and SQL Analysis Services provide powerful reporting and analysis of very large
data sets.
Presentation and Visualization of Information
The insights capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to
aggregate information and present it in meaningful and productive ways:
Presentation of information
Dashboards
Scorecards
Chart Web Part
Composites
The composites capability offers the following components, features, and functionality to
empower users to create no-code solutions that target specific needs and to enable an
enterprise to manage ad hoc solutions:
Access Services: Publish Access databases as Web apps
Business Connectivity Services
Read-write access to back-end data
Disconnected experience: Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office
Word, SharePoint Workspace
Customizations: Browser, SharePoint Designer
Workflows: Out of box, SharePoint Designer, Visio
Forms: Customized Web forms or forms-based applications
Visio: Publish diagrams, interact with objects and data
Manageability
Governance over all no-code solutions features
Control over infrastructure, data, and applications
Following are some important points related to the composites capability:
SharePoint gives you a plethora of ways to create a custom application without writing a single
line of code. The enterprise gains control over such custom applications and can apply
governance and security measures that are not possible when applications are ad hoc and not
centrally managed.
Additional Reading
Microsoft SharePoint Composites (SP2010_Composites_Datasheet.pdf) at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197253&clcid=0x409.