I've heard about FAST Search recently and trying to make sense of it. Whenever I read about it , Sharepoint is mentioned.
Is this a separate product? How is it related to Sharepoint?
I am interested in learning more about it. Where can I find learning resources for it outside of Sharepoint context?
Thanks
SharePoint's enterprise search offering was non-existent, and there was this really nice product called FAST ESP that Microsoft liked the look of, so they bought the company. When SharePoint 2010 came out they made the connection a little easier to configure, and gave it a SharePoint admin UI.
Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 has the Search feature for intranet and people search. This was enabled by integrating MS Sharepoint and MS enterprise FAST. Microsoft FAST is an enterprise Search product which can be used as a stand alone search product for any website. There is no online documentation source for MS Enterprise Search. It can be compared to Endeca, another enterprise Search product.
Related
I am a .NET developer with a few years of experience in Winforms, WPF and some ASP.NET with C#. What would be the best way for me to go about learning sharepoint, as a developer? I would be Learning on my spare time, My work currently has nothing to do with sharepoint, but I have seen a bit of what sharepoint can do and I felt that It is a technology worth investing my time in.
I am interested In books, videos, possible training, webcasts, videos, blogs, forums, communities and any advice you may have.
I made a pretty detailed list here that I have accumulated over the past 5 years trying to learn SharePoint - I hope it helps:
Best way to learn SharePoint
I always receive the emails about SharePoint training. But it needs to pay $100+.
Here is the one.
http://elearning.left-brain.com/event/preparing-for-sharepoint-v15?code=EP3328D1
One of the ways to get started learning about SharePoint is to use Sharepoint Hands Labs. You can read about it here SharePoint 2010 Hands on Labs. Also interesting tutorials are Sharepoint Labs on Codeplex and
SharePoint Server Virtual Labs on MSDN.
Good luck!
I took the official Microsoft SharePoint 2010 developer course and that was very useful. Several different companies offer it but it isn't cheap. Also SharePoint 2010 Development with Visual Studio 2010 was a big help as well. Also find out if your city has a SharePoint user group in it. Mine does and it is a great way to network with other SharePoint users and developers.
Here are a couple resources that may help you get started.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sp2010devtrainingcourse.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557253.aspx (Download for the examples is near the top)
And I would likely start with either a custom event receiver or a visual web part and just work on accessing data in a list.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728093.aspx (Custom event receiver that prevents deletes on a list).
For books I like
Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Professional SharePoint 2010 Development
Real World SharePoint 2010: Indispensable Experiences from 22 MVPs
Also as a first step you should install SharePoint and get a feel for it, once you do that look at SharePoint designer as it can accomplish a lot of tasks that users normally want.
I am an experienced ASP.NET C# developer who is investigating using Sharepoint for document management for one of my clients. They want an intranet site with blogs and other stuff in addition but this will need to adhere to their brand guidelines.
Apart from the faff of setting up a working development environment to what extent do you get document management 'out of the box' with just using Windows Sharepoint Services? (the client understandably would rather not line Microsoft pockets further if possible)
Or put another way, how long would it take to add document management to an ASP.NET site?
Thanks
Oliver
WSS will give you all the document management capabilities that you need. If you pair it up with Search Server Express (which is also free), youget a complete solution for zero investment. We've even based a company portal of a major corporation on that. Doing it yourself in ASP.NET is a waste of time to say the least. The SharePoint platform gives you an enourmous value and the learning curve is actually not that tough
You definitely don't want to go and implement something like this yourself when a freely available (and powerful) solution like Windows SharePoint Services already exists. For most requirements I'd say the features in WSS are enough, but it really depends on what your client is looking for. For example you get:
Support for versions of documents
Exclusive check-out
Management of content types
Integration with Office applications
Meta-data
If you need to support records management scenarios, then you'd need features found in the SharePoint Server product. I'd start with WSS and see how far that gets you.
I would highly recommend looking at SharePoint Foundation 2010 over Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It's the latest version of the basic SharePoint infrastructure (with the obligatory name change!).
SharePoint Foundation 2010 is a lot easier to work than WSS in terms of deployment, management and, especially, development. Plus there are new features in Foundation that you can start using.
Don't forget that SharePoint Designer 2010 is also free and is a great tool for customizing SharePoint.
Some links to get you going:
Download SharePoint Foundation 2010
Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010
We build CMS's with ASP.NET using tools such as Umbraco and DotNetNuke etc
A client is asking us if we can build a site in WSS which I think is Windows Sharepoint Services.
Are there any experienced MOSS people out there who can tell me how hard we would find this?
Would it be just like learning another CMS?
Or will it be a nightmare?
Also, what software do we need to build the site in house for testing?
We don't have a MSDN subscription and use free Microsoft tools (Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express)
Sharepoint is great for use with its own document management features, and it integrates well with Office products.
It's not such a good platform for development. The API is a nightmare, web parts are incomprehensible, and the database has a terrible structure (fields are named NumericField1, TextField2, etc. Yuck).
If you eventually need a web-facing server, MOSS is very expensive.
I will preface this by saying I am currently finally wrapping up a more-than-2 3-year project building one of the largest WCM sites deployed on MOSS in the world. We're talking thousands and thousands of content editors, nearly a million pages, millions of hits per day.
Depending on what you need, it could be moderately painful or extremely painful. MOSS is never a pleasure to use, so at the very least it will be an unpleasant exercise to deploy an out-of-the-box WCM site and make it look kinda like the design you want. However it should not be too terribly time-consuming or overly difficult.
If your needs look more like ours - do you need complex cross-loaded content on your pages? Content syndication and connected content? Flexible editor-controlled layouts? XHTML-compliant markup? Pixel-perfect design? If so, trying to use MOSS will absolutely be a nightmare.
Take note that WSS is not MOSS. WSS is the free version of SharePoint and MOSS is the paid version. MOSS is also the version designed for public facing CMS web sites.
With a bit of reading you should find MOSS relatively straight forward to develop a CMS site on top of. JP's link is a good one and I also recommend reading Andrew Connell's book Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Depending on your requirements, in most cases you can work out-of-the-box with MOSS and SharePoint Designer. If you find you need more than what these can provide your learning curve will jump by quite a lot so tread carefully!
For development you will need at least a MOSS and SharePoint Designer license (as JP suggests MSDN is better and also gives you the option of using Visual Studio). Your client is going to need to fork out the licensing costs for MOSS. I think there are additional costs for public facing web sites but check with your Microsoft account manager.
See some cool stuff you can with public-facing web sites for the product at Top SharePoint.
It's not that hard. I don't find it as easy as DotNetNuke, but it's still fairly straight forward once you have some of the concepts down. There is a really great intro to CMS on MOSS at Web Content Management with SharePoint MOSS 2007. You are going to need least the lowest level subscription to MSDN because CMS is part of MOSS not WSS. Search around for deals on MSDN.
Actually if you are aware of the share point technology , then wont find it difficult to built CMS using it. Designing content management system using share point is actually possible.
I work for a large organization and we have been utilizing SharePoint for document library. Yesterday my boss called me to his office and asked me:
"I heard that SharePoint is an ECM! So what can it do for us?".
"What kind of problem do you want us to solve utilizing SharePoint?", I replied.
"I want to know what it means when they say it is a ECM and how it can help us?", He said.
I told him it has Document Management, WorkFlow, Records Management, Search and some other stuff.
Anywho, He wants me to put togetter a list of things that SharePoint offers as an ECM.
You might find some useful info on the MS ECM team's blog.
Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server has a substantial content management system available. What was previously Microsoft Content Management Server was discontinued and that functionality was put under the Sharepoint umbrella. Usually this is referring to web content, but it can honestly be any kind of content relevant to an enterprise. It is intended to be a direct competitor to all the major WCMS out there, focused especially on the enterprise (governance, auditing, security model, etc).
That having been said, the current iteration of MOSS's EWCM pretty much blows. If you can develop your CM strategy to be parallel to MOSS, it can work out OK, otherwise it's much more pain than it's worth. Use SP for document management and use something else for content management.
Sharepoint is a collaboration platform restricted to a windows environment
Give Alfresco communities (labs) a go is my opinion here as it 'acts' as a Sharepoint server so Microsoft Office suite will not notice the difference but your wallet will...
Er... think the boss got a bit too much $$$ to spend. But really, an't we supposed to deploy a technical solution to solve a business problem.
The list of features can be found at
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/product/capabilities/Pages/default.aspx
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I have heard that Microsoft SharePoint was used by many companies. Could someone tell me briefly what is SharePoint and why is it popular?
What is SharePoint?
The latest version of Microsoft SharePoint software is really two different products:
Windows SharePoint Services is a free download for Windows Server. In the latest version, known as WSS v3, collaborative web sites templates include basic blog and wiki services along with list templates for Image Libraries, Document Libraries, Contact lists, Calendars, Tasks and much more.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or MOSS for short is built on Windows SharePoint Services. As a member of the Office Server product platform, it leverages the Microsoft Office client software to provide content on the web. Integration with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access and InfoPath provide rich web content from familiar content creation tools.
Why is it so popular
File Sharing
SharePoint originally became popular because it was an easy way to share documents on the web. Many organizations that adopted SharePoint in the 2003 versions capitalized on the ability to upload documents to Document Libaries and share those documents with others.
Company Extranets
One great example of this web based sharing, is a company extranet where users are not all in one location or authentication domain. Using form based authentication, accounts can be created for people across physical and company boundaries. By allowing one place for shared documents around a task rather than a corporate entity, SharePoint goes way beyond the common file share.
Content Management
There are plenty of other Content Management Systems, but MOSS incorporated the functionality of the previously name Microsoft Content Management System which itself often cost more than MOSS alone.
Search Search is greatly improved in SharePoint 2007 technologies. Search results are security trimmed, relevant and performant unlike the previous 2003 version. Bad search in SharePoint 2003 products lead to a lot of dissatisfaction with the product.
what is sharepoint
Sharepoint is really two different technologies: Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS). WSS is free and it comes with Windows Server 2003. MOSS isn't free.
WSS provides lots of out of the box functionality for managing documents and projects online. It manages documents in "document libraries." These are folders with permissions and different views of your documents. Projects, tasks, issues, or any tabular data, is managed in lists. Lists are similar to document libraries. They have permissions and views as well. It provides some simple search as well.
MOSS provides a better search (it's supposed to at least). It also has more publishing capabilities (WSS doesn't). And you have more control over page layouts. It's meant more for internet style sites while WSS is more for intranet sites.
and why is it popular?
WSS is popular partly because its free and partly because it just does so much out of the box. You can solve many common office requests with WSS. Stuff like issue trackers, project management and document management are trivial in WSS. That said, its a jack of all trades - good at many, master of none.
MOSS is probably less popular because its not free and having used it for a year, I don't see as much value in it as WSS. Search isn't that great. It does do a good job of creating a company directory.
I've been working with SharePoint since v.1 and I could tell you that SharePoint is a:
Document management server
Web content management server
Portal solution
Search engine
List-based repository
Collaboration site
Replacement for file shares
etc etc...
...but if I have to summarize in one sentence what SharePoint is I would say:
Sharepoint is Microsoft's Web OS.
That's real the secret of its success. Many people imagined the Web OS as something like these. A Web OS is not something that is meant to look like a desktop OS. A Web OS should be a WEB PLATFORM in which all sort of applications can be built on and users are able to collaborate with.
Think of SharePoint as the 2.0-era version of Windows :-)
Previous answers describe what sharepoint is, but don't do a good job describing why it's popular. Yes, it gives you all that neat doc-management stuff out of the box. Yes, it integrates tightly with Office.
The OOB features are 1/10th of the whole story. Sharepoint exposes a comprehensive .Net object model that lets you customize the thing to your hearts content. People are coding amazing things with MOSS 2007. With the object model, you can build and customize sites via code, in response to external events. You can write custom "web-parts" (controls hosted on special pages) that consume both internal (sharepoint) and external data.
Check out Sharepoint Blogs to see what people are doing with it.
Very good points so far but I'll try my best to add something. :)
SharePoint is not just 2 technologies. It is a set of products and technologies brought together by Microsoft into one immense product that comes in 2 flavors. The 2 flavors are Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). MOSS does come in standard and enterprise.
[Some of the technologies used in SharePoint: Windows Workflow Foundation, ASP.NET, Web Parts, XML (included XPath, XSLT, etc), SQL, Web Services - to name a few I can think of off the top of my head]
No matter the version you choose, SharePoint allows for web-based capabilities to allow users to create, organize, distribute, and maintain information. Because of this, the most common uses for SharePoint sites are intranets and project/team sites.
SharePoint also has incredible possibilities as an application platform. Looking at the web part and workflow pieces alone you can begin to realize the potential. For example, automation of authorization processes within an organization can quickly be developed without any code using SharePoint Designer. (FYI: more complex workflows would require Visual Studio but many simple workflows can be designed using the point and click functionality of SharePoint Designer)
While MOSS only extends upon the WSS, it does add a large amount of functionality that can be very important and useful to a business. Some of the more important features available in MOSS and not in WSS are: records management, document retention and auditing policies, browser based forms (InfoPath forms without installing InfoPath on client machine), and some of the business intelligence capabilities. Amazingly we're seeing interest in the social networking features of MOSS too. (easy to read list of features not in WSS that MOSS has)
Why is SharePoint used? I was doing some research not to long ago on this exact subject and I found a research study that cited 5 key benefits:
Ease of information access
Streamlined internal communication
Increased end-user productivity
Optimized document management practices
IT time savings
Sorry if that turned into a bit of a ramble.
It's a collaboration website. All of the members on a team can update a single calendar and upload shared documents to a single repository.
I think in this case Wikipedia have it right
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is the basic part of Microsoft SharePoint, offering collaboration and document management functionality by means of web portals, by providing a centralized repository for shared documents, as well as browser-based management and administration of them. It allows creation of Document libraries, which are collections of files that can be shared for collaborative editing. SharePoint provides access control and revision control for documents in a library.
In a nutshell Sharepoint is all about corporative management and collaboration features. Your company have a Windows 2003 server? Here you go. WSS 3.0 is here up and running.
SharePoint is the reason I'm considering taking advantage of a suicide booth.
In all seriousness, the rest of the answers are spot on. The differences between WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 commonly trip people up ("why pay for MOSS when WSS is free?" for example). SharePoint is a very complex and rich product that is integrated into other Microsoft applications, like Project Server 2007 and Team Foundation Server.
Why should you care about it? It depends. There are quite a few opportunities out there for experienced SharePoint developers and administrators. It can very quickly become the singular focus of your career if you decide to put a lot of effort into learning it.
Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) is a combination of two previous products, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Content Management System.
It has a large number of features out of the box that are very desirable for any single system, including hosting files with customisable metadata. Page and file publishing that is enabled for end users, excellent search... the list goes on.
Essentially it is designed to enhance and organisations collaboration activities across the entire enterprise, leveraging the organistations existing Office application to create an enterprise system.
Sharepoint, MS OFFICE proxy circa 2003...
remember when you emailed a copy of that word doc out to the whole company, that's what sharepoint is for, but apparently you missed the introductory gotomeeting training course.