Is there any sort of "out of the box" system within SharePoint (i.e. MOSS 2007) that is useful for tracking/managing permissions. We've got a relatively small installation, but I can easily see special permissions for special users/sites getting out of hand. I'm hoping there's something pre-baked into SharePoint that will help with this, but if there is, I don't know where.
If this isn't available from SharePoint, are there any 3rd party tools people would recommend?
If anyone is curious, I ended up using SharePoint SUSHI for this. It has some useful "security reports" that met my needs. There's a few other goodies included as well. The best part of it all is that it's FREE. :-)
Unfortunately, I haven't found anything that great out of the box in SharePoint for managing or tracking user permissions. You always have an opportunity for customizations. There are some third party tools, however. The best tool I've found for simple management of SharePoint is the Universal SharePoint Manager v2007.
This app has some stellar tools for analyzing security and information about permissions.
Here's a link directly to the feature that might interest you the most: http://www.idevfactory.com/products/uspm2007/features/sharepoint%20user%20site%20security%20analyzer.aspx
I haven't used the USPM myself. I have used the SWAT tool which has a subset of features. iDevFactory does do a good job with their apps and I've found that it's fairly decent ant getting what you want.
Good luck!
Here is a free option that is getting good reviews http://www.codeplex.com/AccessChecker
The SharePoint Administration Toolkit contains a permission tool that shows the effective permissions for a user or group. Becky Bertram has a blog post about this.
See information for downloading it on the SharePoint Team Blog.
Related
I'm looking for a page that provides a good, fairly basic and brief, end-user targeted overview of the capabilities of Sharepoint 2010, and another that does the same for Sharepoint 2013. I searched microsoft.com and couldn't really find much. Most of what I found was based on the assumption that the reader was familiar with Sharepoint already and was upgrading from an older version. I was hoping to find something for folks new to Sharepoint, checking it out for the very first time. Something kind of like a product info sheet that you'd see in a trade show booth, maybe.
Any pointers to something along these lines would be appreciated.
Background:
I work for a large university, and we offer Google Apps, Box, and Sharepoint (2010 now, 2013 soon) as options to support collaborative projects. I'm trying to help our user community understand the different capabilities of and optimal use cases for each tool. I've found good overview material for Box and Google Apps, but I'm getting stuck finding this for Sharepoint. And -- as luck would have it -- our users tend to be the least familiar with Sharepoint.
It's often hard to find decent information about SharePoint on the internet.. ;)
Maybe some of these links will help, but most probably you have already seen them all:
http://www.slideshare.net/pointbeyond/comparison-webinar3
http://sharepointpromag.com/blog/sharepoint-2010-vs-sharepoint-2013-small-step-or-big-jump
http://www.rharbridge.com/?page_id=966 [from a technical point of view]
http://www.fpweb.net/sharepoint-server-2013/features/end-user/
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/sharepoint-2013-social-features-highlights-019624.php
http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/sharepoint/sharepoint-2013-overview-collaboration-software-features-FX103789323.aspx [collaboration feature overview - and it's official! ;)]
JFYI: there are also a couple of frameworks and platforms available which improve the social capabilities, for example MatchPoint Snow is one I have heard of.
Update:
Ok, if you're willing to actually convince people to use SharePoint, try following query - I think there are some good results there (but maybe there also too tech-targeted): https://www.google.ch/#q=why%20should%20i%20use%20sharepoint
For example:
http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/whitepaper/6-things-every-manager-should-know-about-microsoft-sharepoint
http://www.degdigital.com/blog/why-sharepoint-2013-considerations-for-your-platform-selection/
http://newsletter.stc-carolina.org/How+to+Encourage+Good+Use+of+SharePoint
I need to read-up on SharePoint security. Can anyone recommend where to start? The areas I need to look into are:
Security of remote clients which use SharePoint web services (SOAP or RESTful).
Security of data sitting on SharePoint.
Authentication of users.
User permissions.
At the moment, I'm unsure of where to start or even what to Google. I guess a check-list of things to read up on would great.
MSDN and technet are very good resources. Search both for "SharePoint Security" and you will find all kinds of things down different tracks like Developer, ITPro.
Try this for a starting point: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee518672
Or just start digging here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256(v=office.12).aspx
SharePoint is really just an application built on top of 3 main technologies:
ASP.net web side
SQL Server database
Windows operating system
You should start with a basic understanding of these 3 technologies.
You can then go on to how SharePoint handles security within SharePoint.
In addition to the many useful articles on Microsoft TechNet, you should take a look at the SharePoint blog at TITUS. I don't mean this reply to be as self-serving as it sounds, but the TITUS blog at http://www.titus.com/blog is focussed on SharePoint security. There are a number of (non-product related) articles and papers there that might be helpful, which educate on SharePoint security, mostly from a user permissioning, authentication and authorization perspective. As well, check out the article titled "Effectively Managing Permissions in Microsoft SharePoint 2010" (written by me) at the DIWUG eMagazine site: http://www.diwug.nl/e-magazines/Pages/default.aspx. Again, its focussed on permission management, especially in large libraries and lists in SharePoint (impact on performance, etc). Hope this helps.
-Antonio
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
This question already has answers here:
Developer Documentation: Sharepoint Document Management vs. ScrewTurn Wiki [closed]
(11 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Duplicate
Developer Documentation: Sharepoint Document Management vs. ScrewTurn Wiki
I have been tasked with picking a wiki tool for a development organization, comprised of several different development teams. Sharepoint is installed and upper management would prefer this to be used, but in the past it has only used when PMs are forced to use it. None of the developers will update it with content that needs to be shared. I developed in Sharepoint and I liked it, so I have nothing against it. But for this to work I need something I can get everyone using, so Sharepoint will not work.
Step one is to convince management why Sharepoint will not work. We need the typical wiki features:
WYSIWYG, Clean interface, Easy to use, Attach Files to pages, Support for groups of users, Open source, Hosted Locally. (Maybe others I am not considering now?)
Can anyone provide a list of objective reasons why Sharepoint is not the solution we can use to take our first step?
There are many such products out there so step 2 should be easier.
SharePoint is the exact opposite of a wiki: A wiki is lightweight, easy to use, obvious, quick, doesn't get in the way.
To elaborate: A wiki allows your to jot down an idea quickly and moving details to the next page. In SP, people start to create processes, editing rights, workflows.
Wikis are designed to not get in the way. SP is designed to prevent you from doing "something bad"; whatever that might be. Wikis are driven by the idea that brainstorming works in open space while SP is driven by FUD: Who can see this information? Can it be used against me? How can I prevent someone to see/edit something?
Note: This is not a critique of SP per se; it's just how it used in most organizations. If you look at the security settings and edit rights, you sometimes feel like the workers of the company must all have been inmates in some high-profile prison (or should be).
I have absolutely no sharepoint-foo at all, but the sharepoint setup by IT at my employer has a wiki that we can use for documentation. Wouldn't that be good enough? Works ok-ish in firefox on mac, so I'm a happy camper.
SharePoint is best when using many of it's features (eg DM, WCM, workflow, collaberation etc) - you get a lot of it's benefits from the synergy of using all these things together with a common interface.
In any one area though, it's far from the 'best of breed' application - so, if you want a product for a specific job (eg a wiki), SharePoint isn't the most fully-featured/easy-to-use/delete-as-applicable product to be using - there will be products that do that (single) job far better.
You could also try looking at this question to see others experiences with SharePoint wiki's
I have used MediaWiki, Instiki and Sharepoint. Sharepoint does not work correctly with firefox on purpose. Its wiki functionality is an after thought. All kinds of additional features nobody use. But it does appeal to managers.
Instiki can be up and running in less than a minute and MediaWiki has everything you could need. Sharepoint annoyed most people on our team so nobody wanted to use it which meant a lot of knowledge was lost.
Which version of SharePoint are you using WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 includes both wiki and blog functionality.
Although the SharePoint wiki isn't as feature-rich as most, the fact is that if your developers would not update a SharePoint wiki, chances are that they would not update any other kind, either.
I recommend creating a SharePoint wiki, and then actually reading the starting page, where it gives the definition of wikiwiki. I recommend only using a wiki (of any kind) for documents that can be written quickly, so that developers can get back to developing as soon as possible. Let the structure and accuracy grow over time. Just get the facts into the wiki quickly.
Wikis offer workflows, Document management and more too. I would disagree with those who say you can't do this in a wiki. Check out Confluence by Atlassian
...what are the essential components(files required) for a "Feature"..
and can anyone point to any best practice tutorials on creating features (using the "12 hive")...
sharepoint dev is new to me, and im just looking for best practice development.
tutorial/screencasts will be a bonus
thanks
A major headache, grounds for divorce, plausible excuse for murder, etc...
But actually the answer is a lot more complicated. The quick answer is it's a unit of deployment that generally includes content such as .aspx application pages, list schemas, customizations expressed in CAML (potentially huge XML files without much documentation.)
JD's suggestion for Ted Pattison's book is a good one but I suggest picking up a few books because you'll usually find something in one that you don't find in another and it will help you to see what is required by convention and what is just a particular author's preference.
You will really need to comb a lot of different sources and plan on spending a considerable amount of time with SharePoint before becoming comfortable with these concepts.
Check out the SharePoint Patterns and Practices information here and here
I also highly recommend picking up a copy of Ted Pattisons book Inside SharePoint Windows Services 3.0
These should be required reading for noob SharePoint developers. Good luck on your SharePoint journey.
This webcast about how to add social networking features to Sharepoint might be helpful.
And there's lots of videos here, some free and some not.
The minimum you need is feature.xml, and elements.xml if you want the feature to actually do something. I recommend the templates from WSPBuilder as a starting point.