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The SharePoint Portal Server is a powerful end-to-end solution for document management, custom portal development, and aggregating content from multiple sources into a single location. The Administrator's Guide to SharePoint Portal Server 2001 is a comprehensive manual for the planning, design, deployment, and management of Microsoft's corporate information portal solution. Bill English, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, takes technical and nontechnical administrators under the hood, explaining everything from basic concepts to advanced customization techniques.
The book begins by outlining the challenges of knowledge and document management and showing how the SharePoint Portal Server can be used to address them. Chapters detail the server's architecture, including the index and Web-store tools, and examine Microsoft's Digital Dashboard and Web Parts, the core components of a powerful customized corporate portal. Readers walk through the entire server life cycle: the identification of user needs, capacity planning, installation, and configuration. Each task of SharePoint administration is systematically described and demonstrated. The Administrator's Guide to SharePoint Portal Server 2001 concludes with a rundown of third-party tools and resources for extending SharePoint.
Readers will gain an understanding of:
Any IT professional evaluating, planning for, installing, or managing Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server 2001 will find this thorough examination an invaluable guide.
Managing SharePoint Portal Server's Digital Dashboard
(NOTE: Each chapter concludes with a Summary.)
Preface.
I. INTRODUCTION AND ARCHITECTURE.
1. SharePoint Portal Server Overview.Document Management in a Knowledge Management Solution.
The Organizational Effects of Poor Document Management.
Introduction to SharePoint Portal Server.
How SPS Meets DM and KM Needs.
The Development Environment in SharePoint Portal Server.
2. SharePoint Portal Server 2001 Concepts and Architecture.Integration with Exchange 2000 Server.
The SharePoint Architecture.
The Web Storage System Architecture.
SharePoint Portal Server Folder Structure.
3. Managing the Digital Dashboard.Digital Dashboard Terminology.
Customizing the Digital Dashboard.
Creating New Web Parts.
The Resource Kit and the Digital Dashboard.
II. PLANNING AND INSTALLATION.
4. Planning for SharePoint Portal Server 2001.Planning Your SharePoint Portal Server Deployment.
The Big Picture: Deployment Scenarios.
Capacity Planning Your SharePoint Portal Servers.
Benchmark Numbers Published by Microsoft.
Improving the Performance of the Dashboard Site.
Tuning the ASP Engine.
Planning and Implementing SharePoint Portal Server across the Internet.
Tuning the Web Storage System.
5. Installing SharePoint Portal Server 2001.Planning for the SharePoint Installation.
Installing SharePoint Portal Server.
Installing the SPS Client.
Server Updates When SPS Is Installed.
The SPS Web Site.
Troubleshooting Failed Installations.
III. ADMINISTRATION.
6. Working with Documents and Document Folders.Managing Document Folders.
Administering Documents and Document Versioning.
Using Categories to Find Documents.
Folder Properties and Inheritance.
Creating and Managing Document Profiles.
Property Promotion and Demotion.
Troubleshooting Tips.
7. Managing the Workspace and Search Settings.The Search and Index Service Architecture.
Day-to-Day Workspace Management.
Configuring and Managing Microsoft Search.
Propagating an Index between Workspaces.
Searching for Content Using the Search Web Parts.
8. Publishing, Approving, and Categorizing Documents.Planning for Categories.
Creating Categories.
Configuring and Managing Categories.
Publishing and Approving Documents.
Security Roles in SharePoint Portal Server.
The Publishing Process.
9. Importing and Managing External Information.The Gatherer Process.
Creating Content Sources in SharePoint Portal Server.
Managing Content Sources in SharePoint Portal Server.
Configuring Search Scopes.
Security and Content Sources.
Working with IFilters.
Working with Protocol Handlers.
Working with Plug-ins.
Crawling Metadata in External Documents.
Troubleshooting Content Sources.
IV. ADVANCED ADMINISTRATION.
10. Advanced Management of SharePoint Portal.Server 2001.
Understanding the SharePoint Portal Server Microsoft Management Console.
Moving Databases.
Editing Important Files.
Customizing the Portal Content.
11. Backup and Recovery of SharePoint Portal.Server 2001.
The msdmback.vbs Utility.
Integrity Checker for an SPS Workspace.
Workspace Exporting, Importing, and Archiving.
Troubleshooting.
12. Monitoring SharePoint Portal Server 2001.Developing Monitoring Policies.
Microsoft Operations Manager.
Overseeing Overall Server Health.
Monitoring the Major Processes of SharePoint Portal Server.
Monitoring the Web Storage System.
Getting All Stressed Out with SharePoint Portal Server.
13. Securing SharePoint Portal Server 2001.General Network Security Principles.
Microsoft and Security.
Understanding Role-Based Security: The Architecture of Security in SPS.
Working with Access Accounts.
Configuring Portal Security.
Securing Internet Information Services.
Securing External Content.
14. Deploying SharePoint Portal Server 2001 in the Enterprise.Planning an Enterprise-Wide Deployment. Deployment Scenarios.
Duplicating a Master SharePoint Portal Server across the Enterprise.
Rapid Portal Deployment.
15. Extending the Functionality of SharePoint Portal.Server 2001.
Resource Kit Tools.
Third-Party Software to Extend SharePoint's Functionality.
Appendix Brief XML Tutorial.I was first introduced to SharePoint Portal at the beta presentation of the Microsoft Official Curriculum course 2095 in February, 2001, taught by one of the technical editors for this book, Goga Kukrika. I remember being excited about what this product could do and how it would enjoy a wide install base. My excitement remains and I think that time will prove that this product will be widely installed and heavily used.
SharePoint Portal Server is both simple and complex. While it does have a simple front end for your non-technical users, under the hood, its very complex. In this book, I hope to illustrate both the ease of using SharePoint Portal Server, the depth of this product (especially in its architecture) and the current gotchas that I hope will be resolved in future revisions.
When this product was first developed (over a two-plus year period), it was written by developers who were under the larger .NET server umbrella. Since its release, it has been moved under the Office group's management. This means, among other things, that SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Team Services will meld into a single product in the coming releases.
Some have suggested that, over time, you'll see public folder functionality be trimmed and then removed from Exchange 2000 Server and that functionality placed into SharePoint Portal Server. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. But I think that it is certain that SharePoint Portal Server is here to stay and will mature as a product over the next five years.
I think I've been honest about my thoughts on SharePoint Portal Server. I've stated at times that this or that feature is a great feature and in some cases, is a compelling reason to purchase the product. In other places, however, I've expressed my less-than-positive thoughts on parts of this product. Overall, I'm hopeful that the negatives of this produce will be rectified in future releases and I think it will enjoy wide support in the market.
This book is not about programming in SharePoint Portal Server, though you will see some code presented where I felt it was appropriate. If you're an experienced developer, you'll probably find the code to be pretty elementary. Understand that I included what I thought would be helpful to the non-programmer-oriented administrator.Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are the most difficult to read. And frankly, they were the most difficult to write. In them, you'll find granular information that I felt was necessary for any SPS Administrator to understand in order to effectively administer SPS. Some of my editors felt the information was too detailed, but I find that many administrators can better troubleshoot a problem if they have good architectural information available to them.
This book is written for Coordinators and those who must administrator a SharePoint Portal Server. There are some server-level activities which belong to the Coordinator role, but in many environments, there will be a fairly non-technical person who is the Coordinator while the IT person will end up being responsible for the overall functionality of the SharePoint server.
Hence, I don't expect a non-technical Coordinator to be interested in reading the Capacity Planning or Monitoring chapters. However, I would expect a non-technical Coordinator to read up on the chapters more focused on the workspace and management of documents, categories and profiles. Therefore, this book will be of benefit to both the non-technical Coordinator as well as the technically oriented IT Administrator.
I've decided to try something new and make available a newsgroup that will be specific to the readers of this book. Simply point your newsreader client to snoopy.networknowledge.com and subscribe to the book.sharepointportalserver newsgroup. I will monitor this group regularly and will keep an up-to-date errata posted on the group that will list this book's corrections.
I view the existence of such as newsgroup as doing two very positive things. First, it gives us a chance to interact. Too often, authors are not available to their readers for interaction on their own book's contents and I feel that if a person is going to read and invest their own hard-earned money on my book, then I would like to be available to interact with them. Secondly, a well-developed errata from the first version of a book will mean that future editions and revisions will have even greater technical integrity and accuracy. It may sound crazy, but I've seen technical mistakes in one version carried over to the next version of a book without the author(s) or editor(s) catching it. Hard to believe, but its true.
Now, what I will not do in the newsgroup is try to answer situational questions about why something isn't working. I won't do newsgroup consulting, to coin a phrase. I will, however discuss concepts in the book and try to field questions about the material that you have questions on. There will probably be times that I'll need to find the answer to a question and, thus, all of us will learn and grown.
If you want help with a specific problem, then use the public newsgroups at news.microsoft.com. These groups exist for such a purpose and I do visit the SharePoint groups regularly and try to answer some questions there.
So, I hope to see you on my newsgroup. And if you'd like to learn more about my person and work, then please visit my web site at www.networknowledge.com. Remember that this is a marketing web site. I don't run a SharePoint-specific web site because others are doing a bang-up job at this and I don't see any reason to reinvent the wheel. Hence, here are a couple of great SharePoint-focused sights from which you might get additional information:
I would also suggest that if you are a Coordinator or Administrator of a SharePoint Portal Server, that you seriously consider sitting course 2095 at your local Microsoft Certified Technical Education Center. This three-day course will give you hands-on experience working with SharePoint Portal Server and will help you learn how to install and deploy this product. Also, if you don't know Active Directory very well, then take courses 1560, which is the Updating Support Skills from Windows NT Server to Windows 2000 Server and 2154, which is the Advanced course focused on Active Directory in Windows 2000 Server. These two courses will be essential in understanding Active Directory.
Thank you for purchasing this book. I hope you'll enjoy it and find it to be a great reference that helps you grow in your knowledge of and expertise with SharePoint Portal Server.
Bill English
February 2002
Maple Grove, Minnesota