Microsoft Sharepoint Interview Questions: Share Point Certification Review

Introduction

If you are a subscriber to the theory that The World is Flat then the genesis of this book should not come as a surprise to you. This book was born because there is an increasing number of people collaborating across international boundaries, and hence and increased demand for Microsoft SharePoint professionals worldwide. And also because we think that Sharepoint is an important piece of software. True, it is simple, but it can capture a very important work function and we believe it is a great tool for businesses. Sharepoint enables what I consider to be a very elegant and simple workflow system. In fact, at Equity Press we use Sharepoint for our publishing operation to gather, track, and collaborate on all of the various aspects of our book publishing business.

If you are a newcomer to the world of SharePoint – welcome. If you are an experienced user, we hope that this book serves as a handy guide, a quick reference, a cookbook that you can refer to from time to time to help you out on the job.

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint allows you to create custom views of the content management web site. This customization can be very simple or very complex, depending on the type and version of the product that is installed. In addition, Share Point has a powerful collaboration model that is tightly integrated with the Office 2003 suite.

The current version of Share Point is its seventh. Like most Microsoft software, version 3 was the version to gain rapid adoption. A recent article in the register indicated that Share Point Portal Server is Microsoft's fastest growing product, with 30 million licenses.

History of SharePoint

Microsoft's first portal application was called Digital Dashboard. This product introduced the concept of web parts; boxes of information on a page that represented a summary or overview of information. By assembling multiple parts on a page, each user could customize his view of the portal to contain the information that pertained to him. In theory, every visitor of the site could have different content at the same URL. However, the technology behind the Digital Dashboard was not up to the task, and it never made it out of the beta stage.

At the same time, Microsoft's Office group was working toward a collaboration solution. The need for many people to contribute to a single document or worksheet was growing. And these people were not necessarily working at the same location. The result was Share Point Team Services (STS), a web-based solution that allowed shared access to information and documents. STS also allowed end-users to make changes to the site via a web browser instead of requiring a development-oriented application.

The merging of the collaboration and aggregation functions lead to Share Point Portal Server 2001. Portal Server has been upgraded to run on the .Net framework and is now referred to as Share Point Products and Technologies. The Product is Share Point Portal Server 2003 (SPS) and the Technologies are Windows Share Point Services (WSS). A significant point about these two is that WSS is included with the Windows Server 2003 license. Any organization that is licensed for Windows Server 2003 can also host websites that are based on WSS.

Features of Share Point

In general, Share Point contains all of the features you would expect from a portal or collaboration tool:

Browser-based customization of pages.

Browser-based content administration.

Aggregation capabilities.

Document repository.

Message board.

Ad-hoc data storage.

E-mail notifications.

Announcements, event calendar and contact list.

A complete feature matrix that also indicates whether the feature is part of WSS or SPS can be found in the whitepaper Implementing Rich Collaboration Infrastructure using Windows Share Point Services and Share Point Portal Server 2003 on Microsoft's web site. (http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/evaluationoverview.asp).

Uses for Share Point

In addition to being the default intranet portal, there are many additional uses for Share Point. Microsoft has included pre-defined templates for Web sites to facilitate meetings, manage projects and create documents combined with the self-service site creating feature, teams can create and use a web site with minimal assistance from the Information Technology Department.

The Document Workspace template will allow a group to work on a document. The template combines a document repository with a task list and a links list. While using Word 2003, a user can have the document open and at the same time view the task or links list. Changes made to the task list are immediately visible to site visitors. And the document library allows versioning, so edits are not lost.

The Meeting Workspace template combines the agenda, attendee list and Outlook's calendar function. When sending a meeting request in Outlook 2003, a user can create a workspace on the server. The URL of the workspace is automatically included in the message and the attendees are added to the site. The materials required for the meeting can be centrally located, which is preferable for attendees who travel frequently.

The browser-based customization feature, combined with the ability to create ad-hoc lists, allows an advanced user to create a site for almost any purpose. A user group could host its meeting schedule, complete with handouts. A youth sport organization can post its schedule and roster. An individual can host a blog.

Question 1: Share Point Installation

We are having a problem with the installation of Share Point.

We have IIS set to Digest Authentication and the web configuration file has impersonate set to true and the authentication mode set to Windows.

Every time a user goes to the site, they are prompted for their window’s login details. They enter their network username and password and that gets them access to the site.

The user is already logged onto the network with