SharePoint Server 2007 Unleashed

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. What a mouthful. And what a handful. First, let's take care of the mouthful—the product is often referred to as SharePoint Server, just SharePoint, or MOSS. I'll refer to it as SharePoint Server or SharePoint Server 2007. As for the handful, SharePoint Server addresses an exceptionally broad range of business scenarios by delivering capabilities in six categories: Portal, Enterprise Search, Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Process, and Content Management.

Whether you're new to SharePoint Server and want to learn what business value it offers your organization, or you've experienced earlier versions of SharePoint Server and want to see what 2007 brings, I'd like to guide you on a journey into SharePoint Server 2007 through seven "experiences":

1. Obtain and install SharePoint Server 2007.
2. Configure the top-level site.
3. Create a departmental site.
4. Create a document library.
5. Subscribe to changes in the library by using RSS.
6. Take the library offline through Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 integration.
7. Generate a repository for standard Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 slides.

However, before we dive in, let's get a quick overview of SharePoint technology.

What Is SharePoint Server 2007?
SharePoint Server 2007 is a server product that's part of Microsoft Office System 2007. It sits on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, which I examined last month in "Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Out of the Box," InstantDoc ID 94240. SharePoint Server leverages Windows SharePoint Services 3.0's plumbing and adds its own significant functionality. Figure 1 shows some of SharePoint Server's Web application features. Some of these features—such as forms services, Excel Services, and the Business Data Catalog—are exclusive to the Enterprise version. The rest are included in the Standard version.

As you approach SharePoint Server, you might find, as I did, that its full capabilities are somewhat mind-blowing. I had to work with SharePoint Server piece by piece, getting acquainted with its features gradually. That's why I've created these "experiences"—to help you learn as we create our SharePoint Server sandbox for a fictional organization, WINDOMAIN.com.

Experience 1: obtaining and Installing SharePoint Server 2007
The most important SharePoint Server– related URL for you to know is http://office.microsoft.com/sharepointserver. This URL will get you to the SharePoint Server Web page, from which you can locate documentation, support, and (as of this writing), a downloadable trial of both the Standard and Enterprise editions of SharePoint Server 2007.

Download the trial version of SharePoint Server, as well as Microsoft.NET Framework 3.0, which you can access from the .NET Framework page at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/netframework. I recommend using a "clean" server for your sandbox, to eliminate any idiosyncrasies that might otherwise cause problems. Log on to your soon-to-be SharePoint Server system with a user account that's not the Administrator account but that is a member of the Administrators group. The account you use to install SharePoint Server becomes the default "owner" of the site collection and its sites.

Install .NET Framework 3.0, then install SharePoint Server. There's no rocket science to either of the installations. The only choice you need to make is the type of SharePoint Server installation. For our purposes, choose Basic installation. This installation takes care of the configuration of the server farm, the server, the applications, and the shared services. However, for a production installation, you'll more likely choose the Advanced installation so that you can manually configure the components and set up your single server in anticipation of eventually increasing to a farm of multiple servers. With the Basic installation, the standalone server can't later become part of a multiserver farm.

When installation has completed, you'll be prompted to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. If you don't run it now, you can launch the wizard from the Administrative Tools folder on the SharePoint server. The wizard performs a series of tasks depending on the type of installation you've performed. When the wizard finishes, it informs you of your next step.

In the Administrative Tools folder of your SharePoint Server system, open the SharePoint Central Administration application. The SharePoint Central Administration Web page will appear. This is where you'll perform most of the administration of SharePoint Server. Make a note of the URL for the site—it will be your server name with a randomly assigned port number, such as http://wss01.windomain.com:22222. Now you can open the same site from any machine on the network by using the full URL that includes the port. If you're prompted to authenticate, use the account you used when installing SharePoint Server, in the form DOMAIN\username. You'll need to add the Central Administration Web site to your Trusted Sites zone to ensure proper functionality. Feel free to poke around and see what has been configured, but don't change anything just yet—the Basic installation already configured what was needed at this point.

Experience 2: Configuring the Top-Level Site
Open the SharePoint Server site by using the URL http://servername (e.g., http:// wss01). The default home page appears, which you can see in Figure 2.

The Basic installation you performed created a site collection. A site collection contains one or more sites, each of which can inherit security policies, settings, templates, and user and group definitions. In many production implementations of SharePoint Server, one site collection will suffice. You'll typically have a top-level intranet portal with-in which you'll create sites for departments, functions, teams, or projects.

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