One of the most useful components of SharePoint has to be document management. Using SharePoint for document management can not only streamline your business and increase productivity; it can do so in an especially cost-effective way.

First, let’s take a look at what exactly SharePoint can do in terms of document management. SharePoint allows you to:

•    Store, organize and find your organization’s documents.
•    Guarantee that a document is consistent from one user to the next.
•    Manage the meta data for your documents.
•    Protect documents from unauthorized use.
•    Maintain specific business practices and workflows for your document management.

When you use SharePoint for document management, you create a “Document Center site.” [The Document Center is not available in WSS 3.0, but WSS 3.0 can be customized for similar features]. SharePoint (MOSS) includes a template for this type of site. This kind of site is optimized for creating, accessing and keeping high amounts of documents.
These sites offer users a number of document management features, including document versioning and required check-out, both of which help to insure the integrity of a given document. These features insure that team members don’t accidentally overwrite the work of someone else.

SharePoint also lets you utilize content types. Content types are groups of settings that can be used over and over again for specific types of documents. Content types let you organize and manage specific types of documents in a uniform way all across your organization. For example, you can create a content type that relates to product information, or one that relates to specific procedures to be followed within your organization.

Using document metadata in SharePoint is just another way of being able to locate specific documents and to be sure you’ve got the most accurate and current version of that document. When you create, edit or even open a document in SharePoint, you can edit the server properties in the Document Information Panel.

In addition, SharePoint integrates the metadata created by Microsoft Office applications, storing that on the SharePoint server as well.

SharePoint also helps to insure that your document management is secure. It provides you several different methods for protecting your documents from unauthorized use. For example, you can apply IRM (Information Rights Management) to help protect your entire document library. The IRM allows you to set limits on what specific actions users will be allowed to take when they access, or try to access, files from SharePoint. Using IRM, you can enforce your company’s policies that relate to controlling proprietary and/or confidential documents, data and information.

There are other layers of security that SharePoint provides, as well. You can sue SharePoint to prevent people from being able to access a document that is in the draft process, using major and minor versions of the documents. IN addition, you can also set up permissions on specific folders, individual documents or even list items.

Finally, SharePoint allows you to manage your document workflows effectively. From the creation of a document through the review, approval and signature processes, SharePoint tracks and manages the document’s life cycle for you.
If you need a document management solution, SharePoint is definitely worth a look.

SharePoint and Google Wave are two products that overlap in their stated purposes. While SharePoint has a much longer and more established history, as well as a larger user base, there has been speculation that Google Wave may give SharePoint a serious challenge. It can be worth taking a few minutes to look at each of these applications, and compare how exactly one compares with the other.
It’s important, first, to understand what SharePoint is and what it can do. SharePoint is a collaboration and communications platform that utilizes many different Microsoft technologies, integrating technologies such as Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office applications. SharePoint allows organizations to create sites that group information and documents together so that users can share information in a secure and efficient way. SharePoint also has a number of other features and abilities, from things like version management to custom site design.
Google Wave also is a collaboration tool. Google Wave combines several different web-based concepts and puts them together into a specific product and platform. It combines email, instant messaging, wikis and blogs. It allows users to have real-time messaging conversations, and to store those conversations.
However, Google Wave isn’t, and doesn’t pretend to be, a complete and full replacement for SharePoint. Google Wave, in the most basic sense, isn’t really a full-fledged, feature-rich collaboration platform. Google Wave, instead, is more of an email client with many interesting, useful and new features that haven’t been seen in email previously. It is an exciting and innovative email client, to be sure, but it doesn’t offer the versatility that SharePoint offers.
In many ways, it isn’t entirely appropriate to compare SharePoint and Google Wave. Instead, Google Wave more realistically compares to Microsoft Outlook. Google Wave doesn’t include things like document management, content management, dashboards, workflow management and data integration. SharePoint does include all of those things, and those features are largely what defines SharePoint as a collaboration platform.
To truly compare SharePoint and Google Wave, Google would have to take a step back and integrate several of their products. For example, if Google were to integrate their Google Wave product along with their calendaring application, Google Sites and Google Gears, they would come close to having a true collaboration management platform.
There is some speculation that Google Wave will, eventually, replace Gmail as a web-based email application. In contrast, SharePoint doesn’t have those sorts of ambitions. SharePoint knows what it does best, and sticks to those core competencies.

SharePoint Designer allows you to take the data from many different sources across your business and incorporate them into one convenient place. From a product database your customers can use when ordering products and services to developing workflows, SharePoint Designer is one of the most versatile tools your business can have.

Here are some tips for using SharePoint Designer in your business:

• Don’t underestimate the value of using control levels. By figuring out what level of control each team member needs, you can choose what commands in SharePoint Designer that the user will be able to access, and thereby what kinds of changes they can make to a SharePoint Site. This increases not only the security of your site, but the integrity of your data, as well.

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• Make good use of the SharePoint Designer site performance reports. These reports provide you with all of the key information you need, such as how many people visit the site, traffic trends and sources, which pages are accessed most frequently, and how documents are being used in your workflow process. In addition, these reports can tell you when you have site problems, like broken links or slow pages.

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• Data Views are invaluable to your company. A data view lets you collect data from all over - whether it is database queries, web services or document libraries. Creating useful Data Views and sharing them with team members will greatly increase your effeciency.

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• From time to time, Microsoft will discover a bug or security problem with SharePoint designer. Keeping SharePoint Designer up to date is critical. Fortunately, Windows Update will check for updates to SharePoint Designer. Keep Windows updated, and your SharePoint will be updated, as well.

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• A customized My Places bar is one of the most useful tools you will have in SharePoint Designer. Make sure to place your most frequently uses shortcuts in the My Places bar, and regularly review My Places to see if there are shortcuts you don’t need.

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• Master Pages are invaluable. SharePoint Designer allows you to create new content pages directly from a pre-existing master page. This insures that the new page has the same look and feel as the master page. When you do create a content page from a master page, though, recognize that the content regions will be unable to be edited by default. You will need to locate the region you want to be able to edit and then change settings to make it editable.

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• Microsoft offers a series of SharePoint Designer training videos, which you can find at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA102632321033.aspx. These videos provide you with examples of how to build composite applications and workflows. They also take you through the features of SharePoint Designer is a logical and easily understood fashion.

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• SharePoint Designer is one of the most powerful and versatile applications available. Making the most of it means, in many cases, just exploring its capabilities, and looking at how others have done it in the past. Don’t be afraid to talk to other users about how they’re using SharePoint, and learn from them.

Thanks

Kashif Saleem

If you haven’t already heard about the Wave (not the ocean wave but “Google’s Wave”) then have a look at this video

Google Wave combines the functionality of LinkedIn, messenger, emails, doc management system, face book. It looks great on the video. For developers it’s a good opportunities to start building applications (pretty much like iphone apps). So if you already have an Iphone app you should consider building something for Wave.
Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group said, “Wave represents an effort to displace Microsoft entirely, but has a higher probability of failing completely and is also consistent with Google’s strategy with apps.” See full article by Jennifer LeClaire

How does Google compete with SharePoint, only time will tell - but it seems like Wave is more for internet users then for intranet users. Wave is very user friendly and pretty but SharePoint is tidy in a sense that you can organize documents in a folder while wave is more focused on information flow.

There are lots of questions and issues regarding Wave that needs answering eg
•    What are the security policies and how to enforce them in Wave?
•    How a company implement Wave?
•    Can businesses have local deployment?

From my experience companies and business are reluctant to put information on the net. It will take businesses a long time to adapt technologies like wave. People are still struggling to adapt SharePoint and trying to get rid of “Reply All”, CC and BCC.

So time will tell how this ‘Wave’ of technology is going to affect us… Hopefully in a productive way.

Short Answer - YES?

3 important reasons

1) Differentiation and Edge - MCTS provides differentiation to businesses, gives you an edge over your competition and builds trust with your clients

2) Technical Resources - You can get technical resources from MCP website, this will also helps you provide user training and trouble shooting.

3) Be part of the Microsoft community - You will be a part of  Microsoft community and can always ask someone from the Microsoft community for advice and help.

A BIG WORD OF ADVICE

Even though its great to have your certification there is nothing that beats hands on experience. So if you are developer or a consultant, the certification will make it easier for you to convince clients or employers to hire you. However if you perform poorly due to your technical or non-technical skills then the certification wont protect you from dissatisfied clients. You can’t tell your boss, “Oooops!!! I stufff up, but I have MCTS”.

So please be careful and don’t get over confident.

Learn, Practice, Teach and Prosper.

Kashif

Phone : 08 9278 2786

Email me at info@saleem.com.au

Websites: www.saleem.com.au | www.sharepointperth.com

I was having problems while installing SRS (SQL Server Reporting Services). It was really really frustrating.

This is the error I was getting
“Access to the path ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer\RSReportServer.config’ is denied”.

See picture below

Click here to see the error

The solution is very simple (i found it googling)
Give networking service account the access - how?

Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer

Select rsReportServer.config file grant Network Service access to the file  (Simple!!!)

See pic below

How to fix the error

Make sure to “Restart IIS” oh and notify your users before restarting….

Hardware Requirements:

The following is the recommended hardware requirements (from Microsoft) for deploying Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, including the deployment of Windows Internal Database, for a stand-alone installation.

Processor: Dual processors that are each 3 GHz or faster
RAM: 2 GB
Disk: NTFS file system–formatted partition with 3 GB of free space plus adequate free space for your Web sites
Drive: DVD drive or the source copied to a local or network-accessible drive
Display: 1024 × 768 or higher resolution monitor
Network: 56 Kbps or faster connection between client computers and server

Software Requirements:

1) Windows Server 2003 with SP1 or later.
2) Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later (for administration)
3) Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0, including:
     a) Common files
     b) WWW
     c) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
4) You must have IIS 7.0 (for Windows 2008 server)
5) Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0

You can download the .NET Framework version 3.5 from Microsoft website http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=333325fd-ae52-4e35-b531-508d977d32a6&displaylang=en

1 ) Web application: Any Windows Internet Information Services website that is in the SharePoint
2 ) Top-level site: A site that is at the top of a site and/or other sub sites
3 ) Site collection: Collection of sites
4 ) Web Part: Components that display contents on a page
5 ) Web Part Zone - Container for Web Parts.
6 ) Page - Container for Web Part zones, and Web Parts.
7 ) Site - Container for child sites, pages, and content such as lists and document libraries.
8 ) Farm - Installation of one or more servers.

Click here to download thsharepointe SharePoint structure PDF

There are three such default SharePoint groups: Team Site Members, Team Site Owners, and Team Site Visitors. If you click on People and Groups and then click on More you will see the following figure

SharePoint User Groups

These groups have different level of permissions

• Contribute which allows you to add, update, and delete (and read)
• Full Control which allows you to do almost anything
• Read which allows you to have read-only access

Tip: Use groups to give access to the users instead of individuals as this will avoid extra hassles later on.