Part I
Collaborating with Team Sites
In this part . . .
In this part, I kick off your SharePoint 2010 exploration with foundational stuff, such as introducing team sites, explaining what they are and why you might want one, and setting up one. I also show you how to upload documents to SharePoint, use lists to manage documents and other kinds of content, and how to keep an eye on things that interest you by setting alerts on lists and libraries. Finally, I cover how you can use SharePoint Workspace to work offline with SharePoint content.
Chapter 1
Getting to Know Your Team Site
In This Chapter
Requesting a new team site and opening it in the browser
Participating in a team site
Changing your team site’s home page
One of the fundamental kinds of websites that SharePoint 2010 allows you to create is a team site. A team site is a SharePoint site that you can use to collaborate with your coworkers. If the team site is hosted in your company’s extranet or in the cloud by a public hosting service, such as Microsoft Office 365 SharePoint Online, you may even be able to collaborate with people outside your organization. In most cases, an administrator will create a team site for you.
Many kinds of teams can use a SharePoint team site to collaborate. For example:
Department members can use document libraries to upload document files and enter meetings in a team calendar.
Project members can use a team site home page to post announcements and track issues and risks.
Corporate communications can use a team site to store the documents and track the tasks required for preparing the company’s annual report.
You need to know your way around some of the basic features of a team site, which is exactly what I show you in this chapter.
Requesting Your Team Site
Most organizations have a process for requesting a team site. I’ve seen everything from the simple process in which you send an e-mail addressed to someone in your IT department to very detailed wizards that walk you through the site creation process. One company requires that you write a justification for why you want the team site and then submit prototypes.
Whatever you have to do to get your SharePoint 2010 team site, get one. At a minimum, you need to provide your SharePoint administrator with this information to get a team site:
The site name: The friendly caption that appears in the header of your site and in any site directory where your site may be listed.
The site template: The template determines what kind of site SharePoint makes for you. SharePoint includes dozens of predefined site templates. Your company may even create its custom site templates. Tell your administrator you want a team site, which is the most popular of all the SharePoint 2010 site templates.
The web address or URL: The unique location where your team site is hosted. In most organizations, all team sites are located off the same root web address. Some examples I’ve seen include
http://intranet.company.com/sites
http://portal/projectsites
http://sharepoint/sites
I discuss the detailed steps of how to create a new site in Chapter 7. For now, I’m going to assume you have someone to create one for you.
Your organization may also ask who has permission to access the site. By default, all SharePoint team sites have three basic kinds of users, which are called SharePoint groups:
Visitors have Read Only permission. They can view your site without making any contributions.
Members can participate in your team site by uploading and editing documents or adding tasks or other items.
Owners have Full Control permission to customize the site. As the person requesting the team site, the SharePoint administrator likely assumes that you’re the proud owner unless you specifically tell him who owns the site.
You’ll need to decide which users fit into which of these three SharePoint Groups. SharePoint offers more than just these three groups, and you can create your own groups to meet your needs. I discuss SharePoint groups and permissions in more detail in Chapter 13.
Your site’s users must be connected physically to your network or have permission from your network administrator to access your network remotely. Some companies set up a special kind of deployment for SharePoint, or an extranet, that provides a secure way for non-employees to log in to their SharePoint team sites without actually being on the internal company network.
Setting up SharePoint in an extranet environment can be done in lots of ways. Configuring a SharePoint extranet in your company’s network can be com...
