You are reading the article Sharepoint 2007: Getting To Know Sharepoint updated in December 2023 on the website Moimoishop.com. We hope that the information we have shared is helpful to you. If you find the content interesting and meaningful, please share it with your friends and continue to follow and support us for the latest updates. Suggested January 2024 Sharepoint 2007: Getting To Know Sharepoint
• Introducing SharePoint / Business Drivers for SharePoint
• Organizing SharePoint’s Document Library
• Collecting and Organizing Data with SharePoint Lists
• Collaborative Structure/ Personalizing SharePoint Server 2007
• Collaborating with SharePoint 2007 / SharePoint Calendaring, Blogging, Wikis
• Accepting Emails / Accepting Content in SharePoint 2007
• SharePoint Search Capabilities
• WSS vs. MOSS / Integrating Office 2007, Outlook 2007 with SharePoint
• Managing Excel for Sharepoint / Administering and Monitoring SharePoint 2007
• Securing SharePoint / SharePoint Best Practices
Introducing SharePoint 2007
It is rare for a technology product to attract as much attention as SharePoint has in recent years. The industry has historically paid little attention to new product suites, particularly those related to web design. SharePoint products and technologies, however, have managed to excite and rejuvenate industry followers, causing them to take notice of the ease of use, scalability, flexibility, and powerful document management capabilities within the product.
Microsoft has further upped the excitement with the newest release of the 3.0 generation of SharePoint, including the full Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and the free Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 products. These products not only introduce several sought-after features, but improve on key areas of the product line that have limited its full scale deployment in the past. What Microsoft has created is a powerful, regulatory compliant, scalable, and economical product for document management and team collaboration.
This chapter introduces both the WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 products, giving a high-level overview of the features and functions in each product. It lists the differences in functionality between the product lines and in various licensing options, and discusses specific improvements over the SharePoint 2003 line of products. It serves as a jumping-off point to the other chapters in this book, indicating which particular areas of the book give more information about individual features and technologies.
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
Understanding the Business Needs and Drivers for SharePoint 2007
A number of organizational needs have spurred the adoption of SharePoint technologies. Some of the most commonly mentioned requirements include the following:
• A need for better document management than the file system can offer—This includes document versioning, check-out and check-in features, adding metadata to documents, and better control of document access (by using groups and granular security). The high-level need is simply to make it easier for users to find the latest version of the document or documents they need to do their jobs, and ultimately to make them more efficient in those jobs.
• Improved collaboration between users with a minimal learning curve—Although virtually everyone has a different definition of what comprises collaboration, a functional definition is a technology solution that allows users to interact efficiently with each other using software products to share documents and information in a user friendly environment. In regard to SharePoint, this typically refers to document and meeting workspaces, site collections, discussion lists, integration of instant messaging and presence information, and integration with the Office suite of applications. Integration with Office applications is a key component: Most organizations do not want to force users to learn a new set of tools to collaborate more effectively because users generally resist such requirements.
• A better intranet—Although most companies have an intranet in place, the consensus is that it is too static, that it is not user friendly, and that every change has to go through IT or the “web guy.” This level of request generally comes from a departmental manager, team lead, or project manager frustrated with their inability to publish information to a select group of users and regularly update resources their team needs to do their jobs.
• A centralized way to search for information—Rather than using the “word of mouth” search engine (that is, asking coworkers via email for a specific document), there should be an engine in place that allows the user to quickly and efficiently find particular documents. The user can search for documents that contain certain words; documents created or modified during a certain timeframe; documents authored by a specific person; or documents that meet other criteria, such as file type.
• Creation of a portal—Many definitions exist for the term portal , but a general definition that a portal is a web-enabled environment that allows Internet and, potentially, external users to access company intellectual resources and software applications. A portal typically extends standard intranet functionality by providing features such as single sign-on, powerful search tools, and access to other core company applications such as help desk, human resources software, educational resources, and other corporate information and applications.
The SharePoint 2003 product line offered a wide variety of tools that went a long way toward meeting those commonly requested goals. Even better, it integrated in many areas with the Office 2003 family of products (and to some extent with previous versions of Office), which made the learning process relatively easy for all different levels of users. It was a second generation Microsoft product, building on SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2001, which placated some of the warier decision makers.
However, as SharePoint newbies rapidly became power users, requests came up for features that SharePoint 2003 didn’t provide out-of-the-box. Fortunately, third-party companies quickly evolved to offer new, cutting-edge features, such as an undelete capability, workflow tools, enhanced navigation tools, roll-up web parts, and many more. A subset of users generally turned to FrontPage 2003 to modify their SharePoint work environments to better suit their needs; for example, by removing the Quick Launch area, modifying the navigation bars, adding zones, and making other structural changes. Unfortunately, in the process of making those changes, the site collection became “unghosted,” rendering it an island separated from the server-hosted site definitions.
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
As more third-party applications became part of the SharePoint 2003 environment, support, maintenance, troubleshooting, and end user training became arithmetically more complex. Many organizations reached a certain level of complexity and decided to halt the addition of more functionality, despite the demands of the user base, after word of the 2007 versions of SharePoint started to circulate.
Enter the SharePoint 2007 product line, which builds on the many strengths of the previous version, introduces features that end users have requested, and provides new features that many users might never have dreamed of. The following sections introduce SharePoint features using a bottom-up methodology that starts with the smallest units of organization—document libraries and lists—and works up to sites, workspaces, and site collections. This approach will help you understand how different groups of users benefit from SharePoint’s new and improved features.
Organizing and Streamlining Document Management
One of the most used features of SharePoint is the document library. Knowledge workers, team members, and end users will find themselves “living” in document libraries when adding to or accessing files stored in these units. It is important for SharePoint administrators and architects to put sufficient time and effort into designing the document libraries to meet the needs of the different types of users.
A powerful new feature of SharePoint 2007 document libraries is security-trimming of the user interface: menus that shouldn’t be seen by a user with a lower level of access and privileges don’t appear. In Figure 1.1, the New, Actions, and Settings menus wouldn’t appear if the individual accessing the library had only Reader privileges. The Edit menu shown in Figure 1.1 is security-trimmed to the privileges of the user. In this case, User1 has Owner-level rights in the library, so that user can perform these actions: View Properties, Edit Properties, Manage Permissions, Edit in Microsoft Office Excel, Delete, Send To, Check Out, Unpublish this version, Version History, Workflows, and Alert Me.
SharePoint 2003 users will notice that some of the tools that used to be available in the Quick Launch area have moved to the Edit menu. Chapter 7, “Using Libraries and Lists in SharePoint 2007,” provides a detailed overview of different tools as well as the actions available in the New, Upload, Actions, and Settings menus.
Site administrators have access to many additional tools that enable the creation of different views of the information stored in the library. The links in the General Settings column enable an administrator to determine which basic features the library makes available. The administrator controls versioning (with the new abilities to create only major or both major and minor versions, and to limit the retained number of each type), requiring that documents be checked out before they can be edited, whether content types can be used, whether new folders are allowed, and whether items in the library appear in search results.
The Permissions and Management column enables the administrator to define privileges for different groups and users to the library, create workflows, and manage information management policies (such as policy statements, auditing, expiration, and barcodes). The Communications column makes it possible for an administrator to allow the document library to receive emails, to define the email address and how to manage and store emails, and to decide whether the list can receive RSS feeds.
Collecting and Organizing Data with Lists
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
These tools show the interconnected nature of SharePoint 2007 and the Office 2007 applications, and power users of lists will soon find many creative uses for SharePoint list data in Outlook (taking data offline), Access (easily creating sophisticated reports), and Excel (taking snapshots of data for more complex analysis and chart creation). Chapter 10, “Using Word, Excel, and Excel Services with SharePoint 2007,” and Chapter 11, “Leveraging Additional Office 2007 Products in a SharePoint 2007 Environment,” provide additional information about the integration between SharePoint and Office applications. The following are examples of possible uses for other list types:
• Announcements list—Provides rich text–formatted information to users of a site that expires after a certain date.
• Contacts list—Creates a list of internal or external contacts relevant to the audience of the site.
• Discussion Board list—Allows users to create and participate in threaded discussions to enhance brainstorming and other forms of collaboration.
• Links list—Creates a list of URLs that are useful for site users. The URLs can be links to other SharePoint sites, internal web-enabled resources, or external websites.
• Survey list—Creates a survey that allows users to answer questions of many types (text, choice, rating scale, and yes/no) and enables administrators to show a graphical summary of the results.
• KPI list—Uses data in another SharePoint list, in an Excel workbook, from a Microsoft SQL 2005 Analysis Services, or manually entered information to provide a visual summary of status based on actual values. Figure 1.5 shows a simple example that displays a green circle, yellow triangle, or red diamond for three different rows. Key performance indicators are important elements in creating dashboards of information to help managers see at a glance how the organization is doing in specific areas of interest.
Providing Collaborative Structure with Workspaces, Pages, and Sites
Managers, administrators, and SharePoint architects must focus on some of the larger organizational elements in SharePoint to ensure that the overall structure facilitates collaboration and document management. Sites are the basic building blocks in SharePoint 2007. After creating a web application in IIS (Internet Information Services), you can extend the web application and create a site collection. A site collection can grow to a virtually unlimited size, and contain hundreds or thousands of subsites, and sub-subsites, but will always have only one top-level site. Windows SharePoint Services offers fewer options for types of sites that can be created and templates that can be used for the top-level site.
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
Pages, a new feature in SharePoint 2007, enhance SharePoint’s publishing capabilities. Astute users of SharePoint 2007 will notice that the home pages that load for a site are actually located in the Pages folder, rather than in the root folder of the site. Figure 1.7 shows the Site Content and Structure page with the root-level Pages folder selected. Pages in SharePoint 2007 can be copied and reused among sites; have page settings (such as page layout templates and audience targeting) and properties to edit; permissions; and versioning is on by default. By default, each page requires approval before publishing. Chapters 9 and 12, “Implementing Records Management and Enabling Web Content Management in SharePoint 2007,” provide additional information about managing and editing pages.
Personalizing SharePoint Server 2007 with Personal Sites
Personal sites allow individual users to create a site where they can manage personal information in their profile and store personal documents, links, and contacts. This is available only in SharePoint Server 2007. This feature has been greatly enhanced since SharePoint 2003, and now plays a key role in facilitating social networking, and helping co-workers understand others’ skills and experience. One important benefit of My Sites (also called Personal Sites) is that they encourage users to stop saving files locally in favor of a central location. In addition, each user is now empowered to create a custom working environment, portions of which they can share with the general population.
Personal sites allow a great deal of customization. A user can customize the site to his or her heart’s content, and has access to the full range of web parts located in the Web Part Gallery, which the site collection administrator can control. A My Site can also serve as a training tool, and encourages users to experiment with different web parts, libraries, and lists, to bring those skills to other sites they manage, and to make requests for new functionality.
Personal site profiles can be part of individual personal sites as well. A user can customize which pieces of information are available to different audiences (such as My Manager, My Workgroup, and My Colleagues). Information entered in the About Me field in the profile is shown (in this case, in the style of a resume) and beneath it other information from the user’s profile, including responsibilities, skills, past projects, schools, birthday, and contact information. The site collection administrator can modify, delete, and add new fields to the fields tracked in the user’s profile to suit the needs of the organization.
Collaborating with SharePoint 2007
The development of SharePoint 2007 placed considerable emphasis in on the improvement of the collaboration functionality in the platform. New collaboration techniques, such as blogs, wikis, and RSS feed support, were added and existing collaboration functionality was enhanced and improved. End users will immediately notice the improvements made to this area, so it is of considerable importance to understand the key features in the category.
Leveraging Workflow for Enhanced Collaboration
Workflows are now available in SharePoint 2007 lists and libraries. The interface is intuitive enough that even less experienced administrators can quickly create and test workflows. Several standard workflows are provided (including Approval, Collect Feedback, Collect Signatures, and Disposition Approval), and the workflow’s tasks are tracked in either an existing Tasks list or a new one created specifically for the workflow. A Workflow History list tracks the workflow’s history. Participants in the workflow are notified by email when they have a task to complete, and can interact with the workflow from Office 2007 applications such as Word 2007. Chapter 21, “Using Design 2007 to Extend SharePoint 2007 Workflows and Customize the User Experience,” provides additional information about workflows.
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
Enhancing Calendaring
Blogging with SharePoint 2007
One of the more popular communications mechanisms in use on the World Wide Web today is the web log, commonly shortened to blog. A blog, as shown in Figure 1.9, is a mechanism similar to a newsgroup in which a user can enter a question or information about a specific topic, and then have multiple other users add their own responses to the question. The original author can moderate the responses before adding them to the site, or have responses automatically added. Topics can include simple items, such as “What should we have for lunch at the team meeting,” or complex technical discussions.
Using Wikis for User-Generated Content
Wikis have been increasingly popular in online collaboration circles in recent years, so much so that they have been included as a design element available by default in SharePoint 2007. A wiki page, such as the one shown in Figure 1.10, is one to which users can easily add their own information about a particular topic, allowing them to easily add new pages, links to pages, and modify other users’ content. This allows a team to create its own content quickly and easily and to moderate other users’ content, empowering the users’ ability to impart their own knowledge with little effort. Figure 1.10 shows a wiki page in Edit mode. The page shows users’ changes, with deletions crossed out and additions highlighted.
Determining User Presence Information
SharePoint 2007 includes built-in smart tags that display every time there is a reference to a user object, such as when an individual user adds a document. The smart tag allows access to a sequence of communications options, such as those shown in Figure 1.11. For example, the smart tag can be emailed, phoned (if integrated with a phone PBX platform through Exchange 2007), or instant messaged.
When an end user uses an approved instant messenger client, such as Communicator 2007, MSN Messenger, or Windows Live Messenger, and a contact from the user’s buddy list appears with a smart tag, the user can obtain the contact’s presence information. The user can then user can get in touch with the contact directly from the SharePoint site.
In addition, SharePoint can integrate with an enterprise presence platform, such as Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 or Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005. Those applications can display presence information for any user within the enterprise, not just those in a buddy list. Chapter 19, “Enabling Presence Information in SharePoint with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007,” presents more information about integrating SharePoint 2007 with Office Communications Server 2007.
Accepting Emails Directly into Site Content
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
The capability of SharePoint 2007 to accept emails directly into site content positions it to replace public folder technology in Exchange, which is slowly phasing out in favor of technologies such as SharePoint. It is not uncommon to find organizations that use Exchange completely replacing public folder functionality with WSS and its email-enabled content capabilities.
Configuring a SharePoint 2007 environment to accept inbound mail is not complex. It involves simply adding the SMTP Server service to a system and then configuring the server role in SharePoint, as shown in Figure 1.12 (SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). SharePoint 2007 also allows direct integration with Active Directory, making possible the automatic creation of contact objects, in Active Directory, which correspond to the SharePoint email-enabled content. More information on configuring SharePoint for inbound mail access is in Chapter 18, “Configuring Email-Enabled Content and Exchange Server Integration.”
Presenting and Navigating Content in SharePoint 2007
One of the most often heard complaints about the SharePoint 2003 product line related to the unfriendliness of navigation. Help desk resources continually fielded requests for navigational improvements but, unfortunately, third-party products were generally required to meet the needs of the masses. SharePoint 2007 greatly improves the navigation options with the inclusion of tabs, tree navigation look, and breadcrumb trails. Figure 1.13 shows a sample site hierarchy tree that can greatly facilitate intersite navigation.
The following are additional tools available to affect the navigation experience:
• Specify whether this site should display subsites and publishing pages in navigation
• Specify whether to sort subsites, pages, headings, and navigation links automatically or manually when displayed in navigation
• Specify whether to display the same global and current navigation items as the parent site, or only the navigation items below the current site
• Customize the Quick Launch area by moving the location of different types of lists and libraries, adding headings, adding links, and deleting entries
The overall result of these tools is a highly customizable interface that should allow site administrators to customize their navigational environments fully without resorting to the use of tools such as SharePoint Designer 2007.
Using the Sites Directory to Find Information
The Sites directory is very customizable and allows a site collection administrator to fine-tune both the categories used to manage and display different sites and the layout of this information. In addition, site administrators can change the name of a site, move a site to another location, or change permissions for a site from the top-level Sites directory.
The configuration of the Sites directory can be quite important in more complex environments because without a logical configuration, users might have a difficult time locating the specific site they are looking for.
Managing Content in SharePoint 2007
Assigning Retention and Auditing Policies
SharePoint 2007 offers enhanced auditing tools to help administrators keep records of what is happening with important content. Events available for auditing include the following:
• Opening or downloading documents, viewing items in lists, or viewing item properties
• Editing items
• Checking out or checking in items
• Moving or copying items to another location in the site
• Deleting or restoring items
• Editing content types and columns
• Searching site content
• Editing users and permissions
Administrators are now able to retrieve the entire history of actions taken by a particular user during a particular date range. Excel-based audit reports capture all the events selected for auditing, and those reports are accessible from the View Auditing Reports page, shown in Figure 1.16. Reports are available in the following categories: Content Activity Reports, Custom Reports, Information Management Policy Reports, Security and Site Settings Reports.
Finding Information with SharePoint Indexing and Search
The completely redesigned search engine now offers easy-to-use, enterprise class functionality. A number of clients have justified their upgrade to SharePoint 2007 based on the enhanced search functionality alone!
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 offers enhanced functionality, but it lacks many of the capabilities found in SharePoint Server 2007’s search function. In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, the query searches only the current site and any subsites below it. The search engine will not search for content outside of Windows SharePoint Services, even if the other site is compatible with Windows SharePoint Services. SharePoint Server 2007 is required for this extended functionality, and provides many other powerful tools, as covered in detail in Chapter 13, “Benefiting from the Enhanced Search Capabilities in SharePoint 2007.” A brief summary of enhancements and new features follows.
Using Improved SharePoint Search Capabilities
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
If a user selects the People tab, that user can search the information stored in the user profiles (updated, ideally, by each person through their personal sites). The user by default can search on first name, last name, department, title, responsibilities, skills, and memberships.
Creating and Managing Search Scopes
The creation of new search scopes in SharePoint Server 2007 takes place in the Shared Services administrative console. This allows SharePoint to search content stored in other SharePoint servers, websites, file shares, Exchange public folders, and business data stored in the Business Data Catalog.
To ensure that an account with appropriate permissions to access the source data is used, create crawl rules. Intuitive crawl logs provided detailed information about the successes or failures of crawls, which enables the SharePoint administrator to quickly fine-tune and troubleshoot the crawls to ensure that they are functioning properly. Built-in search query reports provide current information on a number of search related topics, including the following:
• Number of queries over the previous 30 days
• Number of queries over the previous 12 months
• Top query origin site collections over the previous 30 days
• Queries per scope over the previous 30 days
• Top queries over the previous 30 days
• Search results top destination pages
• Queries with zero results
• Queries with zero best bets
These reports make it extremely easy for SharePoint administrators to understand what users are looking for, whether they are finding it, and how to customize the environment with best bets to facilitate the searching process.
Comparing the Versions of SharePoint
One of the reasons that the free version of SharePoint, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, doesn’t meet the needs of all users and all organizations is that it does not provide the flexibility or full set of tools that larger organizations require. A more complete comparison of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 comes later in the chapter, but design options are much more limited in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
Detailing the Specific SharePoint 2007 Products
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0—The Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 product is a free (value-add) product that can be downloaded from Microsoft and installed on any Windows Server 2003 system without any additional licensing (aside from the server itself). It provides core document management, collaboration, and search capabilities.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (with Standard CALs)—Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 includes two types of client access licenses (CALs): standard CALs and enterprise CALs. The core WSS functionality receives enterprise search and people search capabilities with both CAL editions. MOSS 2007 is the tool for large, distributed organizations that have to store more than 500,000 documents.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (with Enterprise CALs)—Adding the enterprise CAL to the standard CAL in a MOSS 2007 environment allows for the addition of the Business Data Catalog.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for Search 2007 (Standard Edition)—This product was created for those organizations that simply need search capabilities, but do not yet require the document management and collaboration features of the full MOSS 2007 product.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for Search 2007 (Enterprise Edition)—The Enterprise Edition of MOSS 2007 for Search adds additional search providers to the product and allows for additional scaling options.
Outlining Key Features Differences Between WSS and MOSS
A great deal of confusion exists over which version of SharePoint 2007 is right for particular circumstances. In a great number of cases, a small, free deployment of WSS 3.0 would satisfy many of the needs of an individual project or project team. It is therefore critical to understand which features are present in each edition of this product. Check the index of this book to find the individual chapter that discusses each feature in more detail. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 includes the following features:
• Document Management functionality, up to 500,000 documents
• Email-enabled content capabilities
• Basic search capabilities
• Alerting capabilities
• RSS feeds
• Wikis
• Blogs
• Mobile device support
• Direct integration with Office 2003/2007 clients
• Capability to serve as a public folder replacement for Exchange environments
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 adds all of WSS 3.0’s features plus the following:
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
• Unlimited document repository capabilities
• My Site personal sites
• Additional built-in web parts, such as the Social Networking and Document Roll-up web parts
• Search capabilities across enterprise content sources, including file shares, web sites, Lotus Notes databases, and other third-party content sources
• People search
• Workflow support
• Support for chúng tôi pluggable authentication and forms-based authentication
• Single sign-on support
• Content syndication
• Site directory
• Audiences (targeted site content)
• Enterprise content search capabilities
• Search relevance
• Indexing controls
• Security-trimmed search results
• People search
• Site templates
• IRM support
• Retention and auditing policies
• Master pages and page layouts
• Web content editor
• Navigation controls
Adding the Enterprise CAL to a MOSS 2007 environment maintains all the WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 Standard CAL features, and adds the following:
• Excel services
• Business intelligence features
• Business process and business forms support
• Business data search
As organizations examine more feature-rich versions, they will find that these versions are also more expensive to license, particularly because WSS 3.0 starts as a free product. It is therefore critical to identify which specific features are required from the SharePoint product and to make a licensing decision made from that discovery. It is important to remember that migrating an environment from WSS 3.0 to MOSS 2007 is relatively straightforward and changing from standard CALs to enterprise CALs in MOSS 2007 is exceedingly easy, but there is no easy way to downgrade from one version to the next. This is an important factor to take into account when deciding on the SharePoint 2007 version to use.
Integrating Office 2007 Components with SharePoint 2007
Using Office 2007 applications with SharePoint 2007 is ideal because they provide the most complete level of integration, whereas using Office 2003 and earlier versions provides only limited levels of integration and compatibility. It is worth noting that support and training are more involved and complex when there is more than one version of Office products in use, so standardize on one version as much as possible.
Integrating Outlook 2007
Outlook 2007 integrates with SharePoint 2007 in a number of different ways. To begin with, Outlook receives many of the alerts and messages from SharePoint, so users can receive significant amounts of information without leaving the comfort of their email client. In addition, it is possible to configure SharePoint libraries to accept incoming emails and publish RSS data. Outlook 2007 can receive RSS feeds directly. Outlook 2007 users can chose Connect to Outlook as shown in Figure 1.18. This enables users to synchronize and take files offline with them when they don’t have access to the SharePoint environment, make changes, and synchronize back to the SharePoint document library when they again have connectivity. Chapter 7 discusses the links between certain lists and Outlook, and Chapter 11 provides additional information about connectivity between the applications.
Using Word 2007 with SharePoint Sites
Word 2007 enables users to access data stored in the SharePoint 2007 document library in a number of ways, several of which are visible in Figure 1.19. The document properties ribbon is below the standard ribbon and circled in the figure. It shows metadata that the library administrator has chosen to publish to Word 2007. Users with sufficient privileges can update this information without leaving Word 2007.
Without even leaving Word 2007, a user can update metadata, edit workflows, change access rights to the document, and see important task information. Chapter 10 provides additional information about using Word 2007 with SharePoint 2007, along with other new enhancements in Word 2007 that can enhance document security and collaboration when used with SharePoint 2007.
Managing Excel 2007 and Excel Services for SharePoint
Customizing SharePoint Content with SharePoint Designer 2007
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
• Create, open, edit, back up, and restore SharePoint sites
• Create SharePoint master pages and web part pages
• Building SharePoint no-code applications
• Create lists, views, and forms
• Create and aggregate data views and forms on a variety of data sources (SharePoint lists and document libraries, SQL databases, XML files, web services)
• Add business logic with no-code workflows
• Render accurate, high quality WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), and chúng tôi pages
• Create integrated code and split view standards-based pages (XHTML, CSS, XSLT [XSL Transformations])
• Support deep CSS formatting and layout
• Manage and apply styles
• Edit properties
Administering and Monitoring SharePoint 2007
Administration of a SharePoint 2007 environment is greatly simplified and improved over the 2003 version of the product line. It is no longer necessary to hunt around for administrative tools and commands because a distinct, centralized set of tools contains them all. The SharePoint Central Administration tool, accessed from the server console or remotely from a web browser, contains the bulk of all administration of the farm. It contains operations tasks, application management tasks, and shared settings administration. In addition, SharePoint 2007 provides the capability to give site administrators customized permissions to specific areas, with site administration taking place from the Site Settings link within each site. Chapter 14, “Managing and Administering SharePoint Infrastructure,” covers the administration of a SharePoint environment in detail.
Backing Up and Restoring SharePoint
SharePoint 2007 is a mission-critical application environment that requires a robust and reliable backup-and-restore infrastructure. Fortunately, SharePoint 2007 dramatically improves restore functionality with the addition of a two-stage recycle bin, shown in Figure 1.20. This enables end users to recover their own documents that have been deleted, and enables site administrators to recover files that have already been emptied from the site Recycle Bin.
In addition to Recycle Bin functionality, SharePoint 2007 includes a built-in farm backup tool. This backup tool allows the entire farm, or individual farm components, to be backed up and restored.
SharePoint also includes powerful site backup functionality with the STSADM command-line tool. This simplifies using a combination approach to backups and restores. Chapter 17, “Backing Up and Restoring a SharePoint Environment,” offers more information about all these approaches to backing up and restoring.
Using the SharePoint Best Practices Analyzer
Microsoft has released a Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. (That link takes you to the page to download it.)
After installation, the Best Practices Analyzer can evaluate the existing Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 implementation. Figure 1.22 shows a portion of the report, which discovered two errors and six warnings in a test configuration. As with any automated analysis, review the errors to see whether they do in fact have to be rectified, or they simply do not agree with Microsoft best practices. For example, one of the errors identified indicates A dedicated front-end Web server is configured for crawling, which is part of a design that includes only one front-end server! The second error that appears states No trusted locations have been defined for Excel Services within SSP SharedServices1, which is a valid error, and Excel Services would not work in this configuration.
Monitoring a SharePoint Environment with the SharePoint Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005
SharePoint 2007 by itself does not include an integrated monitoring application or service. Instead, it provides for application hooks into monitoring platforms, providing for especially tight integration with the Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 application, shown in Figure 1.23, or its new successor, System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr) 2007.
The SharePoint Management Packs available for MOM 2005 and OpsMgr 2007 give unprecedented levels of monitoring capabilities at the application level because the SharePoint 2007 team wrote the management packs. If an individual service within SharePoint were to fail, the management pack would trigger an alert within MOM, detailing specifics about the failure and giving an administrator a list of next steps and knowledge base articles to help solve the issue. Chapter 16, “Maintaining and Monitoring SharePoint 2007 Environments and Databases,” supplies more information about using MOM 2005 to monitor SharePoint 2007.
Securing the SharePoint Environment with ISA Server 2006
SharePoint 2007 is a critical component that can often contain sensitive data about an organization and its intellectual property. Many organizations want to enable their end users to be able to access this data from anywhere on the Internet, but are concerned about the security implications of doing so. For these scenarios, best practice dictates the use of a reverse proxy security solution that provides for application-layer filtering of the HTTP traffic to the SharePoint environment. One of the most comprehensive applications to provide this level of filtering to a SharePoint is Microsoft’s Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006.
A SharePoint 2007 site reverse proxy scenario, detailed in Figure 1.24, allows all the Secure Sockets Layer–encrypted traffic intended for SharePoint to be intercepted, scanned at the application layer for vulnerabilities and attacks, and then re-encrypted and sent back to the SharePoint Server. To reduce the surface attack vector of the platform, allow only the specific HTTP calls required by SharePoint 2007 and disallow all other types of HTTP calls, extensions, and methods.
“SharePoint 2007 Unleashed” learn more
This type of solution also allows for the use of forms-based authentication scenarios that do not require custom chúng tôi authentication providers in SharePoint, further enabling some of the security options available to SharePoint designers. Chapter 15, “Securing a SharePoint Environment,” contains more information about using ISA 2006 with SharePoint 2007.
Sharepoint 2007 Summary
SharePoint 2007 products and technologies are an exciting evolution of a product that has received considerable attention in recent years. Inclusion of new collaboration features such as blogs, wikis, RSS feed readers, and other end user enhancements make the platform more accessible and user friendly, whereas improvements made to existing key functionality enhances the viability of the platform. In addition, several key new administrative enhancements and functionalities, such as email-enabled content support, Excel Services, and Business Data Catalog services, position the product for enterprise document management capabilities.
This chapter discussed the functionality improvements and additions to both Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Later chapters of this book supply additional information about each of the topics discussed here.
Best Practices
• It is a good idea to become familiar with the differences among workspaces, sites, site collections, and top-level sites when planning and designing SharePoint 2007 environments.
• The new and improved navigational tools in SharePoint 2007 enable site collection administrators and site administrators to customize their sites to meet the needs of the end users, and now include tree views, breadcrumb trails, and fully customizable Quick Launch area.
• Understand the differences among SharePoint 2007 product versions and their embedded features. Many organizations might find that a cheaper version of the product suits its particular needs.
• Download and run the Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The results give the SharePoint farm administrator a report that summarizes errors and warnings based on Microsoft best practices and SharePoint configuration requirements.
You're reading Sharepoint 2007: Getting To Know Sharepoint
Sharepoint Rest Api: Explained With Examples
The SharePoint REST API has quickly become a go-to method for connecting external applications and services to SharePoint sites. It gives organizations the power to maximize their investment in the SharePoint platform.
The SharePoint REST API is a flexible and efficient method for interacting with SharePoint data remotely, providing a powerful alternative to traditional client APIs. By leveraging the SharePoint REST API, developers can efficiently integrate SharePoint functionality into their own applications.
If you’re a developer looking to integrate SharePoint into your applications, this comprehensive guide will give you all the information and steps that you will need to make your integration both effective and successful.
Now let’s start at the beginning with some basics!
REST, which stands for Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style that guides the design and development of networked systems. It’s a lightweight and flexible way to interact with SharePoint remotely using any technology that supports the REST protocol.
REST emphasizes a stateless client-server communication model, where clients send requests to servers to perform actions on resources. These requests are typically in the form of HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE, which align with different operations on the resources.
The REST architecture focuses on the notion of resources, which are identified by unique URLs and is based on the standard Open Data Protocol (OData) and allows developers to perform basic create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations through a RESTful HTTP request.
In the context of SharePoint, resources can be items in a SharePoint list, documents in a SharePoint library, or even the SharePoint site itself. By interacting with these resources using HTTP requests, clients can retrieve information, make modifications, and perform other actions.
Constructing requests and handling responses: To interact with the SharePoint REST API, developers need to construct HTTP requests with the necessary information, such as the target endpoint, headers, and sometimes request chúng tôi requests are sent to the SharePoint server, which processes them and returns responses. These responses contain the requested data, confirmation of a successful operation, or error messages if any issues arise.
SharePoint client object models: The SharePoint REST API provides functionality that corresponds to various client object models, including:
JavaScript (JSOM): Via JavaScript libraries, you can interact with SharePoint remotely.
Silverlight (CSOM): Using .NET libraries, you can create Silverlight applications that work with SharePoint.
Managed .NET (CSOM): Through C# or VB, you can build client applications that SharePoint is compatible with, using managed .NET code.
Mobile (MCSOM): You can create Windows Phone apps that leverage SharePoint REST API with Microsoft’s Mobile Client Object chúng tôi client object model allows you to interact with all the SharePoint entities, such as lists, SharePoint libraries, content types, and more.
SharePoint Online: In the context of SharePoint Online, the REST API plays a crucial role by allowing the integration of SharePoint content and features into various client and mobile applications. When you query SharePoint Online using the REST API, you get results from:
Content in SharePoint Online site collectionsContent in Microsoft 365 groups
The SharePoint Search REST API enables you to add search functionality to your applications, providing a seamless and efficient way for SharePoint site users to access SharePoint content from different platforms and devices.
Understanding these fundamental concepts will provide a solid foundation for working with the SharePoint REST API. Now let’s explore the practical aspects of integrating with SharePoint using the REST API in the next section!
In this section, we’ll delve into the process of integrating SharePoint’s REST API into your applications. We’ll go over the authentication and authorization process and then how to set up your development environment.
When integrating with SharePoint using the REST API, it’s crucial to understand the authentication and authorization process. SharePoint employs a variety of authentication methods to ensure secure access to its resources.
Here are some key points on authentication to consider:
1. Different authentication options: SharePoint supports multiple authentication options, including OAuth, app-only authentication, and more. OAuth is commonly used and involves obtaining an access token that represents the authenticated user or application.
2. Obtaining access tokens for API requests: To make API requests, you need to obtain an access token. The token is acquired through an authentication process, where the requesting applicant presents valid credentials and receives a token in return. This token is then included in subsequent API requests to prove the authenticity of the requester.
To start integrating with the SharePoint REST API, you’ll need to set up your development environment. Here are some points to consider.
1. Required tools and libraries: Depending on your programming language or platform, there are various tools and libraries available to facilitate SharePoint REST API integration. These may include SDKs (Software Development Kits), code libraries, or development frameworks specific to your chosen programming language.
2. Establishing connections to SharePoint sites: In order to interact with SharePoint using the REST API, you need to establish a connection to the SharePoint site or site collection you want to work with. This typically involves providing the site URL of the SharePoint site and the appropriate authentication credentials.
Once you have your development environment set up, you are ready to start leveraging the power of the SharePoint REST API to interact with SharePoint resources programmatically.
Now that you have a solid understanding of the basics and have set up your development environment, it’s time to explore the various operations that can be performed using the SharePoint REST API.
In this section, we’ll delve into the various operations that can be performed to retrieve data, create and update resources, delete items, and work with metadata.
Understanding these operations and their implementation through the SharePoint REST API will empower you to efficiently interact with SharePoint, automate tasks, and streamline your workflows.
Retrieving data from SharePoint through REST API is a valuable technique for developers when working with a particular SharePoint group such as a group of files, documents, properties, metadata, and more. The REST interface allows developers to perform various CRUD operations with ease using HTTP requests.
To interact with files and documents using the SharePoint REST API, you can use methods like GET, POST, PUT, MERGE, and DELETE. Each method represents a specific action: retrieving, creating, updating, merging, and deleting files or documents, respectively.
For example, to fetch a list of items in a specific SharePoint document library, you can use the following HTTP request:
You can also fetch files within a specific folder using:
SharePoint entities, such as files, documents, and folders, have properties and metadata associated with them. The SharePoint REST API enables developers to fetch and manage this information.
To retrieve properties of a file, use the following request:
Updating metadata of a file requires the MERGE method along with additional header information:
Headers: Content-Type: application/json;odata=verbose If-Match: * X-HTTP-Method: MERGE Body: { “__metadata”: { “type”: “SP.Data.DocumentsItem” }, “Title”: “Updated Document Title” }
Finding specific information or items in SharePoint is made easy using search and query capabilities of the REST API. These features allow developers to filter, order, and customize their search results based on various parameters.
One example is filtering items in a list by using the $filter query option:
Sorting search results can be done using the $orderby query option:
The SharePoint REST API also supports batch requests, allowing developers to combine multiple requests into a single call, improving performance:
By leveraging the SharePoint REST API capabilities, you can efficiently fetch data from SharePoint, manage its properties and metadata, and perform accurate search queries while maintaining a smooth user experience.
For instance, to create a new list, construct a RESTful HTTP request using the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, like so:
var listData = { '__metadata': { 'type': 'SP.List' }, 'Title': 'NewList', 'Description': 'This is a new list.' };Then, make an HTTP POST request to the following URI:
/_api/Web/ListsSimilarly, to add an item to a list, send a POST request with the JSON payload representing the new item:
var itemData = { '__metadata': { 'type': 'SP.Data.ListNameListItem' }, 'Title': 'New Item' };The request should be sent to the following URI:
/_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('ListName')/ItemsYou can update data in SharePoint by using the PUT or MERGE HTTP requests. These methods are often combined with X-HTTP-Method in the header to avoid issues related to certain firewalls and proxies. With MERGE, you can update only the properties you want to modify, while the PUT request will update all properties of an item, even if they’re not included in the request.
For instance, to update an item’s title, use the following JSON payload:
var updatedData = { '__metadata': { 'type': 'SP.Data.ListNameListItem' }, 'Title': 'Updated title' };Then, construct an HTTP POST request to the item’s URI, and update the item using the MERGE method:
/_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('ListName')/Items(itemId)The SharePoint REST API provides options to delete and recycle objects, such as lists or items. To delete a SharePoint object, you can use the HTTP DELETE command. Alternatively, you can use the recycle operation to move an object to the recycle bin.
For example, to delete an item, send a POST request with an X-HTTP-Method of DELETE and the appropriate headers:
/_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('ListName')/Items(itemId)To recycle an item, use the recycle endpoint, like so:
/_api/Web/Lists/GetByTitle('ListName')/Items(itemId)/recycleSharePoint lists are an integral part of the SharePoint site architecture. Using REST APIs, you can manage list items easily by interacting with various endpoints related to lists and list items:
The SharePoint REST API simplifies the process of interacting with SharePoint entities, making it more convenient and efficient for developers to manage site collections, lists, and items programmatically.
Microsoft Graph API is a unified API endpoint for various cloud-based services, including SharePoint Online. With the Graph API, client applications can interact with SharePoint sites, lists, and libraries using RESTful web technologies.
The API follows the Open Data Protocol (OData) standard, allowing developers to perform CRUD operations on SharePoint entities using HTTP commands like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.
Here’s one of the SharePoint rest endpoint examples using Graph API. This is a REST endpoint URL for SharePoint Online through Graph API:
This endpoint allows retrieving items from a specific list in a SharePoint Online site.
Developers using the .NET Framework or Silverlight can also interact with SharePoint REST services. SharePoint provides client object models in these technologies, making it easy to work with SharePoint data in various .NET and Silverlight applications.
In the SharePoint REST service, REST endpoint URLs follow a specific pattern, enabling developers to perform operations on entities such as sites, lists, and fields.
Here’s an example of a REST endpoint URL structure for SharePoint:
The SharePoint REST API offers capabilities to leverage social features such as feeds and followings. The SocialFeedManager and SocialFollowingManager classes provide methods for managing social feeds and following content in SharePoint.
Using the SocialFeedManager, developers can create, read, update, and delete posts, replies, and likes in user feeds. The SocialFollowingManager class, on the other hand, enables managing and retrieving users and content being followed. Below are some examples of REST endpoint URLs for working with these classes:
The SharePoint REST API provides a powerful means to interact with SharePoint programmatically, enabling developers to unlock the full potential of SharePoint for their organizations.
By following the guidelines, best practices, and examples outlined in this comprehensive guide, you are well-equipped to embark on your journey of integrating SharePoint with the REST API and building robust, customized solutions tailored to your unique needs. Embrace the power of the SharePoint REST API and unleash the full potential of SharePoint integration.
Take a course to learn how to integrate SharePoint with the Power Platform or watch this video to discover the possibilities:
To authenticate with the SharePoint REST API, you have to first obtain an access token. This is typically achieved by registering an app in the Azure Active Directory and acquiring the token using the application’s credentials. Then, include the access token in the HTTP header of your REST calls, usually as a Bearer token.
To call SharePoint REST API from JavaScript, you can use the XMLHTTPRequest or the fetch API. These SharePoint APIs allow you to make HTTP requests like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH to interact with SharePoint REST endpoints. Make sure to construct properly formatted URLs for the endpoints and include the necessary headers for authentication and content type.
When using SharePoint REST API, some limitations and restrictions might apply. For instance, REST API requests are subject to the SharePoint threshold limit for data retrieval.
Additionally, certain operations may not be supported for specific scenarios or environments, like working with taxonomy fields, accessing on-premises SharePoint farms, or interacting with certain SharePoint add-ins and features.
Make sure to check the API documentation for specific functionality and limitations.
How To Automatically Sync Sharepoint Libraries To Onedrive
How to Automatically Sync Sharepoint Libraries to OneDrive Boost your productivity by automating this small task
495
Share
X
The OneDrive sync app enables users to configure team site libraries to sync automatically with Group Policy Objects.
You can configure team site libraries to sync automatically with Intunes’ administrative templates.
Alternatively, feel free to set up auto-sync for a SharePoint library with the Group Policy Editor.
X
INSTALL BY CLICKING THE DOWNLOAD FILE
To fix Windows PC system issues, you will need a dedicated tool
Fortect is a tool that does not simply cleans up your PC, but has a repository with several millions of Windows System files stored in their initial version. When your PC encounters a problem, Fortect will fix it for you, by replacing bad files with fresh versions. To fix your current PC issue, here are the steps you need to take:
Download Fortect and install it on your PC.
Start the tool’s scanning process to look for corrupt files that are the source of your problem
Fortect has been downloaded by
0
readers this month.
OneDrive is one of the foremost cloud storage services for Windows. Microsoft SharePoint is a collaboration platform many organizations utilize for document management and storage.
Users can synchronize files in SharePoint Online libraries with OneDrive for Business across devices. It has been possible to automatically sync internal SharePoint libraries to a group of users since 2023.
However, there are some prerequisites and limits for SharePoint library/OneDrive automatic syncing. These are the prerequisites and limits:
The OneDrive Files On-Demand Must policy needs to be enabled
Must have Windows 10 (1709) or later
There’s a 1,000-device limit for syncing a specific document library
OneDrive ADML and ADMX files need to be copied into certain directories to enable the sync automatically policy for SharePoint libraries (as outlined below)
You’ll need to have OneDrive for Business installed
Don’t enable automatic syncing for SharePoint libraries that include more than 5,000 files
With all required prerequisites met, you can configure the SharePoint library to automatically sync with OneDrive via Group Policy Editor or Microsoft Intune.
To utilize Group Policy, you’ll also need Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise. This is how you can sync SharePoint to OneDrive automatically.
How do you automatically sync SharePoint libraries with OneDrive? 1. Install the OneDrive ADMX and ADML policy filesNOTE
You’ll need to install the sync client admin template files as outlined above for both the Group Policy Editor and Intune methods below.
2. Automatically sync SharePoint with OneDrive via the Group Policy EditorCopy the library ID
Expert tip:
3. Sync SharePoint with OneDrive with Microsoft Intune EndPoint Manager Why is my SharePoint not syncing with OneDrive?Sharepoint sync issues with OneDrive can arise because of installation issues with the OneDrive app and local/server file copy conflicts.
The Microsoft Office Upload Center’s cache can also stop SharePoint from syncing with OneDrive. Check out our OneDrive not syncing guide for potential fixes.
So, that’s how you can configure SharePoint libraries to automatically sync with OneDrive with Group Policy Editor or Intune.
Whichever method you utilize, note that it can take up to eight hours for a SharePoint library to automatically sync when you next log in to OneDrive.
Still experiencing issues?
Was this page helpful?
x
Start a conversation
How To Keep From Getting Addicted To Technology
As a reader of Make Tech Easier, you are of course aware of how gloriously varied the new world of tech truly is. There are apps for almost everything, and if they don’t exist then the ability to make them is even easier to acquire than ever before.
There is a downside to the rise of mobile device-driven, omnipresent computing in that we can forget to unplug, to learn to do things manually rather than automate everything. This can lead over time to over-reliance on tech to fill every tiny gap of downtime we have between things we have to do. It can just degenerate into tech-assisted boredom phobia, and the creeping “Fear Of Missing Out” causes us to get stuck to our devices.
In this article we talk about how not to get stuck to your tech and how use it to make yourself a better person in your offline life. This is not giving up tech, that’s crazy talk; this is making sure you use your tech more effectively for good mental and physical health.
You’ll see it’s not about avoiding tech; it’s about taking sensible steps to keep our brains alive while we do it.
Start as you mean to go onRule number one is try to Keep Mornings Tech Free. You may use your phone as an infallible and accurate waking alarm, but this is the “thin end of the wedge.” If you have to pick up your phone to quiet an alarm, then you might see an alert or notification which drags you into Facebook or email before you’ve even woken up or gotten out of bed. The frontline of avoiding sticky tech is to guard your mornings.
Consider getting a nice non-ticking electronic alarm clock and use that to wake up. Try to put off checking your messages and other things till you’ve taken care of yourself, eaten, drunk some water and gotten dressed. This is a good habit to get into, as Tim Ferriss says “email is the mind killer.” He also espouses the idea of only checking email twice a day, at 12 noon and at 6pm. Rarely is anything so urgent that it needs your instant attention unless you are a doctor who is on call. Few of us are on call in that sense, but we check our messages more often than people who ARE.
While we are on the subject of screen time and sleep, make sure you also Keep Bed Time Tech Free. Shining the bright light of your phone or pad screen into your eyes will upset your sleep patterns. If you need entertainment at bedtime, listen to soft music or read a book which are both potent sleep inducers. And also when you do sleep, do so in total darkness as this kicks off the sleep cycle in your brain. You can wear an airline-style sleep mask to assist this process.
You can also use tech to relax anytime – services like chúng tôi and other meditation apps which play soothing strobed music are very effective at relaxing tired and busy brains for sleep or focus.
Game TimeAlways ask yourself is what you are using a tool or a toy? It is something that enables you to make something or is it an end in itself? Games are an obvious end in themselves but a great one and a fabulous pastime unavailable to previous generations. The quality and scope of gaming in the 21st Century is staggering. It’s also, however, massively addictive and can suck time away from you having any kind of a life if you are not very careful.
The secret to good mental and physical hygiene in regard to games is really simple. Timing. That is to say use games with a timer running.
It’s perfectly okay to play games whenever you want, for two hours in the evening. Where the problems start to happen is that it’s very absorbing, and you can easily burn six hours straight if you have nowhere better to be.
Gaming is great, but like all good things (alcohol and TV for example) it starts to be bad for you if you do it to excess for unbroken periods of time. The hack to make game time work for rather than to you is to break the time up. Take a short break every thirty mins and walk about. Set timers for breaks but also for the overall session. The more strict you can be about this, the more you will feel in control.
This discipline has two benefits:
You get better at the games.
You don’t suffer any long-term ill effects from gaming.
It’s a win-win.
Seriously, it’s true. Setting timers on your phone for gaming and sticking to it is a very smart strategy. Games can be paused. You can stretch your legs, consume food and drink, talk to people, and do whatever you want. But most importantly you also rest your brain and your muscle memory to make it stronger and more permanent.
Studies have shown (most recently in the book “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle) that competence in any learned skill improves after intense but relatively short practise followed by breaks to allow your brain to process and hard code the skills you’ve learned into your brain.
Make Something Every DayThis is extra credit for real tech health ninjas. It’s easy to just consume, buy apps, order online, look at videos, read Facebook posts, read blogs, watch TV shows, etc. So another rule you should try to observe is this: try to produce as well as consume. Make something every day, even if it’s just a meal.
This means that as well as watching videos, you should make them. Use your tech as a tool and not a toy; toys are pastimes, tools make stuff. Also make sure it’s something of your own; don’t just cut and paste someone else’s creations. Start from scratch. Music, videos, writing, all kinds of art can be made with tech, so it’s not abstaining from tech, it’s using it for its intended purpose and not just another broadcast medium like TV and radio.
Make some art, make a table, paint a wall, stuff a cushion, make Dungeons and Dragons figures … anything. You can use tech to find out how to do these things, but once you learn, put the tech down and use your hands to create something.
Consider a Tech sabbathNow on to the shaolin monk level. Something that a lot of very bold thinkers, including creators of The Sabbath Manifesto, believe in is the concept of a tech sabbath. Borrowing an idea from religious thought, it’s a day when you unplug, are not instantly obtainable digitally and cut off all info coming in to your space.
You cut out the noise and unplug from the digital realm. Basically you intentionally turn one day of your week into something resembling the 1970s, where if you want to contact someone you either have to call them on a landline or you have to walk over to their house.
Why would any sane person do this? To reconnect with your own brain.
Subjecting yourself to constant input means stress, boredom, phobia and frankly there’s no space left in your brain for output. If you ever want to make anything you’ll need some ideas. Ideas don’t thrive in a sea of input from other people’s ideas.
Add manual entertainment to your week, board and card games are a boom industry, bizarrely now more than ever, and many fantastic games exist which are social and powered by just plastic, paper and card and the human brain. It can’t hurt to try.
ConclusionWe hope you have enjoyed this special article, and yes we totally get the irony of telling you to unplug in an article on the Internet. Nobody said unplugging was going to be easy.
Phil South
Phil South has been writing about tech subjects for over 30 years. Starting out with Your Sinclair magazine in the 80s, and then MacUser and Computer Shopper. He’s designed user interfaces for groundbreaking music software, been the technical editor on film making and visual effects books for Elsevier, and helped create the MTE YouTube Channel. He lives and works in South Wales, UK.
Subscribe to our newsletter!
Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox
Sign up for all newsletters.
By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy. We will not share your data and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Getting Creative With Adopted Curriculum
Whole group, teacher-led instruction doesn’t work for all students. But with blended learning, adopted curriculum can offer differentiation, choice, and agency.
Think about the last time you used a recipe to cook a meal. Perhaps you were hosting friends for dinner and wanted to make lasagna for the first time. The recipe identifies the ingredients you need, the order in which you should combine them, and the time and temperature required to cook the dish to perfection. This guidance is useful when you’re learning to cook a dish—straightforward, easy to follow, and complete with photos, all of which inspire confidence.
But most people wouldn’t want to cook every meal using a recipe. At some point, directions become restrictive, limiting your creativity. Over time, you may want to make adjustments, removing garlic for a friend who is allergic or substituting mushrooms for meat if you’re cooking for a vegetarian. The freedom and flexibility to modify that recipe keeps cooking enjoyable.
The same is true for the adopted curriculum that many teachers use. At first, it’s helpful to have a clear path to implementation; however, as you gain confidence, you will want to be creative to ensure that you meet all students’ needs.
As a coach and professional learning facilitator, I work with teachers shifting from whole group, teacher-led instruction to student-centered instruction with blended learning models. Blended learning combines active, engaged learning online and offline to give students more control over the time, place, pace, and path of their learning. There are several models under the umbrella of blended learning: station rotation, whole group rotation, flipped classroom, and playlists, all of which position students at the center of their learning.
Adopted curriculum is often written for a whole group, teacher-led model; however, that isn’t the only way to use it. Teachers are architects of learning experiences. They deserve the flexibility and freedom to make the curriculum work for their students using various models, some of which we’ll explore below.
STATION ROTATION
Station rotation frees the teacher to work with small groups, differentiating instruction, guiding discussion, and providing feedback.
This model comprises a series of learning experiences that students rotate through, including teacher-led, online, and offline stations. Teachers may struggle to conceptualize linear lessons in a circular rotation. I encourage them to ask: Which part of the lesson is most challenging for students and requires significant teacher support? Which activities benefit from variable time on task? Which activities will be enhanced from peer support?
The answer to question one will determine which activity the teacher might include in a teacher-led station. The answer to question two will determine which learning activities work best as self-paced tasks. The third will identify the learning activities that work best as small group or partner tasks.
AN ELA EXAMPLE
StudySync is an ELA curriculum that includes a library of digital texts paired with audio tracks, video models of various skills, a peer feedback tool, and automated scaffolds.
Let’s take a linear, whole group lesson from StudySync and reimagine it as a station rotation. I’ll use the eighth-grade First Read lesson for A Celebration of Grandfathers, by Rudolfo Anaya.
This StudySync lesson asks students to watch and discuss a video preview and build background knowledge; engage in reading activities; practice comprehension strategies; annotate and discuss the text; engage in grammar practice; and answer “think questions.”
If we reimagine the lesson as a station rotation, it might include a teacher-led station modeling a reading strategy using gradual release; an offline station for independent or paired grammar practice and self-assessment; an online or offline station where students make vocabulary predictions, read, and annotate the text; and an online station for collaborative research to build background.
Station rotation frees the teacher from the front of the room to work alongside students, allowing the teacher to make the lesson more accessible.
A MATH EXAMPLE
Math can be challenging to design because it is linear, with concepts building sequentially. Some students get content quickly, while others need more explanation and support. If we want learning to be equitable, with all students receiving the input they need to reach a particular output, we need to get creative.
During a recent blended learning training, a teacher was in tears. She knew her current approach wasn’t working for most students but wasn’t sure how to use blended learning with the Swun Math curriculum. Challenge accepted.
We brainstormed an approach that honored the basic methodology of Swun but incorporated stations to differentiate instruction.
Like most adopted curriculum, a Swun lesson has more than a teacher can cover in a class period: a problem of the day, vocabulary, the input model, structured guided practice, a final check for understanding, student practice, challenge problems, and an extension activity.
In a reimagined lesson, the teacher could allow for student control by beginning with the whole group using Problem of the Day and Vocabulary Building as warm-ups. Then, the teacher could use Swun’s Input Model to provide direct instruction introducing the day’s topic.
Instead of having the class move as a unit through the remaining lesson elements, since students require variable time on task, the teacher can transition them into skill-level groups. That frees the teacher to provide more support to the students in the lower-level group as they work on Final Check and move to Practice Problems.
Students in the midlevel group can watch the video of the input model if they need additional instruction while the teacher is working with the lower-level group. The teacher then transitions from the lower to the midlevel group to review and support work.
The high-level group will need less teacher time and complete more lesson elements. When they finish Challenge Problems, they can decide how to use their time. They might move on to the next video lesson, complete the extension activity, or grab a “student tutor” lanyard and assist other students. Not only do students in the high-level group move at a pace that works for them, but they can choose to serve as valuable resources in the classroom.
Designing Adopted Curriculum Facilitates Tailored Learning Experiences
The purpose of an adopted curriculum is to provide a high-quality, standards-aligned learning experience for all students, but a one-size-fits-all approach rarely meets everyone’s needs. Just as a traditional meat-filled lasagna won’t work for a dinner party that includes vegetarians, a teacher-led whole group lesson won’t meet the wide spectrum of needs, abilities, and interests in a classroom.
Teachers must bring their creativity and knowledge of their student population into their work, designing and facilitating tailored learning experiences. Blended learning provides transferable instructional models that teachers can use to modify their curriculum to ensure that learning is designed to meet the needs of all students.
Techtarget Reports Record Fourth Quarter And Full Year 2007 Results
TechTarget, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTGT) today announced financial results for the three months and year ended December 31, 2007. Total revenues for the fourth quarter increased by 23% to $28.4 million compared to $23.1 million for the comparable prior year quarter. Online revenues increased by 23% to $19.0 million compared to $15.4 million for the comparable prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, as adjusted for stock-based compensation) increased by 13% to $8.4 million compared to $7.4 million for the comparable prior year quarter.
Total revenues for 2007 increased by 20% to $94.7 million compared to $79.0 million for 2006. Online revenues, which represented 67% of total revenues, increased by 24% to $63.7 million compared to $51.2 million for 2006. In 2007, adjusted EBITDA increased by 22% to $24.6 million compared to $20.1 million for 2006.
“We are pleased to deliver another quarter and year of strong growth both on the top and bottom line,” said Greg Strakosch, Chairman and CEO of TechTarget. “Our primary focus during the quarter was the acquisition of KnowledgeStorm. We finalized due diligence, closed the transaction and made tremendous progress integrating KnowledgeStorm into TechTarget. We’re confident that this acquisition has expanded our competitive lead and allows us to further scale the business.”
Gross profit margin increased for both the quarter and year to 73% and 70%, respectively, compared to 71% and 69%, respectively, as compared to the comparable prior year periods. Online gross profit margin continued to demonstrate high operating leverage, increasing for both the quarter and year to 77% and 76%, respectively, compared to 76% and 75%, respectively, as compared to comparable prior year periods. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 30% and 26%, respectively, for the fourth quarter of 2007 and 2007.
Net income for the quarter was $2.8 million, unchanged from the prior year quarter. Net income for 2007 was $8.2 million, an increase of 14% compared to 2006. Earnings per basic and diluted share for the quarter and year were $0.07 and $0.06 and $0.15 and $0.13, respectively, compared to earnings per basic and diluted share of $0.00 and ($0.46) in the fourth quarter of 2006 and 2006, respectively. As of December 31, 2007, TechTarget had $62 million of cash, cash equivalents and short term investments, and bank debt of $6 million.
Additionally, as separately disclosed, the Company will be restating certain of its filings as a result of overstatements of its provision for income taxes in 2007; the restatement results in increases in net income of $534,000 and $290,000 for the quarters ended June 30, 2007 and September 30, 2007, respectively.
Recent Company Highlights
Integrated KnowledgeStorm product offerings with TechTarget’s product offerings. Introduced a new lead generation program that combines the TechTarget and KnowledgeStorm offerings called FlexROI™. We sold more than 70 FlexROI programs in the first 60 days since the launch.
Made significant progress integrating the KnowledgeStorm employee base and reducing expenses. Material sales and operational efficiencies have allowed us to reduce the expense base against the KnowledgeStorm business by approximately 50%, which equates to an annual projected reduction of approximately $8 million. At year end, approximately half of the KnowledegeStorm employees had been integrated into the TechTarget workforce, increasing our capabilities against product development, product management and search engine optimization and marketing. Expense reductions have primarily come from selling & marketing and general and administration.
Continued to optimize our web sites for search engines. Visits from search engines were up approximately 40% in the quarter. Our success in attracting a growing amount of search engine traffic, as well as the large amount of direct visits to our sites, allows us to attract over 90% of our new registered members with minimal incremental expenses.
Financial guidance for Fiscal Year 2008 and the First Quarter of 2008
For the fiscal year 2008, the Company expects revenue to grow between 25% – 29% and be within the range of $118.0 and $122.0 million and adjusted EBITDA to grow between 34% – 42% and to be within the range of $33.0 – $35.0 million. The Company expects its online growth rate to be approximately 40% in 2008.
For the first quarter of 2008, the Company expects revenues to be within the range of $23.0 million to $24.0 million and adjusted EBITDA to be within the range of $3.0 million to $3.8 million.
Conference Call and Webcast Non-GAAP Financial MeasuresThis press release and the accompanying tables include a discussion of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA Margin, all of which are non-GAAP financial measures which are provided as a complement to results provided in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”). The term “adjusted EBITDA” refers to a financial measure that we define as earnings before net interest, income taxes, depreciation, and amortization, as further adjusted for stock-based compensation. The term “adjusted EBITDA Margin” refers to a financial measure which we define as adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of total revenues. These Non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to results prepared in accordance with GAAP, but should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, GAAP results. In addition, our definition of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA Margin may not be comparable to the definitions as reported by other companies. We believe adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA Margin are relevant and useful information to our investors as these measures are an integral part of our internal management reporting and planning process and are primary measures used by our management to evaluate the operating performance of our business, as well as potential acquisitions. The components of adjusted EBITDA include the key revenue and expense items for which our operating managers are responsible and upon which we evaluate their performance. In the case of senior management, adjusted EBITDA is used as the principal financial metric in their annual incentive compensation program. Adjusted EBITDA is also used for planning purposes and in presentations to our board of directors. Furthermore, we intend to provide these non-GAAP financial measures as part of our future earnings discussions and, therefore, the inclusion of these non-GAAP financial measures will provide consistency in our financial reporting. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to GAAP is provided in the accompanying tables.
Forward Looking Statements
© 2008 TechTarget, Inc. All rights reserved. TechTarget, KnowledgeStorm and the TechTarget logo are registered trademarks, and FlexROI, chúng tôi and chúng tôi chúng tôi chúng tôi chúng tôi and chúng tôi are trademarks, of TechTarget, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Share This Press Release
Update the detailed information about Sharepoint 2007: Getting To Know Sharepoint on the Moimoishop.com website. We hope the article's content will meet your needs, and we will regularly update the information to provide you with the fastest and most accurate information. Have a great day!