SharePoint 2010 - Some good books I refer!

1. Sams.Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.Unleashed.Oct.2010
2. Manning.SharePoint.2010.Web.Parts.in.Action.Apr.2011
3. Wrox - Professional SharePoint 2010 Development.
4. Microsoft.Press.Using.Microsoft.InfoPath.2010.with.Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.Step.by.Step.Oct.2011

Hope this helps...

How to get process ID attached to a WSP?

To debug a WSP service in Visual Studio 2010, we need find and attach W3WP process. There are n number of W3WP process running at a time. How to get the ID of W3WP process attached to that specific WSP service you are working with? Earlier you might have use IISAPP command but that is no more available .

Simple use “%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list wp” command and you can find out.

Hope this helps!

SharePoint 2010 - InfoPath form Library

A tool provided as part of office system which helps to design, develop, deploy and configure XSLT standards compliant user interfaces out of XML document/schema required for business data collection.

Business data --- Work Flow, business process

Form Library

A document library that keeps tracks of user inputted XML documents and associated with an InfoPath template.

Browser Support for InfoPath in enterprise edition, session state is required for InfoPath

InfoPath Form Services.

One of the enterprise edition features provided as part of SharePoint Plat Form which helps to publish and render InfoPath documents as browser compatible HTML forms with client side AJAX implementation.

Browser support

Features of InfoPath

1.       Available as separate licensing for scalable configuration and reduces licensing cost

2.       XML schema based UI structure and design

3.       Out of the box controls for better UI design

4.       Inbuilt support to UI validation

5.       .NET(C# and VB) based customization in UI processing. VSTA(visual studio tools for application)

6.       Different types of data connection support for integrating UI with external systems.

7.       Reusable template part support

8.       Support of SOA features including web services, WCF services(limited to only basic http binding) and REST enabled services

9.       Views and Navigation support (like wizard) to design UI modular.

10.   Options to publish InfoPath data to SP libraries and Lists

11.   Content type Support in publishing InfoPath forms

12.   Options to extract InfoPath data as column(which would be useful for reporting and workflow)

13.   Browser support to InfoPath form rendering

14.   Form viewer web part support for Rendering InfoPath forms in a specific zone.

15.   InfoPath form controls for both windows and web for better application integration

16.   Data connection library support for looking up connection information required for InfoPath Data Sources.

17.   WSP deployment and packaging support

SharePoint 2010 - Business Intelligence Services

Business Intelligence generally consists of SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS, however Business Intelligence in SharePoint means a platform which helps to connect, author, publish render business data from various services such as excel, analysis service to design reporting and dashboard solutions.

Business Intelligence Services

1.       Excel Services

2.       Access Services for Web Databases

3.       Visual services for web diagram and strategy maps

4.       Chart Web Part

5.       Business Connectivity Services

6.       SSRS integration

7.       SSAS integration

8.       Power Pivot for SharePoint and Excel

9.       Key Performance Indicator

10.   Performance Point Services for Analytics and Dashboard reporting

Business Intelligence Features

1.       Excel Services

a.       Options to publish Excel works as browser enabled, html content,

b.      Data Connection library support for connecting data sources

c.       Excel web access web part support for rendering tables, ranges and charts

d.      REST support to Excel Services to access Excel components independently

e.       Analysis services data source support for better pivot charts and tables

f.        Macro support in rendering(ActiveX based macros are not supported)

g.       USF assembly support for custom calculations

h.      Excel Service web Service support for programmatic access

i.         Cashing support for better rendering performance

2.       Visio Services

a.       Options to publish and render vision diagrams as Silverlight enabled web diagrams(Silverlight prevents from content extraction)

b.      Options to design strategy map diagrams connected to data sources.

3.       SSRS integration

a.       Options to store report definition in content database

b.      Inter-connection enabled

c.       Report viewer web part for rendering report

d.      SQL

e.      Charts and graphs control support in rendering reports

4.       SSAS integration

a.       Power pivot for Excel(Part of Office licensing)

b.      Easier solutions in terms of analysis volume of data.

c.       Leverage existing excel skills to build analytical solutions

d.      Options to connect various data sources such as SQL server, RSS feeds, oData, analysis services, XML and Web services

e.      Browser compatibility support in rendering power pivot, chart and table

f.        Dedicated site template for power pivot gallery

5.       KPI(Key Performance Indicator)-

a.        inbuilt SharePoint list definition for creating KPI entries

b.      Options to connect various data sources in defining KPI goals, actual values and trends

6.       PerformancePoint Service  is one of the most important features of BI

a.       Part of SharePoint EE licensing

b.      Dedicated site template for BI centre to design pps services

c.       Option to connect various data sources, SQL, Analysis services, excel services, XML, OLEDB compatible services and excel services

d.      Easy to create KPI solutions compared to SharePoint features

e.      Built in support to de-composition trees(mainly used for digging data deeply to get more analytic information)

f.        Built in support to designing score cards

g.       Support for creating analytics report

h.      Options to Link vision service enabled strategic maps

i.         Easy to design dashboard reporting solutions

j.        Options to include filters to allow users to get right information

k.       Options to publish dash board reports as browser compatible HTML solutions

SharePoint 2010 - Enterprise Content Management

ECM – One of the enterprise application Features provided as part of SharePoint Plat Foam which helps to take full control over or govern or administer document flow, content flow or information flow in the organization with automated features. It is available in only in Share Point Server.

Five components that make ECM really works

1.       WCM – web content management

2.       DM – Document Management

3.       DAM – Digital Assent Management

4.       RM – Record Management

5.       IRM –  Information Right Management

1, 2 are available in Standard and rest are available in Enterprise Edition

ECM Features

WCM – Capabilities

1.       Unified browser based tool sets for authoring/reviewing/publishing with work flow.

2.       Multi-lingual editor support in authoring

3.       Out of the box support to spell checking the browser itself

4.       Options to view differences between pages of changes in the browser.

5.       Options to create custom page layout

6.       One click page layout change support

7.       Scheduled publishing support

8.       Reusable content library support

9.       In-built work flow support for publishing(Approval work flow)

10.    Variation(add multi-lingual support) for multi-lingual sites

11.   Better control over caching content (Pages, Page Layouts can choose different caching). SharePoint caching is in memory and restarting will lose caching.

12.   Content deployment support for linking SharePoint sites

DM – capabilities

13.   Document conversion support for publishing web pages out of office documents

14.   Content Organizer to manage documents relocated to different libraries in an automated way.

15.   Document ID service to uniquely identify documents

16.   Document set service to group. Set of related documents

17.   Taxonomy and Foxonomy Services to document management(Managed and unmanaged way of tagging)

18.   Content type based identifying, grouping and organizing documents

RM – capabilities

                A mechanism of archiving business use completed documents and list items into separate SharePoint sites.

19.   Record management is available as solution and features (any site can leverage)

20.   Record routing support (a mechanism of organizing business use completed documents and list items into appropriate libraries)

21.   EDRM (Electronic discover reference model) compliant. A specification that governs how editing and changes applied to archived documents controls how search impacts records in displaying search results.

22.   Hold management to support adding dependency to records

23.   Multi stage retention policy to records

IRM – capabilities

24.   WRMS integration (Window right management services)

25.   Options to support content extraction policies

26.   Options to define content expiration policy to downloaded documents

27.   Options to configure information security management policy that includes labelling, expiration policy, auditing and generating barcode

DAM – capabilities

28.   Separate and dedicated document library template for managing media assets

29.   Options to capture media meta data information such as author, copy right details , dimension and image labels

30.   Options to configure IIS media service to secure media assets from being miss-used

Reference materials

1.       Wrox press- professional share point 2010 web content management

2.       Addison Wesley Essential SharePoint 2010 content management

3.       APress- Pro SharePoint 2010 development solutions

4.       Microsoft Press SharePoint 2010 development Reference(Advance reference)

SharePoint 2010 - Enterprise Search

Definition 1: Finding relevant Information

Definition 2– Finding nouns, phrases, statements

Activities involved in Search: Sorting with appropriate data, metadata, security and Query handling

Technical Definition: One of the enterprise features provided as part of SP server which helps to craw, index and handle query on various data sources to retrieve relevant information user needs.

Technically Search = Crawling, indexing and query handling.

What are the Search products available to use?

1.       Search server express license free product

2.       Search Server Enterprise edition

3.       Search Server for SP

4.       Search server for SP internet sites

5.       Fast Search Server

6.       Fast Search Server for SP

What are the Search products available to use?

1.       Various content   sources support

2.       Incremental crawling support

3.       Incremental and adaptive indexing support.

4.       Scalable configuration in search topologies

5.       IFilter API support for custom file/document format

6.       Crawl rules to define how crawl should work.

7.       Search support for narrowing down the sources

8.       Server name mapping support to transform indexed data to different url in the result

9.       Meta data property search

10.   Host distribution rule support to configure where to store indexed data in appropriate databases.

11.   Authoritative page support for promoting demoting url/content sources

12.   Federated search support for integrating external search providers

13.   Key words based best beds(recommendations/suggestions)

14.   Inbuilt support to “did you mean suggestions”

15.   Profile support for people search.

16.   SQL connecter support in search using BCS

17.   Out of the box search web-parts(Extensible)

18.   XSLT based search customization

19.   Search result refinement panel for filtering(not a nested search)

20.   XML dictionary based thesaurus

21.   Multi-lingual dictionary support

22.   SOM support for programmatic access

23.   Windows 7 explorer integration for search

24.   Wild card search

25.   Boolean operator supporting search (And or NOT etc.)

26.   Phonetics search using soundx

27.   Search alert support

28.   RSS and ATOM feed format support in Search results

29.   Search analytical report based on search query logging.

30.   In built support to search statistics and search summary

31.   Out of the box support to search pagination.

Features of FAST Search

1.       Performance centric solution for Enterprise centric sites

2.       Completely customizable and extensible because it uses pipe line based processing in crawling and indexing

3.       Context based search support(Area specific)

4.       Visual best bed and preview support

5.       Digital media assets and properties support in search.

6.       Nested search support

7.       Text mining based algorithms for relevant search(fussy lookup and grouping in finding related keywords and terms)

SharePoint 2010 - Web Parts

Definition 1: Widgets added to SP pages @runtime

Definition 2: Web Part is a portion of a Web Page used by a server control that renders dynamic contents.

Technical Definition: Web Part is a specialized ASP.NET server controls that are added or plugged into SharePoint pages dynamically at runtime using browser to render some dynamic contents as part of SharePoint page contents.

Comparison of ASP.NET & Web Parts

ASP.NET server control	Web Parts
Added to pages at design time	@run time
Developer adds controls to page	End users chooses web part
No communication established between controls by default	inter connectible web part
User specific personalization not applicable	User specific personalization supported
SOM by default not supported	SharePoint object model supported
Target audience is not supported	Target audience supported
By default designed support to user controls	Developing web part is as good as developing custom controls. So designer by default is supported.

Features of Web Parts in 2010

1.       ASP.NET portal framework based(more usable and interoperable)                         

2.       Visual web part support(web part that host user controls)

3.       Ease of development and deployment(inherit a class and update some methods)

4.       Sandboxed solution deployment support(only coded web part supports)

5.       WSP packaging support for deployment

6.       Inbuilt support to ASP.NET server side AJAX

7.       Options to hosting Silverlight Packages to enrich web experience

8.       Inter-communication between web parts support using interface support

9.       Media web part support for streaming media contents(by default client side streaming supported- installing IIS media services would provide server side streaming – license free

Download from iis.net.

10.   Charts and graph web part support

11.   XML viewer web part for XSLT transformation

12.   Content query web part for rolling of the contents

13.   Page viewer web  part for integrating existing pages

14.   Content editor web part for inline HTML rendering

15.   Editor part component support for customizing look and feel of web part properties

16.   Verbs support for adding custom commands to web parts

17.   RSS feed/ATOM feeds web part support

18.   SOM support to leverage SharePoint features

19.   Target audience support

20.   HTML form web part