Relevant navigation is a key component for any website. By default, SharePoint displays lists and libraries in the navigation pane. Learn how to add links to the top link bar of a site and you’ll see how the enhancing the SharePoint navigation bar improves the user experience. Course instructor Eric Skaggs will also show how to hide some of the default nodes in the navigation pane to make room for more relevant, contextual items that will be added to be added later.

One of the advantages that Exchange Unified Messaging provides is language compatability for companies with employees in different locations, potentially speaking different languages. Peter will create a new auto attendant linked to an existing dial plan, and walk through how to configure a Portuguese language pack—and speaks a bit, too. He goes on to explain how careful configuration of dial plans and language packs is necessary reagarding translation and transcription issues in an enterprise utilizing multiple languages.

Connected web parts allow you to provide enhanced interactivity within SharePoint application pages. Consumer and provider web parts pass information back and forth, which is very useful in master-details scenarios, for instance when selecting a list item and seeing additional information about that item. Eric Skaggs carefully walks through the process of creating a provider web part that has a message among its properties, and connecting it with a consumer web part. After the web parts have been connected, the message property of the provider web part will be displayed in the consumer web part.

In this interview, Peter talks about his TechMentor sessions that covered high availability, Exchange virtualization, Windows 7 and more. He also touches on some of the challenges admins need to overcome when adapting to new technology. You’ll also get a glimpse of some of his Vegas antics, which may or may not have involved a mechanical bull.

Read what Peter has to say on Twitter @JPBruzzese and visit his InfoWorld blog for info regarding Exchange, Windows 7 and SharePoint.

Application Development with SharePoint 2010

In this free video lesson from his SharePoint 2010 Development Training course, Eric uses Visual Studio 2010 to demonstrate the methods needed for effective feature deployment in a SharePoint 2010 environment. The lessons of the course cover many other SharePoint development tools and strategies that developers can use to create unique business solutions for their company.

Check out how SharePoint 2010 Development Training will prepare you for the MCTS 70-573 Application Development exam, distinguishing you as a developer in demand.

Available Now: SharePoint 2010 Development Training

SharePoint holds a wealth of capabilities when it comes to content and document management, application development and business process automation. This video training course gears instruction towards addressing those skills of SharePoint specialists.

With some ASP.NET and C# knowledge, this SharePoint 2010 Development course will familiarize the SP ’10 novice with the process of creating applications that will increase business productivity. Integrating business logic while developing custom-code solutions for optimizing branding and workflow, even in large enterprises, is paramount to SharePoint development expertise.

Instructor Eric Skaggs lays out scenarios in each lesson for customizing features in an application. These are custom features that must often be added to meet very specific needs, including site collection, custom site navigation, branding, group permissions and much more. The knowledge of robust workflow development with permissions management in SharePoint 2010 environments is a highly valued asset.

In this course you will learn how to build custom business applications in SharePoint 2010:

• Visual Studio 2010 features to integrate with SharePoint
• How to Create a Custom Ribbon Control
• Coding a Timer Job Solution
• How to Delegate Controls

Quality SharePoint development can serve as another way for companies to maximize investment in such a broad platform. A section of the course addresses this concern in covering Business Connectivity Solutions (BCS). You’ll understand the purpose of incorporating data from SQL and other sources to create solutions to client needs, such as dashboards.

The course also includes a copy of the code used in each lesson’s programming scenarios to aid as base for your specific applications and to help you practice.

Meet Your Certified Instructor: Eric Skaggs

Instructor Eric Skaggs is Microsoft certified in SharePoint 2010 in both the Administration/Configuration and Development tracks. With several years of experience in training and contracting for clients, such as Kraft Foods, Chicago Public Schools and Columbia College Chicago, Eric provides well-presented, highly communicative instruction as an all-around SharePoint expert.

Earn a highly demanded IT certification with SharePoint 2010 Development training, and see where value-added development capabilities with SharePoint can make the difference.

Registrations Now Open for VMware vSphere 5 Certification

VMware recently announced that registrations for the new VCP5 certification (VMware Certified Professional on vSphere 5) are now open. If you already hold a VCP4 certification, you’re able to simply take the new exam to get certified for vSphere 5. However, if you hold an older certification or are not yet VCP certified, you’ll need to meet a few prerequisites in order to take the new exam. Here’s a graphic from VMware to help you map out your path to earning your VCP5 certification.

As you can see, if you already hold a VCP4 certification, you can simply take the “VMware vSphere: What’s New [V5]” course, which will prepare you for the changes made in the new VCP5 exam. If you do not currently hold a VMware certification, you can take the “VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V5]” course which will prepare you for the exam. Finally, if you’ve completed a VCP4 course, but have yet to take the VCP4 exam, you can continue on to take the “VMware vSphere: What’s New [V5]” course and take the VCP5 exam.

Of course, I always recommend using more than one method of studying and training for exams, so you might want to take a look at the TrainSignal vSphere 5 training that was recently released.

New MCPD Certification

Mobile app development and use is on the rise and Microsoft is looking to certify app developers who have what it takes to develop using their technology. The new Windows Phone Developer MCPD is now available. To earn the certification, you’ll be required to pass the following three exams:

• 70-506 – TS: Silverlight 4, Development
• 70-516 – TS: Accessing Data with Microsoft .NET Framework
• 70-599 – PRO: Designing and Developing Windows Phone Applications

There are a few important things to note while working towards the certification. First, as you’ll notice above, the 70-599 exam is still relatively new, so the scores may not be processed right away. Second, because this is a new certification, the title will not show up on your transcript until late September of 2011. Lastly, mobile technologies change quickly, so you’ll be expected to recertify every two years in order to keep up with the quickly evolving platforms.

New Microsoft Office Specialist Certification

SharePoint 2010 (77-886) has been added to the MOS 2010 line of certifications. According to Microsoft Learning, candidates for the exam are users who provide structure for information, extend out-of-the-box site features, solve business problems through composite applications, and facilitate collaboration with other site users. The following domains will be included in the exam (percentages are not provided):

• Creating and Formatting Content
• Managin SharePoint Site
• Participating in User Communities
• Configuring and Consuming Site Search Results
• Integrating SharePoint 2010 Services and Microsoft Office 2010 Applications

For more information on the exam, please visit the Microsoft Learning exam page.

New MCP Certification

The Microsoft Certified Professional exam, Designing and Developing Windows Phone Applications has been released and is now available in Prometric testing centers. According to Microsoft Learning, candidates for the 70-599 exam are typically independent software vendors or developers who design and develop applications for the Windows Phone platform. Candidates should also have knowledge of and experience with the following:

• Windows Phone 7
• Silverlight
• C# or Visual Basic
• Microsoft .NET
• Mobile Application Design and Development

For more information on the exam, please visit the Microsoft Learning website, and to register for the exam, visit the Prometric website.

Open Office Certifications Retired

After Oracle discontinued (official/commercial) development of the Open Office suite of applications following the creation of LibreOffice (a community-based project aimed at being open source and vendor-neutral), Open Office certifications became irrelevant. As such, all Open Office certifications have been listed as “Discontinued” on Oracle’s website. It is not yet clear if or when Oracle (or any other certification vendors) will create new certifications for the new community driven project.

It is important to remember, however, that neither of the two projects officially ended. Both may continue to release updates to their software. Oracle has simply discontinued commercial development and retired the certifications, but as it is open source, community driven updates are still likely.

Earning College Credit with a Microsoft Certification

Are you in college while looking to earn a Microsoft certification? You might be in luck. The American Council for Education (ACE) has recommended the allowance of college credits for earning select Microsoft certifications. While ACE maintains a large network of over 1,500 colleges and universities that have agreed to consider Microsoft certifications as college credit recommendations, it’s important to note that each college or university retains the right to accept (or deny) credit recommendations as they see fit. If you’re planning on earning a Microsoft certification, contact the institution you attend to find out about their policy on accepting certifications for college credits.

For more information on participating colleges and universities, you should visit the ACE website where you’ll find an alphabetical list of participating institutions. To acquire an ACE transcript, visit the Microsoft Learning website to enroll and submit your exams for verification. Finally, to find out what certifications will earn you college credit, you can view the full list here. Certification credit offerings range from one to six college credits per qualifying certification.

What is RBS?

SharePoint 2010 has offered to solve the problem to a degree by offering Remote BLOB Storage (RBS). A Binary Large Object (BLOB) is a large block of data that is stored in a database, and is known by its size and location rather than its structure (good examples being videos, images or Office documents you might upload to a document library). Since these BLOBs can grow out of control (because some admins just hate the fact that any document type is stored in SQL through SharePoint) the idea is that you can store these BLOBs outside of the content databases. Hence the name Remote BLOB Storage, or RBS.

If you are curious as to how to work with and configure RBS, you can watch me do this step-by-step in my new SharePoint 2010 Administration Training series from TrainSignal.

Remote BLOB Benefits

Now Microsoft says openly “Before you implement RBS, we highly recommend you evaluate its potential costs and benefits.” To learn more about the reasons behind such a statement, we turn to comments made by Chris Beckett, a certified SharePoint Master and trainer with an extensive SharePoint development background. He says, “The principle justification for RBS is offloading large files to lower cost storage for very large content profiles, however RBS introduces administrative overhead to backup/restore, periodic maintenance (orphaned blobs), and other potential issues. This means from a cost justification standpoint, you have to have a lot of content before it actually makes financial sense. The general recommendation is to only recommend RBS when dealing with content inventories when pragmatic content database partitioning strategies cannot be effective, streaming media, and with very large content stores. Even when considered, selectively using it only for media, document and record center sites should be considered instead of enabling it for all sites.”

So, there is an obvious call to use this feature judiciously. But for admins who aren’t comfortable with having their documents held by SQL, they can now rely on another option in RBS. Whether you decide to use it or not… ah, that is the question.

This free video lesson from our SharePoint 2010 Training course also walks you through how to analyze the pre-check report before running an installation of SharePoint 2010

If you have experience with SharePoint 2007 and Server 2008 R2, then a seamless upgrade to SharePoint 2010 will yield a massive improvement in the way you manage your environment. Our new SharePoint 2010 Training course not only covers migration, but covers everything needed to prepare for the Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, Configuring Exam (70-667):

• Incoming and Outgoing Email
• Security and Backup
• Configuring Remote BLOB
• Web Apps
• and more!

SharePoint 2010 Training will get you beyond the basics and up to date with one of the most important platforms for server administrators.

Just Released: SharePoint 2010 Administration Training

The new SharePoint 2010 Training course by Microsoft Exchange MVP J. Peter Bruzzese can confidently put you on track for the MCITP. Since a SharePoint 2010 certification is in such high demand, the course takes a novice familiarity of SharePoint and teaches from beginning to end how to setup, deploy, configure, and manage a real SharePoint environment.

While the installation and configuration processes of SharePoint 2010 have been streamlined, the options seem neverending. A certification level experience with SharePoint 2010 is your starting point for becoming a great server administrator.

Throughout the course, Peter delves into specialized instruction for a broad range of coverage on tasks such as:

• Indexing and Search
• Web Applications
• Backup and Restore
• Operational Settings and SharePoint Solutions
• Preparation for the SharePoint 2010 Configuring 70-667 certification exam

Lessons on configuring SharePoint farms, managing authentication and site collections, and performance monitoring lend to the well-rounded approach of the course.

The course covers the diverse set of options offered in SharePoint 2010 to give students varied instruction that goes beyond just an introduction, and contains exclusive lessons on configuring Remote BLOB (RBS) for storing large files, and managing user profiles & social networking.

Instructor J. Peter Bruzzese has also made courses for TrainSignal on Exchange Server and Small Business Server, based on over ten years of certification instruction experience. He spent the early portion of his IT career working for corporate powerhouses, such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, so his instruction aims to stress the real-world, on-the-job impact of polished server administration skills in a corporate setting. As a Microsoft MVP for Exchange, Peter regularly contributes to Redmond Magazine, Windows IT Pro and TechTarget, and has published a dozen books on Exchange and other Windows subjects.

Don’t Get Left Behind

The rapid, widespread use of SharePoint has resulted in a rising demand for skilled administrators, so you can’t afford to be lacking in your professional training. Go beyond the basics with our SharePoint 2010 Training.

In short, teaching is what Peter enjoys more than anything, whether it’s through video training, how-to articles and books, or tech conferences. And he’s excellent at it. I’ve watched a number of Peter’s videos, read many of his articles and seen him speak and connect with an audience at last year’s TechEd. He’s definitely got a knack for helping people understand complex concepts and get them excited about what they’re learning.

At this year’s Connections in Orlando, Peter held a workshop on migrating and restructuring Active Directory with Microsoft’s free Active Directory Migration Tool, showing IT pros that not only is this possible, it’s a very cost friendly solution.

I got a chance to sit down with Peter for a quick interview to talk about his session and what he believes Exchange admins should pay attention to in 2011. Peter’s response was Office 365, but not in the way you might think… he’s not talking about Office 365 features, or how great the new platform will be. A lot of Exchange admins worry that Office 365 might cost them their jobs and Peter addresses this concern and offers his advice.

If you’re an Exchange admin, or are planning on moving into the Exchange space, then this is one video you won’t want to miss.

Also, make sure to take a look at Peter’s books and training videos and feel free to ask him a question or just say hi on Twitter at @JPBruzzese.

As SharePoint 2010 adoption increases, so does the demand for qualified SharePoint professionals. So let’s take a closer look at SharePoint 2010 and the available SharePoint certification at the MCTS and MCITP levels.

Brief SharePoint 2010 Overview

Microsoft SharePoint is a web publishing software used in organizations for collaboration, file sharing and building portals.

Many organizations utilize SharePoint to set up their intranet websites, which can be used to share information easily, and also to share files with minimum bandwidth crunch. File sharing especially is chiefly popular considering that the alternative to sharing files through a web server is through emails, and an email sent to mass recipients can choke the network, as the entire propagation is at the same instant. Alternatively a file shared on SharePoint can be downloaded by users as and when needed, and the probability that all users will download the file at the same point in time is pretty low.

In the organizations I have worked for, SharePoint have been a key factor in the medium of communication. Organizations use it to share certain mandatory documents or information like policies, guidelines and procedures. Project managers use it to store files, collaborate with others sitting across continents and share common information, which is necessary for teams that are not co-located. Communication accounts for about 70% of project timestamps, on an average. For example, if a project is estimated to take 10,000 hours, around 7,000 of it goes into communicating between various parties, be it between the team, client, third party vendors and other stakeholders. That’s where SharePoint comes in very handy.

SharePoint can be an extremely powerful tool and a vital part in many organization’s success. And SharePoint 2010 has more to offer than ever. With a new user interface, new collaboration features, improved search function, new ways to customize and manage SharePoint sites and content, SharePoint 2010 is a completely redesigned tool. Take a look at this article from Microsoft to get more details on what’s new in SharePoint Server 2010.

A Word on SharePoint Professionals

I consider all individuals working with SharePoint as SharePoint Professionals; I say this because there are a number of certifications at the Professional level in the area of SharePoint. In fact, there are two different certification paths for SharePoint professionals with very diverse skill-sets:

• SharePoint Administration
• SharePoint Development

SharePoint administration revolves around the activities of SharePoint installation, configuration, managing users, controlling access, and the like. Senior level administrators can get into more complex activities like designing the infrastructure needed to support SharePoint.

SharePoint developers on the other hand work on designing and developing SharePoint websites and spend their time writing code and optimizing the features and performance of SharePoint sites.

Microsoft has certifications for both SharePoint developers and administrators at both the MCTS and MCITP level. Let’s take a closer look at the certification and exam options.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Certifications

There are a total of five SharePoint 2010 certifications available, two geared towards SharePoint administrators, two designed for SharePoint developers and the fifth one is an amalgamation of the four, designated for the true SharePoint masters.

SharePoint 2010 Administration Certifications:

Exam 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring

The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) Exam 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring focuses on the installation, deployment, upgrading, managing and maintaining a SharePoint environment.

There are no mandatory prerequisites to take this exam however, Microsoft recommends that the candidate has a minimum of one year experience in SharePoint administration along with Windows Server 2008, Active Directory, and network infrastructure knowledge.

70-667 exam topics include deploying new installations and upgrades, managing accounts and user roles, managing web applications and site collections, backing up and restoring SharePoint environments, as well as monitoring, analyzing and optimizing SharePoint performance, among others.

Learn more about Exam 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring

Exam 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator

The Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) Exam 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator covers disaster recovery, infrastructure capacity, upgrading and migrating, security and compliance, information architecture, information search strategy and more.

Microsoft recommends a minimum of two years of experience in SharePoint administration, deployment, management, migration, and design before attempting this exam. You should have a good grasp of PowerShell, SQL mirroring and load balancing, security concepts and authentication methods, as well as Server 2008 and Active Directory administration, and network infrastructure services like DNS and IIS.

70-668 exam topics include designing physical architecture and SharePoint integration with network infrastructure, planning service applications, SharePoint backup and restore, search topology and enterprise content management, business intelligence and more.

Learn more about Exam 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator.

SharePoint 2010 Developer Certifications:

Exam 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development

The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) Exam 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development revolves around a candidate’s ability to develop applications on the SharePoint 2010 platform. It is geared towards those with a programming background who are interested in working on customizing and extending the features of SharePoint to users.

To be eligible to take this exam, you should have at least one year experience with ASP.NET with Visual Studio 2008, along with SharePoint development experience and a minimum of 3 months exposure to SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010. The ideal candidate will be able to write code that extends SharePoint, add and support code in an existing SharePoint project and write code for custom features, such as Visual Web Part or EventReceiver. This certification could help you get the role of a software developer who uses SharePoint 2010 as a platform to develop and extend features.

70-573 exam topics include creating and applying branding to SharePoint sites, programming custom navigation and creating custom ribbon objects, creating and debugging Web Parts, managing features and solutions with Visual Studio 2010, creating and modifying custom content types, and much more.

Learn more about Exam 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development.

Exam: 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications

The Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) Exam: 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications focuses on designing and developing custom applications for SharePoint 2010, including selecting appropriate technologies to build code, creating a strategy for code development, versioning and structure as well as custom design projects for SharePoint 2010.

The ideal candidate fits a team lead role on the SharePoint development team and has a minimum of two years of development experience, and at least three years developing with ASP.NET.

70-576 exam topics include managing application development, optimizing SharePoint application design, designing SharePoint solutions and features, designing user experience, and more. There is a long list of exam objectives for this certification and it definitely involves a lot of skills.

Learn more about Exam: 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications.

Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) on SharePoint Server 2010

There is one more SharePoint certification, and this is the grand master of all the other SharePoint 2010 certifications. The Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is reserved for the true SharePoint experts.

The idea behind this MCM certification is to validate the skills around the entire SharePoint product, including the design, development, configuration, deployment, migration, optimization, troubleshooting, etc. A candidate at the MCM level possesses comprehensive knowledge and experience with SharePoint 2010 and is able to handle the most complex projects.

With great responsibility come greater requirements. The MCM certification requires you to complete all the four aforementioned SharePoint certifications before applying to the MCM program. Hands on experience with the tool in administration and development is a necessity, along with at least three years experience with SharePoint installation, configuration, troubleshooting, and custom development. Another prerequisite of the MCM program is the ability to speak, write and understand fluent English and this probably isn’t as much of a requirement for SharePoint itself, as it is for the testing process which is available only in English.

Learn more about the MCM SharePoint 2010 Certification.

Should You Get SharePoint Certified?

If you currently work with SharePoint 2010, then validating your skills with SharePoint certification is a good idea for several reasons. IT certifications are often requirements for many positions and hiring managers use this as a determining criteria when evaluating resumes. The certifications are also a good way to really get to know a product or technology; because of the exam objectives you’ll be making sure you learn all aspects of SharePoint as you prepare for your exam.

Salary statistics show that SharePoint is a good area to be in, with salaries ranging from upper $60,000 to upper $80,000 for SharePoint administrators and developers. The stats below are taken from SimplyHired.com.

SharePoint Salary Trends from SimplyHired.com

There are 15 dates and locations to choose from around the US:

The sessions include information on planning, implementation, deployment and much more:

For more information and to register for one of the Office 2010 Launch Events visit www.microsoft.com/business/2010events.

And if you can’t attend any of the live events in person, check out the virtual Office 2010 launch event on May 12th .

This is a huge number considering that it wasn’t until recently that SharePoint was any sort of focus at Microsoft.

The Great Wall of Microsoft?

This summer’s blockbuster releases from Google including the new browser Google Chrome, its speedier Java VM, V8, and most recently its Android operating system for mobile devices indicate that the boys in the Googleplex are fighting hard to shift the balance of power away from Microsoft and the desktop, and out into "the cloud."

Microsoft’s main strategy of tweaking its own desktop based products to be a little bit more accessible remotely, including via the Internet, suggest that Redmond’s opinion is that Google is bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Still, there is clearly much at risk, and just in case it has misjudged the moment, Microsoft’s SharePoint services represent an enormous defense against the move toward cloud based computing.

Microsoft ships the main basis of SharePoint as a free add-on for its Windows Server line. SharePoint is not technically a cloud computing platform, competing more directly with IBM/Lotus, but it offers many of the same advantages including remote access and collaboration.

The Windows SharePoint Services uses both IIS and SQL Server for data storage and retrieval while Microsoft Office SharePoint Server sits on top of the Windows SharePoint Services. The end result is three-fold.

First, with SharePoint Services, developers get a bunch of the up-front work for application building done for them. For example, developers don’t have to actually have to write any of the store procedures for the databases. This is very important in corporate America where most application development has a deadline of "now."

Second, with SharePoint Services being built upon common enterprise applications, development has a similar feel to other Microsoft based technologies meaning that a company’s or department’s current developers are probably up to the task.

Third, and perhaps most critically to Microsoft, using SharePoint Services tightens tentacles that reach into businesses. If a firm needs IIS and SQL Server for SharePoint, it stands to reason that they would look there first for other needs instead of purchasing a different product line. And, even more is coming with Microsoft having announced that it will include tools for SharePoint in the next release of Visual Studio.

As Business Goes, So Goes the Customer

The first version of SharePoint, released in 2001, was not well received. Companies were not yet sold on the value of "collaborative" applications and there was little reason to add another layer in the enterprise.

In 2003, SharePoint was included as part of Windows Server 2003. This led to developers testing the software and using it for small or pet projects as a way to get them up and off the ground quickly.

With this developer acceptance, came business acceptance. Still, the adoption rate was a trickle. This year, though, SharePoint licenses have exploded, with Bill Gates saying in March that there were over 1 million licensees.

The main road block is — as always it seems with Microsoft’s new systems — scalability, but Redmond is working hard to eliminate those issues in the next release. Until then, corporate developers are finding more and more power in a way that is easier to get to than on other platforms.

So, while the average IT professional or high-end computer user may love the various open-source or Google offered systems and platforms, it is SharePoint that is filling up the corporate datacenters.

In the end, that is what matters, because no matter how great something is, in the development world there is just no money to be made without the deep pockets of American business.

Emailing updated versions of the document just doesn’t seem feasible in these situations. Luckily, you are running a SharePoint server, and know how to use document libraries.

What? You aren’t using document libraries? Don’t know what they are?

Well don’t worry, in this article I’m going to explain: what a document library is, how to set one up, and how to set permissions for who in your organization can access and edit the files contained inside. Let’s get started!

Document libraries allow you to use your SharePoint Server like an online filing cabinet. You can create multiple documents, store them in an online format (rather than in your local file directories), and even work on them collaboratively.

The best part of it is that SharePoint integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft Office applications, so you can edit your documents in the same version of Word or Excel that you always have. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to set one up and set the options.

How to Set Up a Document Library in SharePoint

Document libraries can be created from the client-side SharePoint application, by navigating to your organization’s Sharepoint page (in our example, the page is for a fictitious publishing company). Once you’re there, click Site Actions and then click Create, as shown below:

In the resulting page, under the Libraries category, click Document Library.

Now you are presented with a page where you can create a name and description for this document library, and set a few options including quick-launch navigation and versioning.

Enabling the versioning option will allow you to create a version of the document each time it is updated in case, for some reason, you need to roll back to a previous version. This kind of backup is usually recommended for important information.

The last option you can set allows you to set the template for the documents you will create in this library. This is what allows for the integration with the Office products I mentioned earlier. Whichever template you select will determine what file-type the document is stored as and which program will open to edit it on your machine.

When you are finished setting these options click the Create button, and you are done. Now all you have left to do is set up your permissions and get to creating documents.

How to Set Up Permissions for Your Document Library

To set up the permissions for your new document library, you have to go through a similarly simple process. On the page for the document library, click Settings and the select Document Library Settings.

In the resulting page, click the link for Permissions for this document library.

Now you will be taken to a page that has a list of all of the users in your organization who can see this document library. You can select a user (or multiple users) and click Actions, then select Edit User Permissions to bring up the permission options for that user.

The resulting page presents you with the different types of access the user(s) you selected can have. All you have to do is select the checkboxes for the permissions you want the user(s) to have, and then click OK.

You will be returned to the previous page, and you will see that the access settings you have just changed will be reflected in the list of users.

Now you are ready to start creating, editing and collaborating! Go for it!

If you’re looking for more tips on managing documents in SharePoint check out my previous article on How to Manage Your Documents the Easy Way with Workflows.

Good luck, and don’t forget to come back for more tips and How-To’s from TST! Or grab out RSS Feed to get our updates automatically — learn how!

Get More Handy Tips with SharePoint Server 2007 Training Videos!

Our SharePoint training covers both: SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) and SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).

This instructor led video training also prepares you for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration Exam (70-630 MCTS) and the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Configuration Exam (70-631 MCTS).

With over 15 hours of video, our SharePoint training is your comprehensive guide to simplifying your organization’s collaboration and communication efforts.

Learn more and view the free demo here!

Of course, with that said, everyone knows that having a professional-looking webpage can be the difference between having a successful, useful site and having a site that just ends up being a waste of time and resources. No one wants to look unprofessional, right?

One way to have a huge affect on your SharePoint site’s presentation with only a small amount of work, is to add a customized company logo to your site. Branding your SharePoint Site in this way not only makes you look more professional, but can also help provide a basic level of copyrighting to the information presented there.

Ok, enough singing its praises. Let’s get started already!

The first thing you want to do is make sure you have the correct permissions to edit pages on your server. If you don’t have administrator privileges, point your system administrator at this How-To page and ask them to help you out (while you’re at it, why don’t you go ahead and plug this TST page to everyone you know? Thanks).

To change the logo that appears in the top left corner of your site, first go to your actual SharePoint server — either physically or by using a remote desktop client. Now navigate to the SharePoint site in question using your browser.

In the top left corner, right-click on the image next to the title of the page (in our example, the page is called Operations) and click Properties. The Properties dialog box should appear. In the box, look for the address of the image and copy only the filename portion, as shown below.

Now simply open the search dialog on the server and paste the filename into the box. When the file in question appears in the search box, simply right-click on it and select Open Containing Folder. Once the folder opens, simply copy the file you want to use as your new logo and paste it into the folder where the old logo is located.

Next, you have to change the settings on your site so that the new file you just copied is referenced as the page’s logo. To do this, navigate to your SharePoint site, click Settings, and then select Site Settings in the dropdown box.

On the next page select Title Description & Icon under Look and Feel

On the resulting page, you will need to enter the URL for the new logo that you want to use. The URL is going to be the same as the previous URL, except that the filename will be changed to the file that you want to use. You can either type this in manually, or you can copy, paste and then edit the URL from the current logo by using the method mentioned earlier.

Now all you have to do is add in a description for the logo in the alt text field, and click Ok. When the page reloads your new logo should appear in the top left corner of the page. Quick, simple, and elegant. That’s the name of the game with SharePoint.

That’s not the only way to customize your SharePoint site, but it’s a great start. Good luck, and check back soon for more from TST or grab our RSS Feed and get all of our latest updates sent directly to you!

Get More Tips with SharePoint Server 2007 Training Videos!

Our SharePoint training covers both: SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) and SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).

This instructor led video training also prepares you for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration Exam (70-630 MCTS) and the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Configuration Exam (70-631 MCTS).

With over 15 hours of video, our SharePoint training is your comprehensive guide to simplifying your organization’s collaboration and communication efforts.

Learn more and view the free demo here!

One of the things that can take up a lot of our time is waiting for approval. Everyone has had a situation in which they were assigned a project, and had to create some kind of a document relating to it. After creating a really thorough article or abstract, you send it off to your manager in an email for approval, and then you wait.

You may have one of those managers who is notoriously slow at responding to emails, or perhaps your manager has to send it further up the food chain via another email (after making suggestions and changes, of course). Either way, you are effectively stalled while you wait for the document to come back to you — approved or rejected.

Well if your company utilizes SharePoint, there is a better way to deal with these types of problems. That way comes in the form of workflows.

Time To Simplify …

Workflows provide a way for people in any organization to easily pass along documents for review, editing, and approval. The best part is — everything is integrated and works smoothly since it’s within SharePoint. You can see the progress of the document and better plan out your next steps.

No more waiting for the return email, or worse sending the “did you get my last email?” message — no one likes those. Better still, if your item is meant to be published out for the rest of your organization to see, using workflows in SharePoint can ensure that this happens automatically.

Getting Started with Workflows

To set this up, you simply navigate to the SharePoint Site for which you want to have a workflow assigned, click the Settings menu and then go to the site’s settings. In the example below, we have created a document library for this purpose:

In the resulting page, select link for Workflow Settings. Pretty straightforward, right? Here is a screenshot of it anyway, just in case:

The next page presents you with a few options to change. You can select the type of workflow you want, essentially what you want done with the document — for example: request approval, request feedback, request signatures, etc.

Next you specify the workflow’s name. Workflows will usually take the form of task lists that must be completed by those they are assigned to. Here you can decide to use an existing task list to add this to, or use a brand new task list (I recommend the latter).

Similarly, you can specify a history list for this workflow, or create a new one. Lastly, you can select options to know when this workflow will be started. This option gives you a very good amount of control over how and when you want the workflow itself to move along over time.

After you have made your decision for those options, click Next at the bottom of the page, and you will be taken to the Customize Workflow page.

In this page you can specify whether users who are assigned tasks in the workflow can delegate the tasks, or pass them off to other users to complete. You can also specify whether all users or only one user at a time can be assigned a task, and even decide who exactly can approve a document or mark a task as complete and under what circumstances (i.e. if the document is rejected).

The level of control here is really great, especially the fact that it is still so easy to customize all of these options right from the page you are trying to edit. Once you are done editing these options, simply click OK at the bottom of this page to finish up and view the workflow summary page.

Using Workflows To Their Full Potential

Once you have completed the setup for your workflow, the abilities of SharePoint to combine with Microsoft office products really begin to shine. You can create a document within your library, and it will open up in Word automatically. You simply edit the document and save it as you would any other.

The office application will actually check in with the SharePoint server on a regular basis to update the document’s status in the workflow that you created. When the person assigned to approve your document attempts to view or edit the document, the workflow status dialog will be displayed in Word automatically. The approval manager will be asked to approve or reject the document, and will be allowed to leave comments on it as shown below.

And that’s really all there is to it! The process is no more complicated than sending the documents via email, and since all the functionality is handled by the server, everything works very interactively but still automates many of the steps.

It’s a great system, and one that I recommend you try out as soon you get the chance. Have fun, and check back here at Train Signal Training for more articles and tips.

Get More Tips with Train Signal’s SharePoint Server 2007 Training Videos!

Our SharePoint training covers both: SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) and SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).


This instructor led video training also prepares you for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration Exam (70-630 MCTS) and the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Configuration Exam (70-631 MCTS).

With over 15 hours of video, our SharePoint training is your comprehensive guide to simplifying your organization’s collaboration and communication efforts.

Learn more and view the free demo here!

If you missed the previous articles, I would suggest reading them first to make sure you’re not missing any important information and that you understand the whole process from start to finish.

Parts 1 and 2 are available here:

• SharePoint Services Part 1: Learn to Create a New Child Site
• SharePoint Services Part 2: Learn to Created a New Custom List

Today we’re shifting our focus to the third and final objective: Creating a new wiki to use for a knowledge base. I’ll show you the easy steps to creating a new wiki that can be used as a great tool for storing information, enabling team collaboration, and more!

Creating a Wiki Library

Wikis are document libraries with which documents can be quickly created and edited within the SharePoint site. “Wiki” is the Hawaiian term for quick, and the goal of a wiki in SharePoint is to provide an unstructured environment that encourages collaboration and enables everyone to participate.

Going back to our IT department example, the wiki library will serve as a knowledge base for the department. So let’s get started!

1. From the SharePoint site where the wiki is to be created, click the Create link from the Site Actions menu.





2. From the Create page, click the Wiki Page Library link under the Libraries category.





3. From the New page enter a title and description for the wiki, select whether or not to display the wiki in the Quick Launch then click the Create button.

When a new wiki library has been created, it will automatically be populated with two pages that explain the purpose and usage of a wiki library.

Wikis are ideal for hosting a knowledge base from a SharePoint site since the content can be searchable from the site.

Wiki pages can also easily link to other Wiki pages by simply enclosing the title of the page you wish to link to within two sets of brackets, for example [[Wiki Page]].

If you create a link in a wiki page to a page that does not exist, the link will have a dotted underline which when clicked, will automatically create a new wiki page with the link’s title.

Let’s take a look at a finished wiki page. Notice, you can add text, images, links and more — just like in any old document.

After you enter your information, this is what others in your team will see and will be able to add on to it and edit it:

Wait! That’s Not All …

The examples in this article show just a portion of the capabilities of a SharePoint site. SharePoint has many other features that can be useful for an IT department or any other team within an organization. While the additional features offer their own usage and functionality, the creation of many of those features follows a lot of the same conventions as those explained in this series of articles.

Learn More about SharePoint with Train Signal’s SharePoint Server 2007 Training Videos!

Our SharePoint training covers both: SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) and SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).

This instructor led video training also prepares you for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration Exam (70-630 MCTS) and the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Configuration Exam (70-631 MCTS).

With over 15 hours of video, our SharePoint training is your comprehensive guide to simplifying your organization’s collaboration and communication efforts.

Learn more and view the free demo here!