Getting started with SharePoint 2010? This is where you begin.
Someone in your organization has given you a SharePoint site—what are you going to do with it?
- You may have been given a site for sharing information about your department or project with the rest of your organization.
- You may be leading a project team and you’ve been given a site to help you manage your particular project.
- You may have heard that there is a free version of Microsoft SharePoint and you’re wondering how it can be put to work quickly to effectively improve communication and productivity in your organization.
The concepts taught in the course are all applicable to SharePoint Foundation 2010 (MSF2010), the free version of SharePoint.
As you may know, there are three editions of SharePoint 2010:
- SharePoint Foundation 2010 (the free version)
- Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Edition
- Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition
Each successive edition builds on the foundation of the other(s).
This course is an excellent introduction to SharePoint 2010 regardless of which edition of SharePoint your organization is running, because Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (SPS2010—both Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition) builds on the features and functionality in SharePoint Foundation 2010.
This course is comprised of the first two days of the course entitled "Introduction to SharePoint 2010 - Using SharePoint Server 2010." Students of both courses attend the same class together.
This two-day course is designed to provide the hands-on experience with SharePoint 2010 that you need to begin utilizing SharePoint within departments and teams in your organization. Although some people may learn how to use some of the SharePoint functionality by just jumping right in and seeing what they can do with it, these people usually miss a lot of the power that SharePoint provides. After taking this class, you can be assured that you will begin using SharePoint in the most effective way possible.
- On day one you will learn what SharePoint is all about and how to use it to share information with others.
- On day two you’ll dive into the collaboration features that make SharePoint a powerful tool for managing your teams and projects.
If you are looking for a “SharePoint for beginners” type of course, this course would be perfect for you.
This course is intended for:
- SharePoint Site Owners
- Site Collection Administrators
- Project Managers
- Department Managers
- Trainers
- Help-desk and End-user Support Professionals
- IT Professionals who are interested in the out-of-the-box functionality and features
- CIOs and IT Managers who are considering implementing SharePoint in their environment
- Anyone who will be using any edition of SharePoint 2010 in their work
The typical environments that these professionals work in can vary greatly from very small organizations with just a few employees to very large organizations with thousands of employees and multiple locations.
After completing this course, students will be able to:
- Understand the concepts and terminologies that are unique to SharePoint 2010
- Understand governance considerations as related to business use of SharePoint
- Understand and apply best practices associated with site and site collection administration
- Use SharePoint 2010 to Share Information
- Use SharePoint 2010 to manage a collaborative team
- Identify and understand how to best make use of the core functionality available in SharePoint Foundation 2010
Students should be comfortable using Windows in their everyday work. The course assumes that the student has no prior experience with SharePoint 2010 or any previous version of SharePoint. If you are setting up your first SharePoint site for your department, team, or project, you will find that this course is an excellent first step.
Students will receive a comprehensive course manual, which will include all presentation materials and lab exercises. The lab exercises are step-by-step and fully documented in the student workbook. To view sample modules of our courseware click here.
Each student will be given access to their own SharePoint 2010 environment on the classroom hardware. In essence, students will be attending a class where a fully functional SharePoint 2010 environment has been set up for their use in learning the product. No pre-installation of SharePoint 2010 software or Office 2010 is required for this class.
Each student will need to bring a qualifying laptop to the class. Click here to verify that your laptop meets the minimum requirements.
(Note: This Course Outline is subject to minor changes and refinements based on student feedback and instructor experience.)
This course is divided into two distinct sections, each with its own focus. One section will be covered each day:
Day 1: Sharing Information with SharePoint 2010
Module 1: Introduction to Sharing Information with SharePoint 2010
The class assumes that the student is seeing SharePoint for the very first time, so no prior SharePoint knowledge is necessary. Students will begin by learning what SharePoint is conceptually—and how information is accessed in SharePoint—by exploring an existing SharePoint site. Over the rest of the day, students will build an identical SharePoint environment.
Module 2: Document Libraries – Part 1
Much of the information in most organizations is stored in file shares and users’ My Documents folders on their local computer. Document Libraries in SharePoint build on the file share paradigm that most users are familiar with but add a number of significant improvements. In this module, students will learn the role that Document Libraries play in a SharePoint site by adding documents to a library, categorizing documents with folders and metadata, creating custom views.
Module 3: Document Libraries – Part 2
In this module, students will build on what they have learned about Document Libraries and be exploring the document management functionality. Students will explore the features that allow SharePoint to automatically create and store both minor and major versions of documents such that previous versions can be viewed or restored if needed. Students will also use the content approval and check-in and check-out functionality along with the Recycle Bin to restore documents that have been deleted.
Module 4: Lists
At its core, a SharePoint site consists of a number of lists. In this module, students will work with the out-of-the-box Links list that is natively part of a SharePoint team site. Students will also create their own custom lists with custom views, and learn how to create a list from data that is in an Excel spreadsheet.
Module 5: Pages and Web Parts
SharePoint is more than just lists and libraries. It can also contain many web pages that display content to the users. SharePoint 2010 provides two types of pages that users can customize: Wiki Pages and Web Part Pages. Wiki Pages can be quickly edited to display Rich Content while Web Part Pages use small sections of content Web Parts. SharePoint comes with a number of web parts that allow users to add both static and dynamic content to their pages. In this module, students will create and edit their own Wiki Pages and Web Part Pages; they will use the Content Editor Web Part, Image Web Part, and Page Viewer Web Part to customize the content that appears on their pages.
Module 6: Creating Sites
SharePoint is a collection of small web sites. Each site has a collection of lists and libraries that store the information end users interact with and use. In this module, students will learn about the various site templates that are available to them and how to create their own sites and subsites. They will also learn how to manage their sites with the Site Settings page.
Module 7: Security
Information security has traditionally been the responsibility of the Information Technology department. In SharePoint, much of this responsibility has now been transferred to the site owner. In this module, students will learn how the SharePoint security model works and how to secure the content in their own SharePoint sites.
Module 8: Blogs
A Blog is a special kind of SharePoint site that allows users to easily publish articles. Within the enterprise, blogs are great replacements for newsletters; project, team, and department update memos; and announcements. Blog sites expand on these traditional forms of publishing by allowing others to comment on what was published and thereby create community around the content. In this module, students will learn how to create and use SharePoint blog sites.
Day 2: Collaborating with SharePoint
In Day 1 students learned how to share information with SharePoint. This second day will focus on the tools in SharePoint that help people collaborate. Students will begin by learning what collaboration is conceptually—and how collaboration is accomplished in SharePoint—by exploring an existing SharePoint site. Over the rest of the day, students will build an identical SharePoint environment.
Module 9: Calendars
Calendars in SharePoint provide a central location for teams to track specific events. In this module you’ll explore SharePoint’s calendar functionality and the variety of views that are available to allow you to view a single calendar in a variety of ways.
Module 10: Tasks and Project Tasks
The tracking of tasks is important to any project team. In this module, students will explore how Tasks and Project Tasks lists can be used in SharePoint to make task management easy.
Module 11: Alerts and RSS
There is always a lot going on in SharePoint. It’s just not possible to monitor everything, especially in a large SharePoint deployment. In this module, students will learn how to subscribe to email alerts on lists and libraries to be notified when specific kinds of changes take place. All lists and libraries in SharePoint are also RSS-enabled, which means that users can also receive updates about changes via RSS which greatly reduces email overload.
Module 12: Surveys
Within any organization there is a frequent need to gather input from various users. SharePoint provides the capability to create surveys with a variety of response types and conditional branching logic. Students will learn how to create a survey in SharePoint and view reports of the survey results.
Module 13: Discussion Boards
Discussion Boards and Forums have been around since the early days of the Internet. They are a common way for users to collaborate with non-time-sensitive questions, answers, and conversation. In this module, students will learn how SharePoint Discussion Boards work to facilitate this kind of collaboration within their team.
Module 14: Meeting Workspaces
After discovering the power of SharePoint, many users will want to use a SharePoint site to manage their meetings or to plan a particularly large meeting. SharePoint provides special site templates called Meeting Workspaces optimized with special functionality to meet these two needs. In this module, students will create and utilize the variety of functionality in a Meeting Workspace.
Module 15: Customizing Navigation and Look-and-Feel
SharePoint provides tools that allow the site owner to quickly and easily customize the Top Link Bar (Global Navigation) and the Quick Launch Bar (Site Navigation) to meet the needs of their users. In this module, students will customize the navigation of the SharePoint environment of the site they have created. Students will also customize the look-and-feel of their SharePoint site via themes.
Module 16: Search
SharePoint sites can contain a variety of content. While a well-developed taxonomy will help users quickly find most information, many users will find Search to be the best way to quickly locate some content. In this module, students will learn how search works in SharePoint Foundation 2010.