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.
(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.
Days 1 and 2: Sharing Information and Collaborating 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. During the first two days, 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, and creating custom views.
Module 3: Document Libraries – Part 2
In this module, students will build on what they have learned about Document Libraries and explore 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 sub-sites. 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.
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.
Days 3 and 4: Working with SharePoint Server 2010
Module 17: Content Types
All the information that is stored in SharePoint is some type of content. SharePoint allows user to create their own types of content with custom metadata and functionality. By creating custom types of content, users can take better control over the information in their organization. In this module, students will learn how to create their own Content Types and Site Columns.
Module 18: Workflow
Much of the information in your organization is part of a larger business process. Many of those business processes can be automated through workflows in SharePoint. SharePoint provides five out-of-the-box workflows to assist with common business processes. In this module, students will learn how to configure and use an out-of-the-box workflow.
Module 19: My Sites and Social Computing
My Sites provide a place for individual users to store and share information. SharePoint 2010 also provides features that integrate with My Sites that allow users to tag, rate, and write notes about any information in SharePoint. In this module, students will work with the personalization and social computing features in SharePoint 2010.
Module 20: Rich Media Management
Digital assets (such as images, audio, video, etc…) are becoming more important in today’s workplace. SharePoint 2010 can serve as a repository for these kinds of rich media that makes it easy for users to discover and use items others have created. In this module, students will learn how to store and manage digital assets in SharePoint 2010.
Module 21: Enterprise Search
Although search is nice in SharePoint Foundation 2010, several enhancements make the Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010 Server. In this module, students will learn how to utilize the powerful features of Enterprise Search.
Module 22: Managed Metadata
Organizations are discovering the benefits of tagging information with metadata instead of using folders. Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010 allows metadata terms to be centrally stored and managed so they can be reused across the SharePoint farm. In this module, students will learn how to apply and use Managed Metadata from an end-use perspective.
Module 23: Publishing and Web Content Management
The Publishing features in SharePoint 2010 make it easy to implement a public web site with web content management or to implement web content management within an intranet scenario. In this module, students will learn how to work with the Publishing Features in SharePoint.
Module 24: Office Web Applications
Although not strictly a feature of SharePoint Server 2010, the Office Web Applications provide a way for users to both view and edit Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents entirely in the browser. In this module, students will explore and use many of the features in the Office Web Applications.
Module 25: Audience Targeting
Audience targeting is a feature of SharePoint Server 2010 which allows content to be displayed only to users who are in particular groups, or audiences. In this module, students will explore how to: add targeted navigational links, add targeted web parts on pages, and how to use the Content Query web part to target individual list and library items to specific groups of users.
Module 26: Document Sets
Document Sets is a powerful way to treat multiple documents as though they were a single document. This can be very helpful whenever a particular business process centers around multiple documents such as a loan document packet, request for proposal (RFP), or other project. In this module, students will explore the Document Set functionality for handling multiple documents as a single entry.