SharePoint 2007 Training

Upgrading From SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007
(Level 200 - Intermediate)

(This course has been retired, and is no longer available.)

Introduction

This three-day, instructor-led course is intended for IT Pros who are responsible for upgrading their SharePoint 2003 deployments to SharePoint 2007.  The course emphasizes hands-on experience through performing an upgrade via extensive hands-on labs.  The primary goal of the upgrade modules and labs is to simulate the challenges that a real-world SharePoint administrator will face, and provide best practices for upgrading their production SharePoint deployments.

The course will also survey some of the many new and exciting features of SharePoint 2007 including:

• UI enhancements such as persistent breadcrumb navigation, menu security trimming and tree-view site and subsite navigation

• Web Content Management (formerly part of Microsoft’s CMS product) which enables organizations to use SharePoint to create web sites that are visually appealing and consistently styled with the ability for non-technical content authors to publish content to the sites after appropriate approval

• Document Management enhancements including configuring content types, item-level security, check-in/check-out, versioning

• New Workflow Engine that allows designers and users to configure sophisticated multi-path, multi-action workflows for document libraries and lists

• Enterprise Search enhancements including the new Search Center site, Boolean searching, hit highlighting, indexing and search of business data through the Business Data catalog and many others

• New Site Templates including ones for Blogs, Wikis, Records Repository and others

 Audience

This course is intended for:

• SharePoint Server Administrators

• Network Administrators

• Any other IT Professionals (developers, webmasters, etc.) who will be involved in projects to upgrade from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007 and need to learn more about the new functionality in SharePoint 2007

Prerequisites

You must understand basic Windows networking and web concepts such as TCP/IP, Active Directory, DNS and IIS.

You must have three or more months working full-time with SharePoint 2003 (either WSS or SPS, or both).  

Course Materials and Lab Environment

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. 

Each student will be given access to their own Windows Server 2003/SharePoint Portal Server 2003/WSS v2 environment on the classroom hardware.  In essence, students will be attending a class where a fully functional customized SharePoint 2003 environment has been set up for their use in learning to upgrade the product.  No pre-installation of Windows Server software or SharePoint 2003 software on the student’s laptop 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.  Please pay special attention to the section on the unique requirements for this class in particular.

Course Outline

(Note: This Course Outline is subject to minor changes and refinements based on student feedback and instructor experience.)

There are two parts to the course:

Part 1 – Upgrading:  Modules 2 – 6

Part 2 – New Features:  Modules 7 - 15

Part 1 - Upgrading:

Module 1:  Introducing Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services version 3

This module presents a quick introduction to the two new products.  As with previous versions, customers will have the option of deploying Windows SharePoint Services v3 as part of their Windows Server 2003 deployments, or, for an additional price, deploying the full Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) premium product.  This module will explain the differences between the two products and will lay a foundation for the process of determining which is most suitable.

Module 2:  Overview of Upgrade Requirements, Process and Options

First, this module will cover the hardware and software requirements for MOSS 2007 and WSS v3.  The pros and cons of using SQL Server 2000 vs. SQL Server 2005 will be discussed along with new Microsoft technologies such as Windows Workflow Foundation that are now required for SharePoint.

Second, the module will review the overall functionality of the automated upgrade process and discuss the pros and cons of the three primary upgrade options:

• In-place upgrade

• Gradual upgrade of site collections

• Content database migration

Module 3:  Review of typical SPS 2003 and WSS v2 customizations that can impact the upgrade process

The upgrade that you will work through in class uses a Virtual PC (VPC) image that contains a highly-customized deployment of SPS 2003 and WSS v2.  The goal of starting with this image is to simulate a relatively complex real-world deployment of SPS 2003 and WSS v2.

Some of the customizations and complexities that are represented in the system to be upgraded include:

• Highly-customized styles, graphics and branding for SPS 2003 and WSS v2.

• Sites based on custom site templates that were customized using FrontPage 2003 (unghosted pages)

• Sites based on a custom site definition

• Document libraries with hundreds of documents and nesting of subfolders

• Custom web-parts deployed

• Third-party add-ons deployed

• Web part connections in use

• Data view web part connected to a line of business database

• Office Web Components in use to display interactive charts and graphs

• Custom search scopes, content sources and Best Bets

• Customized client-side JavaScript (OWS.JS)

• Portal Areas and Listings in use

• Audiences configured

• My Sites created and populated

• Site Directory populated with top-level WSS sites

• Custom security applied to portal, sites, subsites and document libraries

In short, the SPS 2003 and WSS v2 sample that each student will upgrade during the course has been designed to expose as many issues as possible that are not resolved automatically by the upgrade program provided by Microsoft.

Module 4:  Performing the upgrade using the gradual option

In this module each student will connect to an instance of Virtual Server 2005 on the classroom network and use that instance to upgrade the VPC image in an isolated environment.  The gradual upgrade option will be used in the lab.

Module 5:  Analyzing the results of the upgrade and determining issues that must be resolved

The instructor will lead an analysis and discussion of the results of the automated upgrade and point out specific problems\issues with the upgraded system.

Module 6:  Strategies and techniques for resolving upgrade issues

The instructor will present strategies and techniques for resolving the issues that occur due to features and content that do not upgrade successfully or completely.

Part 2 - New Features:

Module 7:  Tour of major new features in SharePoint 2007

This module will provide an overview presentation and demos of the most important new features that have been added to SharePoint 2007.  The presentation will cover:

• User Interface (UI) and navigation enhancements

• Document management enhancements

• The new Workflow engine

• Office 2007 Integration

• New Web Parts

• New Site-type templates

• Enhancements to List technology

• Web Content Management

• Business Data Catalog

• Search enhancements

• Report Center

• Records Management

• Business Intelligence and Excel Server

• Forms Server and InfoPath

• The “Features” feature

• Alternate authentication providers and Forms-based authentication

Module 8:  Digging Deeper - UI Enhancements and Navigation

In SPS 2003 and WSS v2, there are many inconsistencies in the user interface.  Frequently, users complain that they get “lost” while attempting to navigate from portal to sites and from sites to sites.  Also, it is common for users to see menu items to which they apparently have access, but then receive an authentication challenge when they click on them.

Much work has gone into the new version to improve the user interface.  In this module, you will get hands-on experience with improvements such as:

• Security-trimmed menu options

• Automatic breadcrumb-bar

• Customizable tree-view left navigation bar

• New web part selection interface

Module 9:  Digging Deeper - Document Management and Office 2007 Integration

One of the major selling points for SharePoint 2003 has been the document management capabilities of document libraries and Office 2003.  For many companies this has been a vast improvement over server-based file shares.  However, SharePoint 2003 has also been criticized for having too many “rough edges” in its document management functionality.

SharePoint 2007 overcomes many of the previous version’s shortcomings related to document management.  Some of the important new document management enhancements that you will explore in this module are:

• Item-level security

• Content types

• Major and Minor versioning

• Required Check-in, Check-out

• Capturing metadata with the new Office Document Information Panel

• Navigation to document libraries from within the Office programs

• Offline document support using Outlook 2007

Module 10:  Digging Deeper – Workflow

SPS 2003 and WSS do not include a true workflow engine. SharePoint 2007, on the other hand, incorporates all of the richness of the Windows Workflow Foundation.  Furthermore, the new SharePoint Designer client application (the successor to FrontPage 2003) includes a built-in Workflow Designer.  In this module, the student will gain hands-on experience with the new workflow engine and the capabilities of the Workflow Designer.

Module 11:  Digging Deeper - New Web Parts

Many new and improved web parts are included in SharePoint 2007.  In this module, you will gain hands-on experience with several, including:

• Sites roll-up web part

• Documents roll-up web part

• Colleagues and memberships web part

• Content Query web part

• Enhanced calendar view web part

Module 12:  Digging Deeper - Search

In SPS 2003 and WSS v2, in many instances the Search experience is confusing due to the fact that the two products use different indexing and search engines and different user interfaces.

In MOSS 2007 and WSS v3, both products use a common indexing and search engine and share a common user interface for search functions.  This module will give you hands-on experience with the common indexing and search engine and point out the differences in features depending on which product is deployed.

Module 13:  Server Farm Topology and Administration Enhancements

The administration interface for SharePoint 2007 has been completely re-designed based on feedback from customers.  The time-consuming, less-than-intuitive hierarchy of administration web pages has been replaced with a more streamlined approach that is designed to make it easier for administrators to find the configuration options they are looking for.

Also, the configuration of the topology for the MOSS server farm has changed significantly with the new concept of the Shared Services Provider (SSP). First, all MOSS server farms are now required to implement at least one Shared Services Provider. Second, the Shared Services Provider no longer requires that a certain portal/site parent-child relationship be implemented along with the shared services.

You will explore these changes and improvements in SharePoint server farm administration through instructor presentation and demonstrations.

Registration Fee Includes

The registration fee includes your tuition, hotel room, student materials, hot breakfasts, breaks and lunches. Airfare, ground transportation, and dinners are not included in the registration fee. Once you are registered for the course, a hotel room will automatically be reserved in your name.

Don't need a hotel room? If you are a local student and do not need a hotel room you will receive $100 per day off the price of the class. Please note this in the "Questions / Comments" section of the online registration form.

Government, Academic and Non-Profit Discounts

We offer a $400 per person discount to the following:

• Employees of government entities at the federal, state and local level
• Employees of universities, colleges, secondary schools, primary schools and school districts
• Employees of Non-Profit organizations

All discounts are mutually exclusive and may not be used in combination with any other discount.

Corporate Group Discounts

An organization registering two or more students for the same class at the same time receives a $200 discount per person. The discount will be applied at time of registration.  (May not be used in combination with any other discount.)

Returning Student Discount

If you previously attended one of our other courses, you will receive a $200 discount off the standard price for the course. The discount will be applied at time of registration.  (May not be used in combination with any other discount.)

Cancellations

Any cancellations up to 30 days before the start of the course will be charged $300. Cancellations within 30 days of the start of the course will be charged $700. Refunds will be sent no later than 30 days after the scheduled course start date.

Course Location Information
Click here for more information on course locations.

Please feel free to contact us at 615-515-0210 x2 or email us at training@sharepointsolutions.com if we can answer any additional questions.