Author Archives: imghani

About imghani

Imran Abdul Ghani is working as Software Developer(Senior) with extensive knowledge in Web development technologies especially C#, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, Web API, ADO.NET Entity Framework, jQuery etc. He has several years of experience in designing/developing enterprise level applications. He is Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for .NET (MCSD.NET) since 2005. You can reach his blogging at www.webdevelopmenthelp.net, www.topwcftutorials.net, and www.sharepointfordummies.net.

What’s New in SharePoint 2013 for Administrator

This SharePoint for dummies tutorial is part-3 in series of “What’s New in SharePoint 2013“. This post is focused on new and updated features for administrators in SharePoint 2013. In previous parts we discussed new features targeting End Users as well as Developers that you can find here:

SharePoint 2013 comes with a variety of tools that you can use to see that the health and security of your working environment. Its administrative tools are tailored to enhance functionality and performance. It comes with numerous which are aimed at streamlining the work of a farm administrator. The following features are found in the Administration mode of SharePoint. We will explore new and updated features in all major areas including Central Administration, App Management, Power Shell, SharePoint Designer, Identity Management, Performance and Scalability as:

Central administration – SharePoint 2013

Application Management: this is where you can manage web based applications, site collection, service applications and database management.
System Settings: modify and customize settings for your server, email, SMS and general farm management.
Monitoring: health analysis, timing of jobs and reporting.
Security: users, information policy, general security.
Backup and Restore: general security issues, users and information policy.
Apps: Sharepoint, App management and office store.
Upgrades and mitigation: the upgrade and patch management is done here.
General Settings for Applications: SharePoint designer, content deployment, external server connections, report server settings, info Path forms services.
Configuration wizards: The farm configuration Wizard is the only wizard.

SharePoint 2013 PowerShell

PowerShell 3.0 (web access, tab completion, Task scheduler integration).
Better code writing.
Easily update help documentations.
More than 300 New cmdlets.

Identity Managment in SharePoint 2013

Streamlined usage process of claims based authorization.
Authorized users allowed to use system.
Claims based identity plus authentication is supported.
All IIS as well as options for Windows authentication are supported including Digest, certificates, Basic and NTLM.

SharePoint 2013 with new App management features

Buy apps directly from Microsoft SharePoint App using the Central Administration.
Management of all app licenses is possible.
Monitoring of the performance of all the apps.
Management and control app permissions.
Management of the App catalog.

SharePoint 2013 Designer

Create your own SharePoint landscape that has features of the advanced 2013 version of SharePoint Designer. Web design tools are also available which enables you to customize page layouts, integration of line business data, automation of manual processes using workflows as well as coming up with business solutions.

This is due to the following new features:

The latest HTML 5 as well as CSS support feature.
Advanced designer interface.
Integration of loops and workflow stages in workflows.

Performance & Scalability – SharePoint 2013

SharePoint 2013 comes with various performance enhancements and scalability which include speed and elasticity improvements. For example, the server response is 50 % faster than it was in the previous version and the Active Directly is 10x faster.

Other SharePoint and related Articles:

3 simple steps to create SharePoint 2013 Site Collection

SharePoint Site Collection

It’s a collection of SharePoint sites sharing common features like Content types, Templates, Site columns, permissions, Web Parts etc. In order to understand How SharePoint collection fits to a business scenario? Consider a company (ABC Consulting & Services) having multiple departments (Accounts, Finance, Support, Sales,etc.), all using SharePoint for different purposes like Team Collaboration, Document sharing, Business Intelligence and others. For better administration, company can create a SharePoint Site collection for each department containing all of its websites. It can be demonstrated with the help of a following structural diagram as below:

Creating a Site Collection in SharePoint 2013

Step 1: Open your browser and navigate to Central Administration site Or select “SharePoint 2013 Central Administration” from start menu. Please click “Create site Collections” under Application Management.

It will navigate to Create Site Collection page. On this page, provide site collection information in simple steps:

Select web application.
Please provide a logical Title/Name and Description for your site collection.
Specify the URL – This URL has 3 parts
- http://MySPServerName i.e. fixed, for example http://MySPServer.SharePointfordummies.net/
- “/” or “/sites/ or “/my/personal/” – you can choose one of them from drop down. You can manage these paths at “Define Manage Paths” page.
- You can enter final part in text box as “MyTeamSite”.

Step 2: Next below on the same page, you need to specify the template for your Site Collection. SharePoint supports a number of templates including Team Site, Business Intelligence, Blog and much more to fulfill different business needs.
Simply choose the experience version as 2013 and “Team Site” template under Collaboration Tab as shown below:
Step 3: Finally, you need to specify your primary site collection admin here who has to be a specific person or service account. Once you specify all above information, Just click “OK” button on same page and it’s all done.

SharePoint will display in progress screen i.e. “Working on it…”.

Once it’s complete, your new SharePoint 2013 site collection will be created successfully. SharePoint for dummies simplified the way you create a Site Collection in SharePoint 2013.

Other SharePoint and Related Articles:

What’s New in SharePoint 2013 for Developers

SharePoint 2013 introduced many interesting features for developers including new development tools as well as enhancements, platform level enhancements, Cloud App Model and off course mobile apps etc. As a developer, one must always be interested especially in new development tools that simplify things, reduces effort and enhances productivity. Previously, we discussed about new and exciting features of SharePoint 2013 for End User.

Here you can find the list of key enhancements for SharePoint 2013 developers:

Support for common Web Standards – Programming Model of SharePoint 2013 is based on common web standards including HTML, CSS and JavaScript that makes SharePoint development easy for web developer’s without Microsoft background. Standard web protocols like OData, REST and OAuth are also supported.
Platform Enhancements
- Microsoft introduced RER (Remote Event Receiver) as core platform enhancement in SharePoint 2013 that is easy and straightforward to use.
- New Client as well as Server APIs.
- Support for REST (Representational State Transfer) endpoint for web services. So, if we need to access SharePoint data remotely, we can make REST based web requests for all CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) Operations. Please follow for understanding about RESTful services.
- Client Side Rendering is a new cool feature that allows to render SharePoint elements using JavaScript instead of using server side XSLT.

New Development Tools / Development Tools Enhancements
- Visual Studio 2013
  - ASP.NET MVC Project template for SharePoint Apps.
  - Publishing Manager Tool.
  - Visual Studio Provides RER (Remote Event Receiver) Service by default.
  - Workflow Debugging support for SharePoint online.
  - New SharePoint Phone Application Wizard Template
  - and more..
- Visual Designer 2013 – Enhanced support for customizing and publishing workflows in SharePoint Designer 2013.
- “Napa” – a new web based tool for Office 365 development.
- Updates 2014 – Office development tools for Visual Studio 2013, please follow here for details.
SharePoint 2013 Cloud App Model is a model for developing and installing apps having added advantages as:
- apps are isolated so easier to deploy and maintain.
- apps are stored on an apps server instead of SharePoint server resulting reduced load on SharePoint Server.
- apps are ready for cloud.
Business Connectivity Services
- SharePoint 2013 supports OData that provides a way to access data source using a simple URL.
- Support to subscribe to events from external system.
- SharePoint 2013 now support to consume external data by creating an App-scoped external Content type.
Enterprise Content ManagementSharePoint being primarily an Enterprise Content Management product enhanced many core features in this area as:
- Managed Metadata
- e-Discovery
- Team Folders
Search
- Consolidated Search platform that includes the capabilities of SharePoint 2010 and further enhances it.
- Rich results framework.
- Support for KQL (Keyword Query Language) and FQL (Fast Query Language) to build search queries.
Social and Collaboration – Social support is key to any application these days. Web 2.0 is considered to be “The Social Web” and SharePoint 2013 has added a lot to social and collaboration features including Communities, Micro-blogging and Interactive feed etc.
Mobility Features – Mobile devices get much more support than ever before.
- In order to target different devices, SharePoint site can be rendered in multiple designs.
- New Geo-location field type can also be used for mobile application development.
- We can easily enable push notification service for sending updates to mobile devices.
- Visual Studio app template.
Workflows
- Just like the new “app” model, Workflow also run in a separate service to SharePoint.
- Workflow Engine – SharePoint 2013 uses WF 4.0 as compared to SharePoint 2010 that uses WF 3.5 for workflows.
- Enhanced Workflow Manager Capabilities.
- Designer and Project Template

Hopefully this SharePoint for dummies post provides developers a good overview of exciting features available for them in this new version and SharePoint developers will enjoy playing around them.

Other SharePoint and Related Articles:

What’s New in SharePoint 2013 for End User

In one of my previous post on SharePoint Interview Questions for Dummies, we talked about New features of SharePoint 2013 at high level for all type of users including End User, Administrators and Developers. In this post, we will try to explore End User specific new and exciting features in SharePoint 2013.

Following are the key features of SharePoint 2013 for End Users:

Social Computing Features: SharePoint 2013 has introduced many good improvements with respect to Social Computing including Communities, Micro blogging, My Sites, Activity Feeds,Yammer Integration etc.
- New Site Templates are introduced for Community sites in SharePoint 2013.
- SharePoint 2013 has Micro blogs – It allows a user to broadcast a message publicly at a central location where other users can respond.
- My Sites design has also been improved for better navigation.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM): As we already know thatSharePoint is primarily an ECM (Enterprise Content Management) System, so every versionhasimprovedit’s capabilities with respect to Content Management.SharePoint 2013 has improvement as ECM e.g. Site MailBox, Site-Level RetentionPoliciesandeDiscovery Capabilities etc.
- It’s always been desired to Keep relevant and important emails in SharePoint. Now, it’s easy to keep emails and documents with SharePoint Site Mailbox.
- Moving documents from one location to another in SharePoint by defining a Policy which is basically a set of rules.
- eDiscovery capabilities is a key feature for End Users; i’ts a better and improved way to protect Business.
Mobile
- HTML 5 support in SharePoint 2013 extends it’s usage for Mobile devices.
- Office Mobile Web Apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Push Notifications
- New Geo location Field Type to store map coordinates.
Search: Search has always been a very important feature for End-User in an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) System,soSharePoint improved a lot in version 2013 as:
- More powerful and unified search. It gives more functionality to search with results coming much faster.
- Relevant and personalized Search on the basis of a user’s search history.
- Document preview on search result without opening document.
- In order to keep the index current (maximum possible), continuous crawl feature is introduced.
- and much more to it that requires a complete separate post.
Business Connectivity Services (BCS):
- Support for OData.
- Improvements to Online SharePoint Business Connectivity Services.
- REST based Object Model for Web and Mobile application developers.
- Improved support for sorting and filtering of external Lists.
- Export external list data to an Excel workbook.
- Improvements to Event Listeners.
Business Intelligence (BI): SharePoint 2013 has presented Business Intelligence tool as a way to integrate all Microsoft Office Applications as well as other Microsoft technologies.
- Visio Services.
- Excel Services.
- Performance Point Services i.e. Dashboard Migration, Filter Search, Support for Analysis Services, Support for Performance Point on iPad.
SharePoint 2013 Apps

This SharePoint for dummies post clearly explains key new features in version 2013 for End Users. Later on this blog, we will discuss new features for Developers and Administrators in SharePoint 2013.

Other SharePoint and related Articles:

A MUST HAVE SharePoint Interview Questions

What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is an extensible platform that provides a range of products that can help organizations with solution for a variety of business needs. Primarily, SharePoint was introduced as an Enterprise Content Management System but later on Web Publishing, Collaboration, Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) features were introduced through a variety of ways.

What are the Core features of SharePoint?

With every new version, new and exciting tools were added to SharePoint platform but core of the tools that makes SharePoint an outstanding platform for Content management, Business Process Management, Collaboration and Web Publishing are:

SharePoint Sites facilitates to create websites.
SharePoint Communities plays it’s role to collaborate with other peoples.
Contents makes SharePoint a true CMS (Content Management System)
Search Engine provides smart and efficient searching of enterprise contents.
Insights brings information together from different data sources.
Composition makes SharePoint an extensible platform and extends it’s capabilities by using different tools like SharePoint Designer etc.

Can you briefly explain SharePoint Version History?

Latest version of the product is SharePoint 2013 but if we look into version History, it will be as follows:

What’s new in SharePoint 2013?

New and exciting features are released with every version of SharePoint. SharePoint 2013 also bundled with lots of new features. Few of them are listed here:

Improved Performance
Cross-Site Publishing
Design Manager for Publishing Sites
Improved and better Search
Changes in SharePoint Workflow Architecture
Office Web Apps Server
Improved Social Computing Features
Optimized User Interface for Mobile Devices
Shredded BLOBs for Storage
New Features to BCS (Business Connectivity Services)
and much more…

For details on new and updated features in SharePoint 2013, please follow here.

What specific features Improve Performance in SharePoint 2013? Kindly elaborate.

SharePoint 2013 introduces following features that improves performance significantly.

Distributed Cache Service
Minimal Download Strategy and
Shredded Storage by introducing Shredded BLOBs.

What is a SharePoint Farm?

SharePoint Farm is a collection of one or more SharePoint server(s) working together in order to provide a set of
SharePoint Services. Servers in a SharePoint Farm normally share common resources and owns a single Central Configuration database.

Web Applications Vs Site Collections Vs Sites in SharePoint.

SharePoint Site basically is a website. SharePoint allows us to create websites of specific types like Personal site, a Team Site, a social media site, a blogs or a Wiki Site etc.

On the other hand, a Site Collection in SharePoint is a collection of SharePoint sites that share common features like Content types, Templates, Site columns, permissions, Web Parts etc.

A Web Application is a collection of Site Collections in SharePoint OR in order way a site collection resides in a
web application. Normally a SharePoint web application is corresponds to a website in IIS means when a SharePoint Web application is created, it creates a WebSite and an application Pool in IIS .

Above can be understood by following diagram:

What is the concept of Content Type in SharePoint?

SharePoint is about Contents, so Content Type is a reusable collection of settings and metadata to represents a certain type of content. For Instance, a Student Content Type may have set of metadata like Student Enrollment ID, Name, year of enrollment etc.

Content Type in SharePoint facilitates to organize contents in more meaningful way. It supports inheritance of properties, behaviors and appearances.

What is a Theme?

Themes are used to apply customization to a SharePoint Site and applying a lightweight branding by changing overall site layout, colors, fonts, background image etc. In SharePoint 2013, Microsoft has extensively improved theming Engine. Now, Theme customization is available by creating Font Schemes and Color Palletes. Further, we can add custom themes to Theme Gallery.

What are Master Pages in SharePoint?

Master Pages in SharePoint serves the same purpose as that of ASP.NET Master Pages. Certain parts of a web page normally remains same like header, footer or navigation bar etc. So, We create Master Pages with these common parts in order to achive a consistent look and feel for a SharePoint Site.
Using Master pages provides lots of benefits including:

Common Controls in one location only
Writing less Code and Centralized Updating
Better User Experience
Flexibility
Easier management of SharePoint Sites

Important Note:

A SharePoint Farm can have one or more Web Application(s).
A SharePoint Web Application can have one or more Site Collection(s).
A SharePoint Site Collection can have one or more Site(s).
A SharePoint Site can have one or more List(s).
A SharePoint List can have one or more List Item(s).

Sites Vs Site Collection in SharePoint 2013

In order to understand the difference between SharePoint Site and SharePoint Site Collection, let’s first go for the basic definition of each of them as:

SharePoint Site basically is a website. SharePoint allows us to create websites of specific types like Personal site, a Team Site, a social media site, a blogs or a Wiki Site etc.

A Site Collection in SharePoint is basically a collection of SharePoint sites that share common features like Content types, Templates, Site columns, permissions, Web Parts etc.

As a SharePoint Site Collection share common features, it facilitates for better administration of our websites. It can be understood by taking a practical example. For example, in my software company, we have multiple departments (Software Development, Finance, Sales, Support etc.). All using SharePoint for different purposes like Document Sharing, Team Collaboration, Blogging and much more. For better administration, we have created a SharePoint Site Collection for each department containing all of its websites. It can be illustrated with the help of a structural diagram as below:

In SharePoint 2013, we will have one top level website and other websites under it inside a Site Collection as shown above. A Web Application in SharePoint can have multiple Site Collections and a single Site Collection can have multiple SP Sites.

Hopefully, this SharePoint for dummies tutorial describes clearly the difference between Site and Site Collection in SharePoint 2013 in a practical way.

Getting Started with SharePoint

What is Sharepoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is an extensible platform that provides a range of products that can help organizations with solution for a variety of business needs. Primarily, SharePoint was introduced as an Enterprise Content Management System later on Web Publishing, Collaboration, Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) features were introduced through a variety of ways.

Version History

The current version of the product is SharePoint 2013 but if we look into version History, it will be as follows:

SharePoint Basics

New and exciting tools were added to SharePoint platform with every new version but core of the tools that makes SharePoint an outstanding platform for content management, collaboration, Business Process Management and web publishing are:

SharePoint Sites
SharePoint Communities
Contents
Search
Insights
Composition

Sites
SharePoint facilitates to create websites. Different Site Templates are available in SharePoint to create website of a specific type like Personal site, a Team Site, a social media site, a blogs or a Wiki Site etc.

Communities
As collaboration is a key feature ofSharePoint, so it helps to work with other people more effectively in an organization by providing a forum experience inSharePoint environment.Contents
Initially, SharePoint was introduced as an Enterprise Content Management System, so it acts as repository to put all contents within an enterprise.

Search
As we know that SharePoint is an Enterprise Content Management System so searching the content efficiently and effectively becomes an important and key requirement. SharePoint search engine provides smart searching of whole Enterprise contents.

Insights
In order to extract information from different data sources including dashboards, reports etc, SharePoint has introduced Insights. SharePoint Insights brings all information together in more understandable way.

Composition
SharePoint is a feature-rich plate form but still extensible. We can extend the capabilities of SharePoint using different tools like SharePoint Designer to meet more complex scenarios.

Hopefully, this SharePoint for Dummies article gives a basic overview of SharePoint environment, features and versions. Much more to come on this blog soon.