Introduction to SharePoint

A part of our Projects team has been spun off into a SharePoint team, which will adapt and implement a particular CRM template for Indian as well as overseas customers. Since our architect is also a part of this new team, he was able to provide some Web links to help me understand what SharePoint is all about

Microsoft SharePoint is a Web application platform. Simply put, it is a tool to store, to manage and to retrieve information. This information could be text or MS Office documents or other files, like videos. The main strength of SharePoint is that even non-technical users can use it as well as develop applications using it

Initially, SharePoint was used for content management and document management on Intranets but recent versions are much more powerful. You can use Sites to store and manage information, and share it on the Intranet or Internet. You can use Communities to collaborate with colleagues. You can use Content management, including integration with your existing Microsoft Office documents. Search allows you to retrieve information quickly and to find people within your organization. Insights allow you to effectively obtain information stored in a different repository, within a certain useful context. SharePoint enables no-code integration of data, documents and processes to create Composite applications

The most basic element in SharePoint is an Item (calendar entry, task, contact) or a Document (Word, Excel, PDF). Both Items and Documents can have metadata associated with them. They can be arranged using Folders

Items are stored in Lists while Documents are stored in Libraries. A List or Library uses Views to display information. VIews depend on context but the standard view is as rows and columns. Each row represents an Item or Document while its metadata is displayed in the columns. Metadata can be grouped into Content Types

Each List or Library is part of a Site, which is a container for data. Sites can be Team Sites, Project Sites or Internet Web Sites. They can be arranged in hierarchies and collected into Site Collections with a Root Site at the top and common site settings. Each Site has a default page (Homepage), along with various other Pages

Sites are viewed using a web browser. Hence there are Web Applications, which can contain several Sites or Site Collections and are hosted on Web Servers. Multiple SharePoint servers can be grouped into a Sharepoint Farm

In short, SharePoint provides a solution to all your information management needs with a secure and remote access. Andreas Glaser's website provides some good SharePoint tutorials that are very useful for beginners. Note that the content of this post has been adapted from his pages, and the SharePoint Wikipedia page