Eli's SharePoint Resources
What's Here
Welcome to my list of SharePoint 2003 Resources! This is a hub for SharePoint 2003 and WSS 2.0 Resources with two advantages: All resources are hand-picked and vetted for quality, and each topic contains a with hand-tuned search designed to return the latest content which you can then filter further to find what you need.
Reference. FAQs, Administrator's Guide and other reference materials.
Hubs. More starting points.
Conference Resources. Slide decks and videos.
Community Resources. Discussions, weblogs and user groups.
Planning. Resources for planning a SharePoint deployment.
Administration. Guidance, configuration, maintenance, backup recovery, and management tools for SharePoint.
Developer Resources. Build web parts, write event handlers, and use the SharePoint API.
Customization. Change the look and feel of WSS and SPS.
SharePoint Templates. Site Templates, Site Definitions, and other solutions for real-world scenarios.
Web Parts. Collections of great web parts for SharePoint.
iFilters. Gain full-text indexing of additional file types.
Integration. Integrate SharePoint with Content Management Server (MCMS), BizTalk, Live Communication Server (LCS), and more.
Add-Ons. Workflow, Search, and other add-ons to improve or replace the standard features of WSS and SPS.
Books. The best books for SharePoint end-users, developers, and administrators.
Migration. Migration products and guidance.
Reference [Google Results]
KBAlertz. Receive free e-mail alerts whenever Microsoft posts a new support or KB article. [Index by Technology] [SharePoint 2003]
SharePoint FAQ on GotDotNet. Questions and answers contributed by SharePoint and Microsoft newsgroup users.
SPSFAQ. SharePoint Portal Server Frequently Asked Questions.
WSSFAQ. Windows SharePoint Services Frequently Asked Questions.
Google Search Microsoft.com. Use Google to search all Microsoft.com servers.
Hubs [Google Results]
Lamont Harrington's SharePoint Resources. Had I seen this first I might have saved myself the trouble!
SharePoint D2D. A collection of resources including tools, webcasts and discussion areas.
User Groups. [Google Results]
Canada: Toronto, ON.
USA: SF Bay Area, CA. Centennial, CO. Denver, CO. Waltham, MA. Minneapolis, MN. St. Louis, MO. Delaware Valley, PA. Fairfax, VA.
Australia: Melbourne. Sydney. Brisbane. Canberra.
United Kingdom: UK (online only).
Mexico: TechNet Mexico SharePoint.
Discussions and Q&A Forums. [Google Results]
SharePoint Newsgroups (microsoft.com). Explore the support newsgroups to ask questions, share information, or exchange ideas with others who use SharePoint Portal Server.
Weblogs from the Dev Team. [Google Results] [SharePointBlogs.com] [SharePoint BlogSearch]
[SharePoint Team Blog] [Rss]
[PJ Hough's WSS Blog] [Rss]
[O12 Web Content Management] [Rss]
[Daniel McPherson's Point2Share] [Rss] Blogs from the dev team get top billing.
[Mike Fitzmaurice's FitzBlog] [Rss] Mike is the SharePoint Developer Evangelist. Infrequent but important posts.
[Arpan Shah's Weblog] [Rss] Arpan posts great articles on SharePoint, CMS, and beyond.
Weblogs from everyone else.
[Bill Simser's Fear and Loathing] [Rss] Fellow Canuck solves everyday SharePoint issues including a nice bit on aggregating / merging documents in SharePoint.
[Paul Schaeflin's Weblog] [Rss] An overdue addition, Paul is a prolific poster on SharePointBlogs.com.
[Mark Kruger]
[Jan Tielens' Weblog] [Rss] Jan created the excellent SmartPart and Son of SmartPart.
[Amanda Murphy's Weblog]
[Amar Galla's Weblog] Book reviews (eventually).
[Ted Pattison's Blog] This Pluralsight blog replaces the blog Ted penned as "Barry Kouda," aka Barry's Blog. Advanced SharePoint Customization and WebParts on Barracuda.net.
[E. Shupps] SharePoint Design, some great stuff.
New 2006-Feb! [Eli Robillard's Weblog] [Rss]
[Ian Morris' Weblog]
[Jason Nadrowski] The co-author of SharePoint 2003: In the Trenches with great technical details (like how to locate the connection string used by SharePoint).
[Jim's SharePoint Weblog]
[John West's Weblog]
[Mads Haugbø Nissen's Weblog] SharePoint Customization Tips.
[Maurice Prather's SharePoint Thoughts] Building a SharePoint Blog and more deep knowledge.
[Serge van den Oever] Deep developer blog and a full DataViewWebPart namespace reference doc, nice!
[Steve Clark's Weblog (SharePoint Category)]
[Maxim V. Karpov's Weblog (SharePoint Category)] Wow. Go look.
[FrontPoint] [Rss] Great advanced tips (many on data manipulation) using FrontPage with SharePoint.
Note: The category views above may not show links to the RSS/XML sources; to get those, click on the blog's title and look for the RSS link(s).
Planning
SharePoint Deployment Resources (Microsoft.com).
Plan a SharePoint Portal Server Deployment Project (MS Project file). This project file contains steps and considerations for a 166 day portal planning, design, and delivery cycle.
Capacity Planning. Describes deployment scenarios from standalone server to large farm, special considerations for special circumstances, and benefits of adding capacity, and costs of adding content. Also, a table of boundaries which lists the typical and maximum capacities of SPS objects. [Webcast]
Planning Your Information Structure. A chapter excerpted from the SharePoint Resource Kit which covers basic considerations for designing search and index strategies, area and topic taxonomies, user audiences, site collections, and more.
Extranets. [Google Results] [Webcast]
Administration [Google Results]
SharePoint 2003 Administrator's Guide. Guide for installing, configuring, managing, and maintaining Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Service Packs.
Service Pack 1 for WSS. [Google results]
Service Pack 2 for WSS. [Google results]
Service Pack 1 for SPS. [Google results]
Service Pack 2 for SPS. [Google results]
Backup and Restore. [Google Results]
AvePoint. Allows for the successful backup and restore of whole sites, documents and images with history, versions and meta data, areas with portal links, and all lists and items including contacts, events, tasks, and discussions.
CommVault. A product exists for SPS 2001, not yet for 2003. However an alpha (“engineering“) release for SPS 2003 is available to existing customers.
Symantec / Veritas Enterprise Vault for SharePoint Portal Server. Automatically archive older information off the SharePoint server and into on-line stores. Solves SPS's lack of an undelete feature and provides an alternative to document versioning without bloating the database.
Disaster Recovery. [Google Results]
Disaster Recover in SharePoint Products and Technologies. A chapter excerpted from the SharePoint Resource Kit which describes the built-in tools for backup and recovery, and discusses considerations for several server configurations.
Reporting and Monitoring. [Google Results]
Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) Management Pack for SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Documentation.
SQL Server Report Packs for SharePoint 2003. Includes: Storage Report, Storage Trend Report, Site Trend Report, Site Collections Report, Detailed Page Report, Best Bet Keyword Report, and Search Terms Report.
Search and Index Administration. [Google results]
Developer Resources [Google results]
SharePoint on MSDN. Check out the full list of technical articles on the left navigation panel.
SharePoint on CodePlex. Awesome open-source SharePoint projects.
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Software Development Kit. This SDK contains conceptual overviews, programming tasks, samples, and references to guide you in developing solutions based on Microsoft® SharePoint® Products and Technologies. [Documentation]
SharePoint Intellisense XML files for Visual Studio.NET.
URL Encoding Reference Chart. Try searching for what %22 translates to, and you'll know why I added this link.
[New April 2006!] Impersonation. A 3-part article by Victor Vogelpoel on impersonating the administrator and then reverting back to the identity of the logged-in user. Also explains problems with the MS-supplied code.
Web Parts. [Google Results]
[Web Part Pages and the Web Part Infrastucture (msdn.com)]
[Creating a basic Web Part]
[Debugging Web Parts]
[Web Part Templates for Visual Studio.NET]
Event Handlers. [Google Results]
[Document Library Event Handler Toolkit]
[Creating Event Log Messages for a Document Library] Includes source code which may be extended to handle any document library event.
[Updated 2006-07] Application Programming Interface (API). [Google Results] [Search Microsoft.com]
[Class Library]
[Microsoft.SharePoint Namespace]
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities Namespace]
[Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls Namespace]
[Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages Namespace]
[Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.Communication Namespace]
Search and Index Development.
Calling SPS search from inside a WSS site. Instructions for changing WSS search to search the entire portal.
InfoPath. [Google Results]
InfoPath 2003 Service Pack 1. Advantages include .NET allowing C# and VB.NET code, improved access to data sources (schema changes don't break forms), and enhancements to the object model. This update will be released as part of an Office 2003 Service Pack, and no breaking changes are expected from this preview release to the RTM release. [Google "InfoPath Service Pack"]
InfoPath 2003 Toolkit. Create forms templates in InfoPath using Visual Studio.
Customization [Google Results]
Customization refers to changing the look and feel of SharePoint. It involves CSS files, Site Templates, and Site Definitions.
SharePointCustomization.com. A collection of templates, skins and guidance for modifying the look and feel of SPS and WSS with FrontPage.
Branding SharePoint 2003. Two MSDN articles. The first is a great background article on how SharePoint works and degrees of customization, with instruction on adding breadcrumbs to SPS. The second explains how to simplify the navigation by combining two top nav bars into one, changing the left navigation, adding menu items, updating default images, adding a custom style sheet, and moving the logo.
Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals. A three-part series of MSDN articles. [Part 1: Custom themes and Web Parts] [Part 2: Templates and Site Definitions] [Part 3: Style Sheet Class Reference]
WSS Demo Site. It looks like a hub but it's really a sweet developer resource for WSS site customisation. The home page has a list of recent KB articles (it reads the KBAlertz RSS feed) and the sections on Articles and Demos provide a number of quick useful tips.
Style Sheet Class Reference. This complete reference for ows.css defines all the elements with examples.
Visual Style Sheet Reference. This page contains screenshots of SharePoint pages where mousing over elements reveals the underlying style in a tooltip. Handy!
SharePoint Style Designer. James Milne wrote this fantastic online style designer where you can change SharePoint style elements visually, and then hit a button to produce a .css file to drop into your site.
New 2006-Mar! Theme Pack. Infotech Canada has a great set of themes here, a few of which are far superior to the out-of-box themes. Highly recommended!
SharePoint Application Templates [Google Results]
SharePoint Applications Site. A growing collection of excellent scenario-specific site templates. You can test-drive them on Bil's site here.
The SharePoint Template Project. An open-source project for people to develop list and application templates for common business scenarios.
Microsoft Office Solution Accelerator for Sarbanes-Oxley. Help your company efficiently manage the extensive work required to comply with sections 302 and 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Built on WSS. [Download] [Deployment Guide]
Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Proposals. Create solutions to help sales teams write a higher number of winning proposals with greater speed, effectiveness, and compliance.
Web Parts [Google Results]
Web Component Directory (microsoft.com). Web Parts, Templates, Tools, and Complete Solutions.
Office 2003 Web Parts. A terrific little collection including Datasheet, PivotChart, PivotTable, PivotView, Spreadsheet, Quick Quote, and Web Capture Web Parts.
SmartPart for SharePoint. A SharePoint Webpart that can host any ASP.NET user control. Create your webparts by using the VS.NET designer instead of coding everything by hand!
SharePoint WebPart Toolkit. This collection (including GhostHunter!) can also be found in the SharePoint Resource Kit. "The Web Part Toolkit offers five of the most powerful SharePoint tools that free can buy. These tools are designed to give you a powerful insight to the inner workings of your web part pages, web parts, and the SharePoint server itself."
Advis Web Parts. Nice free web parts for Area Map, List Viewer, Mailing List, and a Page Header with Login. Advis also has commercial web parts for site and area navigation, changing passwords, breadcrumbs, and more.
SharePoint Page Toolbar. This web part by James Milne adds a "Print Preview", "Add to Favorites", "Alert Me" and "Add to My Links" button to the page.
IFilters [Google Results]
Collection of iFilters at Microsoft.
Acrobat. Installing the Adobe Acrobat IFilter and associated icon.
MP3. An MP3 IFilter originally written for the Meticulist document management system.
TIFF. This article describes how to enable optical character recognition for Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) files, how to change the TIFF file size limit, how to enable automatic file rotation, and how to log TIFF error messages to the application event log.
Visio. With this download, you can extend the text search features in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePointâ„¢ Products and Technologies to include searching within Microsoft Office Visio 2003 files. Visio binary and XML formats are supported.
IFilter Shop. Commercial IFilters for a variety of formats including Zip, Shtml, Wma, vCard, and OpenOffice.
Integration [Google results]
BizTalk Service Adapter for SharePoint Libraries.
Integrating BizTalk Human Workflow Services with InfoPath 2003.
Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 Connector for SharePoint Technologies. MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies consists of .NET server controls, Web Parts, ASP.NET files, and documentation that enable customers to integrate SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 technologies with Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. [Search for more resources]
Microsoft Live Communication Server (LCS). An instant messaging server platform to support SPS presence and document collaboration features. LCS Web Parts. [Search for more resources]
Project Server Webcast. Describes the default integration, plus extensibility scenarios including searching and indexing Project Server web sites, and using Project Server Web Parts in a portal page.
Reporting Services. A collection of SharePoint WebParts that integrate with SQL Server Reporting Services. [Search for SharePoint and Reporting Services]
Recycle Bin.
SharePoint Recycle Bin. From Microsoft Technical Support, includes source code. It's an ISAPI filter which intercepts delete requests and copies the file to NTFS before SharePoint kicks in and does its thing. [Find it with Google]
Deleted Items Document Library. By Todd Bleeker of MindSharp, a replacement for the DocLib with many extra features like multiple document templates and a drop-down list for New Document. [Find it with Google]
Search.
Coveo Enterprise Search for SharePoint. The leading alternative to SPS Search & Index. Coveo is also a great option is you use WSS sites, want search, but don't need SPS features like Portal Management, Audiences, and AD Profile Import.
Workflow. [Google results]
K2.NET Workflow. A powerful workflow application service which integrates with SharePoint, Exchange, SQL Server, BizTalk, and more, plus a terrific Visual Studio-like GUI for developing solutions.
Captaris Workflow (Teamplate).
Brightwork. A help desk ticket application built on SharePoint.
BizTalk. In addition to being a great SOA and integration product, BizTalk can also provide workflow orchestration for SharePoint. Integrating BizTalk Human Workflow Services with InfoPath 2003.
Books [Amazon results]
Books are categorized by audience: developers (e.g. Web Parts, the SharePoint API), designers (re-branding, editing look and feel), administrators (deployment and maintenance), and end-users (Mort).
Developers.
Solutions for SharePoint Portal Server 2003: In the Trenches. Authors: Stacy Draper and Jason Nadrowski (Addison-Wesley). Release Date: December 9, 2005. I was a technical editor on this tome, and can say first-hand that it has simply the best examples out there. Topics include site templates, list definitions, site definitions, custom property types, and global customization.
Advanced SharePoint Services Solutions. Scot Hillier (Apress). The first reference for customizing WSS and SPS, writing CAML, and more. Indispensible for developers and those who need to customize or extend SharePoint.
Microsoft SharePoint: Building Office 2003 Solutions. Scot Hillier (Apress). A good book with usable code for budding SharePoint developers. Contains code for implementing SPS's Single Sign-on, WSS Web Parts, and more.
Designers.
Solutions for SharePoint Portal Server 2003: In the Trenches (above).
Administrators.
Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit. Bill English (Microsoft Press). An excellent reference for SharePoint administrators. It covers requirements gathering, architecture, deployment, configuration and maintenance. The cd contains many great tools for SharePoint administrators. Several chapters are available online!
Microsoft SharePoint 2003 Unleashed. Lynn Langfield, Colin Spence, and Michael Noel (Sams Publishing). A terrific book for department champions who will own team sites, and anyone looking for an introduction to using and configuring SharePoint.
Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server 2003: Planning, Design and Implementation. Release Date: July 1, 2005. Kevin Laahs, Emer McKenna, Veli-Matti Vanamo (Digital Press).
End Users.
SharePoint 2003 User's Guide. Release Date: June 30, 2005. Seth Bates, Tony Smith (APress). A terrific book which covers WSS and SPS features for end users without all the confusing stuff about deployment and implementation. Review.
End users see also: Microsoft SharePoint 2003 Unleashed (above).
Migration
Proposion. Proposion builds migration and integration tools for Lotus Notes. Check out Portal Adapter, Portal Migrator, Report Adapter, and N2N, which is Proposion's .Net wrapper from Lotus functionality.
Connecting Outlook to Lotus Notes Mail.
Updates
2006-04-06 Rebuilt from SharePoint Application Templates forward after an accidental deletion. Added Impersonation articles.
Updates
2006-04-06 Rebuilt from SharePoint Application Templates forward after an accidental deletion. Added Impersonation articles.
Updates
2006-04-06 Rebuilt from SharePoint Application Templates forward after an accidental deletion. Added Impersonation articles.
Updates
2006-04-06 Rebuilt from SharePoint Application Templates forward after an accidental deletion. Added Impersonation articles.