SharePoint interview Question and answer

There are some important questions of SharePoint frequently asked in interviews.

1.     What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and

The web ,  Allows individuals in an organization to easily create and

Manage their own collaborative Web sites

2.     what is the difference between SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services?

SharePoint Portal Server is the global portal offering features like global navigation and searching. Windows SharePoint Services is more content management based with document libraries and lists. You apply information to certain areas within your portal from Windows SharePoint Services or directly to portal areas.

3.     what is a document library?

A document library is where you upload your core documents. They consist of a row and column view with links to the documents. When the document is updated so is the link on your site. You can also track metadata on your documents. Metadata would consist of document properties.

4.     what is a meeting workspace?

A meeting workspace is a place to store information, attendees, and tasks related to a specific meeting.

5.     what is a document workspace?

Document workspaces consist of information surrounding a single or multiple documents.

6.     what is a web part?

Web parts consist of xml queries to full SharePoint lists or document libraries. You can also develop your own web parts and web part pages.

7.     what is the difference between a document library and a form library?

Document libraries consist of your core documents. An example would be a word document, excel, powerpoint, visio, pdf, etc… Form libraries consist of XML forms.

8.     what is a web part zone?

Web part zones are what your web parts reside in and help categorize your web parts when designing a page.

9.     how is security managed in SharePoint?

Security can be handled at the machine, domain, or sharePoint level.

10.                        how are web parts developed?

Web parts are developed in Visual Studio .Net. VS.Net offers many web part and page templates and can also be downloaded from the Microsoft site.

11.                        what is a site definition?

It’s a methods for providing prepackaged site and list content.

12.                        what is a template?

A template is a pre-defined set of functions or settings that can be used over time. There are many templates within SharePoint, Site Templates, Document Templates, Document Library and List Templates.

13.                        how do you install web parts?

Web Parts should be distributed as a .CAB (cabinet) file using the MSI Installer.

14.                        what is CAML?

stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language and is an XML-based language that is used in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to define sites and lists, including, for example, fields, views, or forms, but CAML is also used to define tables in the Windows SharePoint Services database during site provisioning.

15.                        What is a DWP?

The file extension of a web part.

16.                        What is the GAC?

Global Assembly Cache folder on the server hosting SharePoint. You place your assemblies there for web parts and services.

17.                        What are the differences between web part page gallery, site gallery, virtual server gallery and online gallery?

Web Part Page Gallery is the default gallery that comes installed with SharePoint. Site Gallery is specific to one site. Virtual Server gallery is specific to that virtual server and online gallery are downloadable web parts from Microsoft.

18.                        what is the difference between a site and a web?

The pages in a Web site generally cover one or more topics and are interconnected through hyperlinks. Most Web sites have a home page as their starting point. While a Web is simply a blank site with SharePoint functionality built in; meaning you have to create the site from the ground up.

19.                        What is Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services? How is it related to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Windows SharePoint Services is the solution that enables you to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services — a key piece of the information worker infrastructure delivered in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 — provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office system and other desktop applications, and it serves as a platform for application development.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to provide additional capabilities including collaboration, portal, search, enterprise content management, business process and forms, and business intelligence.

20.                        What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?

SharePoint Portal Server is a portal server that connects people, teams, and knowledge across business processes. SharePoint Portal Server integrates information from various systems into one secure solution through single sign-on and enterprise application integration capabilities. It provides flexible deployment and management tools, and facilitates end-to-end collaboration through data aggregation, organization, and searching. SharePoint Portal Server also enables users to quickly find relevant information through customization and personalization of portal content and layout as well as through audience targeting.

Benefits of communities:-

   

                  Brief description of benefits of SharePoint communities:

·         Work Together the Way You Want

With SharePoint 2010 Communities, people can work together the way they want using a full set of collaboration tools—from wikis to workflows and team sites to tagging. A single, flexible platform makes it easy to manage these tools and design the right collaborative experiences for different business needs

·         Rely on a Secure Collaboration Platform

The SharePoint 2010 collaboration platform is secure, easy to manage, and scalable. People can work together more safely with the platform’s granular security and privacy controls, centralized policy setting, and detailed reporting and analysis.

·         Extend the Value of Your Community Solutions

SharePoint 2010 provides a single collaboration platform that lets people use the tools and applications they already know. SharePoint 2010:

• Works seamlessly with the rest of the Microsoft Business Productivity infrastructure, including Microsoft Office applications, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Dynamics.

• Adheres to open standards, so people can use third-party applications and systems.

• Uses Business Connectivity Services to surface information from other business applications.

Related feature of SharePoint communities

·         Tags

Classify and organize large amounts of information in your company by applying tags. Use standardized taxonomy tags defined by the organization and informal social tags defined by employees.

·         Blogs

Use the new SharePoint Ribbon to format blog text and easily upload images.

·         Colleague Suggestions

Keep your colleague network current with an automated service that suggests colleagues based on your reporting structure, communities membership, e-mail distribution lists, Office Communicator contact lists, and analysis of most common Office Outlook e-mail recipients.

·         My Content

Centrally store and manage your documents, favorite links, personal blog, and wiki pages on the My Content section of your My Site. Customize your pages and set access and permission levels for any content in the section.

·         Organization Browser

Navigate your organizational structure to see managers, peers, and direct reports.

·         Photos and Presence

Help people recognize each other with photos. Use presence to email, IM, or call someone with the click of a button.

·         Ratings

Rate SharePoint pages, lists, libraries, and individual documents with a five-star rating system.

·         Recent Activities

Let people know what you're up to with the Recent Activities feed on your profile page.

·         Wikis

Create pages that combine the ease of wikis with the functionality of Web Parts.

Benefits of SharePoint Sites

 Description of Benefits of SharePoint Sites in Brief:-

·         Easily Share and Publish Information

SharePoint sites are easy to make. In fact, the full set of features in SharePoint 2010 Sites can help anyone build a site from start to finish. Several out-of-the-box features provide instant value by helping a site owner build the first page right away. Still other features make it simple to modify pages—change content, add interaction, or apply a design theme. Novice or expert, anyone can quickly create, customize, and publish a site that looks great and meets a specific business need.

·         Ensure Broad Adoption

SharePoint sites are as easy to use as they are to make. That’s because SharePoint 2010 Sites works so well with other technologies that people use to do their jobs. Connections to Microsoft Office make it a snap to save documents directly to SharePoint sites. Even offline, people can access sites, documents, and lists with Microsoft SharePoint Workspace and synchronize changes just by reconnecting. Plus, cross-browser support and a great mobile experience mean that anyone can access and share content, in the office or on the go.

·         Deliver Personalized Experiences

SharePoint 2010 Sites gives people the content they need, the way they want it. Features such as audience targeting, multilingual interface support, and user tagging provide a highly customized Web experience.

Related Features of SharePoint Sites:-

·         WebParts

Use Web Parts to add new functionality to SharePoint sites. Add a Web Part to any page, and a the new functionality will appear when the page is displayed.

·         SharePoint Health Analyzer

Quickly find and fix potential problems across all of the servers in your farm. The SharePoint Health Analyzer monitors farm health and can automatically fix many common configuration and performance problems.

·         Visual Upgrade

Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 but keep the SharePoint 2007 look-and-feel until you are ready to switch. View a site with the SharePoint 2010 user interface before committing to it.

·         Out-Of-Box-Web Parts

Use more than 40 out-of-the-box Web Parts to add functionality anywhere in a site with point-and-click simplicity.

·         Accessebility

Use SharePoint more effectively with improved accessibility, including built-in support for keyboard navigation and support for industry-wide accessibility standards.

·         Cross-Browser Support

Access SharePoint through Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.

·         Multilingual User Interface

Take advantage of out-of-the-box support for multilingual experiences in SharePoint 2010. Give your people language options in site navigation, menus, the SharePoint Ribbon, and customized list fields.

·         Streamlined Central Administration

Manage SharePoint 2010 more efficiently with a streamlined Central Administration experience. Use the SharePoint Ribbon to configure and manage your server farm.

·         Unattached Content Database Recovery

Temporarily mount an unattached content database and browse content, back up a site collection, or export sites and lists without a recovery farm.

·         Windows PowerShell Support

Achieve greater control and productivity with Windows PowerShell, a command line shell and scripting language. SharePoint 2010 offers a snap-in so you can take advantage of PowerShell for your SharePoint deployments and manage your server farm and automate tasks with out-of-the-box cmdlets.

Capabilities of SharePoint

We divide SharePoint capabilities in six parts:

1.       Sites.

2.       Communities.

3.       Content.

4.       Search.

5.       Insights

6.       Composite

Let’s have a look on these capabilities in descriptive way:-

1.       Sites

A site is a group of related web pages where an organisation can work on project , cunduct meeting and share information. you can think of SharePoint 2010 Sites as a “one-stop shop” for all your business Web sites. It provides a full set of tools that your people can use to create any kind of site, plus a single infrastructure that simplifies site management. From a team site for colleagues, to an extranet site for partners, to an Internet site for customers, people can share and publish information using one familiar system.

2.       SharePoint 2010 Communities: An Integrated Collaboration Platform

SharePoint 2010 Communities lets people work together in ways that are most effective for them. How? By providing great collaboration tools that anyone can use to share ideas, find people and expertise, and locate business information. Even better, SharePoint 2010 lets you manage these tools from a single, powerful platform. With SharePoint 2010 Communities, your people can be more creative and productive—and you can rest easy knowing that they’re working in a secure, well-managed environment.

3.       SharePoint 2010 Content: ECM for the Masses

SharePoint 2010 Content makes Enterprise Content Management (ECM) easy for everyone. Combining traditional content management, social capabilities, and powerful search, it is as natural to manage as it is to use. With its simple, “behind-the-scenes” administration, you can quickly set up compliance policies, while its familiar interface lets your people work just as they would in Microsoft Office. The result is well-managed information that is easy to find, share, and use.

4.       SharePoint 2010 Search: Relevance, Refinement, and People

SharePoint 2010 Search helps your people find the information they need to get their jobs done. It provides intranet search, people search, and a platform to build search-driven applications—all on a single, cost-effective infrastructure. But what’s so unique about SharePoint 2010 Search is its combination of relevance, refinement, and people. This new approach to search provides an experience that is highly personalized, efficient, and effective.

5.       SharePoint 2010 Insights: BI for Everyone

SharePoint 2010 Insights lets everyone access the business information they need to make good decisions. With powerful features like interactive dashboards and scorecards, people can use the information in databases, reports, and business applications to address specific needs.

Even better, they can work naturally and confidently, thanks to a familiar user experience. Because SharePoint 2010 Insights uses well-known applications and interfaces, people are comfortable from the start, and they know how to get the data they need. For example, anyone can use Excel Services to publish Microsoft Excel workbooks in SharePoint 2010. From there, an entire team can access and analyze the same data and rest assured that everyone has the right information.

6.       SharePoint 2010 Composites: Do-It-Yourself Business Solutions

SharePoint 2010 Composites provides building blocks that you can use to assemble, connect, and configure collaborative business solutions. From simple sites to complex applications, you can rapidly respond to specific business needs with custom solutions.

Microsoft new product SharePoint 2010

What is SharePoint and why we use SharePoint?

SharePoint server is server product that relies on SharePoint foundation tachnology to provide a consistent familiar framework for lists and libraries, site administration and site customization. Using SharePoint 2010, your people can set up Web sites to share information with others, manage documents from start to finish, and publish reports to help everyone make better decisions.

Why Use SharePoint?

The capabilities of SharePoint 2010 work together to help any company quickly respond to changing business needs. Using SharePoint 2010,  people can share ideas and expertise, create custom solutions for specific needs, and find the right business information to make better decisions. For IT, SharePoint 2010 helps you cut training and maintenance costs, save time and effort, and focus on higher business priorities.






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Amezing qualities of SharePoint

Microsoft always provide us better environment and great platform to perform our task,so moving ahead in this Microsoft provide SharePoint for developing website,portals,content management system etc.now i'm going to describ briefly what is Sharepoint, history of SharePoint.

What is SharePoint ?

Microsoft SharePoint, is a software platform and a family of software products developed by Microsoft for collaboration and web publishing combined. These capabilities include developing web sites, portals, intranets, content management systems, search engines, wikis, blogs, and other tools for business intelligence. This family of products include: Microsoft SharePoint Server, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation, Microsoft Search Server, Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft SharePoint Workspace.


History of SharePoint

The first version, called SharePoint Team Services (usually abbreviated to STS), was released at the same time as Office XP and was available as part of Microsoft FrontPage. STS could run on Windows 2000 Server or Windows XP.

Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 was marketed as an upgrade to SharePoint Team Services, but was in fact a completely redesigned application. SharePoint Team Services stored documents in ordinary file storage, keeping document metadata in a database. Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 on the other hand, stores both the document and the metadata in a database, and supports basic document versioning for items in Document Libraries. Service Pack 2 for WSS added support for SQL Server 2005 and the use of the .NET Framework 2.0.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 was released on November 16, 2006 as part of the Microsoft Office 2007 suite and Windows Server 2003. WSS 3.0 is built using .NET Framework 2.0 and .NET Framework 3.0 Windows Workflow Foundation to add workflow capabilities to the basic suite. By the beginning of 2007 WSS 3.0 was made available to the public. Windows 2000 Server is not supported by WSS 3.0.

WSS version 3 marked a significant maturation of the product. Version 3 supported more features commonly used in Web 2.0 solutions like Blogs, Wikis and RSS feeds. Microsoft has launch next version 4.0 to SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Features in SharePoint Foundation 2010

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation (formerly known as Windows SharePoint Services) is a free add-on to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 providing a web portal with commonly needed features.

1. Alerts Enhancements

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 expands the alerts framework to enable users to have alerts sent as Short Message Service (SMS) messages to their mobile devices.

Extensible Mobile Messaging Framework

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SharePoint Foundation 2010 takes advantage of the new mobile messaging framework to enhance its Alerts feature. To support the new option, the SPAlert class now has a property that indicates whether the alert is delivered as e-mail or as an SMS message. The SharePoint Foundation Web application is given its own account, which can be programmatically changed, with a mobile messaging service provider.

The mobile messaging framework is itself extensible, so you can create your SharePoint Foundation solutions that incorporate SMS messages that are sent to mobile telephones. You can create a completely customized alert system if you want. If your messaging solution uses the Office Mobile Service (OMS) protocol, most of your development work has already been done for you. A rich set of classes has been added to the object model to represent the Web Methods and response types of the protocol. If your solution requires a different protocol, base classes have been provided with default implementations of essential properties and methods.

2. Business Connectivity Services

Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS), formerly named the Business Data Catalog, provides read/write access to external data from line-of-business (LOB) systems, Web services, databases, and other external systems within Microsoft SharePoint 2010. SharePoint 2010 has product features that can use external data directly, both online and offline. Developers can gain access to a rich set of features and rapidly build solutions by using familiar tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.

Business Connectivity Services enhances SharePoint application capabilities and their UI through features, services, and tools. These enhanced capabilities and UI streamline development of solutions with deep integration of external data and services. Power users, developers, and business unit IT professionals can integrate assets from external systems and enable interaction with the external data through many types of applications. The Business Connectivity Services feature set enables rapid development and deployment of scalable and security-rich solutions.

The following are some of the features of Business Connectivity Services.

Write-back to External Systems

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Using Business Connectivity Services, you can create, read, update, delete, and query (CRUDQ) to the external system from a Microsoft Office application or SharePoint site if the external system supports the operations and is modeled appropriately in the Business Data Connectivity (BDC) service.

Familiar UI

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External content types provide SharePoint behaviors (such as lists, Web Parts, and profile pages) to external data and services. As a result, users can work in their familiar work environments without needing to learn different (and often proprietary) user interfaces.

More Connectivity Options

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The core function of BDC is to provide connectivity support to the following types of external systems:

• Databases

• Web and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services

• Microsoft .NET connectivity assemblies

• Custom data sources

Extensible Provider Model

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In addition to connectors for the previous list of data sources provided by BDC, BDC provides a pluggable framework with which developers can plug in connectors for new external system types, thus enabling these new data source types to be accessed via the BDC.

Batch and Bulk Operation Support

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In Office SharePoint Server 2007, BDC supported only single item operations, such as search. BDC now provides batch and bulk operation support which enable you to read multiple items in a single call thus reducing round trips to the backend dramatically.

Read BLOBs

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BDC now supports reading Binary Large Object (BLOB) data. This is useful for streaming BLOBs of data from the external system.

Read and Write-back of Complex Types

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BDC now supports dot notation in field names and therefore enables you to read and write complex types.

Life Cycle Management

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Business Connectivity Services provides a set of tools to facilitate creation of models and Office 2010 application artifacts, declaratively and by writing code. You can use SharePoint Designer 2010 to rapidly create composite solutions that meet external unit needs without writing code. You can use Visual Studio to create or extend solutions with sophisticated workflows and data that spans structured LOB systems, unstructured SharePoint applications or Microsoft Office applications, and Web 2.0 services.

Enhanced API Set and Extensibility

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Developers can use the BDC Runtime object model to write generic applications by using the stereotyped APIs as building blocks. Such generic applications are then assured to work against any external system, including those that are preexisting and those that are yet to be built.

Developers can also write specific applications that make assumptions about the abstract entity model (the fields exposed by these, and the types of the fields).

And with the .NET Assembly Connector, Custom Connector and the pluggable Secure Store Provider, it provides a rich extensibility mechanism for software developers.

3. Client Object Model

________________________________________Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 introduces three new client APIs for interacting with SharePoint sites: from a .NET managed application (not earlier than Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5), from a Microsoft Silverlight application (not earlier than Silverlight 2.0), or from ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript) that executes in the browser. These new APIs provide access to a subset of the types and members that are contained in the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace of the server-side object model.

The new client object models provide an object-oriented system for interoperating with SharePoint data from a remote computer, and they are in many respects easier to use than the already existing SharePoint Foundation Web services. You start by retrieving a client context object that represents the current request context, and through this context, you can obtain access to client objects at site-collection level or lower in the SharePoint Foundation hierarchy. Client objects inherit from the ClientObject class (ECMAScript: ClientObject), and you can use them to retrieve properties for a specific SharePoint object, to retrieve child objects and their properties, or to retrieve child items from a collection.

4 Custom Field Rendering Enhancements

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 makes two significant changes to the way that you define how custom field types render.

XSLT Stylesheet Rendering on List Views

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In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, fields were rendered on list view pages by a RenderPattern element in a field definition file, fldtypes*.xml. In SharePoint Foundation 2010, fields are rendered on list view pages by XSLT stylesheets. Consequently, you now define the rendering of your custom field types by creating a custom XSLT stylesheet rather than adding a custom RenderPattern element to a field type definition. See How to: Create a Custom Field Type Definition and Understanding the FldTypes.xml File for more information about field type definitions. See Overview of XSLT List View Rendering System and How to: Customize the Rendering of a Field on a List View for more information about XSLT rendering and how to customize it.

RenderPattern Elements are Now Obsolete

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In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, fields were also typically rendered in Display mode by means of a RenderPattern element in a field definition file. It was also possible, although rare, to render a field in Edit and New modes with a RenderPattern element. It was more common to render fields in Edit and New modes with a user control (ASCX), known as a RenderingTemplate, and it was possible to use a user control to render a field in Display mode. In SharePoint Foundation 2010, custom fields should always be rendered with user controls in all three modes. Although some long-standing built-in fields still use a RenderPattern element, for development of custom fields RenderPattern elements are obsolete.

PropertySchema Elements are Now Obsolete

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In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, when a custom field had a variable property (that is, a property with a different value on different lists), a control was needed on the New Site Column, Change Site Column, Create Column, and Change Column pages so that users could set the property value. One of the ways that custom field designers could define the rendering of this control was with a PropertySchema element in a field definition file. This method is now obsolete. You should create an editing control as a user control (ASCX). Point your custom field to the user control by setting the FieldEditorUserControl property. For more information about such editor controls, see Custom Field Type Property Rendering and How to: Create an Editor Control for a Field Type Property.

Backward Compatibility

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If there is no user control (RenderingTemplate) for a field, the runtime looks for a RenderPattern element in the field type definition file and, if found, uses it. One implication of this behavior is that custom fields that you created for versions earlier than SharePoint Foundation 2010 can still use their existing field type definitions with RenderPattern elements for Display, Edit, or New mode.

SharePoint Foundation 2010 will not automatically render your legacy custom fields on list views by using the Render Pattern in the field type definition for the field. However, if you do not want the default rendering that is given to the field by the XSLT stylesheet, you can re-enable the RenderPattern by adding a TRUE element to the field type definition. For more information, see Understanding the FldTypes.xml File and RenderPattern Element (Field Types).