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SHAREPOINTPRACTICAL IT STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION /// FEBRUARY 2009
GOVERNANCE
Who Is Allowedto Customize SharePoint?Unleash the power of users to make SharePoint their own whilesetting ground rules for customization governance. BY PAUL GALVIN
MANAGEMENT
Five Truths YouMust Knowabout SharePoint and ExchangeDispelling the myths about email archiving and public foldersis the first step in improving efficiency. BY JOEL OLESON
IMPLEMENTATION
Make theMove fromWSS 3.0 toMOSS 2007Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is the core of the SharePointproduct line, so moving to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007isn’t as painful as you might expect. BY SHAWN SHELL
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SHAREPOINT ADMINISTRATORS HAVE a dilemma. On one hand, SharePoint wasmeant to be manipulated. Its features make it easy for users to point, click,drag and drop their way into a tailor-made collaboration environment.On the other hand, SharePoint is software—and software breaks. Slapdash
coding from careless users can make a perfect SharePoint world come crashingdown.What’s needed are balance and a good SharePoint governance plan. In this
month’s issue, SharePoint MVP Paul Galvin offers tips on how to empowerusers while giving them boundaries in “Who Is Allowed to Customize Share-Point?”Planning is also key for IT managers migrating fromWindows SharePoint
Services 3.0 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. First, take properinventory of the physical configuration of the servers that support your WSSimplementation as well as the logical and software configurations. SharePointexpert Shawn Shell has practical advice for a smooth migration in “Make theMove fromWSS 3.0 to MOSS 2007.”Did someone say public folders? They’re dead, right? Or are they? Discover
the real truth about public folders and the myths surrounding email archivingin “Five Things You Must Know about SharePoint and Exchange” by SharePointguru Joel Oleson.Do you have a SharePoint myth you want dispelled? Or do you want to
share some of your SharePoint truths? Send them our way. We want to hearfrom you. �
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The Customization ConundrumBY CHRISTINE CASATELLI
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Cathy Gagne, Editorial Director, [email protected] Casatelli, Editor, [email protected], Copy Editor, [email protected] Koury,Art Director of Digital Content, [email protected] Brown, Publisher, [email protected] Larkin, Senior Director of Sales, [email protected]
TechTarget, 117 Kendrick Street, Needham, MA 02494; www.techtarget.com©2009 TECHTARGET.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
3 SharePoint February 2009
SHAREPOINT IS A highly customizableplatform.You can click on site actions -> edit
page and actually edit the page. Youcan addWeb parts, configure themand drag them around from zone tozone. It’s easy to download Share-Point Designer and figure out howto make dramatic changes to Share-Point’s branding by clicking, pointing,dragging and saving. It’s quite a liber-ating feeling, and it doesn’t stopthere.SharePoint can be customized in
all kinds of ways before it ever occursto you to do things the old fashionedway—through code.Proceed with caution, however.
The SharePoint platform is open andinvites customization, but it’s still asoftware product. Careless cus-tomization can lead to poor design,unhappy users and performanceproblems. It can even wreck your sys-tem entirely, forcing you to test that
disaster recovery plan you hopedyou’d never have to pull out from thecloset.You can avoid those kinds of night-
mare scenarios with an appropriategovernance plan that includes rulesfor customization. Follow these tips,and you’ll get the best of both worlds—a highly customized SharePointsolution tailored to your company’sbusiness needs that is also stable andefficient for your user community.
DEFINING ROLESFOR CUSTOMIZATIONWhen you first consider SharePointcustomization and governing activi-ties relating to customization, youneed to establish a handful of roles.These include:
� Casual users: These people useSharePoint infrequently or have littleor no interest in making system
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Who Is Allowed toCustomize SharePoint?Unleash the power of users to make SharePoint their own whilesetting ground rules for customization governance. BY PAUL GALVIN
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changes. They want their searchfunction to work well but are interest-ed only in results, not changing howthe system operates.
� Power users: These are the high-volume users who also tend to be thebest internal evangelists for Share-Point. These users are not program-mers—otherwise, they would be partof the IT department—but they arekeenly interested in business process-es and issues and always look forways to improve them using Share-Point.
� Site administrators: Frequentlypower users, they are also explicitly“in charge” of one or more SharePointsites.
� Developers: These are the oneswho live in the mysterious world ofSharePoint CAML files.
Casual users should rarely makeany SharePoint customizations at all.They won’t have the training to makesensible changes to the environmentand will ultimately be a drain on ITresources.Power users, however, should be
encouraged to learn about Share-Point’s customization opportunitiesand should be trained on their properuse. Power users are close to theaction. Combine their interest in busi-ness process with a training program
that enables them to solve businessproblems, and your SharePoint envi-ronment will grow in a good way.Site administrators should expect
to do the bulk of the customizationwork for a site and be the first line ofsupport for a given site’s audience.Despite SharePoint’s enormous
flexibility, many business require-ments cannot be met without pro-gramming. Although SharePointplaces lots of customization power inthe hands of end users, programmingtasks should be undertaken only bydevelopers.
COMMON CUSTOMIZATIONSWITH SHAREPOINTFor many companies, documentlibraries and custom lists providebackbone functionality upon whichtheir entire SharePoint implementa-tions rest. At the same time, it’s quiteeasy to customize them throughviews.SharePoint has two types of views:
personal and public. Public viewsshould normally be created by powerusers or site administrators. Depend-ing on the efficacy of a company’sSharePoint training program, develop-ers may also need to create publicviews. Casual users should not createpublic views.Personal views, on the other hand,
should be open to everyone. Keep inmind, however, that personal views
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www.AvePoint.com
As organizations increasingly utilize SharePoint for mission-critical business activities, a viable content backup strategy must be properly associated with business importance to satisfy the most stringent SLA’s.
Core to DocAve 5.0 Backup and Recovery is AvePoint’s exclusive Business Criticality Matrix, which automatically classifies SharePoint content according to business importance and usage activity.
This allows you to optimize storage and system resources, and execute rule-based backups based on real-time item level data analyses. All this can be setup in a way that best meets your business needs.
To perform a granular, full-fidelity restore, simply view all backups available over a specified time interval or perform a full-text or metadata search.
To view a short 6-minute video, visit www.avepoint.com/products/docave50.
®
® ®
Changing the way Administratorsmanage SharePoint
Introducing DocAve 5.0Intelligent Backup & Recovery for Microsoft SharePoint
Business-aware and SLA-driven Protection for SharePoint 2007
cannot be “promoted” to a publicview.Using SharePoint Designer, users
can re-brand their entire SharePointenvironment, individual sites or even
individual Web pages by creating newcascading style sheets. Branding canbecome complex very quickly and, asa result, should normally be managedvia a strict development process and
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Take Advantage of SharePointCustomization ToolsMICROSOFT HAS SEVERAL programming tools for SharePoint that you shouldmake available to properly trained end users. Here are two of the mostcommonly used tools for SharePoint customization:
� InfoPath. Included in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, companiescan use this tool to create and deploy electronic forms that pull data fromSharePoint and save that data back to SharePoint. A typical example of howInfoPath can be used is for an expense report.Using InfoPath, you can create aWeb form that allows employees to enter
expenses. When finished, the user presses the Save button, and InfoPath savesthe expenses into SharePoint. It is then typically integrated with a workflowsolution.In general, this tool is a good one to make available to end users so they can
create their own forms. Do this only if you’re ready to offer training before theyuse the tool and on-going support for tricky business requirements after thefact.
� SharePoint Designer. A powerful tool for properly trained end users, Share-Point Designer 2007 helps create and customize sites and applications on theSharePoint platform.With SharePoint Designer 2007, users can build no-codesolutions such as data views, reports and workflow tracking quickly by usingmenus, task panes and templates.Power users and site administrators can also use it to create a sort of
personal backup of their sites to provide protection above and beyond whatIT provides. As easy as it is, SharePoint Designer is also a big risk. It’s possibleto badly damage a SharePoint environment using this tool.
carried out by developers. However, aproperly trained power user or siteadministrator can make brandingchanges. This would normally be anexception to the rule.Developers should be available to
assist as needed. It’s possible to acci-dentally bring down an entire Share-Point environment, leading to losttime and a mad scramble to restore itfrom backup.Last but not least, training is vitally
important and should be tightly inte-grated into any SharePoint gover-nance plan. This is especially true asit relates to SharePoint customization.It’s important to balance the power
that SharePoint’s tools put into thehands of end users while avoidingrisks that arise from that very samething. If you take the tools away alto-gether, then you reduce risk and thesupport requirements associated withuser customization.The downside of taking away cus-
tomization is that you won’t unleashthe power of those users. This sadoutcome will mean longer develop-ment times and useful projects that
never get off the ground, leaving inef-ficient business processes intact thatcan be a permanent drag on yourcompany.As with many SharePoint gover-
nance issues, striking the right bal-
ance is essential. The trick is to weighthe benefit from end users doing theirown customization work with Share-Point tools versus the effort IT willhave to give to support them. Eachenterprise will calculate that partic-ular equation in its own uniqueway. �
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Galvin is a Microsoft SharePoint MVP and a SharePoint solutions architect at EMC Corp.Galvin has worked in the IT industry for more than 15 years in areas such as software develop-ment, consulting and SharePoint solutions design, where he works with clients to create busi-ness solutions using the SharePoint platform. He contributes to the SharePoint community
through MSDN forums and his blog at http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com.
Training is vitallyimportant and shouldbe tightly integratedinto any SharePointgovernance plan. Thisis especially true as itrelates to SharePointcustomization.
8 SharePoint February 2009
IT MANAGERS ARE often overwhelmedby SharePoint technology and unclearon how they can make the most of allof its features. Take the functionalitybetween SharePoint and MicrosoftExchange. On any given day, IT man-agers receive hundreds of email mes-sages, and many of them are criticaland demand immediate decisions.But because of the volume, itbecomes difficult to find, categorizeand sort them all. Data becomes lost,and IT managers spend a great dealof time searching for information. Inthe process, they become less pro-ductive in other aspects of their jobs.They don’t know how to use Share-
Point to make Exchange work better—probably because of the preconceivednotions they have about the two. Inany discussion about SharePoint andExchange, IT managers want to comeaway knowing they’re getting thebiggest technology bang for the buck.Whether designing an email-archiv-
ing solution or deciding what to dowith existing legacy public folders, ITshops need to know how to get thejob done as efficiently as possible.Learning how to dispel the myths
about Exchange email-archiving withSharePoint will put them on the rightpath. Let’s take a look at five mythsand the truths that they’re hiding:
MYTH #1:
Public foldersare dead.Everyone thinks that public
folders are going away, but that’s notso. A couple years ago, the MicrosoftExchange team shared its thoughtsabout the future of public folders tohelp customers plan better. It wasmisunderstood. The truth is that theMicrosoft Exchange team has actual-ly been encouraging the use of Share-Point for new deployments as well asencouraging migration where possi-
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Five Truths YouMust Knowabout SharePoint and ExchangeDispelling the myths about email archiving and public foldersis the first step in improving efficiency. BY JOEL OLESON
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ble and where overlap exists.But the fact remains that public
folders and the custom applicationsbuilt on them can be a nuisance forExchange administrators. There are anumber of common concerns—con-trol, performance, scale and replicat-ing chaos, to name a few.
If you are deploying both Exchange2007 and SharePoint technologies—either Windows SharePoint Services(WSS) or Microsoft Office SharePointServer (MOSS) 2007—it doesn’tmake sense to build up a huge publicfolder deployment. It’s confusing tousers, and it is additional overhead forthe team that’s managing Exchange.Instead, in its next version of Exchange2007, Microsoft has new ways ofmanaging and supporting publicfolders with PowerShell cmdlets.If possible, avoid deploying public
folders. If you’ve got them already,don’t freak out. They will continue tobe supported without much invest-ment.
kTRUTH: The Microsoft Exchangeteam will include public folders in thenext version of Exchange and, at aminimum, will support them for 10years after shipping.
.MYTH #2:
Pointing managed foldersto a SharePoint list willsolve all archiving needs
in a turnkey, hands-off approach.In Exchange 2007, Microsoft intro-duced managed folders with theintention of providing administratorswith an easy means to help usersarchive email. It’s an incrediblyinsightful feature and—when imple-mented properly—can reduce mail-box sizes and capture the intendedemail. But, when not implementedproperly, managed folders can beeasily abused and used as a dumpingground.One poor design example could be
a managed folder called “Keep.” Allusers can be told to put their stuff inthat one folder, and it can be archivedto SharePoint. It sounds like a greatidea, right?Wrong. First, putting all that junk
into one list means that scale will bean issue. SharePoint doesn’t scalewell to support millions of items inone list, especially in a single view.Second, what about the security
of that list? Managed folders are anadministrative setup. It’s an optionin Exchange, not an end-userconfiguration.So what does a good design look
like? How about a managed foldertitled “Legal Hold” that storesrequests from users who have legalholds related to an investigation or
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Everyone thinks thatpublic folders are goingaway, but that’s not so.
court case? On the SharePoint side,a specific document library is set upand secured, and a legal site adminis-trator is responsible for any taggingand for managing the views. A specialsearch view might be set up with spe-cific indexed columns to support aneasy search with no “Allitems” view.
kTRUTH: To best take advantageof managed folders with SharePoint,you’ll need a solid information archi-tecture design as well as trained siteand list administrators who under-stand the scale and can manage thevolume with a custom view andindexed columns or folders.
MYTH #3:
It’s better to keep alldata in one place and touse metadata to search.
Although this is a common practiceand popular method for personalstorage, knowledge repositories inSharePoint do still require specialinformation architecture designs.The recommended limit of 2,000
items per folder popularized inWSS2.0 isn’t a bad one for those whodon’t have the time to invest indesigning a query-based interface.SharePoint administrators may
want to recommend to their usersthat they limit the number of itemson their lists to fewer than 1,000.With an upper limit of 3,000, the ITshop gets involved assisting groups
scale their lists more efficiently.If you’re looking for the easy
answer to scale a SharePoint list,here is one approach: Use foldersor indexed columns.
When the default Allitems viewgrows as a list into the tens of thou-sands, not only does it take tens ofseconds to render, but it can alsocause content database-locking dur-ing query time. Microsoft has set up ascan to detect large lists of more than3,000 items to ensure proper usageand to divide up content where itmakes sense.For document management deploy-
ments, use folders for better scaleand retrieval. Keep each folder to lessthan 2,000 items. Even better is alimit of a hundred or so to preventunnecessary scrolling.Filters are one way of limiting the
number of items displayed, but in
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The recommendedlimit of 2,000 itemsper folder popularizedin WSS 2.0 isn’t a badone for those who don’thave the time to investin designing a query-based interface.
large lists, those queries can be ineffi-cient. Using Indexed columns isanother way to manage list scalabilityand increase index query optimiza-tion. The most efficient method ofretrieval is search queries. Evenchanging the default view to some-thing quick or a simple search or fil-tering-based interface provides betterperformance for large lists. Make surethere is limited exposure to theAllitems view, which can have animpact on the content database onreally large lists.
kTRUTH: Divide up content whereappropriate, and use folders toimprove scale and retrieval.
MYTH #4:
A SharePoint deploymentisn’t complete until theself-service email-enabled
lists are turned on.The email-enabled self-service listscan be powerful, but in most deploy-ments they can easily get out of con-trol. Without the proper planning andmanagement, Active Directoryobjects will be created with archivingand with no lifecycle.Many SharePoint complaints
involve contact account naming stan-dards. IT managers don’t want to seerandom contacts in AD. Everyonewants to have the document librarycalled “docs,” and everyone wants tohave the discussion list called “dis-
cussion.” So, the real recommenda-tion here is to know what you’re doingbecause it’s easy to end up with amess.Again, you don’t want to send all
data from all users to one list. Putcontent in context in different sitecollections, sites or folders, or as itrelates to the context of the group,team or project. Information archi-tecture planning and oversight isrequired to scale a document man-agement repository in SharePoint.Don’t be surprised if it’s more
complex to set up content than youinitially thought it would be. One wayto make it easier is to set it up in apreproduction environment first andlearn how it works by exercisingadministrative and trouble-shootingtasks around maintenance of the list,inbound SMTP and AD contactobjects.
kTRUTH:Most SharePoint environ-ments don’t need the email-enabledfunctionality and the oversight that allthat requires. But if you do decide touse it, plan to set up specific contentobjects and point the lists at those.
MYTH #5:
Email is safeand searchable.Email is a place where
users feel safe and where they cantuck away all of their importantinformation for later use.
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Therein lies the problem becauseemail servers are not always safe.The bigger problem is that each user’sinbox and folders are not searchablefor anyone else. This is counter-intu-itive to enterprises that are trying tomake valuable content reusable.It’s time to change this thinking
and to start putting files where theybelong. Users need to be able toshare their relevant information witheach other in SharePoint. Using thecollaboration platform, they can saveemail messages in their entirety ortheir attachments to SharePoint siteseven without email-enabled lists.If users can learn to save important
email in SharePoint according to con-text and in lists and libraries as theyrelate to projects, teams and groups,then that content is searchable andreusable. Those meeting minutesand project documents—amongother files—can now take advantageof version control and history. Theycan also evolve to become publishedcontent in knowledge repositories.The resulting document history—andthe collaboration around it—becomesextremely relevant.What happens to email that isn’t
saved outside of user mailboxes? Itdies. As email evolves, PSTs go awayin many corporations. Quotas forceemail purging, and the liability ofsome secret conversation from yearsago simply expires.Those who manage compliance of
email would probably prefer that thecontent for legal holds and patentsend up in the proper storage loca-tion—whether or not that location is amanaged folder that’s also managedon the SharePoint side. The legal
department would probably preferthat the email have a defined expira-tion policy to keep down the volumesof chatter.The bottom line is that relevant
conversations and important docu-ments that need to evolve should endup in SharePoint so the content canlive on. This is a better line of attackthan initiating some automatic pushpolicy, which would be a securitynightmare.Microsoft designed SharePoint for
collaboration. It’s a way of sharingcontent securely throughout theenterprise. On a SharePoint site, the
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If users can learn tosave important emailin SharePoint accordingto context and in listsand libraries as theyrelate to projects, teamsand groups, then thatcontent is searchableand reusable.
average document will be reusedagain and again by many people. Thebetter the context and metadata, themore likely the content can continueto be useful.
kTRUTH: The black hole of collabo-ration is yesterday’s email and fileattachments. Today, the way forenterprises to keep content relevant,safe and searchable is to keep it inSharePoint.
For new Exchange deployments,SharePoint is strongly encouraged forapplication development. The func-tionality of calendaring in either sys-tem for team calendars should becompared and contrasted based onout-of-the-box functionality based onrequirements.In the email-enabled public folders
versus email-enabled SharePointenvironments debate, IT shops mayfind that public folders have increasedfunctionality but, again, they shouldconsider their requirements.The scalability of SharePoint lists
is a major consideration and willrequire oversight, especially when
using email-enabled lists. The defaultAllitems view can be problematic,and you may need to replace it witha search or filter-based interface.Use folders and indexed columnsfor large lists.Some guidance may be required
to help users understand where andwhen content should be stored. Emailmessages and attachments storedin SharePoint can contribute to theenterprise immensely in terms ofproject collaboration and knowledgesharing when secured in the propercontext. Training users to tag contentwith metadata will increase the use-fulness of documents.The clear overlap between Share-
Point and Exchange does not needto be a gray area. With the mythscleared away, corporations canunderstand the distinct differencesand advantages and use the rightplatform for the right purpose. Stor-age and sharing of documents inSharePoint has advantages in collabo-ration, document management capa-bilities and discoverability with a richsearchWeb interface. �
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joel Oleson is a senior product manager with Quest Software. As former senior technicalproduct manager for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Oleson focused on topics related toenterprise deployments of SharePoint, such as performance, scale, backup/restore and highavailability. His blog is SharePoint Joel’s SharePoint Land.
What Happens When SharePoint Goes Down?You rely on MOSS to communicate, to actionimmediate service and to collaborate across the organization.
Without MOSS everything stops. Productivity dies,employees are isolated and information flow ends.
Keep Lines of Communication OpenThe ability to collaborate within teams across geographic dispersion is vital. There is no acceptable downtime window for SharePoint, it must be available 24x7.
Planned maintenance, storage failures, power outages and user errors are all reasons for downtime. Factor these into service continuity plans.Service continuity plans should have protection of MOSS as a high priority. Projects and information sharing may depend on it.
Keeping SharePoint AvailableNeverfail is an award winning solution to keepusers connected to MOSS. Disaster recovery, highavailability and data protection comes as standard.Out-of-the box your entire SharePoint farm is protected. Predictive monitoring ensures best practice. Replication ensures data is always protected. Automated failover keeps SharePoint available when things go wrong.
Can you afford to be without email for a day?Visit www.neverfailgroup.com/resources/whitepapers.aspx for your copy of the Neverfail for SharePoint White Paper.
Or, better still, email us at [email protected] or call 512.327.5777 to join organizationsacross the World who’ve chosen Neverfail for themost effective disaster recovery, data protectionand high availability solutions in the industry.
EXCHANGE • SQL SERVER • FILE SERVER • IIS • SHAREPOINT • BLACKBERRY • LOTUS DOMINO • RIGHTFAX
THINKING OF FINALLY making the movefromWindows SharePoint Services(WSS) 3.0 to Microsoft OfficeSharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007?If you’re serious about SharePoint,then migrating makes sense becauseyour organization can get a lot morevalue from using MOSS 2007.There has been a lot of confusion
regarding the differences between theEnterprise and the Standard ClientAccess License (CAL) suites forSharePoint. If you’re struggling withwhich one to choose, consider thatthere isn’t one right answer. However,the compelling reason to spend morefor the Enterprise CAL comes downto a few key services: Excel Services,Forms Server and unlimited searchindexing.In addition, Microsoft just recently
granted Enterprise customers alicense to use their Business Intelli-gence tool PerformancePoint for
SharePoint. This effectively makesSharePoint a very compelling BI plat-form in addition to a content manage-ment tool.Once the decision is made to move
forward with the broader SharePointoffering, companies are left trying todetermine what the best approach isfor migrating and what to retain intheir existing SharePoint infrastruc-ture. They also have to integrate thenew features and either ensure thatuser data remains in place or thatit’s migrated to the “new” location.The good news is that WSS is the
core of the SharePoint product line.That means the larger MOSS productdepends on the foundational servicesprovided byWSS. Because of that,moving fromWSS to MOSS isn’t aspainful as you might expect. Thereshould be no instances where you losefunctionality—MOSS will simply addto the functionality you already have.
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Make the move fromWSS 3.0 toMOSS 2007Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is the core of the SharePointproduct line, so moving to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007isn’t as painful as you might expect. BY SHAWN SHELL
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To begin your migration, make sureyou take a proper inventory of yourexisting environment. Pay particularattention to the architecture of theexistingWSS farm. Be sure youunderstand not only the physicalconfiguration of the server or serversthat support your WSS implementa-tion but also your software configura-tion. Here are some elements to payspecial attention to:
� Farm configuration:A SharePointfarm generally describes the numberand configuration of your servers. Inmany small WSS implementations,a single server may have been used.In moving to MOSS, you may convertto a small or medium farm. This willaffect the configuration of the Share-Point application and security.
� SharePoint applications: In Share-Point terms, an application is essen-tially an IIS website that is “Share-Point-enabled.” If you’ve started withWSS, you’re likely to have at least twoapplications defined. With MOSS,there will be at least four or five appli-cations.
� Site collections:Next in the hierar-chy are SharePoint site collections.SharePoint applications can houseone or more site collections, usuallyoff one or more URL elements likehttp://yourapplication/sites/[sitecol-lection]. The biggest challenge here is
really all about site structure. YourMOSS implementation may have aradically different taxonomy, andyou’ll need to move things around.
� Sites:A site is a basic unit within asite collection, which has to have atleast one site. Your existing sites willhave been created with aWSS SiteDefinition. Those definitions will stillexist in MOSS, but with the additionof MOSS Site Definitions, there maybe opportunities for migrating con-tent to a more appropriate MOSSSite Definition from the existingWSS Site Definition.
Once you have a good handle onyour existingWSS environment, fol-low these migration tips to ensure asuccessful migration to MOSS:
k If you already have a stableWSSenvironment, consider leaving it inplace and installing MOSS in parallel,which would enable you to continueto leverage theWSS environmentwhile gaining the benefit of MOSS.This is especially relevant if your WSSenvironment was largely used as ateam or project collaboration.
k If you’re moving from a singleserver implementation to a smallor medium farm,make sure you knowwhich service identities are beingused. Each SharePoint application is
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Partial feature comparison forWSS 3.0,MOSS Stardard andMOSS Enterprise++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Microsoft MicrosoftOffice Office
Windows SharePoint SharePointSharePoint Server ’07 Server ’07
Features Services 3.0 Standard Enterprise
Wikis and blogs 1 1 1
People and Groups lists 1 1 1
Calendars and surveys 1 1 1
Email integration 1 1 1
Task coordination 1 1 1
Document collaboration 1 1 1
Issue tracking 1 1 1
My Site personal site 1 1
Content syndication 1 1
Site directory 1 1
User profiles and the profile store 1 1
Site manager 1 1
Mobile device support 1 1 1
Integration with Microsoft Office Access 2007, Excel 2007,PowerPoint 2007, andWord 2007 1 1 1
Integration with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 1 1 1
Integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 1 1 1
User interface 1 1 1
Search results 1 1 1
Enterprise content sources 1 1
Indexing controls 1 1
Business data search 1 1
Business document workflow support 1 1
Document action bar 1 1 1
Retention and auditing policies 1 1
Records repository 1 1
Legal holds 1 1
Navigation controls 1 1 1
Content publishing and deployment 1 1
Site templates 1 1 1
Page layouts 1 1
WYSIWYGWeb content editor 1 1
Policies, auditing and compliance 1 1
Browser-based forms 1 1
Form import wizard 1 1
Compatibility checker 1 1
Integrated, flexible spreadsheet publishing 1
Business Data Catalog 1
Report Center 1
Configuration management 1 1 1
Single sign-on 1 1
SOURCE: MICROSOFT
tied to an application pool that has aspecific network identity. SomeWSSimplementations may use SYSTEMor NETWORK SERVICE. On a singlemachine, this may be fine. If you cre-ate a new farm with more than oneserver—or you simply expand yourfarm to include more servers—you’llneed to use domain accounts, even ifyour users use Forms to authenticate.This will affect your ability to accesstheWSS content databases as well asthe configuration database. You musteither grant the new network identi-ties access to the existing databasesor back up and move the existingsites/site collections.
k If you’re changing the taxonomy/structure of yourWSS sites to betterintegrate with your newMOSS envi-ronment, you may be able to use theexport and import capabilities of theSTSADM command to move existingsites and site collections into the newstructure. This option won’t solveevery problem, but it can be veryeffective in helping the migration toMOSS and a new structure.
k You can’t change the site defini-tion used for a site after it’s beencreated. If you want to leverageMOSS site definitions, like PublishingSites instead of aWSS site definition,you’ll have to move the content. Takea look at companies like Metalogixor free utilities on CodePlex to assistyou in moving user content.
kWorkflows and other custom-izations created with SharePointDesigner can’t be moved to the newMOSS environment. This is not alimitation of WSS but rather a factof SharePoint even in the MOSS envi-ronment. Consider recreating theworkflows or more global customiza-tions in Visual Studio and installingthem as a site collection feature toenable broader distribution.
In all, your migration to MOSSfromWSS may be a challenge. How-ever, given that WSS is the foundationof MOSS, your chances for successare high. Just make sure you takecare of the details when you makethe move. �
19 SharePoint February 2009
» IMPLEMENTATION++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Editor’s note
I
Make the movefromWSS 3.0to MOSS 2007
M
Five TruthsYouMust Know
about SharePointand Exchange
G
Who Is Allowedto CustomizeSharePoint?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shawn Shell is the founder of Consejo Inc., a consultancy based in Chicago that specializes inWeb-based applications, employees and partner portals, as well as enterprise content manage-ment. He has spent more than 19 years in IT, with the last 10 focused on content technologies.Shell is a co-author ofMicrosoft Content Management Server 2002: A Complete Guide, published
by Addison-Wesley, and the lead analyst/author on the CMSWatch SharePoint Report 2009.
(Continued from page 17)
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