the list of templates, you will need to figure out which SharePoint feature makes the template available. SharePoint features are explored in more detail in Chapter 18. In general, Microsoft is moving to simplify SharePoint. One way it is doing this is by making it easy to create a Team or Communication site, which means you would need to hunt a bit to find the other templates. (We cover this in Chapter 18.)
The template tells SharePoint which features and functionality should be included on the site. Keep in mind that you can always add more features and add and remove features as you decide to make your site more specific for your needs.
One of the most common SharePoint site templates is called the Team site template (the template you used at the beginning of this chapter). The Team site template includes features such as a discussion board, a library to store documents, and a calendar. In fact, many books simply talk about the Team site template and call that SharePoint. As you learn in this book, the Team site template is very important, but it is just another SharePoint website template. Part 3 explores building and customizing a site based on the Team site template.
TECHNICAL DIVE INTO THE SHAREPOINT BUILDING BLOCKS
To obtain a perspective on SharePoint, it is important to understand how SharePoint is put together. As mentioned in this chapter, SharePoint is a web-based platform. A number of technologies are required in order to make the platform available. Each technology builds on the one below it. In this manner, it is common to call the whole ball of wax a technology stack.
The SharePoint technology stack begins with server computers running the Microsoft Windows Server operating system. On top of Windows Server are some additional technologies required by SharePoint. In particular, SharePoint needs a database and a web server — Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), respectively. In addition, SharePoint also needs Active Directory, which manages the servers in the domain. Only when this entire stack of technology is available can you install SharePoint, as shown in the figure.
SharePoint will only work with the Microsoft stack of supporting technologies. For example, you cannot swap in an Oracle database or the open source Apache web server. SharePoint would simply refuse to install and might ask you what the heck you are trying to do using a non-Microsoft product to install SharePoint.
Getting Familiar with SharePoint Terminology
You should add a number of terms to your SharePoint vocabulary. Some terms are made up by Microsoft marketing, some are industry standards, and others are buzzwords that have grown to have various meanings depending on the context of the conversation. In the following sections, I describe the various components of SharePoint, how the terms that define functionality fit together, and what they mean.
Branding
The term branding refers to the way a SharePoint site looks and behaves to users. Branding includes things like the colors, fonts, images, logos, and layout of the various components on a site. Branding your SharePoint site is covered in Chapter 18.
The term branding is not specific to SharePoint; it is borrowed from the marketing industry in which an organization will brand its product. For example, Coca-Cola has a very strong brand. In the software world, branding refers to the look and feel of a piece of software or website.
Business intelligence (BI)
The term business intelligence is definitely not new. An article was published in the October 1958 edition of the IBM Journal by H. P. Luhn called “A Business Intelligence System.” The article describes how an organization can process documents in order to make business decisions. Business intelligence has continued to evolve over the years and has morphed into something of a catch-all phrase for using data to drive business.
In the Microsoft realm, business intelligence (BI, pronounced bee-eye) consists of a number of different technologies. In fact, we wrote an entire sister book on the subject — Microsoft Business Intelligence For Dummies by Ken Withee. As SharePoint has become a central and nearly ubiquitous application, it has also become a prime place to show the data that decision makers need to make decisions. In other words, SharePoint is a perfect display case for all those fancy charts, graphs, performance indicators, and other data.
Unfortunately, business intelligence has a fairly steep learning curve in SharePoint. Tools such as Report Builder, Dashboard Designer, and PowerPivot unleash endless possibilities, but figuring out how to use them all takes time. One thing you will find with business intelligence in SharePoint is that there are often many ways to achieve the same result. And therein lies the learning curve.
At the basic level, if you can create a chart in Excel, you can plunk it into a SharePoint library and embed it on a page using a Web Part (which is a component that shows data on the page). Ta-da! You just achieved business intelligence in SharePoint. The consumers of the data might never even know how easy it was to put that data in Excel and embed it in a SharePoint web page. And that is the point. These things shouldn’t be difficult to get started.
At the other end of the spectrum, however, you might need to create a data cube (a specialized database in the big data world) with millions or billions of records, and then use a specialized tool such as Dashboard Designer to create an interactive graph with clickthrough capabilities. Whew! That sounds complicated, and trust me, it is.
You need serious expertise when diving into the depths of business intelligence, but that doesn’t mean you can’t understand it at a high level. Many different tools and features make up business intelligence in SharePoint, and Chapter 24 covers one of the latest business intelligence services from Microsoft called Power BI. In that chapter, we discuss Power BI and also walk you through the other SharePoint business intelligence features at a high level. We try to provide you with insights into techniques you can use to get started right away.
eDiscovery
The term eDiscovery relates to the legal world of business. In particular, the word derives from electronic discovery in litigation. If you have ever watched the TV program Law & Order, you understand that critical evidence can make or break a case. In the high-tech world of digital information, it’s a rather tricky endeavor to discover and hold electronic documents.
SharePoint has a number of features specifically designed for eDiscovery. This is great news if you’re a decision maker looking to comply with legal requirements, or you’re a lawyer. If neither applies to you, then just knowing SharePoint handles eDiscovery is good enough.
Identity management
Frankly, modern technology can often be a real pain. It seems that there are gazillions of systems in any organization, and each requires its own username and password. I have so many usernames and passwords on various websites across the Internet that my mind just tries to block it out. Of course, then I forget my password and have to go through the tiring process of resetting it each time I want to log in to a particular system. On the other side, when a user logs in to a system,
