Preface

This book is for people who want to "get things done" in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. You won't find a long and detailed history of the SharePoint product or a comprehensive explanation of every SharePoint feature. Rather, this book is a collection of recipes designed to quickly show you how to achieve common SharePoint tasks. Each recipe has a set of easy-to-follow instructions that first show you "how to do it", followed by an explanation of "why it works".

This is not a "tell me everything about SharePoint" book. You can read that for free on the Microsoft websites. Much like driving a car, you don't need to know how the engine works to be able to take the kids to school. This book is not "SharePoint explained"; rather this book is "SharePoint applied".

Taken individually, each recipe will make you more productive when using SharePoint 2010. The recipes are intended to be read "stand-alone". Feel free to dip in and out of the book as and when you need to know how to perform a particular task.

However, if you read this book as a whole, the simple, intermediate, and advanced recipes that it contains will walk you through a range of collaboration, data integration, business intelligence, electronic form, and workflow scenarios. The recipes will build your SharePoint knowledge to a point where you can "think SharePoint", applying the skills you have learnt to solve complex business problems. At the end of the book, I present three "no code" SharePoint applications that show you how to approach this.

This book is written from the perspective of the end user, not the SharePoint product. In creating its recipes, I haven't restricted them along product boundaries. Along with the standard SharePoint recipes that you would expect, you will also find recipes that show you how to use SharePoint Designer and InfoPath Forms Designer when they are needed to get the job done. You will also find a number of recipes that focus on integrating SharePoint 2010 with Office 2010. Some authors would have you buy several books to cover all these topics; I ask you to buy only one.

If you want to be more productive with SharePoint, then this book is for you.