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Saturday, October 1, 2011

Interview Questions and Answers

What is SharePoint?
Ans SharePoint is a browser based document collaboration platform given by Microsoft.




Q What are features of SharePoint 2010?
Ans Some features are :


· Document Collaboration
· Enterprise Search FAST Search
· New Enhance Web Part
· Ready made Silver Light web part
· Business Connectivity Services
· Social Media Investments
· Large lists
· Enhanced collaboration features
· Visio Services
· Usage reporting and logging
· Better Network Differencing & SharePoint Offline in SharePoint Workspace
· High Availability/ Disaster Recovery Innovation
· Admin Insights through the Logging & Usage database, and dev dashboard
· Service Applications
· SharePoint Designer Enhancements like portable workflows, and granular delegation
· Sandbox Solutions




Q What is WSS ?
Ans Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a Web portal used for collaboration within a business or organization. WSS is easily accessible through an Internet browser such as Internet Explorer. SharePoint is a hosted application - which means in order to use it to full potential, it must be hosted on a Windows server.


WSS provides a solid base to set up one or more intranet sites.
The main WSS features are:

Unlimited number of team sites or portals

Document management with collaboration and sharing capabilities (Check-in/Check-

out, workflow, meta-data, 'warn me', discussions...)

Task management and calendars on group level

Central notification management (problems, complaints, help desk...)

Collecting information/surveys via question forms

Extended search engine within each site

Workflow (examples: expense reports, holiday administration...)


Digital dashboards, with or without scorecarding







Q What is MOSS?
Ans MOSS stands for Microsft Office Share Point Server. MOSS is a portal based platform for complete management of documents & web services. It is a platform for creation of customized web based applications & portals like blogs, wiki etc. MOSS provides security features and can be configured to return separate content based on the fact that the user has logged on using internet, intranet or extranet.

MOSS provides extra features as compared with WSS

Consolidation of all the team sites within the organization

Enterprise search : search through different sources within the organization with one

interface (portals, mail, ERP, CRM ...)

Central personnel data base with extended search capabilities, linked (or not) to


internal personnel management.

Business Data Catalog (BDC): default link to external systems (e.g. CRM/ERP)

Report Center : central management of all reports and data connections.

Excel Services : provides Excel features in the web browser.

Creation of web-based e-Forms, full web-browser access.








Q Difference between Library vs List ?
Ans Library is used to store the document and Lists are the container of similar items in form of rows and columns. In Library you can create core document like Word, Excel, PowerPoint. But in List You can not create document, instead of that you can attach document in a particular List.





Q What is difference between Document Library and Form Library?
Ans Document Library contains core document such as , MS word, Excel, Powerpoint. But Form library contains document in XML form. Such as InfoPath form.





Q What is Central Admin in SharePoint?
Ans Central admin is the default website by sharepoint while installing.





Q What is stsadm command?
Ans Stsadm command is used to perform all administrative work. For e.g. backup, restore, installing feature, adding web part to site etc.





Q What is the command to take backup and restore for sharepoint site?
Ans Backup command:

stsadm -o backup -url http://moss:4002/ -filename c:\bkupsite.bak

To restore :


stsadm -o restore -url http://moss:4004/ -filename c:\bkupsite.bak







Q What is a Farm?
Ans n the context of SharePoint, the term ‘farm’ is used to describe a collection of one or more SharePoint servers and one or more SQL servers that come together to provide a set of basic SharePoint services bound together by a single Configuration Database in SQL.

Farms can range in size from having everything (all SharePoint roles and SQL server) on one machine to scaling out every individual SharePoint serve role onto dedicated sets of servers. A farm the highest administrative boundary for SharePoint and everything that happens inside SharePoint happens in a farm.

In Short : A sharepoint Farm is a collection of one or more sharepoint server which having a single configuration database.




Q What are sites available in SharePoint?
Ans




































Team Site
Blank Site
Document Workspace
Blog
Group Work Site
Visio Process Repository
Basic Meeting Workspace
Blank Meeting Workspace
Decision Meeting Workspace
Social Meeting Workspace
Multipage Meeting Workspace
Assets Web Database
Charitable Contributions Web Database
Contacts Web Database
Issues Web Database
Projects Web Database
Document Center
Records Center
Business Intelligence Center
My Site Host
Personalization Site
Enterprise Search Center
Basic Search Center
FAST Search Center
Enterprise Wiki
Publishing Portal
Publishing Site
Publishing Site With Workflow
Central Administration






Q. What is a site definition in sharepoint?
Ans Site definition is a combination of template and XML. Site definition available in sharepoint are STS for Team and Blank Site, MPS for ,meeting workspace. BLOGS for Blogs site.




Q. What are SharePoint object model?
Ans. In Sharepoint Object model there are two Important namespaces.



The Microsoft.Office.Server namespace is the root namespace of all Office Server objects and Microsoft.SharePoint is the root namespace for all WSS objects.







Q. What is a site collection?
Ans. Site Collection is collection of sharepoint site. i.e. Sharepoint site collection is logical grouping of multiple sharepoint site.

A site collection is a group of Web sites that have the same owner and share administration settings, for example, permissions. When you create a site collection, a top-level site is automatically created in the site collection. You can then create one or more subsites below the top-level site.

A site collection must exist within a Web application. You can create a site collection based on an existing Web application, or you can create a Web application and then create a site collection within that application.








Q. What is a site?
Ans.

Site is a collection of web pages which is used to store information in organised way.


Site stores list of documents, discussion, events, task and many other types of information.

Site provides controlled access to share information among user. i.e. Only Authorize users are allowed to access shared information.



Q. What are web Parts in Sharepoint?
Ans Web Parts are the fundamental building blocks for Share Point user interface, and with them we can build and integrate many different types of applications.


Webparts are smallest component in sharepoint. Web parts are used to give more functionality to the page. In sharepoint we have custom web part as well as ready made 3rd party web part. You can create a custom web part by using visual studio

Various web parts available in sharepoint web part gallery are:

Data view web part, Content editor web part, Form web part, Excel web access web part, Image web part etc.




Q. What is web application in Sharepoint?
Ans. In sharepoint Webapplication is a IIS website. Each web application is associated with one IIS website. For each web application, content database is created.




Q. What is CAML?
Ans. CAML stands for Collaborative application markup languages. It is in xml form. And it can be sued to retrieve the data from sharepoint list as well to update and insert.




Q. What are Content types?
Ans. A content type is a reusable thing provided by WSS. content type defines the column for an item in a library or list and same can be used for any library or list in that sharepoint application.

For e.g. you are creating a list for leave application then if you are creating column for HR department, IT department then it does not makes any sense.

So used content type where you can create your own column or site column (Given by sharepoint) and you can use this content type with any list or library.




Q. What is BDC?
Ans. BDC i.e. Business Data Catalouge. It is a middleware for your sharepoint site and back end data such as SAP, Siebel and any other Line of Business application.

In BDC you can not modify data from your sharepoint list. It will be available to your site in read only.

In Sharepoint 2010 it is named as BCS (Business Connectivity Services). BCS is two way, i.e. Data can be edit from sharepoint list as well from the back end data base.





Q. What is workspace?
Ans. A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on Web pages, lists and document libraries. For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project,collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.





Q. Workflow can be applied to what all elements of SharePoint ?
Ans.
While workflow associations are often created directly on lists and document libraries, a workflow association can also be created on a content type that exists within the Content Type Gallery for the current site or content types defined within a list.

In short, it can be applied ...

At the level of a list (or document library)


At the level of a content type defined at site scope

At the level of a site ( Sharepoint 2010 )





Q. What are the ways to initiate the workflow ?
Ans.

Automatic (on item added or item deleted)

Manual (standard WSS UI interface)

Manual (Custom UI Interface)

Programatically through custom code






Q. What are the types of input forms that can be created for a workflow ?
Ans.
You can create four different types of input forms including an association form, an initiation form, a modification form, and a task edit form. Note that these forms are optional when you create a workflow template.





Q. What are ways to create input forms for workflow ?
Ans.
Two different approaches can be used to develop custom input forms for a WSS workflow template.

You can create your forms by using custom application pages, which are standard .aspx pages deployed to run out of the _layouts directory. ( disadv: lot of code required when compared to Infopath approach)

using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 /2010 (disadv: picks up a dependenct on MOSS, i.e. it cannot run in a standalone WSS environment)





Q. What is the difference between method activity and event activity in WF ?
Ans A method activity is one that performs an action, such as creating or updating a task. An event activity is one that runs in response to an action occurring.




Q. What is different with SharePoint 2010 workflows ?
Ans. Some of the additions in workflow model are :


1. SharePoint 2010 workflows are build upon the the workflow engine provide .Net Framework 3.5.

2. In addition to the SharePoint lists we can now create workflows for SharePoint sites as well.

3. SharePoint Designer 2010 also has a new graphical workflow designer for designing workflows and deploying them directly to SharePoint.

4. Another Improvement in SharePoint Designer 2010 is that it now allows you to edit the out-of-the-box workflows that come with SharePoint.




Q. What is the difference between an Internet and an intranet site?
Ans. An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g., www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password.

An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on the Web, can only be accessed by people who are members of the network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator




Q. What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?
Ans.
A user can be assigned one of the following roles

Reader - Has read-only access to the Web site.

Contributor - Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.

Web Designer - Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.

Administrator - Has full control of the Web site.





Q. What are the types of authentication available for Sharepoint 2010 ?
Ans.

Claims

Windows

Forms-based authentication


Ref : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262350(office.14).aspx




Q.
What is claims based authentication ?
Ans.
Claims is a new authentication method that SharePoint 2010 can utilize. This allows a single authentication store for multiple types of authentication (Windows NTLM, SQL FBA, LDAP, etc) which allows all of these types of authentication to access SharePoint under a single URL.




Claims creates a SAML token based on the sign-in, that contains the user’s identity.



Ref: http://blogs.technet.com/ritaylor/archive/2009/06/03/claims-based-authentication-an-overview.aspx




Q. How do we use the claims identity outside of SharePoint?
Ans.

LOB systems

External partner services

Separate SharePoint farms





Q. What is LINQ to Sharepoint ?
Ans.

LINQ is a feature of the programming languages C# 3.0 and Visual Basic .NET

LINQ adds, to each of the languages, a SQL-like syntax and vocabulary for querying data sources.

LINQ to Sharepoint allows developers to use SQL-like syntax to query Lists and Libraries in Sharepoint.

LINQ to Sharepoint internally converts the LINQ query to a CAML query to fetch records


Advantage : Strongly typed access to the entities of the list.

Disadvantage : If the new columns are added or its datatype changed, the datacontext class used by LINQ is no longer valid and may break the code





Q. Name the tool used to create DataContent classes for use in LINQ queries?
Ans.
SPMetal.exe




Q. What are the advantages and disadvantages of LINQ to Sharepoint ?
Ans.
Advantages:

Intellisense

Strongly typed access to the entities of the list

Faster development

Simplify complex queries

Disadvantages:

If the new columns are added or its datatype changed, the datacontext class used by LINQ is no longer valid and may break the code

Extra layer to the actual CAML query






Q. Can MS Visio be used to create a Sharepoint workflow ?
Ans.
MS Visio cannot be used to create the Sharepoint workflow itself, but can be used for workflow visualization. What this means is that, the flow diagram designed in Visio can be imported in Sharepoint Designer where all the functionality can be added and deployed to Sharepoint.


Note:

To use Visio 2010 for workflow visualization, you must be running the Enterprise version of SharePoint Server 2010 and Visio 2010 Premium.




Q.
Whats new in Shared Service Provider (SSP ) in Sharepoint 2010 ? ( Alt Q: What is "Service Application" ? )
Ans.
“Service Application” or “Service App” is a concept in Sharepoint 2010, where SSP Services are split out into separate services.

What is replaced :

Profiles, Audiences = People Service App

Search = Search Service App

Excel = Excel Service App

Whats new :

Project Server = Project Server App

Visio Services = Visio Service App


Advantages :

Web applications can be configured to only use a subset of the deployed services.

You can deploy multiple instances of the same service in a farm by giving the new service instances unique names.

You can share services across multiple web applications in a farm.



Ref :

http://blogs.msdn.com/uksharepoint/archive/2009/10/21/sharepoint-2010-new-shared-services.aspx

http://aknauer.blogspot.com/2009/11/sharepoint-2010-advantages-of-service.html

http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2009/10/19/the-new-service-application-architecture-in-sharepoint-server-2010.aspx

http://www.andrewmilsark.com/blog/post/2009/10/20/SharePoint-2010-Service-Applications-(Shared-Services)-Overview.aspx




Q. Explain types of SharePoint Sites
Ans. Types of sharepoint sites:


Wiki: This is usually where everyone is allowed to add/change content for a common knowledgebase.

Blog: This type of site is for posting specialized articles or information for everyone to read.

Publishing site: This site is used to approving particular content before it’s published to everyone.

Document library: A site mainly used for document management purposes.

Download site: This type of site helps in monitoring the count of downloads and track them.

List or Forum: The idea is to have specific people post a topic and then allow others to comment on the posts.


Survey: Usually a site that’s accessed by everyone for conducting a survey.

Dashboard: The idea of a dashboard is for business executives to gain information and perform reporting tasks.




Q. What is SharePoint Workflow? Explain its purposes
Ans. Workflows are implementation of business processes allowing people to collaborate on documents through various project tasks assigned to individuals. They enhance productivity and organization of work in an organization. This enables people to only concentrate on tasks given to them. It’s basically a planned series of tasks assigned to individuals to achieve an outcome.

Workflows included in MOSS:

Approval

Collect Feedback

Collect signatures

Disposition approval

Three-state


Group approval

Translation management

Overall MOSS workflows target at higher productivity keeping collaboration and business processes in mind.




Q. How is SharePoint Portal Server different from the Site Server?
Ans. The Sharepoint Site Server has search capabilities which are more advanced using SharePoint. It uses digital dashboard technology, which provides a nice interface for creating web parts and also allows showing them on dashboards pages. Site Server on the other hand, does not have anything as advanced as that. The biggest difference would be Sharepoint Portal Server’s document management features which also integrate with web folders and MS Office.




Q. What are ways to create input forms for workflow?
Ans. MOSS has the capability for a workflow participant to fill an initiation form to start a workflow. The initiation form can have fields that support:

Single line of text

Multiple lines of text

Number (up/down counter arrows)

Yes/No (Checkbox)

Choice (dropdowns)

Date and time (calendar)


One can use these to create forms by using custom application pages (aspx pages), which are deployed to run out of the _layout directory on MOSS server or using Microsoft Office Infopath 2007 /2010




Q. What is an application pool?
Ans. A group of one or more URLs that are served by a particular worker process or set of worker processes.




Q. Why are application pools important?
Ans. They provide a way for multiple sites to run on the same server but still have their own worker processes and identity.




Q. What are zones?
Ans. Different logical paths (URLs meaning) of gaining access to the same SharePoint Web application.




Q. What are Web Application Policies?
Ans. Enables security policy for users at the Web application level, rather than at the site collection or site level. Importantly, they override all other security settings.




Q. What are content databases?
Ans. A content database can hold all the content for one or more site collections.




Q. What are My Sites?
Ans. Specialized SharePoint sites personalized and targeted for each user.




Q. What is the difference between Classic mode authentication and Claims-based authentication?
Ans. As the name implies, classic authentication supports NT authentication types like Kerberos, NTLM, Basic, Digest, and anonymous. Claims based authentication uses claims identities against a against a trusted identity provider.




Q. When would you use claims, and when would you use classic?
Ans. Classic is more commonly seen in upgraded 2007 environments whereas claims are the recommended path for new deployments.




Q. Describe the potential components for both a single server, and multiple servers, potentially several tiered farms.
Ans. A single-server SharePoint Server 2010 environment leverages a built-in SQL Server 2008 Express database. The problems with this environment is scalability, not being able to install the with built-in database on a domain controller, the database cannot be larger than 4 GB, and you cannot use User Profile Synchronization in a single server with built-in database installation.


An example of a multiple tier farm would be a three-tier topology, considered one of the more efficient physical and logical layouts to supports scaling out or scaling up and provides better distribution of services across the member servers of the farm. This is considered a good architecture since one can add Web servers to the Web tier, add app servers to the application tier, and add database servers to the database tier.




Q. What are some of the tools that can be used when backing up a SharePoint 2010 environment?
Ans.

SharePoint farm backup and recovery


SQL Server

System Center Data Protection Manager





Q. What Microsoft tool can be used for incremental backups?
Ans. System Center Data Protection Manager




Q. What is Managed Metadata?
Ans. Managed metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that you can define, and then use as attributes for items.




Q. What are Terms and Term Sets?
Ans. A term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with an item. A term set is a collection of related terms.




Q. How do Terms And Term Sets relate to Managed Metadata?
Ans. Managed metadata is a way of referring to the fact that terms and term sets can be created and managed independently from the columns themselves.




Q. Are there different types of Term Sets?
Ans. There are Local Term Sets and Global Term Sets, one created within the context of a site collection and the other created outside the context of a site collection, respectively.




Q. How are terms created and used?
Ans. There are several ways; however the most common is to use the Term Store Management Tool.




Q. How is Managed Metadata, and the related Term technology used?
Ans. Through the UI, the most common use is through the managed metadata list column which allows you to specify the term set to use. It also related to searching and enhancing the user search experience.




Q. What is a sandboxed solution?
Ans. Components that are deployed to run within the sandboxed process rather than running in the production Internet Information Services (IIS) worker process.




Q. What are some examples of things that might run within the SharePoint sandbox?
Ans. Any of the following are acceptable answers:

· Web Parts
· Event receivers
· Feature receivers
· Custom Microsoft SharePoint Designer workflow activities
· Microsoft InfoPath business logic
· Etc.




Q. Why are sandboxed solutions used?
Ans. Primarily because they promote high layers of isolation. By default they run within a rights-restricted, isolated process based around Code Access Security (CAS). Isolation is possible to increase with activities like running the sandboxing service on only specific SharePoint 2010 servers.




Q. What is a content source in relation to SharePoint search? What’s the minimum amount of content sources?
Ans. A content source is a set of options that you can use to specify what type of content is crawled, what URLs to crawl, and how deep and when to crawl. You must create at least one content source before a crawl can occur.




Q. What is a search scope?
Ans. A search scope defines a subset of information in the search index. Users can select a search scope when performing a search.




Q. What is a federated location with SharePoint search?
Ans. Federated locations provide information that exists outside of your internal network to your end-users.




Q. How does managed metadata affect search?
Ans. Enhances the end-user search experience by mapping crawled properties to managed properties. Managed properties show up in search results and help users perform more successful queries.




Q. What is query logging in SharePoint 2010?
Ans. Collects information about user search queries and search results that users select on their computers to improve the relevancy of search results and to improve query suggestions.




Q. What authentication type does the SharePoint crawler use?
Ans. The crawl component requires access to content using NTLM authentication.




Q. Please describe what a Service Application is in SharePoint 2010.
Ans. Service applications in SharePoint 2010 are a set of services that can possibly be shared across Web applications. Some of these services may or may not be shared across the SharePoint 2010 farm. The reason these applications are shared is the overall reduction of resources required to supply the functionality these services cultivate.




Q. Please provide an example of one of these service applications.
Ans. Any of the below are acceptable answers:


· Access Services
· Business Data Connectivity service
· Excel Services Application
· Managed Metadata service
· PerformancePoint Service Application
· Search service
· Secure Store Service
· State service
· Usage and Health Data Collection service
· User Profile service
· Visio Graphics Service
· Web Analytics service
· Word Automation Services
· Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service




Q. What are Service Application Groups used for?
Ans. Just provides a logical grouping of services that are scoped to a particular Web Application.




Q. How are Service Applications deployed in terms of IIS (Internet Information Services)?
Ans. They are provisioned as a single Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site.




Q. Explain how connections are managed with Service Applications.
Ans. A virtual entity is used that is referred to as a proxy, due to label in PowerShell.




Q. What are some common examples of SharePoint 2010 services architectures, and what are the advantages of each design?
Ans. The three most popular designs are single farms with either a single service application group or multiple service application groups, or Enterprise services farms.


Single farms with a single service application group are generally the most common, and have the advantages of easy deployment, simple service application allocation, effective resource utilization and cohesive management.

Single farms with multiple service application groups is less common, and have the advantage of potential individual management of service applications as well as allowing data isolation, and while being more complex to deploy and maintain allows targeting of sites to particular service applications.

Enterprise Service Farms is pretty uncommon as it is a complete farm dedicated to Service Applications but promotes autonomous management and high levels of data isolation.




Q. Are there any other type of relevant service architectures?
Ans. Depending on the environment requirements, a specialized farm can also be used in order to deploy specific services tailored to the organizational requirements which can aid in scaling out and conservation of resources.




Q. What is the User Profile service?
Ans. Allows configuring and managing User profile properties, Audiences, Profile synchronization settings, organization browsing and management settings, and My Site settings.




Q. What are User Profiles?
Ans. Aggregates properties from diverse identity content sources together to create unified and consistent profiles across an organization, used throughout the SharePoint environment.




Q. What is Excel Services?
Ans. Allows sharing, securing, managing, and using Excel 2010 workbooks in a SharePoint Server Web site or document library. Excel Services consists of the Excel Calculation Services (ECS), Microsoft Excel Web Access (EWA), and Excel Web Services (EWS) components.




Q. What is PerformancePoint Services?
Ans. Allows users to monitor and analyze a business by building dashboards, scorecards, and key performance indicators (KPIs).




Q. What is Visio Services?
Ans. Allows users to share and view Microsoft Visio Web drawings. The service also enables data-connected Microsoft Visio 2010 Web drawings to be refreshed and updated from various data sources.




Q. What is Access Services?
Ans. Allows users to edit, update, and create linked Microsoft Access 2010 databases that can be viewed and manipulated by using an internet browser, the Access client, or a linked HTML page.




Q. What is the Secure Store Service (SSS)?
Ans. A secure database for storing credentials that are associated with application IDs




Q. What is Content Deployment?
Ans. Content deployment enables you to copy content from a source site collection to a destination site collection.






Backup / DR Questions
Q. Describe how redundancy can be built into a SharePoint environment. Please be specific in regards to any auxiliary components.
Ans. Multiple front-end web servers (WFE’s) can be deployed and correlated through Windows NLB or anything approach. Application servers can be deployed into the farm for a variety of purposes, depending on organizational requirements. Databases can be clustered or mirrored, again depending on requirements and environment.





Q. From a basic standpoint, what is the difference between SQL clustering and mirroring?
Ans. Clustering provides a failover scenario whereby one or more nodes can be swapped as active depending on whether a node goes down. In mirroring, transactions are sent directly from a principal database and server to a mirror database to establish essentially a replica of the database.







Governance Questions
Q. What Is Governance in terms of SharePoint 2010?
Ans. Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that guide, direct, and control how an organization’s business divisions and IT teams cooperate to achieve business goals.




Q. What are some useful, OOB features of SharePoint that aid with governance of an environment?
Ans. Any of the below are acceptable answers. There are some others but these are the major ones that I generally look for from a candidate:


Site templates – consistent branding, site structure, and layout can be enforce a set of customizations that are applied to a site definition.

Quotas – limits to the amount of storage a site collection can use.

Locks - prevent users from either adding content to a site collection or using the site collection.

Web application permissions and policies – comprehensive security settings that apply to all users and groups for all site collections within a Web application.


Self-service site creation - enables users to create their own site collections, thus must be incorporated into a governance scheme.






Monitoring Questions
Q. Describe the monitoring features that are baked into SharePoint 2010.
Ans.
Diagnostic logging captures data about the state of the system, whereas health and usage data collection uses specific timer jobs to perform monitoring tasks, collecting information about:

Performance Counter Fata

Event Log Data

Timer Service Data

Metrics For Site Collections and Sites


Search Usage Data







General Workflow Questions
Q. What is a declarative workflow? Can non-authenticated users participate in workflows?
Ans. Workflows created by using Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, the default setting enables deployment of declarative workflows. Yes, however you do not give non-authorized users access to the site. The e-mail message and attachments sent from notifications might contain sensitive information




Q. What is Windows Powershell ?
Ans. Windows PowerShell is a new Windows command-line shell designed especially for system administrators. In the SharePoint administration context, Windows PowerShell is another administration tool that supersedes the existing Stsadm.exe.




Q. How is Windows Powershell different from Stsadm ?
Ans. Unlike stsadm, which accept and return text, Windows PowerShell is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and accepts and returns .NET Framework objects. In addition to that it also gives you access to the file system on the computer so that you can access registry,digital signature certificate etc..




Q. What are cmdlet's?
Ans. Windows PowerShell introduces the concept of a cmdlet which are simple build in commands, written in a .net language like C# or VB.




Q. Can you Create PowerShell scripts for deploying components in SharePoint ?
Ans. If you are creating a webpart with VS 2010 then you can deploy it using ctrl + f5. However, to activate the webpart feature you can write a powershell script (.ps1) and execute it after dpeloyment.




Q. Where is Powershell located in sharePoint ?
Ans. On the Start menu, click All Programs -> Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products -> Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.




Q. If you need going to install a webpart or any custom solution in SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell What permissions do you need?
Ans. In order to use Windows PowerShell for SharePoint 2010 Products, a user must be a member of the SharePoint_Shell_Access role on the configuration and content database. In addition to this, the user must also be a member of the WSS_ADMIN_WPG local group on the computer where SharePoint 2010 Products is installed.




Q. How to list all the commands in PowerShell ?
Ans. Get-Command * commands gets you all the Powershell command




Q. What is the advantage in using Windows PowerShell over stsadm in SharePoint 2010 ?
Ans. Unlike stsadm, which accept and return text, Windows PowerShell is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and accepts and returns .NET Framework objects.Windows PowerShell also gives you access to the file system on the computer and enables you to access other data stores, such as the registry and the digital signature certificate stores etc..







Q. How would you deploy WebPart Using Windows PowerShell?
Ans. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt (PS C:\>), type the below command :

Install -SPWebPartPack -LiteralPath “FullPathofCabFile” -Name “Nameof WebPart”




Q.
What would you like to see in the next version of SharePoint?
Ans.
A few suggestions:

SPS and STS on same machine

Tree view of Categories and Folders

General Discussion Web Part

Personalization of Dashboards

Role Customization

Email to say WHY a document has been rejected for Approval

More ways to customize the interface


Backup and restore an individual Workspaces

Filter for Visio

Better way to track activity on SPS

Ability to Save as from Adobe to space on My Network Places




Q. What is a site definition?
Ans. It’s a methods for providing prepackaged site and list content.




Q. What is a template?
Ans. A template is a pre-defined set of functions or settings that can be used over time. There are manytemplates within SharePoint,Site Templates, Document Templates, Document Library and ListTemplates.




Q. How do you install web parts?
Ans. Web Parts should be distributed as a .CAB (cabinet) file using the MSI Installer.




Q. What is a DWP?
Ans. The file extension of a web part.




Q. What is the GAC?
Ans. Global Assembly Cache folder on the server hosting SharePoint. You place your assemblies there for web parts and services to share them.




Q. Can I post any kind of document? Can i restrict some document types
Ans. You can post documents in many formats, including .pdf, .htm and .doc. In addition, if you are using Microsoft Office XP, you can save documents directly to your Windows SharePointServices site. Yes, you can restrict document types by either adding them to central admin or by using a custom event receiver.




Q. Can I create custom templates?
Ans. Yes you can. You can create site or list templates which are nothing but a set of files, pages and data so that they can be re-used for business process. For e.g. creating a issue tracking list template will be used to various other teams.




Q. How can I make My site public?
Ans. By default, all sites are created private.If you want your site to be a public Web site, enable anonymous access for the entire site. Then you can give out your URL to anybody in yourbusiness card, e-mail or any other marketing material. The URL for your Web site will be:http:// yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com Hence, please take special care to name your site.These Web sites are ideal for information and knowledge intensive sites and/or sites where you need to have shared Web workspace.Remember: Under each parent Web site, you can create up to 10 sub-sites each with unique permissions, settings and security rights.




Q. How do I make my site non-restricted?
Ans. If you want your site to have anonymous access enabled (i.e., you want to treat it like any site on the Internet that does not ask you to provide a user name and password to see the content of the site), follow these simple steps:



# Login as an administrator

# Click on site settings

# Click on Go to Site Administration

# Click on Manage anonymous access

# Choose one of the three conditions on what Anonymous users can access:** Entire Web site** Lists and libraries** Nothing Default condition is nothing; your site has restricted access.

The default conditions allow you to create a secure site for your Web site.








Q. Can each user have access to their own calendar?
Ans. Yes there are two ways to do this,


* by creating a calendar for each user, or

* by creating a calendar with a view for each user.




Q. What types of files can I upload / post to the site?
Ans. The only files restricted are those ending with the following extensions: .asa, .asp, .ida, .idc, .idq.Microsoft reserves the right to add additional file types to this listing at any time. Also, no content that violates the terms of service may be uploaded or posted to the site.







Q. Can SharePoint be linked to an external data source?
Ans. SharePoint data can be opened with Access and Excel as an external data source. Thus, SharePoint can be referenced as an external data source. SharePoint itself cannot reference an external datasource.




Q. How does Ribbon works ?
Ans. A file called CMDUI.XML stays at the web front end which contains the Out-of-Box site wide Ribbon implementation i.e. all the Ribbon UI for the entire site. In addition to this you have a CustomAction for each ribbon component. These CustomActions have CommandUIExtentions block which has CommandUIDefinitions and CommandUIHandlers which make up the activity of the ribbon component. So, when the ribbon is loaded the CommandUIDefinition merges with Out-of-Box definition in the CMDUI.XML




Q. How would you add a link in the Ribbon?
Ans. You can add any link or Custom Action under any of the existing tabs of the ribbon or can create a new a new tab and place your links under it.




Q. What does CMDUI.XML contain?
Ans. The definitions for the out-of-the-box ribbon elements are split across several files in the SharePoint root, with TEMPLATE\GLOBAL\XML\CMDUI.XML being the main one.




Q. What is REST ? How is it used in SharePoint 2010 ?
Ans. REST (Representational State transfer) is a protocol (powered by ADO.NET services) which is used for getting data out of sharepoint via Url. It is mostly used to access data from sharepoint even when you are not in the sharepoint context.




Q. What datatype is retured by REST ?
Ans. REST does not return an object of type SharePoint Site\List. Instead, it returns an XML output.




Q. What is the difference between a Site Definition and a Site Template?
Ans. Site Definitions are stored on the hard drive of the SharePoint front end servers. They are used by the SharePoint application to generate the sites users can create. Site Templates are created by users as a copy of a site they have configured and modified so that they do not have to recreate lists, libraries, views and columns every time they need a new instance of a site.




Q. How will you use WebParts or other solutions Created in SharePoint 2007 in SharePoint 2010 ?
Ans. In SharePoint 2010 the 12 hive is now replaced by 14 hive, So we will rewrite and recompile any code that refers to files and resources in “12″ hive. In addition to we must recompile custom code written for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 that does not run on IIS.




Q. What has Changed in SharePoint 2010 Object model?
Ans. Microsoft has replaced the “12 hive” structure that we had in SharePoint 2007 with “14 Hive” structure in 2010.

It has apparently added four new folders to its hive.

The Folders are :

* Policy

* UserCode

* WebClients

* WebServices




Q. How do you create a Custom action for an item in a list ?
Ans. This can be done by adding a new feature into SharePoint. You would need to use customaction tag in your elements.xml file and will have to set various properties like imageurl or UrlAction for your customaction. You can later add this feature into sharepoint using stsadm install feature command.




Q. How would you bind this CustomAction to a specific list ?
Ans. To do this you can either create a new list type(again a feature) and use the listtype number for the new list in your RegistrationType property of the Customaction. The CustomAction will then show up only for the items of this list type. or You can create a new content type and then use that content type's id in your cutsomaction to bind the custom action to items of just that content type. Add the new content type to the list where you need this customaction.




Q. How do make an existing non-publishing site Publishing?
Ans. You can simply activate the SharePoint Publishing Feature for the Site, you want to make publishing.




Q. What are Application Pages in SharePoint?
Ans. Unlike site pages (for example, default.aspx), a custom application page is deployed once per Web server and cannot be customized on a site-by-site basis. Application pages are based in the virtual _layouts directory. In addition, they are compiled into a single assembly DLL.


A good example of an Application Page is the default Site Settings page: every site has one, and it's not customizable on a per site basis (although the contents can be different for sites).

With application pages, you can also add inline code. With site pages, you cannot add inline code.




Q. What is Authentication and Authorization?
Ans. An authentication system is how you identify yourself to the computer. The goal behind an authentication system is to verify that the user is actually who they say they are.

Once the system knows who the user is through authentication, authorization is how the system decides what the user can do.




Q. Which is faster a WebPart or a User Control?
Ans. A WebPart renders faster than a User Control. A User Control in SharePoint is usually loaded by a webpart which adds an overhead. User Controls however, gives you an Interface to add controls and styles.




Q. What SharePoint Databases are Created during the standard Install?
Ans. The databases that are automatically created when you run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard for SharePoint Server 2010, Standard Edition -



1. Secure Store database - The Secure Store service application database stores and maps credentials, such as account names and passwords. Prefixed with "Secure_Store_Service_DB_".



2. State database - The State service application database stores temporary state information for InfoPath Forms Services, the chart Web Part, and Visio Services. Prefixed with "StateService".




3. Web Analytics Staging database - The Staging database temporarily stores un-aggregated fact data, asset metadata, and queued batch data for the Web Analytics service application. Prefixed with "WebAnalyticsServiceApplication_StagingDB_"



4. Web Analytics Reporting database - The Reporting database stores aggregated standard report tables, fact data aggregated by groups of sites, date and asset metadata, and diagnostics information for the Web Analytics service application. Prefixed with "WebAnalyticsServiceApplication_ReportingDB_"



5. Search service application Administration database - The Administration database hosts the Search service application configuration and access control list (ACL), and best bets for the crawl component. This database is accessed for every user and administrative action. Prefixed with "Search_Service_Application_DB_".



6. Search service application Crawl database - The Crawl database stores the state of the crawled data and the crawl history. Prefixed with "Search_Service_Application_CrawlStoreDB_'.




7. Search service application Property database - The Property database stores information that is associated with the crawled data, including properties, history, and crawl queues. Prefixed with "Search_Service_Application_PropertyStoreDB_"



8. User Profile service application Profile database - The Profile database stores and manages users and associated information. It also stores information about a user's social network in addition to memberships in distribution lists and sites. Prefixed with "User Profile Service Application_ProfileDB_".



9. User Profile service application Synchronization database -The Synchronization database stores configuration and staging data for use when profile data is being synchronized with directory services such as Active Directory.Prefixed with "User Profile Service Application_SyncDB_".



10. User Profile service application Social Tagging database - The Social Tagging database stores social tags and notes created by users, along with their respective URLs.Prefixed with "User Profile Service Application_SocialDB_".




11. Managed Metadata database - The Managed Metadata service application database stores managed metadata and syndicated content types. Prefixed with "

Managed Metadata Service_".





In addition to all the databases created with Standard edition, Enterprise addition install adds two more databases :



1. PerformancePoint service application database - The PerformancePoint service application database stores temporary objects, persisted filter values, and user comments. Name Prefix "PerformancePointServiceApplication_.."




2. Word Automation Services database - The Word Automation Services database stores information about pending and completed document conversions.Name Prefix "WordAutomationServices_..."





Note : You do not have to use these naming conventions. You can either specify database names when you create them, or change the database names after they have been created.




Q. What files gets created on a file system, when a Site collection is created ?
Ans. Windows SharePoint Services does not create any files or folders on the file system when the site collection or sites are created; everything is created in the content database. The Pages for the site collection are created as instances in the content database. These instances refer to the actual file on the file system.




Q. How would you remove a webapart from the WebPart gallery? Does it get removed with Webpart retraction?
Ans. No, Webpart does not get removed from the WebPart gallery on retraction. You can write a feature receiver on Featuredeactivating method to remove the empty webpart from the gallery.




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




Q. what is a document library?
Ans. 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.




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




Q. what is a document workspace?
Ans. Document workspaces consist of information surrounding a single or multiple documents.




Q. what is a web part?
Ans 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.




Q. what is a web part zone?
Ans. Web part zones are what your web parts reside in and help categorize your web parts when designing a page.




Q.
how is security managed in SharePoint?
Ans.
Security can be handled at the machine, domain, or sharepoint level.




Q. how are web parts developed?
Ans.
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.




Q. what is a site definition?
Ans. It’s a methods for providing prepackaged site and list content.




Q. what is a template?
Ans. 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.




Q. what are the differences between web part page gallery, site gallery, virtual server gallery and online gallery?
Ans. 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.

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