Macronimous Web Design

Few months ago, we started working on Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, offered few different solutions to customers in India and UK. This is not a single technology or tool to just to learn and implement within a short span – it has a wide range of technologies which help businesses to not to just to stop with simple file sharing.

Sharepoint has much more. It’s worth a visit to them if an authenticated Intranet solution is what you are looking for.The base product is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), (which is free for Windows server users) however Microsoft office Sharepoint services (MOSS 2007) is pricey.

You may use them to create a secure place to maintain and share all of your business data such as documents, schedules, announcements, calendars, discussion forums, etc.Since we are familiar with ASP.NET 2.0, developing Web parts were no longer a big job.

Microsoft says, “Windows SharePoint Services Web Part infrastructure is built on top of the Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part infrastructure and Web Parts that derive from the ASP.NET WebPart class are completely supported in Windows SharePoint Services. You should create ASP.NET Web Parts whenever possible”. So to provide customization and scaling up the product with additional features will not be a problem, if you know how to write Web parts.

If you have the development environment which consists of Visual Studio 2005, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Knowledge in C# or VB, You should be able to shoot.I found two good resources to start your first Sharepoint Web part development.Post as comments if you have more.http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms452873.aspxhttp://www.15seconds.com/Issue/060914.htm

Additionally, if you understand how to add Web Part zone and Web parts using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can work on the design to to create containers for Web parts.The following are the two good resources to accomplish so:http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101513941033.aspx

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101487201033.aspx

Finally to add more confidence let us understand the advantages of Sharepoint: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb684456.aspx

We will keep our Sharepoint experiences posted in future.