Lists, libraries, items, documents, and other apps

Lists, libraries, items, documents, and other apps

In SharePoint 2013, Microsoft has introduced a new feature called “Apps”. As per MSDN, Apps for SharePoint are self-contained pieces of functionality that extend the capabilities of a SharePoint website. Lists, Libraries, Calendars, Discussion boards, Surveys are all called “Apps”. For example, a Custom List template is now called a “Custom List App” and a Document Library template is now a “Document Library App”.

Every site template includes some predefined lists that are created when you construct a site using that template. For example, a team site provides a Documents library, a Site Assets library, a Site Pages library, and a few other predefined lists and libraries. Regardless of the site template you start from, you can always create new lists, libraries, and content, as well as activate features to customize your site.


You can browse the contents of these lists and libraries, and, if you have the proper permissions, you can create new apps, which can be lists of contents, libraries, or custom apps either taken from the public marketplace or installed from the corporate catalog. Consider that in SharePoint 2013, everything is called an app. However, a list or a library is still what it is—nothing more and nothing less. You can also add items to already existing lists or upload new files (for libraries) by simply dragging and dropping them from the file system to the webpage.

When you want to create a new app, you simply click the gear icon, which is located in the upper-right corner of the webpage, and then select Add An App. As shown in Figure, you’ll see the Apps You Can Add list, from which you can select the type of app that you would like to create

If none of the supplied templates of lists and libraries quite fits your needs, you can try or buy an app from the marketplace, and you can install an app from a corporate catalog. Of course, in order to access these, your farm should be connected to the Internet and configured for supporting apps.

Creating Your First SharePoint 2013 Site

Create Sites or Subsites

Assuming that an initial Site Collection has already been setup, the very next task that an administrator would like to perform is to add a Subsite or a Web in its Site Collection.
In SharePoint 2013, you have option to add Subsite of type Collaboration - Team site, Project site, Community site and Blog site. Enterprise - Document Center, Record Center, Business Intelligence Center, Enterprise Search Center, Basic Search Center and Visio Process Repository. Publishing - Publishing site, Publishing with Workflow site and Enterprise Wiki Site,Duet Enterprise - SAP Workflow site and Custom - Any Custom Site Template. The type of sites available for Creating a Subsites depends upon the activation of corresponding feature in your Site or Site Collection.

Create a SubSite

In SharePoint 2013, you can Create a Subsite using the “new subsite” Link available on Site Contents Page. Unlike SharePoint 2010, this Option to Create a Subsite is not available in Site Actions or Settings menu by default.
To create a new Subsite in SharePoint 2013, follow these steps:


1. Click on Site Settings Wheel in the upper right corner of you site and select “Site Contents” page.

2. In the Site Contents Page, under Subsites heading click on “new subsite” Link.

3. When New SharePoint Site page appears, enter Title and Description, Web Site Address (URL), Template, Permissions and Navigation Inheritance.

Click Create when done. You will be redirected to the Site Contents Page and the Subsite will be listed towards the end .

Information courtesy: Sharepoint 2013 Site Administration Guide

SharePoint 2013 Installation Types

SharePoint Installation Types

When you install SharePoint, you can choose different types of deployments and installation types.

There are three main ways to install and use SharePoint.

SharePoint Foundation

SharePoint Foundation ships as a free, downloadable install and represents the foundation parts of SharePoint. It includes a number of features such as security and administration, user and Team site collaboration, and a number of apps (such as document libraries and lists). In essence, it provides a baseline set of features that enable you to get started with both using and developing for SharePoint.Although the functionality that ships in SharePoint Foundation is less broad than that which ships in SharePoint Server, downloading and installing SharePoint Foundation costs you nothing. You can get up and running very quickly with this version and begin your development work using it. In SharePoint 2013, though, you also have the ability to create SharePoint Online sites very quickly —and have a rich development model there as well.


SharePoint Server
SharePoint Server offers a wealth of features that extend upon those offered in SharePoint
Foundation. These features include additional app types, Offi ce server-side services such as Word and Excel Services, enhanced search versions, enhanced BI, and much more.

Office 365

Offi ce 365 has emerged as a third, fully cloud-hosted model for SharePoint — as opposed to hosting your own farm in your own on-premises Data Center. It has also become a great place where you can develop rich applications (both as SharePoint-hosted and cloud-hosted apps) and scale without the cost of managing the on-premises infrastructure. It doesn’t have all the same services and features as SharePoint Server, but does carry with it some great development capabilities. As a developer, you have the capability to customize any of the SharePoint editions, whether it’s SharePoint Foundation, Server, or Offi ce 365.


information courtesy: Beginning sharepoint 2013

SiteCollection in Sharepoint 2013

 SiteCollection  in Sharepoint 2013

A site collection is a logical container that holds a set of SharePoint sites hosted in a web application. Whenever you work in SharePoint and you want to publish a site, regardless of whether it’s an Internet, intranet, or extranet solution, you will have at least one web application with one site collection, made of one site.

To create a new site collection, you need a web application, which you can create by selecting the Manage Web Applications menu item from the SPCA home page, or by using the corresponding PowerShell command.

Every site collection must have at least one site collection administrator, but it can have more than one. Thus, when creating a new site collection, you need to designate a primary site collection administrator and, optionally, a secondary one. After having created a site collection, you will be able to add as many site collection administrators as you like. A site collection administrator has the rights to create, update, or delete any site contained in a site collection. The administrator also has full rights to administer content within those sites.


Following are the five main functional groups of SharePoint 2013 templates:


Collaboration These are sites whose structure has been designed to facilitate collaboration. The Collaboration group includes the following templates: Team Site, Blank Site,Document Workspace, Blog, Group Work Site, Developer Site, Project Site, Community Site, and Visio Process Repository.

Meetings This group contains templates for sites related to meetings and meeting organization. The available templates are Basic Meeting Workspace, Blank Meeting Workspace, Decision Meeting Workspace, Social Meeting Workspace, and Multipage Meeting Workspace.

Enterprise These templates target enterprise-level needs in the areas of document management, policies, and so on. They include Document Center, Discover Center, Records Center, Business Intelligence Center, Enterprise Search Center, My Site Host, Community Portal, and Basic Search Center.

Publishing This group corresponds to sites intended for web-publishing purposes. The available templates are Publishing Portal, Enterprise Wiki, and Product Catalog.


Custom This is where you can develop your own site templates. Also in this group is a list of all the available custom templates, if any exist.

Figure  shows the home page of a site collection created by using the Team Site template of SharePoint 2013.

sharepoint 2013 Basic Concepts

Sharepoint 2013 Basic Concepts

SharePoint Central Administration(SPCA)


SPCA is a website based on the SharePoint engine; it’s designed to administer and monitor a SharePoint server farm. When you deploy a new farm, by default the first server takes the role of SPCA host. Nevertheless, in a well-defined SharePoint server farm, you should deploy at least two servers hosting SPCA, for better availability and business continuity of the farm.

The following list describes the main areas of SPCA:

Application Management : Here, you can manage existing web applications, as well as create new web applications, site collections, and content databases.

Monitoring : From this area, you have access to a set of tools for monitoring the farm, checking for issues, and solving problems.

Security : Here, you can manage administrative accounts and services’ accounts of the farm, and configure all the security-related features.

General Application Settings : This is the area where you manage general settings, such as site directory and search engine settings, content deployment features, form services, and more.

System Settings : From this area, you can manage servers in the farm, the farm topology, services on servers, and farm customization features.

Backup and Restore : This area provides access to all the tools for managing and handling disaster recovery tasks.

Upgrade and Migration : Here, you can manage upgrade and patching tasks.

Apps : This area provides access to the app configuration and management tools. You can configure and monitor installed apps and apps licenses, as well as your corporate catalog of apps.


Configuration Wizards : This area provides a wizard to configure the farm from scratch.



Information courtesy: Microsoft SharePoint 2013:Developer Reference

Introduction to sharepoint 2013

Microsoft SharePoint 2013 

Microsoft SharePoint is one of the biggest productivity frameworks released by Microsoft during the last 10 years. 

SharePoint 2013 is just one more step of a fabulous journey (that began in 2001) in the world of business productivity, collaboration, knowledge sharing, search technologies, enterprise social networking, and web content management.

From a developer’s perspective, SharePoint is a rich set of tools, classes, libraries, and controls that are useful for building custom solutions and apps focused on making business collaboration and enterprise social networking possible.

Main Benefits


Microsoft grouped the features and services provided by SharePoint 2013 into five main categories of

benefits: Share, Organize, Discover, Build, and Manage.

Share

SharePoint 2013 enables you to share ideas and content with others. For example, you can use SharePoint for storing and sharing documents, contacts, and tasks; organizing meetings; managing business processes; and more. When you share something with SharePoint, you can also put it in the social network of your colleagues, customers, partners, and contacts in general, regardless of whether they are on your corporate network, on Facebook, on Twitter, or elsewhere. Through SharePoint, people can discover what you shared, as well as share contents with you. Using the new social features of SharePoint 2013, you can keep track of what your colleagues are working on.

With SharePoint 2013 and the new Microsoft Office 2013, you can publish documents and content from any Office application, sharing them with people inside or outside your organization. You cantake advantage of these capabilities from your desktop computer as well as from any Internet-capable mobile device, such as Microsoft Surface and other tablets running Microsoft Windows 8 or RT, as well as smartphones based on the Windows Phone operating system or devices based on iOS.

Organize

Through SharePoint 2013, you can organize your projects and tasks, and even integrate SharePoint with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Project to keep your projects on track. The product will help you manage tasks, as well as their status and due dates. You will be able to keep your team connected, through specific team sites, which enable you and others to track meetings, share documents, store emails, and do whatever else is useful for your team collaboration.

Discover

With SharePoint 2013, you can search for content via a professional search engine, which can be customized for your needs.

Build

One of the most exciting new features of SharePoint 2013 is its apps-extensibility model. You can develop custom apps for Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013, using the power of the cloud. You can design everything from business apps for the marketplace at large to a corporate catalog targeting your employees.

Manage

SharePoint 2013 gives you a mature, maintainable, and manageable environment, which can be hosted on-premises as well as in the cloud, using Microsoft Office 365. You can also keep some of your services and content on-premises while deploying others on Office 365, within a hybrid infrastructure.The new capabilities of Office 365 reduce the time to market for your solutions, allowing you to concentrate your resources and time on the project, the contents, and the custom features, rather than on the infrastructure under the cover.

Information courtesy :Microsoft SharePoint 2013:Developer Reference