SharePoint For Dummies

Rosemarie Withee is President of Portal Integrators and Founder of Scrum Now. She has years of experience as a SharePoint consultant and is the author of several books on Microsoft software products. Ken Withee has worked with SharePoint for over a decade.

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 3

Icons Used in This Book 3

Beyond the Book 4

Where to Go from Here 4

Part 1: Getting Started with SharePoint 5

Chapter 1: Getting to Know SharePoint 7

Up and Running with SharePoint in Three Minutes Flat 8

Wrapping Your Head around SharePoint 13

No, really, what is SharePoint? 13

A Microsoft product 15

Many different SharePoint definitions 15

More than a website 18

Taking a Peek at a SharePoint Site 19

Getting Familiar with SharePoint Terminology 21

Branding 21

Business intelligence (BI) 21

eDiscovery 22

Identity management 22

Mobile 23

Records management and compliance 23

Search 24

Social 24

Web content management 24

Workflow 25

Chapter 2: Introducing SharePoint in Microsoft 365 27

Accessing and Using SharePoint 28

Getting Familiar with SharePoint Online 28

Determining What Version of SharePoint You Are Using 30

Understanding Why SharePoint Online Has Become So Popular 30

Differences between SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Premises 31

Exploring the Benefits of SharePoint Online 33

Data center and hardware 33

Software platform 34

Backup, redundancy, and security 35

Chapter 3: Wrangling SharePoint Functionality 37

Coming to Terms with Website Templates 38

Show Me the Apps 39

Working with Web Pages 40

Site page 42

Wiki page 42

Web Part page 42

Publishing page 43

Understanding Web Parts 43

Digging into SharePoint Features 44

Integrating with Office 45

Part 2: Diving Headfirst into SharePoint 47

Chapter 4: Discovering SharePoint in Your Pocket 49

Installing the SharePoint Mobile App 49

Installing on iOS 50

Installing on Android 50

Signing into the SharePoint Mobile App 51

Finding Your SharePoint Stuff with the Find Tab 53

Exploring a SharePoint site 54

Opening navigation 55

Getting the Latest News with the News Tab 56

All About You with the Me Tab 57

Chapter 5: Understanding SharePoint Sites 61

Accessing SharePoint Sites in Microsoft 365 61

Exploring the SharePoint Team Site 64

Finding your way around 64

Uploading documents 65

Sharing your Team site 66

Creating a SharePoint Site 70

Create a subsite from your web browser 70

Create a site from the SharePoint Mobile App 72

Requesting a SharePoint Site 74

Grouping Sites with Hub Sites 75

Chapter 6: Working with Web Pages and Web Parts 77

Understanding SharePoint Web Pages 78

Creating a Site page 78

Creating a Web Part page 80

Creating a Wiki page 82

Introducing the Ribbon 83

Deciding What Type of Page to Create 84

Digging into Web Parts 85

Adding a Web Part to Your Page 85

Choosing the Right Web Part 89

Changing Web Part Properties 92

Reviewing Web Part properties 92

Editing Web Part properties 93

Minimizing or deleting Web Parts 94

Connecting Web Parts 95

Managing Pages 97

Categorizing Your Wiki Pages 98

Taking a Peek into Custom Page Designs 99

Chapter 7: Adding Content to SharePoint 101

SharePoint as a Content Management System 101

Wrangling the Overwhelming Mountain of Digital Content 102

Getting Your Documents into SharePoint 103

Uploading a single document 104

Uploading multiple documents 106

Updating document properties using Edit in Grid view 106

Creating New Content in SharePoint 108

Using the SharePoint Mobile App to Peek at Content on the Go 109

Chapter 8: Discovering SharePoint in Microsoft Teams 113

Using Teams in Microsoft 365 114

Understanding the Marriage of SharePoint and Teams 116

Accessing SharePoint files in Teams 116

Using the Teams wiki and finding it in SharePoint 118

Adding SharePoint Pages and Lists to Teams 119

Chapter 9: Working with SharePoint from Microsoft Office 123

Getting Familiar with Office Versioning 124

Working with Office on Your Desktop or Laptop 124

Installing Microsoft Office 125

Saving a new document to SharePoint 127

Opening a document from SharePoint 129

Working with Office on Your Smartphone or Tablet 131

Saving a new document to SharePoint 131

Opening a document from SharePoint 133

Chapter 10: Getting Social 135

Sharing and Following SharePoint Sites 136

Setting up alerts 139

Managing alerts 142

Staying Up to Date with News 143

Information Sharing with Blog Style Sites and Wikis 144

Creating a blog-style site 145

Publishing a new post 145

Using wikis to collaborate and coauthor 146

Communicating with Discussion Boards 149

Creating a Discussion Board app 149

Posting and replying to a subject 149

Connecting with Others Using RSS Feeds 151

Viewing RSS feeds 151

Reading RSS feeds with Outlook 153

Part 3: Customizing SharePoint 155

Chapter 11: Customizing SharePoint with Apps 157

Introducing SharePoint Apps 158

Adding Apps to Your Site 159

Accessing App Settings 160

Configuring the General Settings 164

Changing the title, description, and navigation 164

Versioning settings 164

Advanced settings 167

Validation settings 171

Audience Targeting settings 172

Rating settings 172

Form settings 173

Chapter 12: Developing a Custom App 175

Planning Your App 176

Creating Your App 176

Adding columns to your app 177

Working with the Title column 184

Importing a Spreadsheet as an App 186

Taking Your App to the Next Level: Calculated and Lookup Columns 188

Creating a calculated column 188

Using a lookup column 190

Keeping Track of Locations 191

Downloading Apps from the SharePoint Store 191

Chapter 13: Taking Control of Your Profile and Content 193

Organizing Your Personal Content with OneDrive 193

Saving stuff with OneDrive 195

Creating or uploading documents in your OneDrive 196

Expressing Yourself with Your Profile 198

Creating a holistic profile experience 198

Filling in your profile information 199

Tracking Your Favorite Sites 201

Chapter 14: Organizing and Viewing Content 203

Working with Documents 204

Using the ellipsis 204

Editing a document’s properties 206

Viewing documents in the browser 208

Sharing Your Documents 209

Recovering Deleted Documents 209

Uploading Documents into a Folder 211

Discovering SharePoint Views 215

Switching the view 215

Getting to know view formats 217

Creating a Standard View 217

Choosing columns for your view 220

Filtering apps with views 221

Grouping results 222

Quickly edit app data with Edit In Grid View (a.k.a Quick Edit) 223

Choosing a display style 225

Managing App Data in a Datasheet View 225

Using Ad Hoc Views 226

Creating a Calendar View 227

Displaying Tasks in a Gantt View 228

Managing Existing Views 229

Modifying your views 229

Setting the default view 229

Other SharePoint built-in views 230

Displaying Views via Web Parts 230

Chapter 15: Creating Workflows with Microsoft Power Automate 231

Understanding Workflow 232

Introducing Microsoft Power Automate 232

Signing into Microsoft Power Automate 232

Getting familiar with Power Automate 233

Building your first flow 236

Using the Traditional SharePoint-Only Workflow 240

Chapter 16: Getting Answers with Microsoft Forms 243

Signing into Microsoft Forms 243

Creating a Form in Microsoft Forms 244

Analyzing Microsoft Forms Data 247

Displaying a Form in SharePoint 248

Capturing Forms Data in SharePoint 250

Part 4: Becoming a SharePoint Administrator 251

Chapter 17: Building Business Apps with Power Apps 253

Introducing Power Apps 253

Signing into Power Apps 254

Getting familiar with Power Apps 254

Building your first Power App 256

Sharing your Power App 260

Using Power Apps on your Mobile Device 261

Embedding a Power App within a SharePoint Page 261

Viewing SharePoint Sites in a Web Browser on a Mobile Device 262

Creating views for small screens 263

Targeting devices using channels 263

Chapter 18: Realizing You Are a SharePoint Administrator 265

Changing Your Site’s Basic Information 266

Finding Site Settings 267

Digging into Site Settings 269

Look and Feel 269

Site Actions 272

Site Collection Administration 272

Microsoft Search 273

Web Designer Galleries 273

Site Administration 275

Search 275

Getting a High-Level View of SharePoint Features 277

Turning Features On and Off 278

Exploring Common Features 279

Extending SharePoint with Features 280

Changing the Look and Feel of Your Site 280

A note on fonts 283

A word on usability 284

The benefits of composed looks 285

Checking Out SharePoint Metrics 285

Chapter 19: Configuring Site Navigation 287

Changing Team Site Navigation 288

Staying local with Quick Launch 288

Adding quick links to a page 290

Taking on Advanced Navigation 294

Configuring SharePoint navigation 294

Configuring global navigation 295

Configuring current navigation 296

Configuring Static Navigation 297

Navigating with Web Parts 300

Understanding Managed Navigation 301

Chapter 20: Creating a Client or Partner Portal 303

Sharing a Site with External Guests 303

Inviting Guests Using Outlook Groups 308

Planning for Your Client or Guest Portal 308

Launching Your Portal 310

Creating a Public-Facing Website 311

Chapter 21: Securing SharePoint 313

Using SharePoint Groups 314

Adding users to a group 315

Understanding the permission structure 316

Securing a site collection 318

Securing Apps, Folders, Documents, and Items 319

Creating unique permissions for a subsite 320

Removing existing permissions 321

Creating unique permissions for an app or document 321

Managing permissions scenarios 323

Viewing a group’s permissions 324

Checking a user’s permissions 325

Granting Administrative Access 327

Viewing Site Permissions 328

Locking Down a Partner Portal 331

Permissions in SharePoint Online versus SharePoint On-Premises 332

Going Further with Custom Permissions 332

Part 5: Managing Enterprise Content 335

Chapter 22: Managing Content and the Content Lifecycle 337

Starting Simple: Co-Authoring 338

Checking a Document In and Out 338

Configuring Content Approval 340

Turning on content approval 341

Identifying approvers 343

Casting an approving eye 343

Disapproving: Not just for stern parents 345

Getting alerts on approval/rejection status 346

Digging into a SharePoint Records Center 346

Defining the terms 346

Creating information management policies 347

Setting Up a Records Center 351

Using the Content Organizer 353

Managing Records in Place 355

Placing Records on Litigation Hold 356

Chapter 23: Finding What You Need with Search 359

Understanding How SharePoint Search Works 359

Searching for Content 360

Searching for a string using quotation marks 361

Wildcard searches 362

Including and excluding terms 362

Building compound search queries using Boolean operators 363

Getting fancy with the parentheses 363

Finding terms in proximity 364

Same meaning, different terms 364

Viewing and Refining Search Results 365

Making Search Your Users’ Best Friend 366

Removing Content from Search Results 372

Reviewing Search Analytics 373

Adding a Search Center Site 373

Chapter 24: Integrating with Power BI 377

Signing into Power BI 377

Installing the Power BI Desktop 378

Building Your First Power BI Report 380

Pulling Data into Power BI from SharePoint 383

SharePoint Library app 384

SharePoint List app 386

Displaying a Power BI Report on a SharePoint Page 386

Part 6: The Part of Tens 389

Chapter 25: Ten Hot SharePoint Topics 391

Getting Up to Speed with SharePoint 391

SharePoint Online Videos 392

SharePoint Online Official Documentation 392

SharePoint Development 392

SharePoint Power Automate 393

Taking SharePoint for a Spin 393

Staying Current: The SharePoint Blog 394

New On-Premises Features in SharePoint Server 394

Plan for SharePoint 394

SharePoint from the Leader 395

Chapter 26: Ten Ways to Maintain Control with Governance 397

Failure Is Not an Option (Neither Is Looking Away and Whistling) 398

Getting Executive Buy-In and Support 398

Building an Effective Governance Group 398

Finding the Right Level 399

Yours, Mine, Ours: Deciding Who Owns What 399

(Re)Visiting Social Networking Policies 400

Applying Consistent Design and Branding 400

Implementing Effective Content Management 401

Reusing Web Parts 401

Keeping Things Current: Web Operations Management 401

Chapter 27: Ten Ways to Become a SharePoint Server Guru 403

Getting Information from the Horse’s Mouth 404

Reading SharePoint Blogs 405

Finding Local User Groups 406

Building a Virtual Lab 406

Starting with a Good Foundation 407

Borrowing from Others 407

Getting Certified 408

Taking a Peek under the Covers 408

Digging Deeper under the Covers 408

Deconstructing a SharePoint Site 409

Index 411