Sharepoint Interview Queries

What is sharepoint?

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

Microsoft often defines sharepoint as a business collaboration platform. In other way its is also a rich framework for developing business collaboration solutions. Sharepoint is a platform for building websites, both intranet and internet web sites. It is a collaboration platform for users, customers or whoever using the sharepoint web site.

 What are the minimum software and hardware requirements to install sharepoint 2010?

Operating system: microsoft windows server 2008 or microsoft windows server 2008 r2, but for development purpose you can install sharepoint 2010 on windows 7 and microsoft windows vista sp1/sp2. All operating system should be 64 bit.

Database: sharepoint 2010 requires database of Microsoft sql server 2005 sp3 or Microsoft sql server 2008 or r2. Also all should be 64bit.

Application server: sharepoint 2010 requires iis7 +.

.net framework: sharepoint 2010 requires Microsoft .net framework 3.5 and sp1 is preferable

What are sharepoint 2010 main features?

Sites: ribbon ui, sharepoint workspace, sharepoint mobile etc.

Communities: tagging, tag cloud, rating, social networking feature, my sites, blogs and wikis, my profile etc.

Content: enterprise content type, metadata and navigation, document sets, remote blog storage, audio and video content types, list enhancements etc.

Search: fast search integration, social relevance.

Insights: excel services, visio services, web analytics, sql server integration etc.

Composites: business connectivity services, info path form services, external lists, workflows, sharepoint designers, visual studio, rest etc.

 What is sharepoint central administration?

This is designed to administer and monitor a sharepoint server farm. Here you can configure servers and servers’ roles, define farm topology, and create new web applications and site collections. This basically a sharepoint site. The main features included here are: application management, monitoring, security, general application settings, system settings, back up and restore, upgrade and migration and configuration wizard.

 

 What is a site collection and web application?

A site collection is a logical container that holds a set of websites, hosted in a web application. If you want to publish internet or intranet web site then you need at least a web application and one site collection.

To create a new site collection we need a parent web application.

What are the site templates available in sharepoint?

There are 5 different site templates available in sharepoint 2010, from which you can create sites. And they are:

Collaboration: it has templates for team site, blank site, document workspace, blog, group work site etc.

Meetings: it has templates for basic meeting workspace, blank meeting workspace, decision meeting workspace, social meeting workspace, and multipage meeting workspace.

enterprise: it has templates for document center, records center,powerpoint broadcast site, business intelligence center, enterprise search center, my site host, basic search center, and fast search center.

Publishing: it has templates for publishing portal and enterprise wiki custom: here you can define your own custom templates.

What is a sharepoint list?

Everything is stored in sharepoint in form of list. They are similar to database. Lists have item, fields and views. Items are like a row in a table. Fields are like columns in a database table. Views display information from list.

What is the difference between a document library and a form library?

 

Document libraries consist of your core documents. an example would be a word document, excel, powerpoint, visio, pdf, etc… form libraries consist of xml forms. Like InfoPath

Difference between library vs list?

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.

What is a workflow?

Workflows are the way an organization functions, a series of actions that correspond to a work process, such as the process for purchase orders.sharepoint 2010 helps you automate these workflows, thereby increasing the efficiency and productivity of the organization

What is different with sharepoint 2010 workflows ?

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.

What are the types of workflow that you can design in sharepoint 2010.

You can design list workflows, reusable list workflows and site workflows using sharepoint designer 2010.

What reusable list workflows and site workflows ?

Reusable list workflows -

You can create a reusable list workflow (reusable workflow) in the top-level site in the site collection, and that workflow can be made globally reusable — meaning that the workflow can be associated to any list, library, or content type in the site collection. You can also create a reusable workflow in any subsite in the site collection; this workflow is available for reuse in that particular subsite.

Site workflows - a site workflow is associated to a site — not to a list, library, or content type. So unlike most workflows, a site workflow is not running on a specific list item. Because of this, many of the actions that are available for items not available for site workflows.

What is windows powershell ?

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.

How is windows powershell different from stsadm ?

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..

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

What is a sharepoint feature? What files are used to define a feature?

A sharepoint feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a sharepoint instances, scope of which are defined as

1. Farm level 2. Web application level 3. Site level 4. Web level

features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature is

installing, uninstalling, activated, or deactivated.

The element types that can be defined by a feature include

menu commands, link commands, page templates, page instances, list definitions, list instances,

event handlers, and workflows.

The two files that are used to define a feature are the feature.xml and manifest file(elements.xml). The feature xml file defines the actual feature and will make sharepoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.

What is the difference between method activity and event activity in workflow ?

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.

What are content types?

A content type is a flexible and reusable wss type definition (or we can a template) that defines the columns and behavior for an item in a list or a document in a document library. For example, you can create a content type for a leave approval document with a unique set of columns, an event handler, and its own document template and attach it with document library/libraries.

what is web part page life cycle?

OnInit – Configuration values set using WebBrowsable properties and those in web part task pane are loaded into the web part.

LoadViewState – The view state of the web part is populated over here.

CreateChildControls – All the controls specified are created and added to controls collection. When the page is being rendered for the first time the method generally occurs after the OnLoad() event. In case of postback, it is called before the OnLoad() event. We can make use of EnsureChildControls() - It checks to see if the CreateChildControls method has yet been called, and if it has not, calls it.

OnLoad

User Generated Event – for e.g. button click on the web part.

OnPreRender – Here we can change any of the web part properties before the control output is

drawn.

RenderContents – Html Output is generated.

SaveViewState - View state of the web part is serialized and saved.

Dispose

UnLoad.

What is the webpartmanager sealed class? What is its purpose?

The webpartmanager sealed class is responsible for managing everything occurring on a webpart page, such as the webparts (controls), events, and misc. Functionality that will occur in webpartzones. For example, the webpartmanager is responsible for the functionality that is provided when you are working with moving a webpart from webpartzone to webpartzone. It is known as the “the central class of the web part control set.”

What does allowunsafeupdates do?

If your code modifies windows sharepoint services data in some way, you may need to allow unsafe updates on the web site, without requiring a security validation. You can do by setting the allowunsafeupdates property.

 What does runwithelevatedprivileges do?

There are certain object model calls models that require site-administration privileges. To bypass access-denied error, we use runwithelevatedprivileges property when request is initiated by a nonprivileged user. We can successfully make calls into the object model by calling the runwithelevatedprivileges method provided by the spsecurity class

What does spweb.ensureuser method do?

Checks whether the specified login name belongs to a valid user of the web site, and if the login name does not already exist, adds it to the web site.

E.g spuser usr = myweb.ensureuser("hitenders");

What is a spsite and spweb object, and what is the difference between each of the objects?

The spsite object represents a collection of sites (site collection [a top level site and all its subsites]). The spweb object represents an instance sharepoint web, and spweb object contains things like the actual content. A spsite object contains the various subsites and the information regarding them.

What does a spwebapplication object represent?

The spwebapplication objects represents a sharepoint web application, which essentially is an iis virtual server. Using the class you can instigate high level operations, such as getting all the features of an entire web application instance, or doing high level creation operations like creating new web applications through code.

Would you use spwebapplication to get information like the smtp address of the sharepoint site?

Yes, since this is a web application level setting. You would iterate through each spwebapplication in the spwebapplication collection, and then use the appropriate property calls (outboundmailserviceinstance) in order to return settings regarding the mail service such as the smtp address.

How do you return sharepoint list items using sharepoint web services?

In order to retrieve list items from a sharepoint list through web services, you should use the lists.asmx web service by establishing a web reference in visual studio. The lists.asmx exposes the getlistitems method, which will allow the return of the full content of the list in an xml node. It will take parameters like the guid of the name of the list you are querying against, the guid of the view you are going to query, etc.

What is caml, and why would you use it?

Caml stands for collaborative application markup language. Caml is an xml based language which provides data constructs that build up the sharepoint fields, view, and is used for table definition during site provisioning. Caml is responsible for rending data and the resulting html that is output to the user in sharepoint. Caml can be used for a variety of circumstances, overall is used to query, build and customize sharepoint based sites. A general use would be building a caml query in a sharepoint webpart in order to retrieve values from a sharepoint list.

What are event receivers?

Event receivers are classes that inherit from the spitemeventreciever or splisteventreciever base class (both of which derive out of the abstract base class speventrecieverbase), and provide the option of responding to events as they occur within sharepoint, such as adding an item or deleting an item

What the Advantage of InfoPath ?
There is not one advantage, but many. It is a form building tool that also acts as the GUI for filling out forms. InfoPath allows you to create powerful, rich forms that do not require you to write any code, which is great, because it allows non-developers to create them or maintain them. You can also write code to enhance them beyond what they can do out of the box, but they can do A LOT without code.

What is the Diffrence Between using InfoBath and ( webParts or custmization any webpart in SharePoint ) ?
 InfoPath is a form building tool. Web parts are not forms but rather windows into data residing in libraries and lists. You can use custom web parts to display or interact with InfoPath forms.

When would you use an event receiver?

Since event receivers respond to events, you could use a receiver for something as simple as canceling an action, such as deleting a document library by using the cancel property. This would essentially prevent users from deleting any documents if you wanted to maintain retention of stored data.

 

What deployment mechanism can you use to instigate code access security attributes for your webparts?

Sharepoint solution files can add in order to handle code access security deployment issues. This is done in the element in the sharepoint solution manifest.xml, which makes it easier to get assemblies the appropriate permissions in order to operate in the bin directory of the web application.

What is moss?

Moss stands for Microsoft 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.

What is stsadm command?

stsadm command is used to perform all administrative work. For e.g. Backup, restore, installing feature, adding web part to site etc.

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

What is a farm?

 

A sharepoint farm is a collection of one or more sharepoint server which having a single configuration database

What is a site?

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.

What are web parts in sharepoint?

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.

What is web application in sharepoint?

 In sharepoint webapplication is a iis website. Each web application is associated with one iis website. For each web application, content database is created.

What is bdc?

 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.

What is workspace?

 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.

What is a meeting workspace?

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

 

What is a document workspace?

Document workspaces consist of information surrounding a single or multiple documents

What is the difference between an internet and an intranet site?

 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

What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?

A user can be assigned one of the following roles

readers - 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.

What are the types of authentication available for SharePoint 2010 ?

Claims

windows

forms-based authentication

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 create a small token based on the sign-in, that contains the user’s identity.

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.

What are the steps to implement forms authentications in SharePoint?

1.      Setup the membership data store

2.      Add a new user to the membership data store

3.      Configure SharePoint Central Administration web.config

4.      Configure the SharePoint site's web.config

5.      Enable Forms authentication on the SharePoint site

6.      Authorize the Forms-based user to access the site

7.      Login

What is linq to sharepoint ?

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:

 Intellisense,strongly typed access to the entities of the list,faster development,simplify complex queries

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

Explain types of SharePoint sites

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.

 What is a sandboxed solution?

When user writing custom code then it is not trusted, its failure causes on entire site. So the sandbox solution concept is used. In that case program is only written for particular site & solution is uploaded in the same site. The solution size limit is decided at the time of site creation & if size increases or code showing bad performance then it is easy to administrator to stop the working of solution.

We can create sandbox solution for particular site but not for the entire site collection or farm. It is not applicable for farm solution. There are some restriction while creating the sandbox solution.

Which are default master pages in Sharepoint 2010?

1. v4.master - This is default master page.

2. default.master - this is used to support the 2007 user interface

3. minimal.master 

4. simple.master- it is used for accessdenied.aspx, confirmation.aspx, error.aspx, login.aspx, reqacc.aspx, signout.aspx & webdeleted.aspx pages.

Which is faster a webpart or a user control?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.

how can debugging share point application and timer jobs ? with steps?

Steps 1:build application place .dll into gac and reset iis

steps 2:On the Debug menu, select Attach to Process

steps 3:select the Show processes from all users check box.

steps 4:select W3W.exe and OSWTIMER.exe can attach

steps 5:refresh sharepoint site point break point

What are New Features and Enhancements in SharePoint 2010 

1.       New User Interface including Ribbon

2.       Built-in SilverLight Support

3.       Rich and Improved Theming Support

4.       Multiple Browser Support

5.       Rich Media support and Digital Asset Management

6.       SharePoint Workspace

7.       Sandboxed Solutions

8.       Stsadm command-line tool is superseded by Windows PowerShell2.0 

9.       Redesigned Central Administration web site

10.    Shared Service Provider (SSP) no more exists (SharePoint 2010, all services are running as independent Service Application. You can select and configure from available services to run on an application server. You can also select and configure only required services for a particular web application)

11.    Business Connectivity Services (BCS)

12.    Developer Productivity Enhancements

13.    SharePoint Designer Enhancements

14.    Business Intelligence Enhancements

15.    Enhancements related to Large List Handling

16.    Workflow Improvements

17.    Social Networking Capabilities

18.    Deployment Advancements

What is the use of SharePoint_Config database?

SharePoint 2010 uses SharePoint_Config database to store farm configurations and contents. This database gets automatically created whenever you deploy the farm for the first time.

What is a Content database?

SharePoint 2010 uses content database to stores content for one or more Site Collections. Content can be items, documents, documents versions, pages, images etc.

You can deploy multiple Content Databases for a single web application.

Explain the differences between public, protected, private and internal.

public

The type or member can be accessed by any other code in the same assembly or another assembly that references it.

private

The type or member can only be accessed by code in the same class or struct.

protected

The type or member can only be accessed by code in the same class or struct, or in a derived class.

internal

The type or member can be accessed by any code in the same assembly, but not from another assembly.

protected internal

The type or member can be accessed by any code in the same assembly, or by any derived class in another assembly.

 What is Polymorphism?

Polymorphism means allowing a single definition to be used with different types of data (specifically, different classes of objects). For example, a polymorphic function definition can replace several type-specific ones, and a single polymorphic operator can act in expressions of various types.

what is the difference between Interface and abstract?

1) A class may inherit only one abstract class, but may implement multiple number of Interfaces. Say a class named Car needs to inherit some basic features of a vehicle, it may inherit from an Aabstract class named Vehicle. A car may be of any kind, it may be a vintage car, a sedan, a coupe, or a racing car. For these kind of requirements, say a car needs to have only two seats (means it is a coupe), then the class Car needs to implement a member field from an interface, that we make, say ICoupe.

2) Members of an abstract class may have any access modifier, but members of an interface are public by default, and cant have any other access modifier.

3) Abstract class methods may OR may not have an implementation, while methods in an Interface only have a definition, no implementation.

Example: Abstract Class with Virtual method

namespace Automobiles

{

 public abstract class Vehicle

 {

  public virtual void Speed() //Can have an implementation, that may be overriden in child class

  { 

   ...

  }

 }

Public class Car : Vehicle

{

Public override void Speed() 

//Here, we override whatever implementation is there in the abstract class 

 {

   ... //Child class implementation of the method Speed()

 }

}

}

 When to use Interface over abstract class?

Abstract Classes: Classes which cannot be instantiated. This means one 

cannot make a object of this class or in other way cannot create 

object by saying  ClassAbs abs = new ClassAbs(); where ClassAbs is 

abstract class.

Abstarct classes contains have one or more abstarct methods, ie method 

body only no implementation.

Interfaces: These are same as abstract classes only difference is we 

an only define method defination and no implementation.

What are the differences between Classic Mode Authentication and Claims based Authentication?

Classic Mode Authentication: It refers to the integrated windows authentication. You cannot configure the Forms based authentication if your web application is using Classic Mode Authentication. You can convert a web application from Classic Mode Authentication to Claims Based Authentication. However, that can only be done using PowerShell commands and its an irreversible process. I have detailed steps to convert the web application from Classic Mode authentication to Claims Based Authentication.

   This authentication refers to the Integrated Windows authentication model supported in SharePoint 2007. Classic mode does not utilize any of the cliams infrastructure, and therefore none of the claims features are available.

Claims Based Authentication: SharePoint 2010 is built on Windows Identity Foundation. It enables authentication from windows as well as non-windows based systems. This also provides the capability to have multiple authentication in a single URL.

   CBA supports 3 different authentication providers out of the box

Windows Authentication: Includes all the same authentication that Classic Mode Authentication.

  Form Based Authentication: This method includes LDAP, database or custom membership and or role providers.

  SAML Token-Based Authentication: This includes ADFS 2.0, Windows LiveID, and third party providers.

Types of SharePoint 2010 Master Pages

.v4.master-This is default master page.

.Nightandday  masterPage

v4.master

Default team site master page. Provides ribbon bar and other UI changes.

Characteristics

·         Site actions are updated for 2010 and appear on left.

·         Ribbon bar is available

 Differences Between Sandboxed and Farm Solutions

Farm Solutions

Farm solutions, which are hosted in the IIS worker process (W3WP.exe), run code that can affect the whole farm. When you debug a SharePoint project whose Sandboxed Solution property is set to "farm solution," the system's IIS application pool recycles before SharePoint retracts or deploys the feature so as to release any files locked by the IIS worker process. Only the IIS application pool serving the SharePoint project's site URL is recycled.

Sandboxed Solutions

Sandboxed solutions, which are hosted in the SharePoint user code solution worker process (SPUCWorkerProcess.exe), run code that can only affect the site collection of the solution. Because sandboxed solutions do not run in the IIS worker process, neither the IIS application pool nor the IIS server must restart. Visual Studio attaches the debugger to the SPUCWorkerProcess process that the SPUserCodeV4 service in SharePoint automatically triggers and controls. It is not necessary for the SPUCWorkerProcess process to recycle to load the latest version of the solution.

 How to customize master page in 2010?

In order to change the master page you have to activate SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature at the Site Collection Administration level and the same one at the web level (Site Action -> Manage Site feature). 

After that just navigate to SiteSettings -> Look and Feel  and click on Master Page link.

First you have to enable the Publishing feature

Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Actions section > Manage Site Features

SharePoint Server Publishing > Click on Activate

Create a  Custom Master Page

Site Actions > Edit in SharePoint Designer

In SharePoint Designer

1. Select your site
2. Click on Master Pages on the left
3. In the Ribbon click on Blank Page Master
4. Name appropriately
5. Download Randy Driscoll’s Starter Master Pages for SharePoint 2010 http://startermasterpages.codeplex.com/
6. Unzip and copy the Foundation (foundation) or SharePoint Server (publishing) version of the master page, depending on your installation, and paste into your new master page content.
7. save the custom master page

Note: You can also duplicate a master page by right clicking on the listing, then using copy and paste.

Make new master page available

Site Actions > Site Settings > Galleries > Master pages and page layouts

Click on master page to select the row

In the ribbon, click on “Check In” if it is available

In the ribbon, click on “Approve/Reject” to approve your new master page for use

If the “Compatible UI Version(s)” field does not have the correct UI(s), click on the Edit Properties in the ribbon and add or change the UI Version (3 is if you are using the legacy UI, usually from an upgrade – 4 is for the new 2010 UI)

Apply your custom master page

Site Actions > Site Settings > Look and Feel > Master Page (available now that publishing has been enabled)

Site Master Page > Specify a master page > select custom master page

Note: This is used by publishing pages, select reset all subsites if you like!

System Master Page > Specify a master page > select custom master page

Note: This is used by forms, “view” pages and pretty much everything that is not a publishing page on your site. Select reset all subsites if you like!

Alternate css url > specify a css file > browse and select the css file

Note: select reset all subsites to inherit this alternate css url if you like!

 

Who should make estimates for the effort of a project? Who is allowed to set the deadline?

The team tasked with implementing the project should make the estimates. The deadline can be set by the customer if they forego choosing the cost or scope. There are cases where the team should set the deadline. One of these is if they are working concurrently on many projects, the team can give the deadline to management, with the knowledge that priorities on other projects can be rearranged if the deadline for the new project needs to be more aggressive than the team has time to work on it.

Otherwise, I imagine management is free to set it according to organizational priorities.

Which kind of diagrams do you use to track progress in a project?

I've tended to return to the burndown chart time after time. Big visible charts has some discussion of different charts that can be used to measure various metrics of your project.

What is workspace?

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.

What are Features? Features represent a set of functionality (code) that can be activated and de-activated at various levels in SharePoint. Using Features, you can do everything from adding a link to the Site Settings page to creating a complete fully functioning Project suite that can be added to any SharePoint site. Developers can scope feature to the following level -
. Web
. Site
. WebApplication
. Farm

What is the difference between a site and a web in SharePoint? . A site in sharePoint is a site collection. It is an object of SPsite class in sharepoint. A Web however, is simply a blank site within that site collection. Web is a Part of SPweb class, thus represents a site within a site collection.

What is stsadm? It is a Command-line tool used for administration of Office SharePoint 2007 (or MOSS 2007) servers and sites. Basic operations like adding a solution or installing activating and feature is usually done by stsadm.

What is Custom action? Represents a link, toolbar button, menu item, or any control that can be added to a toolbar or menu that appears in the UI. For e.g. "New Folder" button in your document library is a custom action or "View All Site Content" in your Site Settings is a custom action.

What are WebParts? Web Parts are self-contained packages of user interface that can be dropped onto a SharePoint Web Part page to provide discrete set of functionality to the users. They can simply be described as re-usable Code units.

What is CAML? CAML stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language and is an XML-based language that is used in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to define sites and lists for E.g. fields, views, or forms etc. Developers mostly use CAML to write Queries to retrieve data from Lists\libraries.

What is MOSS?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is the full version of a portal-based platform for collaboratively creating, managing and sharing documents and Web services. In MOSS additional feature add that can not in WSS 3.0.

How to deploy MOSS?

In Command prompt, navigate to the 12-hive bin folder, then write the command to add the solution i.e.
Stsadm-oaddsolution-filenamefilelocation
Then go to “central administration -> operations” under “global configuration” there is “solution management”clickonthat.Then click on “wsp file name”, and then click on “deploy solution” for deploy it, for retrieve click on “retrieve solution”, for remove it click on “remove solution” after retrieve it. 

What are the two different products in SharePoint 2010?

Answer: – SharePoint 2010 has basically two different products namely SharePoint
Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

SharePoint Foundation 2010 is basically a free version.

SharePoint Server 2010 is basically a paid version.

How to create a simple Website in SharePoint 2010?

In order to create a Website in SharePoint 2010, we need to use
SharePoint 2010 Central Administration tool. As soon as you click on SharePoint
2010 Central Administration tool it will ask for credential do put your
credential and you will directed to the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration
screen. Now from the Application Management screen click on Manage web
applications, as soon as you click on Manage web applications a new window will
open, now from the top most left of the screen click on New menu, again a new
window will pop-up of Create New Web Application which enables you to create new
web application.

How to create Users and Allocates permissions to the Users?

Answer: -Permission management is a three steps process as follows.

Step1: -Create Users.

Step2: – Create Permissions.

Step3: – Link the Users with the Permissions.

In order to create a User’s and Allocate permissions Click on Site Actions
located on the top link bar and then click on Site Permissions.Now, under the
Edit tab, click on Grant Permissions. Later, In the Users/group field, enter the
user’s name, choose the permissions you wish the user to have under Give
Permission, and then click on OK.

How to create or deploy Web parts in SharePoint 2010?

Answer: -Web part: – It is a reusable functionality, which can be inserted on
the web pages and can be configured by the end users. In order to create a web
part, go to Visual Studio and create a new project > select SharePoint tab >
select Visual Web Part > select on which local web site you want to deploy the
web part > click on Validate and Click finish.

Now, in order to deploy the project just go to > Solution Explorer > select your
project > Right click on it > just select deploy.

What is a SharePoint Feature? What files are used to define a feature?

A SharePoint Feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances.
Scopes include

• Farm
• WebApplication
• Site (site collection)
• Web (site)

Features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances.
Scopes include

• Farm
• WebApplication
• Site (site collection)
• Web (site)

Features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature is

• installing
• uninstalling
• activated
• deactivated

The element types that can be defined by a feature include

• menu commands
• link commands
• page templates
• page instances
• list definitions
• list instances
• event handlers
• workflows

The two files that are used to define a feature are

• feature.xml
• manifest file(elements.xml)

The feature XML file defines the actual feature and will make SharePoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.
Common stsadm commands associated with feature are

• stsadm -o installfeature
• stsadm -o uninstallfeature
• stsadm -o activatefeature

stsadm -o deactivatefeature

Can multiple SharePoint installs point to the same DB?

Multiple SharePoint installs can use the same database server. Not literally the same database on that server. That server must be SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005. It cannot be Oracle or another vendor.

What is WSS?

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.

What is the User Profile service?

Allows configuring and managing User profile properties, Audiences, Profile synchronization settings,

What are content databases?

A content database can hold all the content for one or more site collections

How Does SharePoint work?
The browser sends a DAV packet to IIS asking to perform a document check in. PKMDASL.DLL, an ISAPI DLL, parses the packet and sees that it has the proprietary INVOKE command. Because of the existence of this command, the packet is passed off to msdmserv.exe, who in turn processes the packet and uses EXOLEDB to access the WSS, perform the operation and send the results back to the user in the form of XML.

How will you cancel a deployment if it is stuck at “deploying” or “Error”.
You can either try to force execute timer jobs using execadmsvcjobs command or can cancel the deployment using  stsadm command
“stsadm –o cancaldeployment –id {GUID} command.”
The Id here would be GUID of the timer or deployment job. You can get the Id from stsadm enumdeployment command. This will display all the deployments which are inprocess or are stuck with Error.

What permissions are required to perform stsadm operations?
Ans. You need to be a member of WSS_ADMIN_WPG group to perform deployments for sharepoint server. Also, you need to be added into administrators group on a computer on which SharePoint Server or WSS 3.0 is installed. In addition to this you definitely need access to the required sharepoint databases so that you should not get errors while deploying sharepoint solutions.

How will you backup and restore entire farm ? Ans. There are various methods to backup and restore SharePoint entire farm in SharePoint. Two main methods that you can use to back up and restore are:

* Using SharePoint Central Administration Web site – This toolenables you to perform backups and restorations from the user interface. When you use this method, you can back up the server farm, Web applications, and any or all of the content databases in your server farm. You can use the Stsadm command-line tool to view backup and recovery history and to view backup and recovery job status.

* Stsadm command-line tool - Stsadm command-line tooloffers a faster and more flexible command-line-based approach to farm backup and recovery. This method for backing up and restoring data does not require SQL Server 2000 tools or SQL Server 2005 tools. However, to perform this method of backup and recovery, you must be a member of the administrators group on a computer on which SharePoint Server or WSS 3.0 is installed.

Other methods to Backup are :

* Backup Farm by using SQL server Tools – You can perform Full, Differential and Transaction baclups from SQL server studio.

* Third Party Tools – You can also use other Backup and Restore tools such as DocAve for taking daily backups.

What Do you know about SharePoint Object Model?
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.

The Chart Below illustrates some of the key classes contained in each of these namespaces, as well as to which functional area they belong.

Document Libraries (Microsoft.SharePoint)
SPDocumentLibrary , SPPictureLibrary

Business Data Catalog (Microsoft.Office.Server.ApplicationRegistry.Administration)
EntityCollection , ApplicationRegistry

Features (Microsoft.SharePoint)
SPFeatureDefinition, SPFeatureScope, SPElementDefinition, SPFeature, SPFeatureProperty

Sites (Microsoft.SharePoint)
SPSite, SPSiteAdministration, SPSiteCollection, SPWeb

Meetings (Microsoft.SharePoint.Meetings)
SPMeeting, MtgUtility

User Profiles (Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles)
UserProfile, UserProfileManager

Solutions (Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration)
SPsolution, SPFeatureReceiver, SPSolutionCollection

Lists (Microsoft.SharePoint)
SPList, SPListItem, SPListItemCollection

Why do you use Feature Receivers ?
Ans. Feature Receivers are used to execute any code on Activation\Deactivation of a Feature. You can use it for various purposes.

 What are content types?
Ans. A content type is a flexible and reusable WSS type definition (or we can a template) that defines the columns and behavior for an item in a list or a document in a document library. For example, you can create a content type for a leave approval document with a unique set of columns, an event handler.

  Client vs Server OM?
using Client Object Model we can access the data from the system where sharepoint server is not installed on the machine via Web Services , API , JavaScript etc

Whereas In Server Object Model is like a Production Server Environment to access the data where sharepoint server installed on the machine .

Purpose of Client Object model is to access SharePoint data from systems where the SharePoint is not installed like web services.

Server object model is used to access data only SharePoint installed systems.

If I want to access data from production environment and I'm not having access to that machine, in this scenario I will use Client object model or web services.

Client object model is similar to Server object model with few limitations, we can't access WebApplication and Farm objects, we can write our own web service or WCF .

Server Object Model is where you write C# code and create assemblies. Client Object Model is where you write code using ECMAScript which has been introduced in SharePoint 2010. More details can be found in SDK...

how to add,update,delete items in sharepoint list programmatically

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://website url/" ))

 Or SPContext.Current.Site.Url

{

                    using (SPWeb Web = site.OpenWeb())

                    {

            Web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

            // Open List

             SPList list = Web.Lists["MyList"];

            // Add new item in List

             SPListItem item = list.Items.Add();

             item["Title"] = "Test Title";

             item["Description"] = "Test Description";

             item.Update();

            // Get Item ID

             listItemId = item.ID;

            // Update the List item by ID

             SPListItem item = list.GetItemById(listItemId);

             item["Description"] = "Update Description";

             item.Update();

            // Delete item

             SPListItem item = list.GetItemById(listItemId);

             item.Delete();

            Web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;

       }

 }

Object Model?

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
Various tools for creating solution

WSP Builder

Stsdev

Visual studio extension for wss

What are the Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint.

Visual Studio 2010 includes SharePoint-specific project types and project item types, and includes powerful packaging, deployment, and debugging features that help increase your efficiency as a SharePoint 2010 developer.

Some of the Templates avaiable are : 1.Visual Web Part project template.
2. List defintion template.
3. Content Type template.
4. Empty Project template.
5. Event Receiver template.
6. some workflow template.
7. the Site Definition template

How do you develop webparts in SharePoint? Ans. You can either develop a simple asp.net webpart with C# class library project or can use various tools available in the market. VSeWSS is an extension provided by Microsoft that consist of a webpart template for easy webpart creation and deployment. Other tools are wspbuilder, stsdev etc.

Difference between Master page and Page Layout?

Master pages and page layouts dictate the overall look and feel of your SharePoint site.
Differences are
1) Master pages contain controls that are shared across multiple page layouts,
such as navigation,search, or language-preference for multilingual sites.
Page layouts contain field controls and Web Parts.
2) Page layouts can be used by all page instances that are based on that
page layout.Master pages can be used by all page instances in a site.

What is the difference between Site Definition and Site template?

1. To create or use site definition you need server admin access, but site template can install from web UI by site owners.
2. Site definition supports feature stapling, but for site template additional features must be activated in gallery.
3. Site definitions are stored in hard disk, but site templates are stored in content DB.
4. Site definition can provision multiple webs, but site templates for single web only.
5. Creating site definition is relatively complex then site template creation.

 

DB b/w Features,Feature Definition and Solution?

 

Using Features and Solutions will help customize sites and site templates.
Features: It helps sites to reuse functionality from one site to other sites without requiring to copy and paste XML. It is also an instance of Feature Definition.
Solutions: It helps to package Features in a cabinet (.cab) file along with meta data.
Feature Definition: It hides feature manifest contained in a feature directory and are installed at farm level.

Top-Down Approach:- Integration of main module with some of the sub modules is called as Top-down approach

Integration of sub modules without main module is called as Bottom-Up approach.

What are the types of input forms that can be created for a workflow?

You can create four different types of input forms including

1. An association form

2. An initiation form

3. A modification form

4. A task edit form.