Intensive Sharepoint Training
May 13, 2010 9:07 AM Subscribe
At my office we are preparing to deploy Sharepoint 2010 Enterprise-wide and I'm the lead architect. What training will best prepare me for this role?
What they want:
My company did a small Sharepoint 2007 roll-out and I attended 5 days of training. This was basic training, everything from how to upload documents to manage user permissions. The only real customization was how to modify the site theme, which is nowhere near the level of control they want to exert over our deployment.
The bottom line question: What type of training would best prepare me, a web developer and experienced coder, to become our company's Sharepoint guru? Sharepoint Designer seems useful but given that it is "Frontpage on Steroids" I am not sure if it would give me the degree of control necessary. Is that my starting point?
And where can I learn more about the actual coding of Sharepoint pages so I can customize them to fit our needs?
And finally, any certifications I should aim for?
(And, yes, my managers know I know none of this, they want me to learn to become this person for the company, they don't expect me to be it already, so no worries about their expectations)
What they want:
- They want me to be "the go to guy" for all things Sharepoint.
- They want me to be able to totally customize the look and feel of the Sharepoint environment (beyond what Sharepoint designer can do from what I've seen)
- They want me to build custom applications that work in the Sharepoint framework (such as web forms, interactive maps, etc)
- I am a Software Engineer (Architect) with 7 years coding experience, 5 years teaching experience, and 4 years networking experience.
- I am proficient in Java, Javascript, VB 6 (sadly my employer is still VB6 reliant), PHP, ASP, and VB.NET in ASPX.
- I had some pretty sharp C++ skills back in the day but they have atrophied due to lack of use.
- I know XML and RSS feeds like the back of my hand, and I'm good with CSS.
- I have some familiarity with DOM, SAX, JQuery, and C#.
My company did a small Sharepoint 2007 roll-out and I attended 5 days of training. This was basic training, everything from how to upload documents to manage user permissions. The only real customization was how to modify the site theme, which is nowhere near the level of control they want to exert over our deployment.
The bottom line question: What type of training would best prepare me, a web developer and experienced coder, to become our company's Sharepoint guru? Sharepoint Designer seems useful but given that it is "Frontpage on Steroids" I am not sure if it would give me the degree of control necessary. Is that my starting point?
And where can I learn more about the actual coding of Sharepoint pages so I can customize them to fit our needs?
And finally, any certifications I should aim for?
(And, yes, my managers know I know none of this, they want me to learn to become this person for the company, they don't expect me to be it already, so no worries about their expectations)
Best answer: Your new favorite websites are: StackOverflow and SharePoint Overflow.
SharePoint 2010 is radically different from a developer viewpoint than previous versions, making most of the previous classroom and study materials mostly useless. There are new SharePoint 2010 certifications for IT Pros and developers, and they're the best places to start to get the broad overview.
Watch a lot of Channel 9.
Get to know Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 3.5/4.0.
Grab SharePoint 2010 in a virtual machine and start playing with it.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:15 AM on May 13, 2010 [2 favorites]
SharePoint 2010 is radically different from a developer viewpoint than previous versions, making most of the previous classroom and study materials mostly useless. There are new SharePoint 2010 certifications for IT Pros and developers, and they're the best places to start to get the broad overview.
Watch a lot of Channel 9.
Get to know Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 3.5/4.0.
Grab SharePoint 2010 in a virtual machine and start playing with it.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:15 AM on May 13, 2010 [2 favorites]
Seconding getting a very well defined scope.
Learn how to administer sharepoint inside out before coding anything. Stuff you haven't custom coded is stuff that won't break later. Do as much as you can with styles, templates, and workflows before breaking down and creating custom webobjects. Get a large laundry list of the useful modifications possible at all levels - e.g. user uploads document, admin user creates doclib, admin user customizes workflow, dev changes theme, dev spawns site, dev writes webobject, etc. - and figure out which parts are safe to delegate. Start with locked down creation permissions if at all possible to prevent sites from propagating crazily and creating a big mess.
Haven't done formal training - mostly read the MSDN docs and blog posts.
posted by benzenedream at 11:27 AM on May 13, 2010
Learn how to administer sharepoint inside out before coding anything. Stuff you haven't custom coded is stuff that won't break later. Do as much as you can with styles, templates, and workflows before breaking down and creating custom webobjects. Get a large laundry list of the useful modifications possible at all levels - e.g. user uploads document, admin user creates doclib, admin user customizes workflow, dev changes theme, dev spawns site, dev writes webobject, etc. - and figure out which parts are safe to delegate. Start with locked down creation permissions if at all possible to prevent sites from propagating crazily and creating a big mess.
Haven't done formal training - mostly read the MSDN docs and blog posts.
posted by benzenedream at 11:27 AM on May 13, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
In other words, make sure you have detailed implementation plans and post imp processes in place to manage the workstream and ensures your priorities are defined. Your top three bullet points indicates you are going to have a lot of people asking for a lot of things and things tend to spiral quickly out of control with SP.
This is from personal experience within a global organisation that struggled with SP for five years, many mini projects, consultants and a great deal of bullshit from all the stakeholders involved. I held the overview on cost and resources and can assure you without plans and processes for managing customisation, you will quickly be shit out of luck.
posted by Funmonkey1 at 9:19 AM on May 13, 2010