Microsoft Certification Coaching Session: Preparing for your Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Application Development Exam (70-541)

Take advantage of this coaching session hosted by a Microsoft Certified Trainer to help prepare for your Microsoft Certification exam.

This session is intended for Developers and IT Professionals pursuing Technical Specialist: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Application Development certification. You will review key exam topics including deploying Windows SharePoint Services and custom components, developing components, manipulating site content and configuration. The session will help you understand the key exam topic areas and how to better focus your study efforts.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032406314&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Determine permission levels and groups to use (Office SharePoint Server)

In this article:

- Review available default groups
- Review available permission levels
- Determine whether you need additional permission levels or groups
- Worksheet

The most important decision about your site and content security in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is to decide how to categorize your users and what permission levels to assign.

There are several default SharePoint groups that are intended to help you categorize your users based on the types of actions they need to perform, but you might have unique requirements or other ways of looking at sets of users. Likewise, there are default permission levels, but they might not always align exactly with the tasks that your groups need to perform.

In this article, you review the default groups and permission levels and decide whether to use them as they are, customize them, or create different groups and permission levels.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262690.aspx

7 New Features That Enhance Security in SharePoint

Implementing effective security measures for your Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 environment can significantly reduce management overhead while allowing teams to collaborate and share business data in a safe environment. Innovative authentication features built into MOSS 2007 let you employ Web-based security standards through custom authentication providers, Internet-style forms-based authentication, and Web single sign-on (SSO). Furthermore, MOSS offers granular rights management of business assets such as 2007 Microsoft® Office system files, native encryption features, and reduced client authentication obligations.

Here are seven security features provided by MOSS 2007 you can quickly put to work.

http://technet.microsoft.com/de-ch/magazine/cc743496(en-us).aspx

Plan for security roles (Office SharePoint Server)

In this article:

- Farm-level administration
- Shared service-level administration
- Site-level administration
- Worksheet

One of the new features in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a three-tier administrative model that centralizes configuration and management tasks, enables administrative roles to be differentiated, and administration to be delegated and assigned to the appropriate people in your organization. The enhancements in the administrative model can help IT organizations perform administrative tasks more efficiently and effectively. You can use the administrative model and SharePoint groups to give only the permissions that are necessary to perform specific tasks based on specific roles in your organization. To more effectively work within the three-tier administrative model, many organizations designate specific administrative roles within each tier. This article discusses administrative roles within each tier that you can use to help administer your solution.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262918.aspx

Plan for people and user profiles

In this article:

- About people and user profiles
- Plan connections to Profile Services
- Plan user profile properties
- Plan people and relationships
- Plan policies
- Plan for finding people
- Plan additional personalization functionality
- Worksheets

Information about the users in your organization is stored in user profiles within Profile Services. Profiles Services is managed by a services administrator that has additional permissions that are not available to Shared Services Provider (SSP) administrators. Services administrators import information about users from directory services, such as Active Directory directory service and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262095.aspx

Add a trusted data connection library

In this article:

- About trusted data connection libraries
- Add a trusted data connection library

About trusted data connection libraries

In Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, a trusted data connection library is a data connection library from which you have determined that it is safe to access Office data connection (.odc) files. The .odc files are used to centrally manage connections to external data sources.

Instead of allowing embedded connections to external data sources, Excel Calculation Services can be configured to require the use of .odc files for all data connections. The .odc files are stored in data connection libraries, and the data connection libraries have to be explicitly trusted before Excel Calculation Services will allow workbooks to access them.

If a data connection is linked from a workbook that is accessed by a server running Excel Calculation Services, the server checks the connection information and the list of trusted data connection libraries. If the data connection library is on the list, a connection is attempted by using the .odc file from the data connection library; otherwise, the connection request is ignored.

Before you can configure a data connection library as a trusted data connection for Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you must create a data connection library on a SharePoint site. To create a data connection library, click the Site Actions menu, select Create, and then click Data Connection Library. On the New page, type a name for the new data connection library and click Create.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262739.aspx

Configure the Office SharePoint Server Search service (Office SharePoint Server)

In this article:
- Server-level configuration
- Farm-level configuration
- SSP-level configuration
- Site collection-level configuration

This article describes the process of deploying the search features for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that are related to crawling content. If you have not already done so, we highly recommend that you first read the topics described in Plan search (Office SharePoint Server) and fill out the companion Plan to crawl content worksheet (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=73748&clcid=0x409). As you proceed through this article, refer to this worksheet so that you have the information you need to configure these search features.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262700.aspx

Plan to crawl content (Search Server 2008)

In this article:
- About crawling and indexing content
- Identify the sources of content that you want to crawl
- Plan content sources
- Plan for authentication
- Plan protocol handlers
- Plan to manage the impact of crawling
- Plan crawl rules
- Plan search settings that are managed at the farm level
- Indexing content in different languages

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280343.aspx