SHAREPOINT 2010 for USERS
SharePoint has long been a versatile platform for all sorts of internal and public Web sites, with an emphasis on group collaboration sites, and SharePoint 2010 has greatly improved and expanded those capabilities. It is more flexible and more capable, has a much improved user interface, and does a better job of implementing multilingual sites.
The online HTML editor in SharePoint 2007 was weak by any measure, and at least one third-party ISV had a nice business selling a better SharePoint edit control. The online editor in SharePoint 2010 is not just improved, it faithfully brings the experience of editing with Microsoft Word to the Web, complete with live previews. It works just as well with Firefox as it does with IE 7 and IE 8, and almost as well with Safari. That this online editor is rolling out at the same time as Microsoft Word for the Web is no surprise.
Wiki
SharePoint 2010 supports wiki markup (specifically, MediaWiki-compatible links) and wiki-style WYSIWYG editing pretty much everywhere. SharePoint 2010 is easier to use as a wiki than many wikis.
SharePoint has long supported some international sites, but now it fully supports a multilingual user interface, with dozens of languages supplied out of the box. In addition, it supports configuring fields within lists for multiple languages, as well as translations of user content.
Metadata and Tagging
Meta data, in the form of tags, formal taxonomies, user-created folksonomies, and bookmarks, add another dimension of classification to site navigation and content-based search. SharePoint 2010 supports all of these and can use them for targeting list content to specific audiences, for routing documents to specific libraries and folders, for displaying tag clouds, and for searching.
In addition to tagging, documents can be organized into document sets. The confusing proliferation of document versions that often happens in collaboration sites can now be controlled by declaring specific documents "in-place records," which are basically locked official files. Locking a file doesn't prevent future collaboration; it just marks and preserves that version of the document as "official." The in-place record can exist side by side with other versions of the same document.
Office Web Apps
A lot of people believe that Microsoft has locked SharePoint users into installing Microsoft Office, but SharePoint 2010 includes Office Web Apps, the new Web-based editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
It's always been relatively easy to convert Word documents to SharePoint pages, as well as to display PowerPoint slides online. In SharePoint 2010, you can also use Excel Services or Visio Services to publish spreadsheets or diagrams for browsing.
SHAREPOINT 2010 FOR IT PROFESSIONALS
SharePoint 2010 promises IT professionals improved productivity, a scalable unified infrastructure, and flexible deployment. These features can be used to help provide governance and high availability.
Although server requirements are narrower, client support is broader. SharePoint 2010 fully supports 32-bit IE 7, IE 8, and Firefox 3.x running on Windows. Also, 64-bit IE 7 and IE 8, Firefox 3.x on non-Windows systems and Safari 3.x are supported as "level 2" browsers; they can be used to administer the site, but pages may not render with perfect fidelity. Site administrators can tune their content and CSS to support additional browsers for reading the site.
Smooth transitions
Upgrades can be done in place or by attaching a database backup from SharePoint 2007 to a new SharePoint 2010 installation. Databases can run read-only during the upgrade to minimize downtime. Administrators can force all sites to upgrade to the new master pages and CSS, or allow each site owner to run with the old styles, preview the upgrade, correct any issues, and finally switch over to the new styles.
Administrators now have more control over SharePoint site proliferation. It's a two-pronged strategy: Use Active Directory Markers to keep track of SharePoint servers, and/or use Group Policies to control where SharePoint can and can't be installed.
The redesigned Central Administration pages in SharePoint 2010 are easier to understand and use; there's a lot less searching for tasks than before, and a lot less jumping around from menu to menu is required. The new layout is much better organized than before. The new ribbon interface does help to keep like functions clustered, and the new wizards make some of the harder setups easier to complete successfully.
Backup is improved. The backup and restore capabilities built into SharePoint 2007 were blunt instruments. In SharePoint 2010 you can be more selective about restores by browsing an unattached content database, locating the sites or lists you need, saving them, then restoring them to the production database.
Scripts and sandboxes
PowerShell command support in SharePoint 2010 is a big improvement over the older (but still maintained) Cmd.exe and Stsadm.exe environments. There are over a 100 core Windows cmdlets and 300 SharePoint cmdlets and they have a help system, they pipe together in logical ways, and in many cases the user only has to figure out a command sequence once, then save the script and apply it to other sites. Overall, that's a big time saver over going through the GUI for every site in every farm.
On a SharePoint server with many custom controls and large lists, one site that hogs CPU, memory, or database requests can damage the performance of all the sites on the server or even all the sites using the database. Throttling and list controls in SharePoint 2010 allow an administrator to control this per Web application.
In addition, custom solutions can be sandboxed, meaning that they can be given a restricted set of permissions and resource quotas, then run isolated. Sandboxing reduces the risk of allowing site owners to deploy their own solutions, balancing freedom against safety. Quota templates keep the overhead of controlling sandboxed solutions reasonable.
Branding in SharePoint 2010 has been made easier by revamping the way themes work. SharePoint 2010 themes are now compatible with PowerPoint themes. In many cases, companies will be able to import existing PowerPoint themes to apply the fonts and colors of the corporate brand. Perhaps future SharePoint sites won't all look like they've been turned out with the same cookie cutter.
SHAREPOINT 2010 FOR DEVELOPERS
SharePoint 2010 is much more attractive for developers than SharePoint 2007 ever was. There is less code to write because of the richness of the product, without giving up too much in the way of flexibility.
The list of improvements is long. In addition to better API support and more extension points, there is better tool support in Visual Studio 2010, Visio, and SharePoint Designer 2010. There's a straightforward way to connect to line-of-business applications. Many functions have been exposed to RESTful interfaces. There are more application templates. Debugging and monitoring are much better. And sandboxes offer a measure of protection for custom applications that was lacking previously.
Visual Studio 2010 offers a dozen SharePoint 2010 project types in two languages, C# and Visual Basic. Empty projects are used more often than you'd think, as containers for multiple controls, workflows, and other project items. A Visual Web Part is a new kind of project that combines a Web Part class with an ASP.Net user control; the latter can be designed visually within Visual Studio 2010, which makes Web Part design much easier than writing code to instantiate child controls. The downside of a Visual Web Part is that it cannot be deployed to a sandbox.
SharePoint workflows can be sequential or state machines, and they can be one-offs or parameterized reusable workflows. Workflows can be designed using Visio or SharePoint Designer in addition to Visual Studio. In SharePoint 2010, workflows do not have to be associated with a list. They can instead be site-level workflows, with their own start pages; this is an improvement.
A Business Data Connectivity Model is a way of connecting SharePoint to a line-of-business application or an external database through a .Net class. It creates an external content type that can be used like a native SharePoint content type for example, in lists and searches. This connectivity can be two way ie SharePoint users can update data in LOB systems as well as read it.
Solutions and views
WSP packages, or SharePoint Solution Packages, are a handy way to deploy all of the files of a SharePoint project to the SharePoint farm. They can, for example, be created as prototypes in SharePoint Designer and then into Visual Studio for implementation.
An extensibility API allows developers to create new SharePoint project items.
Visual Studio 2010 can view SharePoint sites in its Server Explorer as a giant tree view. This gives the developer a view of all SharePoint settings directly from the IDE. It also allows quick programming access to SharePoint artifacts. The Visual Studio Server Explorer typically appears in the left-hand column of the Visual Studio window, allowing a developer to find a server object without obscuring the code in the middle of the window.
SharePoint Designer also has a site dashboard. In keeping with the spirit of Designer, this dashboard expands to full screen and is easy to navigate and understand.
A Developer Dashboard is part of SharePoint itself; it is basically a detailed tracing and performance profiling tool. When active, the developer dashboard displays performance statistics and timings related to the code that executed to produce the page. This display can take you down to the function level and lets you quickly get an idea of everything that happens from the HTTP POST request for the page to the database queries and the rendering event handlers.
APIs and openness
Developers can use Visual Studio 2010 to enhance SharePoint 2010 through numerous APIs. Does the developer need develop a pop up a dialog? No – the developer can use the pop-up dialog framework. Does the developer need a fancy widget? If so - build a Silverlight Web Part and bind it to SharePoint lists. Does the developer need to display related data? If so – then they can use SharePoint lookup fields.
Does a developer need to bring in data from a CRM or ERP system? Then a developer can create a Business Connectivity Service class and use it to populate a SharePoint list or expose it to search. Does a developer want to write strongly typed queries against SharePoint data that are tightly integrated with their code? The developer could use LINQ to SharePoint in much the same way as you would use LINQ to SQL or LINQ to XML. Does the developer want to create new views of SharePoint data? Then they can create their own XSLT views. Does the developer need to hook into various SharePoint events as they happen? Then write an Event Receiver, using a Visual Studio 2010 wizard to help you trap just the events you want.
If a developer cannot do what they to do on the server, then they can use the Client Object Model from JavaScript. If a developer needs to integrate one server with another server, then they can use Web services or REST, even if the other server runs PHP on Linux?