Sharepoint 2007 Customization Ramp Up – Part 1: Getting Started

Welcome to Part 1 of a multipart series on getting ramped up on SharePoint 2007 customization. My team is working on a good sized Moss 2007 implementation currently and have begun the customization process, in this series I will try to recount the basic steps we have used to get to where we are in the project. This series will consist mostly of links to the many blog and web postings that our team found useful throughout the learning process. I will also try to describe some key points that I think are necessary to “get” Moss 2007 customization. So, without further fanfare, here is part 1.

SharePoint 2007 Customization Ramp Up – Part 1: Getting Started

For this part, I will only be discussion the very basics of getting started. When my team began the project we had no knowledge of SharePoint 2003 or ECM for that matter. We started by just reading as much as possible about Moss 2007 and also were fortunate enough to get training from MindSharp. Here are some links to some of the more useful information sources around the web. Check back in a few days for part 2 of this series, where I will delve further into the customization process.

Lets start with some useful videos:

 

Some folks may find the Microsoft SDK’s useful, though I often find it quite hard to find what I’m looking for in them:

 

I found these next three resources a little more useful for actually learning about how to use Moss:

As for training, like I said before, my group was very fortunate to be able to afford training from MindSharp.

Blogs and web posts are good, but sometimes its comforting to have a real paper book on your desk to flip through when times are tough. Unfortunately, so far, the lake is pretty dry in this department. However there are two good books out right now for SharePoint 2007 administration and development. Make sure you don’t buy any without “2007” or “WSS v3” somewhere in the title because the old stuff will just confuse you:

 

Here are four community resources that are completely indispensable when you need to find out specific information on how to do something. I frequently search through each of these when I run into problems:

 

Lastly, to really start getting SharePoint 2007, you are going to have to start playing with it yourself. Tony Zink has an excellent (if not voluminous) resource for setting up a Virtual PC image of a really good SharePoint 2007 development environment. I highly recommend using a VPC image for your development because the software needed to really get into customization will seriously clog up your PC if you try to install them all without VPC. At the very least check out his list of software that you are going to need, which includes: Microsoft Virtual PC with SP1, Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2005 with SP1, MOSS 2007 Enterprise, and SharePoint Designer 2007. I think these are the bare minimum requirements, as such, an MSDN subscription is most likely a pre-req.

That’s about it for Part 1. I know I really didn’t get into anything too specific in this part, but I wanted it to reflect what I consider to be an essential first step in understanding MOSS… learning, learning, and more learning. Check back soon for the next parts, which should get into some more details