• Part I: Overview
• Part II: Farm administration
• Part III: web application administration
• Part IV: Shared Service Provider (SSP) administration
• Part V: Site Collection administration

In this post I will review Site-scoped administrative functions. I should note that this content was written before SP2 was launched and that revision has yet to occur.

Permissions

SharePoint groups contain users or groups (Active Directory or SharePoint groups). Permission Levels are often confused with groups, as the names of Permission Levels are often nearly synonymous with a SharePoint group. For instance, the default SharePoint group Hierarchy Managers has the Manage Hierarchy and Limited Access permission levels. The Viewers SharePoint group has the View Only permission level. There is no fixed relationship between these groups and permission levels, but it is desirable to maintain this fixed relationship unless there is a compelling reason to change it

New permission levels can be created for new or existing groups, or existing permissions within a default permission level can be fine-tuned. This is a full list of configurable permissions:

List Permissions

• Manage Lists  -  Create and delete lists, add or remove columns in a list, and add or remove public views of a list.
• Override Check Out  -  Discard or check in a document which is checked out to another user.
• Add Items  -  Add items to lists, add documents to document libraries, and add Web discussion comments.
• Edit Items  -  Edit items in lists, edit documents in document libraries, edit Web discussion comments in documents, and customize Web Part Pages in document libraries.
• Delete Items  -  Delete items from a list, documents from a document library, and Web discussion comments in documents.
• View Items  -  View items in lists, documents in document libraries, and view Web discussion comments.
• Approve Items  -  Approve a minor version of a list item or document.
• Open Items  -  View the source of documents with server-side file handlers.
• View Versions  -  View past versions of a list item or document.
• Delete Versions  -  Delete past versions of a list item or document.
• Create Alerts  -  Create e-mail alerts.
• View Application Pages  -  View forms, views, and application pages. Enumerate lists.

Site Permissions

• Manage Permissions  -  Create and change permission levels on the Web site and assign permissions to users and groups.
• View Usage Data  -  View reports on Web site usage.
• Create Subsites  -  Create subsites such as team sites, Meeting Workspace sites, and Document Workspace sites.
• Manage Web Site  -  Grants the ability to perform all administration tasks for the Web site as well as manage content.
• Add and Customize Pages  -  Add, change, or delete HTML pages or Web Part Pages, and edit the Web site using a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible editor.
• Apply Themes and Borders  -  Apply a theme or borders to the entire Web site.
• Apply Style Sheets  -  Apply a style sheet (.CSS file) to the Web site.
• Create Groups  -  Create a group of users that can be used anywhere within the site collection.
• Browse Directories  -  Enumerate files and folders in a Web site using SharePoint Designer and Web DAV interfaces.
• Use Self-Service Site Creation  -  Create a Web site using Self-Service Site Creation.
• View Pages  -  View pages in a Web site.
• Enumerate Permissions  -  Enumerate permissions on the Web site, list, folder, document, or list item.
• Browse User Information  -  View information about users of the Web site.
• Manage Alerts  -  Manage alerts for all users of the Web site.
• Use Remote Interfaces  -  Use SOAP, Web DAV, or SharePoint Designer interfaces to access the Web site.
• Use Client Integration Features  -  Use features which launch client applications. Without this permission, users will have to work on documents locally and upload their changes.
• Open  -  Allows users to open a Web site, list, or folder in order to access items inside that container.
• Edit Personal User Information  -  Allows a user to change his or her own user information, such as adding a picture.

Personal Permissions

• Manage Personal Views  -  Create, change, and delete personal views of lists.
• Add/Remove Personal Web Parts  -  Add or remove personal Web Parts on a Web Part Page.

One of the key tasks in taxonomy design is to determine how adequately the default permission levels fit, to define new permission levels if necessary and to identify where the application of distinct permission levels is required. The corollary task is to identify what custom groupings of users are required for default and custom permission levels and to identify where permission inheritance may need to be broken within the taxonomy

People and Groups

Create SharePoint groups and assign users to them

Advanced Permissions

• Configure permission levels (as opposed to assigning users or groups a level of permission)
• Manage Access Requests
• Specify the visibility of content to anonymous users if anonymous access is enabled within the application

Look and Feel

Master page

Specify Site and/or System Master Pages and alternate CSS

Title, description, and icon

Specify title, description and icon

Navigation

• Manage navigation to sub-sites and pages
• Manage sorting
• Manage global (usually top) and current (usually side) navigation
• Hide pages and sub-sites from navigation

Page layouts and site templates

Specify sub-site, page template and layout inheritance. Also reset sub-sites and pages to inherit from this screen

Welcome page

Specify a page to be loaded at the site root

Tree view

Manages display of Quick Launch and/or Tree View in the left-hand navigation

Site theme

Specifies a default font and colour scheme for the site, without affecting the site layout or pages that have been themed individually

Reset to site definition

From the page description:

If you want to remove all customizations from a page (such as changes to Web Part zones or text added to the page) you can use this feature to reset to the version of the page included with the site definition.

You can reset a single page within your site to use the version of the page included in the site definition, or you can reset all pages.

Caution: When you reset to the site definition version, you will lose all customizations made to the current version of the page. No backup copy of the page will be made before the page is updated, and no new version is created.

Searchable columns

MOSS-only. Specify columns to be excluded from search. Also known as NoCrawl Columns

Galleries

Site content types

Create and Manage Content Types created here and inherited from parents

Site columns

Create and Manage Site Columns created here and inherited from parents

Master pages and page layouts

Upload and Manage Master Pages and Page Layouts available to the site and its children

Site Administration Settings

Regional settings

Specify locale, sort order, time zone, calendar type, alternate calendar, work week days and times, time format and inheritance of these settings to sub-sites

Site libraries and lists

A quick link to the list and library settings pages within the site

Site usage reports

View site metrics, top pages, top users, top referring pages, top referring hosts and top destination sites

User alerts

Manage alerts created within the site for all users

RSS

Allow/disallow RSS feeds within the site. Specify site-wide, “channel elements”, such as copyright, managing editor, webmaster and TTL

Search visibility

Include this site in search results, “yes”, or, “no”, and specify inclusion/exclusion of .aspx page content in the index

Sites and workspaces

A security-trimmed list of all sub-sites and workspaces within the site

Site features

Activate/deactivate features for the site

Delete this site

Permanently destroy all site content

Related Links scope settings

MOSS-only. Add/Remove sites to/from the, “This and Related Sites”, search scope

Site output cache

MOSS-only. Inherit settings or specify a page output cache profile. Define inheritance to children

Content and structure

MOSS-only. Reveals the current position within the site collection hierarchically, with expanding navigation to reveal parents, children and parallel items

Content and structure logs

MOSS-only. View Site Content and Structure logs and delete individual or multiple log events

• Part I: Overview
• Part II: Farm administration
• Part III: web application administration
• Part IV: Shared Service Provider (SSP) administration

In this post I will review Site Collection-scoped administrative functions. Note: everyone with a My Site is a Site Collection Administrator of their personal site, so this section is also applicable for gaining an understanding of the delegated administrative rights that MySites unleash

Site Collection Administrators

Site Collection Administrators can add/remove other Site Collection Administrators, but cannot reduce the number of Site Collection Administrators below two. Farm Administrators can always specify new Primary and Secondary Site Collection Administrators within Central Administration, although additional Site Collection Administrators specified from within the Site Collection will retain their rights if the primary and secondary administrators are changed

Top-Level Site Galleries

Site Template Gallery

A repository of all non-default site templates available to the top-level site and all sites beneath it

List Template Gallery

A repository of all non-default list templates available to the top-level site and all sites beneath it

Web Part Gallery

A repository of all Web Parts available to the top-level site and all sites beneath it

Site Collection Workflows

Displays the currently active/inactive workflows, their associations and activity within the site collection

Site Collection Administration Settings

These are not only the administrative activities that Site Collection Owners need to be trusted to perform, these employees need to have adequate training to understand the impact of these actions

Search settings

Specify whether or not to use custom scopes and chose a Search Centre to display those results

Search scopes

Manage and define the custom scopes enabled above

Search keywords

Manage and define keywords/synonyms. The Keyword Phrase is what search queries will match to return a keyword result

Recycle bin

Manage deleted items. See the notes regarding storage quota templates in part II of this series for more information on the second-stage recycle bin

Site directory settings

MOSS-only. Specify a Site Directory location and Site Directory listing enforcement for new site creation

Site collection usage reports

View Site Collection Usage Reports. This is broadly the same as the site usage report, but adds top query and top destination report

Site collection features

Activate/Deactivate features for the Site Collection

Site hierarchy

A list of all webs that have been created within the Site Collection with links to the home pages and site administration pages of each

Portal site connection

The Portal Site Connection is a sort of reverse breadcrumb, located next to the link to the Site Collection home page in the upper left-hand corner of a page. If, for instance, a Site Collection is created at http://site1/nav1/test, a portal site connection could be created to http://site1/nav1. This allows for a simulacrum of hierarchy for navigation purposes while allowing Site Collection Ownership to retain the autonomous authority it requires

MOSS Site Collection Administration

Site collection audit settings

MOSS-only. Specify events to audit for sites, lists and items. Document libraries and items in them have additional auditing options

Audit log reports

MOSS-only. View audit reports and create/run custom reports

Site collection policies

MOSS-only. Create Site Collection information management policies from those enabled at the farm level (labels, auditing, expiration and barcodes by default). Policies can also be imported

Site collection output cache

MOSS-only. Page output caching can be useful when content is largely static, such as on internet-facing web sites. It requires sufficient RAM to maintain the cached elements. This page allows the selection of an Output Cache Profile for anonymous and authenticated users and defines the Output Cache Policy

Site collection cache profiles

MOSS-only. Create and Modify Output Cache Profiles, such as for public internet sites and extranets. This page includes some quite technical configuration

Site collection object cache

MOSS-only. Object caching is used internally by SharePoint to speed performance but in some cases the information in the cache may become stale and will need to be flushed. This page allows flushing and resetting of the object and disks caches, specifies a maximum size for the object cache in memory and defines the retention settings for Cross List Query results

Variations

MOSS-only. Variations allows for a number of variant sites to be created from a source site. This may be useful when operating in a multilingual or multicultural environment. With workflow settings the variant sites can be updated whenever source content is changed. This settings page specifies automated behaviour regarding creation and re-creation of target sites, web part publication settings, change notification and resource propagation

Variation labels

MOSS-only. Variation Labels are the names given to each variant. This administrative page allows creation and modification of labels and assignment of labels to positions within a variation label hierarchy

Variation logs

MOSS-only. Displays information about the success and failures of the variation operations

Translatable columns

MOSS-only. Specify which columns need to be translated for variations

This is the fourth post in a six-part series on SharePoint 2007 administrative commands. The first part was an overview, the second covered Farm administration, the third covered web application administration, and this post is devoted to Shared Service Provider (SSP) administration. The bulk of this post only applies to MOSS, as there is no SSP for WSS. This means that WSS does not provide:

• My Sites
• Audiences and all of the targeting functionality they unlock
• Search across site collections (which has massive implications to how WSS can scale)
• Any of the other features below, including the Business Data Catalog and Excel Services

What WSS does provide that is analogous but less robust is:

• WSS Search: search within a Site Collection
  • However, custom scopes and People Search are also missing
• User Information List: The UIL is populated from Active Directory with current user information at the time of the user’s first login. The user information list can have additional column data, but it needs to be updated manually rather than by scheduled synchronisation

Neither WSS Search nor the User Information List have configuration options.

The remainder of this post will focus on SSP administration in MOSS 2007.

User Profiles and My Sites

User profiles and properties

MOSS 2007 supports importing user profiles from Active Directory, other LDAP directories or custom profile stores. Additionally, SSP administrators can:

• Configure import schedules
• Manually add or view user profiles
• Manually run import jobs and review import logs
• Manage profile properties

User Profile planning is critical to populating profiles with accurate, relevant and current information. As User Profile data are the building blocks of audience compilation, the ramifications of poor planning are felt widely, as illustrated in more detail in the Audiences diagram above

Profile services policies

Profile services policies apply to user profiles and My Sites. Manage policy enforcement, attribute visibility and user override settings here

My Site settings

• Specify the Personal Site Provider application, path and naming format
• Disallow/allow users to choose the language of their own My Site from the list of language packs deployed to the server
• Update default membership of the My Site Reader group for newly created My Sites
• Specify a preferred Search Centre for searches initiated from the My Site

My Site Global Deployments

My Site global deployments are also configured within the My Site settings page and the trusted My Site locations are specified in the next screen below. This note from the SSP Administration site helps to explain My Site Global deployments:

Multiple My Site deployments can exist in the same environment allowing for specific users to have their My Site hosted by a different Shared Service Provider, this is common with global deployments. When a user’s My Site is hosted by a Shared Service Provider other than this one, that user will be blocked from using My Site related personalization features provided by this Shared Service Provider. The loss of functionality includes the ability to add users to their Colleagues list, the use of My Links and viewing people search results grouped by social distance.

Enabling My Site to support global deployments, will allow a users who’s My Site is hosted by a different Shared Service Provider to perform actions such as adding colleagues and links to their default My Site and viewing people search results grouped by social distance. To associate specific users with different Shared Service Providers use the Trusted My Site hosts list.

Note: It is recommended that you implement a profile replication solution before enabling My Site to support global deployments. Without a profile replication solution in place users that have their My Site hosted on a different Shared Service Provider will have a disconnected user experience.

Trusted My Site host locations

If My Site Global Deployments are enabled, this setting specifies the trusted My Site locations defined in other Shared Service Providers. Users are partitioned to distinct My Sites by audience or distribution/security group membership

Published links to Office client applications

Manage and Create audience-targeted links to SharePoint sites, useable through the My SharePoints tab in Office 2007 Open/Save As dialogue boxes. Note: this assumes Client Integration Features are enabled for the web application(s) and a supported authentication method is in use

Personalization site links

Adds audience-targeted or global links in between the My Home and My Site links, as below:

Personalization services permissions

Assign rights to create personal sites and use personal features. Delegate My Site management of analytics, audiences, profiles and permissions

Search

Search settings

General settings

• Specify content sources and crawl schedules
  • Crawl Settings
  • Specify the behaviour for crawling this type of content
    • Crawling everything under the hostname will also crawl all the SharePoint Sites in the server.
      • Crawl everything under the hostname of each start address if the links on the start address tend to point to relevant content
    • Select crawling behaviour for all start addresses in this content source
      • Crawl only the SharePoint site at each start address if the content available on linked sites is not likely to be relevant, and the content on the site itself is relevant

• Specify rules, such as inclusion/exclusion and unique authentication for specific paths
• Manage crawled file types
• Specify the default content access account
• Reset all crawled content
• Manage, create and view search scopes

Metadata Property Mappings

Map crawled properties to managed properties and determine inclusion of the managed property in search scopes

Add Server Name Mappings

Set up a translation from a crawled address to a search result’s rendering of that same location. This is a one-to-one replacement, as follows:

Configure Search-based Alerts

Search-based Alerts configuration options are useful for temporarily globally disabling Search-based alerts when a catalogue is reset, as users may receive a deluge of notifications when the crawl recompiles the catalogue

Specify Authoritative Pages

• Create lists of the most authoritative, second-level authoritative and third-level authoritative pages
• Demote non-authoritative sites
• Force immediate ranking updates

Search usage reports

View search usage statistics by month, year, originating-query-Site-Collections and Search Scope

Office SharePoint Usage Reporting

Usage reporting

Enable/disable advanced usage analysis processing for site and site collection administrators. Enable/disable search query logging for Search usage reports in the SSP administration site

Audiences

Audiences

• Create audiences by reporting chain or group membership, or based on user profile property rule satisfaction
• View/Delete rules
• Specify audience compilation schedules

A lot of planning needs to be invested in audiences due to the potential complexity of their use for targeting content throughout the organisation. To illustrate, see the chart at the top of this post.

Excel Services Settings

Edit Excel Services settings

Configure Excel Calculation Services security, load balancing, session management, memory utilisation, caching and external data connections

Trusted file locations

• Define WSS, UNC or HTTP trusted locations of Excel workbooks
• Define location-specific session management, workbook/chart size limits, calculation behaviour and external data connection rules
• Allow/disallow user-defined functions

Trusted data connection libraries

A list of trustworthy data connection library locations

Trusted data providers

Add/edit/delete trusted OLE DB, ODBC or ODBC DSN data provider types

User-defined function assemblies

Add/manage file or GAC paths to user-defined functions in .NET assemblies

Business Data Catalog

• Import application definitions
• View applications and entities
• Manage BDC permissions
• Edit the profile page template

Application Creation/Extension

Set up a new site/application in IIS or configure a new zone for an existing application

Remove SharePoint from IIS Web Site/Delete Web Application

The opposite of above

Define Managed Paths

Add/Delete explicit paths. Define Wildcards.

New Site Collections can only be created at available unused explicitly defined paths, or beneath wildcards. If new Site Collection creation will require approval  by Central Administrators, explicit paths will need to be created for new Site Collections. If Site Collection creation is delegated, wildcards will need to be provided in order for Site Collection creators to have a location to create their new sites

General Settings

Default Time Zone

Select a default time zone

Default Quota template

Select a default storage quota template for new site collection creation. See part II of this series for more information on storage quota template creation. Note: storage templates can still be specified during Site Collection creation – this merely sets the default quota template

Person Name Smart Tag and Presence Settings

Enable: yes/no

Maximum Upload Size

Define the maximum upload size in megabytes, up to two gigabytes

Alerts

Enable/disable alerts for the web application. Specify a maximum number of alerts per/user, if desired

RSS Settings

Enabled/disable RSS feeds for the web application

Blog API Settings

Turns On/Off the API, which allows blog posts from client tools, like Word 2007. Also configure acceptance of user name and password from the API

Web Page Security Validation

Turns validation on/off and sets validation expiration in minutes, or to, “never”. Note: this is not the same as the SSP “Session State”, which is used in some MOSS applications, and is reviewed in more detail in part II of this series

Send User Name and Password in E-Mail

Specifies whether to send users their user name and password by e-mail. This may be convenient, but may breach security policy

Backward-Compatible Event Handlers

Turns on/off backward-compatible event handlers, which will only be applicable to WSS 2/SPS 2003 event handlers in the transition period following an upgrade

Change Log

Specifies change log event retention in days

Recycle Bin

• Turns the recycle bin on/off for all sites within a web application
• Specifies first-stage deleted item retention in days
• Specifies the second stage recycle bin at 1-500% of storage quota

Note: site collections are created with a storage quota template, which specifies maximum storage available, so site second stage recycle bin retention is controlled by a combination of the storage quota applied to the site collection and the percentage of live site storage allocated to the secondary recycle bin

Manage Content Databases

Add new content databases to an application. Take content databases on/off-line (which controls new site creation within the databases, rather than taking the database offline as one would do in SQL server). It is sometimes preferable to create new site collections in their own (or new) content databases. This on/off-line functionality can aid that process, although there are better ways to manage this from the command line

Web Application Features

Activate/Deactivate features scoped at the web application level. Features can also be scoped at the farm, site collection or site level

Blocked File Types

Manage blocked file extensions per application

Information Management Policy Usage Reports

Moss-only.

• Enable/Disable Information Management Policy Usage reporting for the web application
• Schedule recurrence
• Specify report location
• Specify default or custom report template

Alternate Access Mappings

Assign up to five distinct zones, each consisting of one or more “internal URLs” per-Load Balanced, or “Public URL”. The public URL is the address which links on pages and in address bars are rendered in. Note: there can also be multiple host-named site collections created within the default zone (with STSADM only) and the default zone must be the most secure, as users who cannot be associated with a zone are automatically authenticated with Default zone policies

Application Security

Security for Web Part Pages

Allow/prevent users to create connections between web parts. Allow/prevent users to access the online web part gallery

Self-Service Site Management

Enable/Disable self-service site creation at the top-level web site. Specify requirement for secondary contact

User Permissions

Specifies which list, site and personal permission settings are available for selection within a web application. This is not an assignment of permissions to users or group, but management of the availability of permission settings to the web application

Web Application Policy

Assign Full Control, Full Read, Deny Write or Deny All permissions, per zone, to users or groups. This can be particularly useful if exposing read-only content to an extranet site, for instance

Authentication Providers

• Specify Authentication providers
  • Basic Authentication
  • Integrated Windows Authentication (NTLM or Kerberos)
  • Forms Based Authentication (FBA)
    • LDAP
    • ADAM
    • SQL Membership Provider
    • Any other ASP.NET 2.0 Authentication Providers
    • Note: no FBA authentication providers are provided with WSS out of the box. These need to be sourced/written independently
  • Web Single Sign-On (SSO)
    • MOSS-only
• Enable/Disable anonymous access (this setting allows site administrators to allow anonymous access, it does not automatically enable it where authorisation has already been configured). Disabling anonymous access removes this option
• Enable/Disable client integration features (FBA does not support client integration features until WSS v3/MOSS 2007 SP2, so this setting can be used to prevent unexpected behaviour in earlier versions)

Workflow Settings

Enable/disable user-defined workflows. Manage Workflow task notifications for internal and external users

Site Use Confirmation and Deletion

Enable e-mail notifications to owners of disused site collections or set automatic deletion after a number of unanswered confirmations

Document Conversions

MOSS-only.

• Enable document conversions for a web application
• Specify a document conversion load balancer
• Schedule conversion timer jobs
• Manage availability to document libraries, time-out, retry and file size settings for installed converters, including the following by default:
  • InfoPath to Web Page
  • Word to Web Page
  • Word with Macros to Web Page
  • XML to Web Page

Note: farm administrators can take ownership of any site collections or deny access to entire web applications, so the people filling this role must be trusted. Auditing can identify and alert the Site Collection Owners to the act of taking ownership, but damage can be done in the intervening period.

As mentioned in the first post, this is a brief command reference organised by administrative scope.

Assign/Remove Farm Administrators

All farm administrators have the right to add/remove other farm administrators, so they must all be trusted equally

Manage Servers, Services and Identities

• Assign SharePoint Server Roles and Enable/Disable Services
• Remove servers
• Configure service accounts and application pool identities

Specify Default Database Server

New content databases will be created on this server unless otherwise specified

MOSS Shared Services

Note: configuration of Shared Services is performed within the SSP Administration site (this will be covered in part IV). These Central Adminstration settings establish and control the relationships between Shared Services and applications within the farm

Create and Configure Shared Services

Create new SSPs, assign a default SSP, associate web applications with SSPs or rebuild an SSP from backup

Manage Shared Services between Farms

Manage provision or consumption of Shared Services from/to other farms

Configure Session State

• Check the state of Shared Services enabled in this farm
• Enable/disable Session State and specify duration

Session State is a store of specific user session information required by some MOSS applications, enabled by default when an SSP is created. It leverages the underlying ASP.NET Session State to minimise quantities of postback data and to maintain sessions across load balanced servers in a transparent manner to end users. Generally the only reason to disable this setting is for troubleshooting.

Note: this is not to be confused with a security validation timeout. Also note: there is a separate Form Session State within the InfoPath Forms Services Configuration

Manage Timer Job Definitions and Statuses

This is where SharePoint does what it’s told, or fails to do so. Farm administrators can disable these jobs if warranted and monitor their success/failure

Solution Management

View solution deployment statuses or deploy solutions to the farm, or to specific web applications

Configure Single Sign-On (SSO)

This feature is available in MOSS only. Manage server settings, encryption keys, enterprise application definitions (SSO settings for each application authenticated by the service) and database properties for the Microsoft Single Sign-on Service

Backup/Restore

Perform backups and restore from within Central Administration at the web application or database level

Configure Antivirus

Require scan on up/down-load. Allow/prevent users from downloading infected documents. Determine if antivirus will attempt to clean infected files

Quota Templates

Create/modify Storage Quota templates. These are later applied during site collection creation. Storage quotas are very important to managing how SharePoint scales within recommended content database growth limits. Failing to design and implement storage quotas effectively can result in underperformance. Note: storage quota templates also directly affect the second stage recycle bin retention space

Data Retrieval Service

Enable/Disable Data Retrieval Services, used for querying with WSS, OLEDB, SOAP Passthrough or XML-URL. These services are used for connecting Data View Web Parts to their data sources.

Note: Data View Web Parts were originally available in WSS 2/SPS 2003. Data View Web Parts are edited with SharePoint Designer, which is not always desirable. Accordingly it may be preferable to disable these services to prevent those connections. In WSS 3/MOSS 2007 there may be other ways to achieve similar results using Reporting Services or the Business Data Catalogue for instance

Logging and Reporting

Enable and configure error reports, customer experience improvement program participation, event logging, trace logging and usage analysis processing

Farm Features

Enable Enterprise Features. Activate/De-active farm-wide features. To quote MSDN, “Unlike other Feature types, a global Feature is activated by default in the farm. A farm Feature contains several elements that are critical for implementing applications and logic”. Examples are Excel Services features and Global Web Parts. Features can also be scoped at the application, site collection or site level

Master Site Directory

MOSS only. Specify a location for the Master Site Directory. Is Site Creation metadata mandatory or not? Which categories of metadata are required, if so?

Site Directory Links Scan

MOSS only. Enables automatic updates to the Master Site Directory based on specific scan locations. The Links Scan can also update Site Properties

E-mail Settings

Configure outgoing and incoming e-mail settings and create/approve/reject distribution groups

Records Centre

MOSS only. Once a site or site collection has been created with the Records Centre site template, this page can be used to configure the farm’s connection to that record centre, which targets the Send To > Records Centre functionality at this location. A farm can only have one records centre configured in this way, although if there is a compelling reason to set up multiple Records Centres, there is nothing in SharePoint preventing new site or site collection creation with the Records Centre template

Content Deployment Paths and Jobs

MOSS only. Manage content deployment between site collections, within or between farms. Specify the paths, content to include and schedule

InfoPath Forms Services

MOSS and Forms Server 2007 only. Upload/manage form templates. Upload/manage data connection files. Enable the web service proxy and/or enable the web service proxy for user forms

Configure InfoPath Forms Services

Configure browser-enabled form template settings. Manage data connection timeouts, response sizes and encryption. Manage authentication settings. Configure session thresholds and session state (see the SSP Session State configuration section above for more information)

Information Rights Management

Service Configuration

Turn on IRM. Use the default server in Active Directory or specify a sever

Policy Configuration

MOSS only. Manage the availability of Information Rights Management Features to the farm. Default policies are defined as follows:

Additional policies can be created, edited or imported at the Site Collection level. Accordingly, it is critical to consider the implications of separating or grouping content at the Site Collection level with these requirements in mind, as well as concerns about ownership, authorisation, taxonomy and ccale

I didn’t have a blog at the time, but I’ll be publishing it over the next few days, starting with an overview below. It will be followed with:

• Farm Administration
• Web Application Administration
• Shared Service Provider Administration
• Site Collection Administration
• Site Administration

Overview

A typical MOSS 2007 farm will consist of at least four web applications:

• SharePoint Central Administration (always only one per-farm)
• Shared Service Provider (SSP) Administration (there can be up to twenty SSPs per-farm, although performance guidelines recommend no more than three)
• My Site (there can be many per-farm, but only one per-SSP)
  • My Sites can reside within the SSP Administration web application, but for administrative purposes, such as backup/restore, this is often impractical
  • Also note that each My Site is its own Site Collection, so there is excellent scalability
• SharePoint web applications (there can be many sites within many site collections within many web applications), to include some or all of the following:
  • Corporate web sites
  • Extranets
  • Intranets

End-users will generally only concern themselves with the intranet/extranet/internet sites and their My Site. Central Administration and Shared Service Provider Administration sites provide distinct administrative functionality and scope. The next post will cover farm administration functionality in the Central Administration web application.

This guide is focused on MOSS 2007, but will identify all MOSS-specific functionality.