Creating a Web Part page and Setting Web Part page as your SharePoint Home page.

Creating a Web Part Page:

From the main site collection, click the Site Actions button and choose Create from the dropdown
Under Web Pages on the next screen, click Webpart Page.

Give the Web Part Page a name, choosing desired layout and choose where you would like it saved. Then click Create.

After you click Create, the page will open from the lib. Where you have saved it.

You can start editing the page from here by adding Web Parts of your choice and can edit the page later by going to the doc. lib where you have saved it.

Setting Web Part page as your SharePoint Home page

This can easily be done is SharePoint Designer. If you have not installed SharePoint designer as a part of Office 2007 Enterprise, I highly recommend it. If you do not have Office 2007 Enterprise edition, MS offers a free 30 day trial of SharePoint Designer to test out as well.

In SharePoint Designer, open the site where you saved the web part page you created. In my case it is located in my personal site. When I created the web part page, I chose to save in Documents. Hit the + and expand the Documents folder to find you Web Part page.

Drag the page out of the folder and below the default.aspx page.

This takes it out of the place is SharePoint where is it was stored to prevent other people from making changes. Now it is associated with the site only.

Right click on your web part page and select Set as Home Page.

Click OK to the message.

Click OK to the next message if it appears.

This will be renaming your old default page as default-old.aspx and will name the Web Part page as default.aspx page.

You can also preview this  page in  your browser. Now you can see that your site has the web part page you created earlier, and you are able to edit the page accordingly. SharePoint Designer is incredibly powerful and you can do things much faster here than in SharePoint itself. Try it out for yourself. 

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. Thank you.

How to Create a New SharePoint Group

Use the following steps to create a new SharePoint Group:

·         Choose Site Settings from the Site Actions and Click Modify All Site Settings.

·         Click Advanced Permissions from the Users and Permissions column

Caution: Check if the site you are adding the group to is inheriting permissions from its parent site. The site is inheriting permissions from its parent if you see the following message: “This Website inherits permissions from its parent Web site. To manage permissions directly, click Edit Permissions from the Action menu.”

·         To break Inheritance from parent site and give this site unique Permissions, click Edit Permissions from the Actions menu.

Note: You can switch back and forth between these settings as needed by selecting Inherit Permissions from the Actions Menu. However, it is important to realize that whenever a site is switched to inheriting permissions from the parent site, all unique permission settings within the site are discarded.      

·         Click OK on the confirmation pop-up.

·         Click New to open the new menu, and select New Group.

·         Type a Name and Description the new group.

Important: Use the following naming conventions.

SiteName_Designers

SiteName_Contributors

·         Enter the group owner information. The group owner will have complete control over this group, including modifying settings as well as adding or removing group membership. There can only be one group owner.

·         Enter Group Settings, Membership Requests.

Caution: If you select yes for the Auto-accept requests option, any user requesting access to this group will automatically be added as a member of the group and receive the permission level associated with the group.

·         Specify the permission level for the Groups.

·         Click Create to create the new group.

How to Add Users to a Group in SharePoint

Use the steps below to add a user into a SharePoint Group:

1.   Choose Site Settings from the Site Actions and Click People and Groups present below Modify All Site Settings.

2.   Click Advanced Permissions from the User and Permissions column.

3.   Click the Groups heading on the left Quick Launch bar.

4.   From the “People and Groups: All Groups” page, click the name of the group to add users or groups to. This opens a page listing the current membership of the group.

5.   Click New to open new menu, and select Add Users.

6.   From the Add Users page, type domain name (i.e. domain name\userid) and click the check name icon or click the phone book icon and search for the name.

7.   Select which group to add the users to.

8.   Click OK.

Backup-Restore by using SharePoint Designer 2007

Steps to create the Backup of a SharePoint site using SharePoint Designer 2007 is provided below:

1.   Open site you want to Migrate in SharePoint Designer 2007

§  Copy the URL of the site.

§  Open SharePoint Designer 2007.

§  Go to File > Open Site.

§  Paste the URL of your site in Site Name.

§  Click Open. Designer will attempt to open the Web.

2.   Go to Site > Administration > Backup Web Site.

3.   Check “Include Sub Sites in Archive” if needed.

4.   Type a name for the backup file and save it to your desktop or somewhere that is easy to locate.

5.   Click “OK” – backup will begin.

6.   A message will appear when backup is complete.

Migrating Site to a New Site

1.   Create New Site under parent

·         Open SharePoint Designer 2007, and open the root parent site where you want to create your subsite.

·         Go to File > Open Site.

·         Type in the URL of the SharePoint web in the folder field.

·         Click OK; the designer will try to open your web.

2.   In the Folder List column, right-click on the top folder, e.g. "http://mosstest/sites/WSSsitename"

3.   Select New > Subsite...

4.   In the Web Site Templates window that appears, select the 'Empty Web Site' template.

5.   On the right-side of the Web Site Templates window you will see a box titled 'Specify the location of the new Web site'. In this box you should see a URL like http://mosstest/sites/WSSsitename/subsite

6.   Change subsite to the name you want your new site to use

7.   This will build a new empty site, and should open a new Designer session showing the empty site.

8.   Restore WSS site using the Restore site steps.

Restore the SharePoint site

Warning: Using the Restore feature in Designer can overwrite existing content or data in a site if not used properly. You should always restore the .cmp file to an empty site

·         With your web open, go to Site > Administration > Restore Web Site....

·         Navigate to the backup file you created in Step 1

·         Click Open.

·         Designer will ask you to press OK to restore the template to your site. Click OK. The Site will proceed to restore.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. Thank you.

Upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products from MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0

When we plan for an upgrade from MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 to SharePoint 2010 Products, we have different upgrade approaches as building blocks that can be used for optimal upgrade approach.

In-place upgrade: Use this approach to install the new version of SharePoint 2010 products on the same hardware that is used for the previous version. Upgrade the content and settings in the server farm as part of a single process.

Databases attach upgrade: Use this approach to upgrade the content for the environment on a separate farm. It doesn't upgrade any of the services or farm settings. Content databases can be upgraded in any order and can upgrade several databases at the same time. Using this approach, its possible to attach a Shared Service Provider database during DB attach upgrade, this will upgrade the profile information in the database. Using this approach, it’s not possible to upgrade the search database.

Hybrid approaches: A hybrid approach lets us to take advantage of in-place upgrade's ability to upgrade content and settings, while we take advantage of the speed of a database attach upgrade. The advantages of this method is

·         Farm wide settings can be preserved and upgraded

·         Customizations are available in the environment after upgrade, although manual steps may be required to upgrade or rework

We can upgrade multiple content databases at the same time, which results in faster upgrade times overall than an in-place upgrade. For more information on Upgrade Process please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262483(office.14).aspx