Sharepoint 2010 interview Questions and answers

1. What is SharePoint?
• SharePoint is Microsoft’s enterprise information portal. It can be configured to run Intranet, Extranet and Internet sites.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 allows people to connect and collaborate.
• A SharePoint enterprise portal is composed of SharePoint Portal and Windows SharePoint Services.
• SharePoint Server is designed medium to large company wide enterprise portal.
2. What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a collaborative enterprise portal that is built upon WSS 3.0. MOSS 2007 allows people, teams and expertise to connect and collaborate. Unlike WSS, SharePoint Server is not free and requires an additional license. MOSS 2007 comes in two versions – Standard and Enterprise. The main components of SharePoint 2007 are collaboration, portals, enterprise search, enterprise content management, business process and forms, and business intelligence.
3. How is SharePoint Portal Server different from the Site Server?
It becomes difficult to keep a track of the large amount of documents with the growth of companies. SharePoint lets these be stored centrally. So instead of having them shared via emails, SharePoint allows an easy access to the members by storing the files at one place. SharePoint allows anyone to create sites for use within their company’s Intranet
4. How is security managed in SharePoint?
Authentication
SharePoint can run under various IIS modes to authenticate its users. The modes include: Anonymous, Basic, Integrated Windows or Certificates Authentication (over SSL).
Authorization
SharePoint security facilitates the regulation of access privileges of users and groups as well.
Impersonation
.NET Impersonation which is utilized by SharePoint allows an application to run under the context of the client accessing an application.
Deployment and Code Access Security
.NET Code Access Security (CAS) provides a security model. It can restrict the operations that can be performed as well as the resources that can be accessed by managed code.
5. What is Windows SharePoint Services?
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is the platform on which all SharePoint Products and Technologies are built. It is suitable for small teams, projects and organizations.
WSS’s project collaboration, document workspace, meeting sub-site, and discussion board features allow individuals and small teams to collaborate and share information online.
New features in WSS 3.0 include
- integrated workflows,
- RSS feeds,
- blogs,
- wikis and
- ASP-style Web parts.
6. What is a SharePoint site definition?
SharePoint sites consist of numerous Web pages, just like an ASP.NET 2.0 application.
When a site is created, these pages are created as instances in the content database.
The instances refer to the actual file on the file system.
7. What is CAML?
CAML stands for Collaborative Application Mark-up Language.
CAML is used to define tables in the Windows SharePoint Services database during site provisioning.
It is an XML-based language that is used in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to define sites and lists.

8. What is Service-Oriented Architecture?
SOA is an IT architecture strategy for business solution (and infrastructure solution) delivery based on the concept of service-orientation.
It is a set of components which can be invoked, and whose interface descriptions can be published and discovered.
It aims at building systems that are extendible, flexible and fit with legacy systems.
It promotes the re-use of basic components called services.

9. Why SOA?
Service is the important concept. Services can be published, discovered and used in a technology neutral, standard form by the set of protocols of the web services.
Other than being just architecture, SOA is the policies, practices, and frameworks by which it is ensure the right services are provided and consumed.
It becomes critical to implement processes that ensure that there are at least two different and separate processes— one for provider and the other for consumer, using SOA.
The Business Service Bus is starting point for developers that guide them to a coherent set that has been assembled for their domain.
This is better than leaving developers to discover individual services and put them into context.

Challenges faced in SOA adoption
One of the challenges faced by SOA is managing services metadata.
Second biggest challenge is the lack of testing in SOA space.
Another challenge is providing appropriate levels of security.
Interoperability is another important aspect in the SOA implementations.
Vendor hype concerns SOA because it can create expectations that may not be fulfilled.

10. What is SOA governance? What are its functions?
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) governance is a concept used for activities related to exercising control over services in an SOA
Some key activities that are often mentioned as being part of SOA governance are:
• Managing the portfolio of services: This includes planning development of new services and updating current services.
• Managing the service lifecycle: This is meant to ensure that updates of services do not disturb current services to the consumers.
• Using policies to restrict behavior: Consistency of services can be ensured by having the rules applied to all the created services.
• Monitoring performance of services: The consequences of service downtime or underperformance can be severe because of service composition. Therefore action can be taken instantly when a problem occurs by monitoring service performance and availability.

Business Benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture
SOA can help businesses respond more quickly and economically to changing market conditions.
SOA can be considered an architectural evolution. It captures many of the best practices of previous software architectures.
The goal of separating users from the service implementations is promoted by SOA.
The goals like increased interoperability, increased federation and increased business & technology domain alignment can be achieved by SOA due to its architectural and design discipline.
SOA is an architectural approach for constructing complex software-intensive systems from services.
SOA realizes its business and IT benefits through utilizing an analysis and design methodology when creating services.

IT Benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture
IT benefits of SOA are:
• The ability to build composite applications is provided.
• Business services are offered across the platforms.
• A self-healing infrastructure that reduces management costs is created.
• Location independence is provided
• Provides truly real-time decision-making applications.
• Reliability is enhanced
• It is not necessary that Services be at a particular system or network
• The approach is completely loosely coupled
• Hardware acquisition costs are reduced
• At every level there’s Authentication and authorization support
• Existing development skills are leveraged
• Provides a data bridge between incompatible technologies
• The search and connectivity to other services is dynamic

11. What are the characteristics of Object Oriented programming language?
Answer
Some key features of the Object Oriented programming are:
• Emphasis on data rather than procedure
• Programs are divided into entities known as objects
• Data Structures are designed such that they characterize objects
• Functions that operate on data of an object are tied together in data structures
• Data is hidden and cannot be accessed by external functions
• Objects communicate with each other through functions
• New data and functions can be easily added whenever necessary
• Follows bottom up design in program design
12. What are the basic Concepts used in the Object-Oriented Programming language?
Answer
Object
Class
Data Abstraction and Encapsulation
Polymorphism
Inheritance
Message passing
Dynamic binding
13. What are content types?
Introduction to Content Types
A content type is a reusable collection of metadata (columns), workflow, behavior, and other settings for a category of items or documents in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 list or document library. Content types enable you to manage the settings for a category of information in a centralized, reusable way.
For example, imagine a business situation in which you have three different types of documents: expense reports, purchase orders, and invoices. All three types of documents have some characteristics in common; for one thing, they are all financial documents and contain data with values in currency. Yet each type of document has its own data requirements, its own document template, and its own workflow. One solution to this business problem is to create four content types. The first content type, Financial Document, could encapsulate data requirements common to all financial documents in the organization. The remaining three, Expense Report, Purchase Order, and Invoice, could inherit common elements from Financial Document and also define characteristics unique to each type, such as a particular set of metadata, a document template to be used in creating a new item, and a specific workflow for processing an item.
Each of the content types in this example could be used on any document library in the site hierarchy, and all of them could be used together on the same document library. When business requirements change, the content types can be modified to meet the new requirements and updates can be pushed down to any document library where the content type is used.
Content Types Encapsulate Data Requirements Content types are a means of encapsulating the data requirements for a category of information. A content type can include the following information:
• The metadata, or properties, you want to assign to this type. These are represented by site columns added to the list or document library when you add the content type. For more information, see Columns.
• Custom New, Edit, and Display forms to use with this content type. For more information, see Custom Information in Content Types.
• Workflows available for items of this content type. These can be defined to start automatically based on a selected event or condition, or through user selection. For more information, see the Workflow Associations property.
• For document content types, the document template on which to base documents of this type. For more information, see Document Template Element (Content Type).
• Any information necessary for custom solutions associated with this content type. You can store this information in the content type as one or more XML documents. For more information, see Custom Information in Content Types.
Content Types Enable Content Standardization

Because content types can be defined independently of any specific list or document library, you can make a given content type available for the lists on multiple SharePoint Foundation sites. This enables you to centrally define and manage the types of content you store in your site collection. For example, you could define a Legal Document content type to ensure that all legal documents track the same metadata, even if those documents are created and stored in multiple sites.
Content Types are File Format Independent

Content types are independent of file formats. For example, suppose you create a content type to represent a business plan. This content type could be applied to any file format. You might have the following:
• Microsoft Office Word documents containing background information
• Microsoft Office Excel documents containing a financial plan
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentations for the venture capital pitch
• Windows Media files of demos
• SharePoint Foundation list items containing the specified metadata
All of these files could be assigned the Business Plan content type. You can also assign content types to items that do not have a file at all, such as list items or folders.
Content Type Creation

You can create column and content types in three ways:
• Using the SharePoint Foundation user interface
• Using the SharePoint Foundation object model
• Deploying a Feature that installs the content type based on an XML definition file. For more information, see Using Features.
More Questions….
1. What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?
SharePoint Portal Server is a portal server that connects people, teams, and knowledge across business processes. SharePoint Portal Server integrates information from various systems into one secure solution through single sign-on and enterprise application integration capabilities. It provides flexible deployment and management tools, and facilitates end-to-end collaboration through data aggregation, organization, and searching. SharePoint Portal Server also enables users to quickly find relevant information through customization and personalization of portal content and layout as well as through audience targeting.

2. What is Microsoft Windows Services?
Microsoft Windows Services is the engine that allows administrators to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office System and other desktop applications, as well as serving as a plat form for application development. SharePoint sites provide communities for team collaboration, enabling users to work together on documents, tasks, and projects. The environment for easy and flexible deployment administration, and application development.

3. What is the relationship between Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Windows Services?
Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (including SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services) deliver highly scalable collaboration solutions with flexible deployment and management tools. Windows SharePoint Services provides sites for team collaboration, while Share Point Portal Server connects these sites, people, and business processes—facilitating knowledge sharing and smart organizations. SharePoint Portal Server also extends the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services by providing organizational and management tools for SharePoint sites, and by enabling teams to publish information to the entire organization.

4. Who is Office SharePoint Server 2007 designed for?
Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be used by information workers, IT administrators, and application developers. is designed

5. What are the main benefits of Office SharePoint Server 2007?
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.
• Business users gain greater control over the storage, security, distribution, and management of their electronic content, with tools that are easy to use and tightly integrated into familiar, everyday applications.
• Organizations can accelerate shared business processes with customers and partners across organizational boundaries using InfoPath Forms Services–driven solutions.
• Information workers can find information and people efficiently and easily through the facilitated information-sharing functionality and simplified content publishing. In addition, access to back-end data is achieved easily through a browser, and views into this data can be personalized.
• Administrators have powerful tools at their fingertips that ease deployment, management, and system administration, so they can spend more time on strategic tasks.
• Developers have a rich platform to build a new class of applications, called Office Business Applications, that combine powerful developer functionality with the flexibility and ease of deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Through the use of out-of-the-box application services, developers can build richer applications with less code.

6. What is the difference between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 have identical feature functionality. While the feature functionality is similar, the usage rights are different.
If you are creating an Internet, or Extranet, facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites which does not require the purchase client access licenses. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition can only be used for Internet facing websites and all content, information, and applications must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an Intranet Portal scenario. See the previous section on licensing for more information on the usage scenarios.

7. What suites of the 2007 Microsoft Office system work with Office SharePoint Server 2007?
Office Outlook 2007 provides bidirectional offline synchronization with SharePoint document libraries, discussion groups, contacts, calendars, and tasks.
Microsoft Office Groove 2007, included as part of Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, will enable bidirectional offline synchronization with SharePoint document libraries.
Features such as the document panel and the ability to publish to Excel Services will only be enabled when using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007or Office Enterprise 2007.
Excel Services will only work with documents saved in the new Office Excel 2007 file format (XLSX).

8. How do I invite users to join a Windows SharePoint Services Site? Is the site secure?
SharePoint-based Web sites can be password-protected to restrict access to registered users, who are invited to join via e-mail. In addition, the site administrator can restrict certain members' roles by assigning different permission levels to view post and edit.

9. Can I post any kind of document?
You can post documents in many formats, including .pdf, .htm and .doc. In addition, if you are using Microsoft Office XP, you can save documents directly to your Windows SharePoint Services site.

10. Can I download information directly from a SharePoint site to a personal digital assistant (PDA)?
No you cannot. However, you can exchange contact information lists with Microsoft Outlook.

11. How long does it take to set up the initial team Web site?
It only takes a few minutes to create a complete Web site. Preformatted forms let you and your team members contribute to the site by filling out lists. Standard forms include announcements, events, contacts, tasks, surveys, discussions and links.

12.Can I create custom templates?
Yes you can. You can have templates for business plans, doctor's office, lawyer's office etc.

13. How can I make my site public? By default, all sites are created private.
If you want your site to be a public Web site, enable anonymous access for the entire site. Then you can give out your URL to anybody in your business card, e-mail or any other marketing material. The URL for your Web site will be: http:// yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com
Hence, please take special care to name your site. These Web sites are ideal for information and knowledge intensive sites and/or sites where you need to have shared Web workspace. Remember: Under each parent Web site, you can create up to 10 sub-sites each with unique permissions, settings and security rights.

14. How do the sub sites work?
You can create a sub site for various categories. For example:
• Departments - finance, marketing, IT
• Products - electrical, mechanical, hydraulics
• Projects - Trey Research, Department of Transportation, FDA
• Team - Retention team, BPR team
• Clients - new clients, old clients
• Suppliers - Supplier 1, Supplier 2, Supplier 3
• Customers - Customer A, Customer B, Customer C
• Real estate - property A, property B
The URLs for each will be, for example:
• http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/finance
• http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/marketing
You can keep track of permissions for each team separately so that access is restricted while maintaining global access to the parent site.

15. How do I make my site non-restricted?
If you want your site to have anonymous access enabled (i.e., you want to treat it like any site on the Internet that does not ask you to provide a user name and password to see the content of the site), follow these simple steps:
1. Login as an administrator
2. Click on site settings
3. Click on Go to Site Administration
4. Click on Manage anonymous access
5. Choose one of the three conditions on what Anonymous users can access:
o Entire Web site
o Lists and libraries
o Nothing
Default condition is nothing; your site has restricted access. The default conditions allow you to create a secure site for your Web site.

16. Can I get domain name for my Web site?
Unfortunately, no. At this point, we don't offer domain names for SharePoint sites. But very soon we will be making this available for all our SharePoint site customers. Please keep checking this page for further update on this. Meanwhile, we suggest you go ahead and set up your site and create content for it.

17. What are picture libraries?
Picture libraries allow you to access a photo album and view it as a slide show or thumbnails or a film strip. You can have separate folder for each event, category, etc

18. What are the advantages of a hosted SharePoint vs. one that is on an in-house server?
• No hardware investment, i.e. lower costs
• No software to download - ready to start from the word go
• No IT resources - Anyone who has used a Web program like Hotmail can use it
• Faster deployment

19. Can I ask users outside of my organization to participate in my Windows SharePoint Services site?
Yes. You can manage this process using the Administration Site Settings. Simply add users via their e-mail alias and assign permissions such as Reader or Contributor.

20. Are there any IT requirements or downloads required to set up my SharePoint site?
No. You do not need to download any code or plan for any IT support. Simply complete the on-line signup process and provide us your current and correct email address. Once you have successfully signed up and your site has been provisioned, we will send a confirmation to the email address you provided.

21. I am located outside of the United States. Are there any restrictions or requirements for accessing the Windows SharePoint Services?
No. There are no system or bandwidth limitations for international trial users. Additionally language packs have been installed which allow users to set up sub-webs in languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish.

22. Are there any browser recommendations?
Yes. Microsoft recommends using the following browsers for viewing and editing Windows SharePoint Services sites: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 with Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 6.2 or later.

23. What security levels are assigned to users?
Security levels are assigned by the administrator who is adding the user. There are four levels by default and additional levels can be composed as necessary.
• Reader - Has read-only access to the Web site.
• Contributor - Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.
• Web Designer - Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.
• Administrator - Has full control of the Web site.


24. How secure are Windows SharePoint Services sites hosted by Microsoft?
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Technical security measures provide firewall protection, intrusion detection, and web-publishing rules. The Microsoft operation center team tests and deploys software updates in order to maintain the highest level of security and software reliability. Software hot-fixes and service packs are tested and deployed based on their priority and level of risk. Security related hot-fixes are rapidly deployed into the environment to address current threats. A comprehensive software validation activity ensures software stability through regression testing prior to deployment.

25. What is the difference between an Internet and an intranet site?
An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g., www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password. The internet is used for public presence and a primary marketing tool managed typically by web programmers and a system administrator.
An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on a Web site, can only be accessed by people who are members of a specific network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator. The intranet is commonly used as an internal tool for giving employees access to company information. Content is driven by business relevance, business rules and has increasingly become a common tool in larger organizations. An intranet is becoming more and more the preferred method for employees to interact with each other and the central departments in an organization, whether or not the organization has a Web presence.

26. What is a workspace?
A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on Web pages, lists and document libraries. For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project, collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.

27. What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?
A user can be assigned one of the following roles
• Reader - Has read-only access to the Web site.
• Contributor - Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.
• Web Designer - Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.
• Administrator - Has full control of the Web site.

28. Can more than one person use the same login?
If the users sharing that login will have the same permissions and there is no fear of them sharing a password, then yes. Otherwise, this is discouraged.

29. How customizable is the user-to-user access?
User permissions apply to an entire Web, not to documents themselves. However, you can have additional sub webs that can optionally have their own permissions. Each user can be given any of four default roles. Additional roles can be defined by the administrator.

30. Can each user have access to their own calendar?
Yes there are two ways to do this,
• by creating a calendar for each user, or
• by creating a calendar with a view for each user

31. How many files can I upload?
There is no restriction in place except that any storage consumed beyond that provided by the base offering may have an additional monthly charge associated with them.

32. What types of files can I upload / post to the site?
The only files restricted are those ending with the following extensions: .asa, .asp, .ida, .idc, .idq. Microsoft reserves the right to add additional file types to this listing at any time. Also, no content that violates the terms of service may be uploaded or posted to the site.

33. Can SharePoint be linked to an external data source?
SharePoint data can be opened with Access and Excel as an external data source. Thus, SharePoint can be referenced as an external data source. SharePoint itself cannot reference an external data source.
But 3rd pary software can do this for you: http://www.layer2.de/en/products/pages/sharepoint-business-data-list-connector.aspx


34. Can SharePoint be linked to a SQL database?
SharePoint 2007 Portal Server (MOSS2K7) allows connections to SQL based datasources via the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The BDC also allows connecting to data via Web Services. Or you can link lists directly qith sql queries in the list settings using the BDLC found here: http://bit.ly/p30tJ .

35. Can I customize my Windows SharePoint Services site?
YES! Windows SharePoint Services makes updating sites and their content from the browser easier then ever.
SharePoint includes tools that let you create custom lists, calendars, page views, etc. You can apply a theme; add List, Survey and Document Library Web Parts to a page; create personal views; change logos; connect Web Parts and more.
To fully customize your site, you can use Microsoft FrontPage 2003. Specifically, you can use FrontPage themes and shared borders, and also use FrontPage to create photo galleries and top ten lists, utilize standard usage reports, and integrate automatic Web content.

36. Will Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 run on a 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows?
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Office SharePoint Server 2007, Office Forms Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search will support 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003.

37. How Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help you?
Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help us:
Manage content and streamline processes. Comprehensively manage and control unstructured content like Microsoft Office documents, Web pages, Portable Document Format file (PDF) files, and e-mail messages. Streamline business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity.
Improve business insight. Monitor your business, enable better-informed decisions, and respond proactively to business events.
Find and share information more simply. Find information and expertise wherever they are located. Share knowledge and simplify working with others within and across organizational boundaries.
Empower IT to make a strategic impact. Increase responsiveness of IT to business needs and reduce the number of platforms that have to be maintained by supporting all the intranet, extranet, and Web applications across the enterprise with one integrated platform.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 capabilities can help improve organizational effectiveness by connecting people, processes, and information.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides these capabilities in an integrated server offering, so your organization doesn't have to integrate fragmented technology solutions itself.

38. What are the features that the portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include?
The portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include features that are especially useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet Web sites, and divisional portal sites. The portal components make it easier to connect to people within the organization who have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience.

39. What are the advanced features of MOSS 2007?
• User Interface (UI) and navigation enhancements
• Document management enhancements
• The new Workflow engine
• Office 2007 Integration
• New Web Parts
• New Site-type templates
• Enhancements to List technology
• Web Content Management
• Business Data Catalog
• Search enhancements
• Report Center
• Records Management
• Business Intelligence and Excel Server
• Forms Server and InfoPath
• The “Features” feature
• Alternate authentication providers and Forms-based authentication


40. What are the features of the new Content management in Office SharePoint 2007?
The new and enhanced content management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007 fall within three areas:
• Document management
• Records management
• Web content management
Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on the core document management functionality provided by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, including check in and check out, versioning, metadata, and role-based granular access controls. Organizations can use this functionality to deliver enhanced authoring, business document processing, Web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing.