Sharepoint

Services Tutorial
March 2005

SharePoint Services is a web-based solution for storing and sharing documents, and
communicating. It has the following built-in features:
• Lists
• Document Libraries
• Discussion boards
• Surveys
• Security
This document is a tutorial on how to use these features in SharePoint Services.

Permission to use this document for non-commercial purposes, in original or modified form, is
granted, provided that the original source of the document is acknowledged as Information
Systems and Technology, University of Waterloo.
 Table of Contents
What is SharePoint Services? ................................................................................................................... 1
Who Can Use SharePoint Services? ......................................................................................................... 1
Customizing Your SharePoint Site ........................................................................................................... 1
Site Themes........................................................................................................................................... 4
Customize Home Page .......................................................................................................................... 5
Adding Users to the Site ....................................................................................................................... 8
Create a Document Library..................................................................................................................... 10
Notes About Document Versioning.................................................................................................... 12
Checking Out a Document...................................................................................................................... 16
Creating Web Pages ................................................................................................................................ 18
Lists......................................................................................................................................................... 19
Discussion Boards................................................................................................................................... 20
Surveys.................................................................................................................................................... 23
Getting More Help .................................................................................................................................. 23

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What is SharePoint Services?
SharePoint Services is a web-based collaboration tool that groups/project teams may find useful for
working together. You can use SharePoint services for:
• Lists (announcements, contacts, events, common interest links, tasks)
• Libraries of documents (files, pictures, forms)
• Discussion boards
• Surveys
• Security (who has access)
SharePoint Services runs on a server that is accessible from the web. The server is maintained by IST.
You don’t need any extra software on your workstation, and one of the benefits is it is very easy to use.

Who Can Use SharePoint Services?

The following groups can request a SharePoint site be setup for them:
• Academic support departments
• Federation of Students groups
• Student groups sponsored by a faculty or professor.
It is expected that each site has an administrator, and the administrator is responsible for setting up the
site, for security, and training.
To setup a SharePoint site, the administrator should send in request to IST. People from outside the
University of Waterloo can only access a UW Sharepoint site if he/she is sponsored by a UW faculty
member. SharePoint users need to be in UWdir. Only users that have been added to a SharePoint site can
use the site (there is no “guest” access).

Customizing Your SharePoint Site

Once your site has been created, you will be sent an email message containing the url of the site. When
you type in the url and go to the site, you will be asked to log in with your UWdir username and
password. Once you have signed in, you will be presented with a window similar to the following to the
window below. You will find that the point size of the text is very small, and you will want to increase it
in your browser (View->Text Size->Medium). If you use a browser other than Internet Explorer, you may
notice some problems.
Your SharePoint site should have a common set of design elements. You can accomplish this quickly by
applying a theme.
1. Click on the Site Settings menu. The following page will appear:

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 2. Under “Customization”, you can change the look of the site, update lists and documents libraries, or
modify the text at the top of each page of the site. Let’s look at each of these functions. Click on
“Change site title and description” and the following appears:

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 3. Type in a title and description for your SharePoint Services site. Click “OK”.

Site Themes
4. Next, let’s change the theme. Click on “Apply Theme to Site” and the following appears:

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 5. Try a few themes and pick one that you like the best.

Customize Home Page

In addition to applying a theme to your site, you can choose to customize the home page a little more,
perhaps giving it a UW identity with the UW logo.
6. From the Site Setting menu, click on ‘Customize Home Page’ (found under Customization). The
following window will appear:

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 7. Let’s put the UW logo on the right of the home page (in the box labeled Right). In the panel on the
right, under ‘Web Part List’, drag ‘Image Part List’ to the following image on the page:

8. The following will appear in the area where you dragged the image part list….

9. Click on “open the tool pane” and the following will appear:

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 10. Type in the url: http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/uwlogo.gif
11. Click on the + beside Appearance and change Frame Style to None.

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 12. Click on OK. The UW logo should now be on your home page.

Adding Users to the Site

13. Click on the “Site Settings” menu, and you will see:

14. Click on ‘Manage users’, and you will be presented with a window like the following:

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 15. Click on “Add Users”, and you will see the following window:

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 16. Add a user to your site, and indicate whether the person you are adding is a reader, contributor, web
designer. Only one or two people should be administrator. It is very important to understand the
implications of assigning a role for a user, as described below:
Reader: has read-only access to the site
Contributor: can add content to existing document libraries and lists. Note that a
contributor cannot create a document library or list.
Web Designer: can create lists and document libraries, and customize pages in the web site.
A Web designer cannot add users.
Administrator: has full control of the site. Only the administrator can approve documents for
libraries that have been setup to require approval.
17. SharePoint users will be asked for their UWdir password when they log in. Also note that if a
person assigned the role of Contributor tries to create a document library, a prompt for credentials
will appear. SharePoint is checking to see if the “contributor” also another account with
“administrator” privileges.

Create a Document Library

Note: Only administrators and web designers can create document libraries. If you are a “contributor” and
you try to create a document library you will be asked to authenticate again (SharePoint does this in case
you have another account setup to be an Administrator).
18. Click on “Documents and Lists” in the menu and then click on “Modify Site Content”, found under
“Customization”. The following window will appear:

19. Click on “Create New Content”, and the following window appears:

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 20. One of the most useful features of SharePoint is a repository for documents that your group would
like to share. Document libraries support features such as sub-folders, file versioning, and check-
in/check-out. Click on “Document Library” and the following window will appear:

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 21. We are now going to create a repository for documents in your group/project. For example, let’s
create a library to contain meeting minutes for a project.

Notice that we have indicated that we want to create a version each time you edit a file in this
document library.

Notes About Document Versioning

Document versioning allows you to keep multiple versions of a document. If a change needs to be
reversed, you can restore the previous version and continue working. When versioning is turned
on, a Version History command is added to the drop-down list that users see when they click the
arrow next to a document name (and the toolbar) in the Edit Properties page for the document.
When you click Version History, a list of the previous versions of the document appears. The
user can open an old version, restore a version (replacing the current version), or delete an old
version. Here are some important notes about versioning:

• When a file is deleted from a library, all previous versions are deleted as well.

• Versions can be created for all file types except HTML files that contain images or embedded
objects. If you want to create versions as HTML, you must use the MHTML format (often
saved as .mht) when saving to this Web site. This also applies to those files on the Web site
that you check out and modify.
When versioning is enabled, versions are automatically created whenever you update a document
in a document library Versions are created in the following situations:

• When a user checks out a file, makes changes, and checks the file back in.

• When a user opens a file, makes changes, and then saves the file for the first time.

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 Note If the user saves the file again, without closing the file, a new version is not created. If the
user closes the application he or she is using to edit the file, and then opens it and saves the
file again, another version is created.

• When a user restores an old version of a file (and does not check it out).

• When a user uploads a file that already exists, in which case the current file becomes an old
version.
Members of the Administrator and Web Designer site groups for a site can determine whether document
versioning is enabled for a particular document library. To enable document versioning, you use the
settings page for that document library.
22. Click ‘OK’ and the following window appears:

Note that you can choose to work in Explorer View when looking at the files in the Library.
23. In the left panel, as shown below, click on “Modify settings and columns”.

24. The window shown below will be displayed

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 25. Click on ‘Change general settings’, and you will see a section of the window that opens
containing the following

26. You can create a new document, or upload existing documents to the library. Let’s upload a
document from the R-drive. Click on “Upload Document” and the following window will
open:

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 If you have a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible program installed, an option to
upload multiple files simultaneously might appear on the Upload Document page. For
example, if you have Office 2003installed, you will see the Upload Multiple Files
option.

27. Click on ‘Browse’ and then click on the folder called “meeting minutes” located on the R-drive.
Select a file to move, and then click on “Save and Close”.
28. Upload the same file again. Leave “Overwrite existing file(s): checked.
29. Click on the down arrow, as shown below:

30. Click on Version History, and you will see a window like the following:

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 31. Click on a file, and then click on the down arrow key as shown below:

32. The following window will open:

You can view, restore, or delete a version of a document. You should keep your versions to
minimum to save disk space.

Checking Out a Document

33. Locate the document that you want to work on. Click the down-arrow beside the document name so
that you see the following menu

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 34. Click on “Check Out”. This will let others know that the document has been checked out. The
window will name have you listed as the person checking out the document:

35. Click the down-arrow beside the document name and choose to edit the document, and then save
your changes.
36. You should now Check In the document. You will see ‘Check In’ if you click the down arrow
beside the document name. You will be presented with the following window:

37. Choose to “Check in document” and click the OK button.

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Creating Web Pages
38. Click on the Create menu, and scroll to the bottom of the window…

39. Click on ‘Basic Page’, and the following window will open:

40. Fill out the name of the document and indicate the document library:
41. Click on Create. A window will open that will allow you to create a web page. There is very basic
editing ability, much like Contribute…

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 42. Type in a simple page, and click on Save.

You can also explore web parts and web sites in SharePoint.

Lists
Everyone has lists. In SharePoint you can create lists for
• Links of useful web links for your project/team.
• Announcements
• Contacts
• Events
• Tasks
• Issues

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43. Click on “Home”, and then click on Lists. Try creating a couple of different types of lists.

Discussion Boards

A discussion board provides a place for newsgroup-style discussions.

44. Click on Discussion Boards in the left panel, and the following window will be displayed.

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 45. Your discussion board is ready to go. Now click on the “New Discussion” button.

46. Click on “New Discussion”, and the following window will appear. Fill in a new discussion topic,
and then click on “Save and Close”. You will now see the following:

47. Click on your discussion item, and you will see the window:

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 48. Click on ‘Post Reply’, and enter in a reply to the discussion item. Your discussion thread will
grow…

New topics will be added within the same thread, and new threads will be added.

49. By clicking on the “Alert Me’ button you can be sent an email when a discussion item has been
added…

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Surveys
You can create surveys in SharePoint for your group/project. This is easy to do, by creating various types
of questions using menus. You can try creating a survey with a couple different types of questions.

Getting More Help

50. There is a lot still to learn about SharePoint Services. Click on the Help menu for more information.

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