Customer Reviews

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Unleashed

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Excellent content and detailed steps actually showing best practice steps and how to do some of the more complex tasks in SharePoint 2010 Administration (e.g. SharePoint 2010 Server Install using PowerShell) make this an invaluable resource to have by your side. If you're an Admin/Consultant/Developer of SharePoint 2010 or a MOSS 2007 Admin thinking about migrating to SharePoint 2010, this is a must-have resource! Unlike other "admin companion" books that sometimes appear to merely regurgitate Technet article content, this book seems to be from a seasoned Admin who knows how to explain common scenarios and/or problems and their associated solutions in clear terms.

The only "beef" I have is not necessarily with the writer of the book but with the InformIT website. I was excited to download the examples and code from the book so I went to the address provided, registerd my copy and confirmed my email from InformIT . . . but alas, there are no links anywhere for downloading code or anything referenced in the book. I was expecting something like the WROX books which provide clear direction on how to download the code referenced in each chapter, but saw nothing but ads from InformIT on buying their books and online content. Couldn't even find a way to contact any kind of support from InformIT (well, there was a link, but it was useless).

Bottom line is . . . buy this book! It is great. Just don't expect to actually be able to access the code (powershell scripts, etc.) samples (unless you type them by hand) . . . at least not as of the time I am writing this. Perhaps InformIT will get the message and clean up their site.

This book covers a ton of topics. Actually more like 10 tons of topics.

The book is broken down into 6 parts:

Planning for and Deploying SharePoint Server 2010

Administering and Maintaining SharePoint Server 2010

Securing, Protecting, and Optimizing SharePoint Architecture

Using SharePoint 2010 Technologies for Collaboration and Document Management

Leveraging Office Applications with SharePoint

Extending the SharePoint Environment

Covering so many topics has its pros and cons.

Pros include covering a wide variety of topics and they provide a lot of very helpful lists. Especially when comparing SharePoint 2010 Foundation, SharePoint 2010 Standard, and SharePoint 2010 Enterprise. The lists are one of my favorite features of the book. They include List of SharePoint 2010 Service Applications, Supported Direct In-Place Upgrade Targets for Various SharePoint Versions, The Advantages and Disadvantages of Search Federation in SharePoint 2010, Comparison of Legacy Versus RBS, SharePoint Server Role Resource Guidelines, Small Virtual SharePoint Environment Deployment Specifications, Comparison of Tools Available from the Home Page of the Central Administration, Site Collection Administration Tools in SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise, Library and List Options in SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise, Web Parts Available in SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, Document Library Settings Tools for Document Libraries, and Guidelines for Using Versioning, Page Approval Workflows, Content Approval, and Scheduling in Document Libraries.

There are a ton more I could list, but I think I have made the point. These list really help give a quick glance into the features and tools available in a given area of SharePoint.

The book also covers topics I have not seen covered elsewhere. It covers Protecting SharePoint with Advanced Antivirus and Edge Security Solutions, Virtualizing SharePoint Components, SharePoint Foundation Versus SharePoint Server, and Safeguarding Confidential Data in SharePoint. The chapter I found most useful so far was SharePoint Foundation Versus SharePoint Server.

The biggest con is that the topics are not as in-depth as they need to be sometimes for field level use. An example would be the upgrade coverage. They cover a vanilla upgrade, but most upgrades are not going to go that smoothly. They list the security accounts needed but do not go into detail on how or where to use them. Another missing topic is setting up the secure store service. They mention it when covering Excel Services, but completely miss it when they discuss configuring PerformancePoint. They never cover how to configure it, and without it the services are useless.

The cons do not really detract from the book because of the type of book it is. It covers far too much material to go into scenario based topics and I feel it goes in-depth enough to get you very familiar with the topics covered.

The authors have made some of the code and the scripts available for download.

Overall the book serves as a good introduction to a very wide variety of topics and goes to the level of depth needed to gain a thorough understand of the topic.

All in all I recommend this book for anyone involve with SharePoint administration.

Without a doubt, the most comprehensive SharePoint 2010 book on the market. I applaud early authors for getting their book to market so early (like Shane, Todd and Steve with SharePoint 2010 Administration). However, SharePoint 2010 Unleashed is a must read for the SharePoint pro and dev. Clean and clear-cut writing style delivered by SharePoint ombudsman Michael Noel, put this one in your backpack and carry it around. Great stuff and thank you.

Bert Blevins

Very disappointed in this book. It is supposed to be an unleashed guide on configuring SharePoint for an enterprise environment. The only reason I bought this book was to learn how to set-up and configure a Fail-Over SharePoint Server. I have no luck finding anything of detail online. The book goes into how to configure SQL for fail-over..... why not a SharePoint fail-over server.

The book regurgitates information already available at Microsoft technet.

Waste of money.

This is a decent book to have on a reference shelf. Very difficult to get through simply because the subjects are presented poorly. Meaning, the authors drill down to the details of a particular topic without presenting a broad overview first. This would be a good MS 'level 300' reference book.

For a better understanding of SP 2010 uses and Administrative tasks I would defer a reader to: Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration by Todd Klindt and Essential SharePoint 2010 - Overview, Governance, and Planning by Jamison, Hanley, & Cardarelli.

A few days were lost looking up information on adding a Navigation Bar to the Web Part pages, then I received this book! Within a small amount of time there was the answer! The book is thorough, has great details and has great pictures so you know when you are in the wrong place.

The details in this book are great, the Index and Contents at a Glance get me right where I need to be quickly. My only problem now is I have about 200 bookmarks! It is easy to go online and copy the code in the book directly so you are not spending a lot of time correcting errors. It gives you great guidance on best practices and how to make things simpler. The exercises can be changed to meet your specific needs, but SharePoint is a huge product and a lot to be covered, the book hits on a lot of these that all are working with on the first deployment of SharePoint 2010.

I highly recommend this book for beginners to the more advanced SharePoint 2010 developers.

Being new to SharePoint I found a lot of good material in this book to get me quickly up to speed as a power user and administrator.