When I started out mingling with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), I didn’t know the importance of a SharePoint TEAM site. I stared creating pages based on the fantastic 40 templates by Microsoft like booking of rooms, document routing calendaring and many more. I wasn’t bothered of what a TEAM site is all about anyways.

The awakening however appears when my company made the move from WSS (Windows SharePoint Services) to MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server). Till then I have only attended one course conducted by a training centre for end-users, not much on development though but I stared to realize by then that a TEAM site has a much more importance in SharePoint deployment for your company.

So what’s actually a SharePoint TEAM site?

If you are constructing sites on SharePoint and you want the main site to be seperated by different subsites ( example based departments, units or groups), then the SharePoint TEAM template is the template you should use to begin with.

Let’s say I’m have a SharePoint server named “SidewinderInc” and I want to create SharePoint subsites for 3 departments namely Operations, Sales and Finance.

Now from the main site (which is also a TEAM site by default) of “SidewinderInc“, I created 3 new TEAM sites for the 3 new TEAM sites for the departments mentioned above.

As illustration let’s check out the diagram below :-

You will roughly get the idea.

It is more of a best practice and planning for a SharePoint infrastructure is very important. I actually have to redo the whole damn thing, mind you and it’s called because of negligence and improper research and planning.

So map out your company’s infrastructure and plan the site in due diligence before creating sites for your company.

I’ve been administrating SharePoint from WSS 3.0 and MOSS for about 3 years now and recently, I have the oppurtunity to work on a WSS 2.0 platform as well.

SharePoint is a great CMS system. It is easy for end-users and collaboration can be done in a snap. However customization can be a bit tough though(for the IT administrators) as each company will have its own needs for SharePoint deployment and for some companies their operations might be way different for the out-of-the box features that Microsoft provides.

Though there are are many solutions for SharePoint in the internet, SharePoint errors and problems are much case to case basis; it might work for certain issues or event id errors.

I have learn the hard way in mastering this platform and the words of my manager when I first entered the IT department after being transferred from the Quality Control dept still rings a bell in my ears. He says to me ” Fauzi, I want you to become the SharePoint expert for this company.” That was it. No direction, no guidance. But after 3 years of learning through mind-bombing mistakes and goof-ups in this CMS, I’ll be gladly shared my knowledge to the world.

There will be articles, tips and tricks, shortcuts and more that will be published in this blog in the near future. Hopefully with my simple and easy to understand tips, I can help IT administrators and SharePoint end-users (be it in the MOSS or WSS platforms)  to troubleshoot their everyday SharePoint problems in dealing with this powerful CMS product.

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