Essential SharePoint

Parts of a Page

Each SharePoint site has a home page named default.aspx. Different site templates create different home pages, as shown in Figure 1-7. These pages are made up of web parts—a web part is a type of custom control that contains a title bar, a frame, and content. Figure 1-9 indicates the web parts included in a document workspace.

Figure 1-7. Team, workspace, and meeting sites

Figure 1-8. Navigating between team and workspace sites

Figure 1-9. Web parts on a home page

Web parts appear on a web part page , which is a special type of page that contains zones where you can drag and drop web parts. The home page of each site is a web part page. Web parts often present data from lists within the site. In fact, all of the lists in a site show up as web parts when you create a new web part page, as shown in Figure 1-10.

Figure 1-10. Designing a web part page

I said that lists are tables of related data, but that doesn't really convey the importance of lists within SharePoint. Lists are used to organize and store Office documents, links, members, discussions, images, and all other types of content in SharePoint. For the most common tables, SharePoint includes a set of list templates, which are categorized and described by task in Table 1-2.

Table 1-2. Types of lists

Category	List template	Use to
Team projects	Announcements	Post messages on the home page of your site.
	Contacts	Share information about people your team works with.
	Document library	Share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents with the team.
	Events	Keep informed of upcoming meetings, deadlines, and other important events.
	Form library	Share InfoPath forms with the team.
	General discussion	Get answers and share opinions within the team.
	Links	Share links to web pages relevant to team members.
	Survey	Get quantifiable feedback from the team.
	Tasks	Track work that you or your team needs to complete.
	Picture library	Share images.
	Problem report	Track customer complaints and feature request. Assign items and record resolution.
Meetings	Agenda	Outline meeting topics, who will cover them, and how much time each presenter is allotted.
	Attendees	Invite members to the meeting.
	Decisions	Enter, review, and track decisions made at the meeting.
	Issues	Manage a prioritized set of problems meeting will address.
	Meeting series	Handle recurring meetings, such as monthly status reviews.
	Things to bring	List things that attendees should bring to be prepared for the meeting, such as notebooks, handouts, or lunch.
	Objectives	List goals for the meeting.
	Workspace pages	Link to other pages in a multipage meeting workspace.
Site administration	List template gallery	Add or remove custom list templates.
	Site template gallery	Add or remove custom site templates.
	Web part gallery	Add or remove custom web parts.

In addition to displaying lists, there are also web parts that perform specific tasks, as shown in Table 1-3.

Table 1-3. Other web parts included with SharePoint

Web part	Use to
Content editor	Display HTML text that can be edited within a frame.
Image	Include an image on a page.
Members	Display a list of site members and status.
Page viewer	Include a view of another web page in a frame.
Form	Filter a list displayed in another web part.
XML	Transform an XML data source using XSL and display the result in a frame on the page.

I explain how to construct new pages and modify existing ones in more detail in later chapters.