SharePoint Interview Questions and Answers
Question.1 What is SharePoint 2010?
Answer: SharePoint was born out of a simple idea: “Sharing Documents”. Microsoft developed family of software products called “SharePoint”, to perform features like File Sharing, Collaboration, and Web Publishing. In simple terms, SharePoint acts as the single platform to share, communicate, store, and collaborate the content, documents, and records.
Question.2 What does SharePoint 2010 family of products consists of?
Answer: SharePoint Foundation 2010
Search Server 2010 Express
SharePoint Server 2010
Search Server 2010
FAST™ Search Server 2010 for SharePoint
SharePoint Designer 2010 [sociallocker]
Question.3 What are Features of SharePoint?
Answer: Communities: The new version of SharePoint allows users to work together in different ways. Microsoft has enhanced the social feature of SharePoint 2007 in SharePoint 2010 and has made it look better. Communities allow people to collaborate in groups, share knowledge, and find information on various topics easily.
Content: SharePoint content shifts SharePoint 2010 from a departmental solution to an enterprise solution. There has been massive improvement in content wherein users can add a significant number of documents to SharePoint. They can even use external data storage options to store more data.
Search: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has acquired FAST search server, which improves the search tremendously for users. Now, users not only can search for content, but also people. User can opt for better language options with thumbnails and previews. User can even sort out the search queries and study similar search to get relevant search results.
Insights: with the help of SharePoint insights, users can access information through different data sources like dashboards, scorecards, reports and more. To help users, Microsoft has introduced performance point server to the SharePoint platform. It is also known as Performance point services for SharePoint. It helps users discover right people and expertise to make better business decisions.
Compositions: SharePoint being a complete platform helps users in creating their code solution on premises or in the cloud. Complex application can be developed with the help of well-known tools like:
InfoPath
SharePoint designer 2010
Visio 2010
Question.4 What are the new features in Sharepoint?
Answer: Access Services: Use Access Services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to edit, update, and create linked Microsoft Access 2010 databases that can be viewed and manipulated by using an Internet browser.
Business Connectivity Services: SharePoint Server 2010 include Microsoft Business Connectivity Services, which is a set of services and features that provide a way to connect SharePoint-based solutions to sources of external data and to define external content types based on that external data
Central Administration: Central Administration has been redesigned in SharePoint Server 2010 to provide a more familiar experience
Digital Asset Management: SharePoint Server 2010 includes a new asset library specially designed for managing and sharing digital assets such as audio, video, and other rich media files.
Enterprise Search (Fast Search): With the new capabilities in SharePoint Server 2010, search administrators can configure an optimal search infrastructure that helps end users find information in the enterprise quickly and efficiently.
Excel Services: Excel Services in SharePoint 2010 can be used to publish Excel client workbooks on SharePoint Server 2010
Health Monitoring: SharePoint Server 2010 includes an integrated health analysis tool called SharePoint Health Analyzer that enables SharePoint Server to automatically check for potential configuration, performance, and usage problems
Managed Metadata: The Managed Metadata Service supports the use of managed metadata, as well as the sharing of content types across the enterprise.
Performance Point Services: Performance Point Services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 provides flexible, easy-to-use tools for building dashboards, scorecards, and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Records Management: In SharePoint Server 2010, user can manage records in an archive, or can manage records in the same document repository as active document
Sandboxed Solutions: User can deploy sandboxed solutions to quickly and more securely solve business problems. Sandboxed solutions are like farm solutions except in the following ways: they are rights-restricted and have a more permissive deployment policy than farm solutions; they are limited to the site collection to which they are deployed;
Social Computing: SharePoint Server 2010 includes social networking tools such as My Site Web sites and social content technologies such as blogs, wikis, and really simple syndication (RSS). These features are built upon a database of properties that integrates information about people from many kinds of business applications and directory services
Visual Upgrade: A new feature that is available with upgrade allows the server administrator or site owner to determine when and if the new look for SharePoint Server 2010 is used for a particular site collection. Server administrators can choose to adopt the new look and feel for all sites during upgrade, let site owners make the choice after upgrade, or keep the old look and feel for all site
Feature Upgrade:SharePoint Foundation 2010 provides new members and types that make it possible for user to upgrade custom Features through versioning and declarative upgrade actions. User can update any Features created for Office SharePoint Server 2007 to work with SharePoint Server 2010 by using these members.
Visio Services: The Visio Graphics Service is a service on the SharePoint Server 2010 platform that enables users to share and view Visio diagrams and enables data-connected Microsoft Visio 2010 diagrams to be refreshed and updated from a variety of data source
Windows Power Shell: Windows Power Shell is the new command-line interface and scripting language specifically designed for Admin
Client Object Model: Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 introduces three new client APIs for interacting with SharePoint sites: from a .NET managed application, from a Microsoft Silverlight or from ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript) that executes in the browser. The new client object models provide an object-oriented system for interoperating with SharePoint data from a remote computer easier to use existing SharePoint Foundation Web services
Question.5 What is Site collection?
Answer: SharePoint site collection is a logical grouping of multiple SharePoint site or hierarchical site structure. For e.g. Sites of various teams or departments of an organization can be grouped logically in one site collection. A site collection consists of a top-level site and one or more sites below it. Each top-level site and any sites below it in the site structure are based on a site template and can have other unique settings and content. Hence, SharePoint site collection is a hierarchical set of sites that can be managed together. Sites within a site collection have common features, such as shared permissions, galleries for templates, content types, and Web Parts, and they often share a common navigation. A sub site can inherit permissions and navigation structure from its parent site or these can be specified and managed independently. Creation of sub sites can be delegated to users of a site collection, but a service administrator must perform creation of site collections
Question.6 What is Site?
Answer: Site is a collection of web pages used to store information in an organized manner. It stores a list of documents, discussions, events, tasks, and many other types of information. Site provides controlled access to share information among users, i.e. authorize users are allowed to access the site & its elements. User can configure following elements in SharePoint site:
Templates: Template acts as stencils, used to create similar attribute elements.
Language: SharePoint has ability to create multilingual sites. Language packs are installed on the server to translate the portal in other languages. User can select a language-specific site template while creating new site.
Security: User can define unique user groups and permissions for each site as well as site elements.
Navigation: Site navigation reflects the relationships among the sites in a site collection. User can fine-tune site’s navigation experience by configuring unique navigation links in each part of site’s hierarchy. Therefore, planning navigation and planning sites structures are closely related activities.
Web pages: Web pages in sites or site collection are used to display information.
Site layouts: Site Layout dictates the overall look and feel of the SharePoint site.
Themes: Themes specify the appearance of site in terms of Color & font.
Regional settings: Regional settings are specific to particular country or geography, such as locale, time zone, sort order, time format and calendar type.
Search: User can make each site having unique search settings. For example, user can specify that a particular site never appear in search results.
Content types: A content type defines the attributes of a list item, a document, or a folder.
Workflows: Workflow defines the action or series of actions that has to be performed on the occurrence of event.
Question.7 What is Sub Site?
Answer: A sub-site is a single SharePoint site within a site collection. A sub-site can inherit permissions and navigation structure from its parent site or can be specified and managed independently.
Question.8 What is List?
Answer: A SharePoint list is a collection of records related to an entity like a student, employees, etc. Records in lists are termed as items. A list contains columns or fields that define the item data or metadata. Lists are created using a GUI interface by defining the metadata types. Once the Lists are created, it becomes very easy to add, edit, delete, and search items in it.
Question.9 What is Document Library?
Answer: A Document library allows users to easily store, upload, share, collaborate, and track documents or files. Users can also store the properties related to documents called metadata to make the documents easily searchable.
Question.10 What is Picture library?
Answer: A Picture library allows users to easily store, upload, share, collaborate and track images or digital pictures. Users can also store the properties related to images called metadata to make the images easily searchable.
Question.11 What is Check-out?
Answer: Check-out ensures that only one person can edit a document at a time. To edit a document, a user would first have to check out a document. This prevents anyone else from editing the document until that user check the document back in. During the period that the document is checked out, other users can only view a read-only version of the document.
Question.12 What is Check-in?
Answer: Check in a file means that user is uploading the modified file to the library and it is now available for edit by other users. Once the document is checked in, the document becomes available again to be checked out by someone else. In addition, all changes made by the person who checked in the document are now visible to others.
Question.13 What is Versioning?
Answer: Versioning allows updates, restoring and tracking of the items in a list or in a library when they are changed. Versioning makes use of version numbers to keep track of changes.
Question.14 What is Site Columns?
Answer: A site column is a reusable column definition, or template that user can assign to multiple lists across multiple SharePoint sites. Site columns are useful if user organization wants to establish some consistent settings across lists and libraries.
Question.15 What are the various built in columns available in SharePoint 2010?
Answer:
Single line of text
Multiple lines of text
Choice (menu to choose from)
Number (1, 1.0, 100)
Currency ($, ¥, €)
Date and Time
Lookup (information already on this site)
Yes/No (check box)
Person or Group
Hyperlink or Picture
Calculated (calculation based on other columns)
Full HTML content with formatting and constraints for publishing
Image with formatting and constraints for publishing
Hyperlink with formatting and constraints for publishing
Summary Links data
Rich media data for publishing
Managed Metadata
Question.16 What is Content Type?
Answer: A content type is a reusable collection of metadata (columns), workflow, behavior, and other settings for a category of items or documents. Content types enable user to manage the settings for a category of information in a centralized and reusable manner. A content type defines the attributes of a list item, a document, or a folder. Each content type can specify properties to associate with items of its type.
Question.17 What is rating?
Answer: Rating provides user the ability to rate content (of any type, lists, documents, pages on a site, and even content types) and stores that rating information in the database. It is an assessment or classification of content on a scale according to how well the content meets specific criteria. Ratings show an average score that can range from 1 to 100.
Question.18 What is Audience targeting?
Answer: The content inside lists, libraries, web parts, etc., can be targeted to appear only for the users who are members of a particular group or audience. The audience can be identified via SharePoint groups, distribution lists and security groups.
Question.19 What are views?
answer: User can use views to see the items in a list or library that are most important to user or that best fit a purpose. For example, user can create views of the files that were created most recently, of the list items that apply to a specific department, or of the files created by one person. After creating a view, it is always available when user looks at a list or library. User can create personal views and public views. A personal view is available only to user while looking at a list or library. A public view is available when anyone looks at a list or library. To create a public view, user must have permission to change the design of the list or library. User can make a public view the default view for a list or library.[/sociallocker]
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