SharePoint Interview QA

1. What is sharepoint?

SharePoint is a browser based document collaboration platform given by Microsoft.
Microsoft often defines sharepoint as a business collaboration platform. In other way its is also a rich framework for developing business collaboration solutions. Sharepoint is a platform for building websites, both intranet and internet web sites.
It is a collaboration platform for users, customers or whoever using the sharepoint web site.

2. What are the minimum software and hardware requirements to install sharepoint 2010?

Operating system: microsoft windows server 2008 or microsoft windows server 2008 r2, but for development purpose you can install sharepoint 2010 on windows 7 and microsoft windows vista sp1/sp2. All operating system should be 64 bit.

Database: sharepoint 2010 requires database of Microsoft sql server 2005 sp3 or Microsoft sql server 2008 or r2. Also all should be 64bit.
Application server: sharepoint 2010 requires iis7 +.

.net framework: sharepoint 2010 requires Microsoft .net framework 3.5 and sp1 is preferable

3. What are sharepoint 2010 main features?

Sites: ribbon ui, sharepoint workspace, sharepoint mobile etc.

Communities: tagging, tag cloud, rating, social networking feature, my sites, blogs and wikis, my profile etc.

Content: enterprise content type, metadata and navigation, document sets, remote blog storage, audio and video content types, list enhancements etc.

Search: fast search integration, social relevance.

Insights: excel services, visio services, web analytics, sql server integration etc.

Composites: business connectivity services, info path form services, external lists, workflows, sharepoint designers, visual studio, rest etc.

4. What is sharepoint central administration?

This is designed to administer and monitor a sharepoint server farm. Here you can configure servers and servers’ roles, define farm topology, and create new web applications and site collections. This basically a sharepoint site. The main features included here are: application management, monitoring, security, general application settings, system settings, back up and restore, upgrade and migration and configuration wizard.

5. What is a site collection and web application?

A site collection is a logical container that holds a set of websites, hosted in a web application. If you want to publish internet or intranet web site then you need at least a web application and one site collection.
To create a new site collection we need a parent web application.

6. What are the site templates available in sharepoint?

There are 5 different site templates available in sharepoint 2010, from which you can create sites. And they are:

Collaboration: it has templates for team site, blank site, document workspace, blog, group work site etc.

Meetings: it has templates for basic meeting workspace, blank meeting workspace, decision meeting workspace, social meeting workspace, and multipage meeting workspace.

enterprise: it has templates for document center, records center,powerpoint broadcast site, business intelligence center, enterprise search center, my site host, basic search center, and fast search center.

Publishing: it has templates for publishing portal and enterprise wiki custom: here you can define your own custom templates.

7. What is a sharepoint list?

Everything is stored in sharepoint in form of list. They are similar to database. Lists have item, fields and views. Items are like a row in a table. Fields are like columns in a database table. Views display information from list.

8. What is the difference between a document library and a form library?

Document libraries consist of your core documents. an example would be a word document, excel, powerpoint, visio, pdf, etc… form libraries consist of xml forms. Like InfoPath

9. Difference between library vs list?

library is used to store the document and lists are the container of similar items in form of rows and columns. In library you can create core document like word, excel, powerpoint. But in list you can not create document, instead of that you can attach document in a particular list.

10. What is a workflow?

Workflows are the way an organization functions, a series of actions that correspond to a work process, such as the process for purchase orders.sharepoint 2010 helps you automate these workflows, thereby increasing the efficiency and productivity of the organization

11. What is different with sharepoint 2010 workflows ?

Some of the additions in workflow model are :
1. Sharepoint 2010 workflows are build upon the the workflow engine provide .net framework 3.5.
2. In addition to the sharepoint lists we can now create workflows for sharepoint sites as well.
3. Sharepoint designer 2010 also has a new graphical workflow designer for designing workflows and deploying them directly to sharepoint.
4. Another improvement in sharepoint designer 2010 is that it now allows you to edit the out-of-the-box workflows that come with sharepoint.

12. What are the types of workflow that you can design in sharepoint 2010.

You can design list workflows, reusable list workflows and site workflows using sharepoint designer 2010.

13. What reusable list workflows and site workflows ?

Reusable list workflows -

You can create a reusable list workflow (reusable workflow) in the top-level site in the site collection, and that workflow can be made globally reusable — meaning that the workflow can be associated to any list, library, or content type in the site collection. You can also create a reusable workflow in any subsite in the site collection; this workflow is available for reuse in that particular subsite.

Site workflows - a site workflow is associated to a site — not to a list, library, or content type. So unlike most workflows, a site workflow is not running on a specific list item. Because of this, many of the actions that are available for items not available for site workflows.

14. What is windows powershell ?

Windows powershell is a new windows command-line shell designed especially for system administrators. In the sharepoint administration context, windows powershell is another administration tool that supersedes the existing stsadm.exe.

15. How is windows powershell different from stsadm ?

Unlike stsadm, which accept and return text, windows powershell is built on the microsoft .net framework and accepts and returns .net framework objects. In addition to that it also gives you access to the file system on the computer so that you can access registry,digital signature certificate etc..

16. What has changed in sharepoint 2010 object model?

Ans. Microsoft has replaced the “12 hive” structure that we had in sharepoint 2007 with “14 hive” structure in 2010.

It has apparently added four new folders to its hive.

The folders are:
* policy
* usercode
* webclients
* webservices

17. What is a sharepoint feature? What files are used to define a feature?

A sharepoint feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a sharepoint instances, scope of which are defined as
1. Farm level 2. Web application level 3. Site level 4. Web level
features have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature is
installing, uninstalling, activated, or deactivated.
The element types that can be defined by a feature include
menu commands, link commands, page templates, page instances, list definitions, list instances,
event handlers, and workflows.
The two files that are used to define a feature are the feature.xml and manifest file(elements.xml). The feature xml file defines the actual feature and will make sharepoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.

18. What is the difference between method activity and event activity in workflow ?

A method activity is one that performs an action, such as creating or updating a task. An event activity is one that runs in response to an action occurring.

19. What are content types?

A content type is a flexible and reusable wss type definition (or we can a template) that defines the columns and behavior for an item in a list or a document in a document library. For example, you can create a content type for a leave approval document with a unique set of columns, an event handler, and its own document template and attach it with document library/libraries.

20. What is web part page life cycle?

OnInit – Configuration values set using WebBrowsable properties and those in web part task pane are loaded into the web part.

LoadViewState – The view state of the web part is populated over here.

CreateChildControls – All the controls specified are created and added to controls collection. When the page is being rendered for the first time the method generally occurs after the OnLoad() event. In case of postback, it is called before the OnLoad() event. We can make use of EnsureChildControls() - It checks to see if the CreateChildControls method has yet been called, and if it has not, calls it.

OnLoad

User Generated Event – for e.g. button click on the web part.

OnPreRender – Here we can change any of the web part properties before the control output is

drawn.

RenderContents – Html Output is generated.

SaveViewState - View state of the web part is serialized and saved.

Dispose

UnLoad.

21. What is the webpartmanager sealed class? What is its purpose?

The webpartmanager sealed class is responsible for managing everything occurring on a webpart page, such as the webparts (controls), events, and misc. Functionality that will occur in webpartzones. For example, the webpartmanager is responsible for the functionality that is provided when you are working with moving a webpart from webpartzone to webpartzone. It is known as the “the central class of the web part control set.”

22. What does allowunsafeupdates do?

If your code modifies windows sharepoint services data in some way, you may need to allow unsafe updates on the web site, without requiring a security validation. You can do by setting the allowunsafeupdates property.

 23. What does runwithelevatedprivileges do?

There are certain object model calls models that require site-administration privileges. To bypass access-denied error, we use runwithelevatedprivileges property when request is initiated by a nonprivileged user. We can successfully make calls into the object model by calling the runwithelevatedprivileges method provided by the spsecurity class

24. What does spweb.ensureuser method do?

Checks whether the specified login name belongs to a valid user of the web site, and if the login name does not already exist, adds it to the web site.
E.g spuser usr = myweb.ensureuser("hitenders");

25. What is a spsite and spweb object, and what is the difference between each of the objects?

The spsite object represents a collection of sites (site collection [a top level site and all its subsites]). The spweb object represents an instance sharepoint web, and spweb object contains things like the actual content. A spsite object contains the various subsites and the information regarding them.

26. What does a spwebapplication object represent?

The spwebapplication objects represents a sharepoint web application, which essentially is an iis virtual server. Using the class you can instigate high level operations, such as getting all the features of an entire web application instance, or doing high level creation operations like creating new web applications through code.

27. Would you use spwebapplication to get information like the smtp address of the sharepoint site?

Yes, since this is a web application level setting. You would iterate through each spwebapplication in the spwebapplication collection, and then use the appropriate property calls (outboundmailserviceinstance) in order to return settings regarding the mail service such as the smtp address.

28. How do you return sharepoint list items using sharepoint web services?

In order to retrieve list items from a sharepoint list through web services, you should use the lists.asmx web service by establishing a web reference in visual studio. The lists.asmx exposes the getlistitems method, which will allow the return of the full content of the list in an xml node. It will take parameters like the guid of the name of the list you are querying against, the guid of the view you are going to query, etc.

29. What is caml, and why would you use it?

Caml stands for collaborative application markup language. Caml is an xml based language which provides data constructs that build up the sharepoint fields, view, and is used for table definition during site provisioning. Caml is responsible for rending data and the resulting html that is output to the user in sharepoint. Caml can be used for a variety of circumstances, overall is used to query, build and customize sharepoint based sites. A general use would be building a caml query in a sharepoint webpart in order to retrieve values from a sharepoint list.

30. What are event receivers?

Event receivers are classes that inherit from the spitemeventreciever or splisteventreciever base class (both of which derive out of the abstract base class speventrecieverbase), and provide the option of responding to events as they occur within sharepoint, such as adding an item or deleting an item

31. When would you use an event receiver?

Since event receivers respond to events, you could use a receiver for something as simple as canceling an action, such as deleting a document library by using the cancel property. This would essentially prevent users from deleting any documents if you wanted to maintain retention of stored data.

32. What deployment mechanism can you use to instigate code access security attributes for your webparts?

Sharepoint solution files can add in order to handle code access security deployment issues. This is done in the element in the sharepoint solution manifest.xml, which makes it easier to get assemblies the appropriate permissions in order to operate in the bin directory of the web application.

33. What is moss?

Moss stands for Microsoft office share point server. Moss is a portal based platform for complete management of documents & web services. It is a platform for creation of customized web based applications & portals like blogs, wiki etc. Moss provides security features and can be configured to return separate content based on the fact that the user has logged on using internet, intranet or extranet.

Moss provides extra features as compared with wss

consolidation of all the team sites within the organization

enterprise search : search through different sources within the organization with one

interface (portals, mail, erp, crm ...)

Central personnel data base with extended search capabilities, linked (or not) to

internal personnel management.

Business data catalog (bdc): default link to external systems (e.g. Crm/erp)

report center : central management of all reports and data connections.

Excel services : provides excel features in the web browser.

Creation of web-based e-forms, full web-browser access.

34. What is stsadm command?

stsadm command is used to perform all administrative work. For e.g. Backup, restore, installing feature, adding web part to site etc.

35. What is the command to take backup and restore for sharepoint site?

Ans backup command:

stsadm -o backup -url http://moss:4002/ -filename c:\bkupsite.bak

to restore :

stsadm -o restore -url http://moss:4004/ -filename c:\bkupsite.bak

36. What is a farm?

A sharepoint farm is a collection of one or more sharepoint server which having a single configuration database

37. What is a site?

Site is a collection of web pages which is used to store information in organised way.
Site stores list of documents, discussion, events, task and many other types of information.
Site provides controlled access to share information among user. I.e. Only authorize users are allowed to access shared information.

38. What are web parts in sharepoint?

Web parts are the fundamental building blocks for share point user interface, and with them we can build and integrate many different types of applications.
Webparts are smallest component in sharepoint. Web parts are used to give more functionality to the page. In sharepoint we have custom web part as well as ready made 3rd party web part. You can create a custom web part by using visual studio
various web parts available in sharepoint web part gallery are:
data view web part, content editor web part, form web part, excel web access web part, image web part etc.

39. What is web application in sharepoint?

 In sharepoint webapplication is a iis website. Each web application is associated with one iis website. For each web application, content database is created.

40. What is bdc?

 Bdc i.e. Business data catalouge. It is a middleware for your sharepoint site and back end data such as sap, siebel and any other line of business application.
In bdc you can not modify data from your sharepoint list. It will be available to your site in read only.
In sharepoint 2010 it is named as bcs (business connectivity services). Bcs is two way, i.e. Data can be edit from sharepoint list as well from the back end data base.

41. What is workspace?

 A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on web pages, lists and document libraries.

For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project,collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.

42. What is a meeting workspace?

A meeting workspace is a place to store information, attendees, and tasks related to a specific meeting.

43. What is a document workspace?

Document workspaces consist of information surrounding a single or multiple documents

44. What is the difference between an internet and an intranet site?

 An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g., www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password.

An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on the web, can only be accessed by people who are members of the network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator

45. What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?

A user can be assigned one of the following roles
readers - has read-only access to the web site.

Contributor - can add content to existing document libraries and lists.

Web designer - can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the web site.

Administrator - has full control of the web site.

46. What are the types of authentication available for SharePoint 2010 ?

Claims
windows
forms-based authentication

Claims is a new authentication method that sharepoint 2010 can utilize. This allows a single authentication store for multiple types of authentication (windows ntlm, sql fba, ldap, etc) which allows all of these types of authentication to access SharePoint under a single url.

Claims create a small token based on the sign-in, that contains the user’s identity.

Classic authentication supports nt authentication types like kerberos, ntlm, basic, digest, and anonymous. Claims based authentication uses claims identities against a against a trusted identity provider.

47. What are the steps to implement forms authentications in SharePoint?

1.     Setup the membership data store

2.     Add a new user to the membership data store

3.     Configure SharePoint Central Administration web.config

4.     Configure the SharePoint site's web.config

5.     Enable Forms authentication on the SharePoint site

6.     Authorize the Forms-based user to access the site

7.     Login

48. What is linq to sharepoint ?

Linq is a feature of the programming languages c# 3.0 and visual basic .net

linq adds, to each of the languages, a sql-like syntax and vocabulary for querying data sources.

Linq to sharepoint allows developers to use sql-like syntax to query lists and libraries in sharepoint.

Linq to sharepoint internally converts the linq query to a caml query to fetch records

advantage:

 Intellisense,strongly typed access to the entities of the list,faster development,simplify complex queries

Disadvantage :

 If the new columns are added or its datatype changed, the datacontext class used by linq is no longer valid and may break the code

49. Explain types of SharePoint sites

Types of SharePoint sites:

wiki: this is usually where everyone is allowed to add/change content for a common knowledgebase.

Blog: this type of site is for posting specialized articles or information for everyone to read.

Publishing site: this site is used to approving particular content before it’s published to everyone.

Document library: a site mainly used for document management purposes.

Download site: this type of site helps in monitoring the count of downloads and track them.

List or forum: the idea is to have specific people post a topic and then allow others to comment on the posts.

Survey: usually a site that’s accessed by everyone for conducting a survey.

Dashboard: the idea of a dashboard is for business executives to gain information and perform reporting tasks.

50.  What is a sandboxed solution?

When user writing custom code then it is not trusted, its failure causes on entire site. So the sandbox solution concept is used. In that case program is only written for particular site & solution is uploaded in the same site. The solution size limit is decided at the time of site creation & if size increases or code showing bad performance then it is easy to administrator to stop the working of solution.

We can create sandbox solution for particular site but not for the entire site collection or farm. It is not applicable for farm solution. There are some restriction while creating the sandbox solution.

51. Which are default master pages in Sharepoint 2010?

1. v4.master - This is default master page.
2. default.master - this is used to support the 2007 user interface
3. minimal.master
4. simple.master- it is used for accessdenied.aspx, confirmation.aspx, error.aspx, login.aspx, reqacc.aspx, signout.aspx & webdeleted.aspx pages.

52. Which is faster a webpart or a user control?

A webpart renders faster than a user control. A user control in sharepoint is usually loaded by a webpart which adds an overhead. User controls however, gives you an interface to add controls and styles.

53. how can debugging share point application and timer jobs ? with steps?

Steps 1:build application place .dll into gac and reset iis
steps 2:On the Debug menu, select Attach to Process
steps 3:select the Show processes from all users check box.
steps 4:select W3W.exe and OSWTIMER.exe can attach
steps 5:refresh sharepoint site point break point

54. What are New Features and Enhancements in SharePoint 2010 

1.      New User Interface including Ribbon

2.      Built-in SilverLight Support

3.      Rich and Improved Theming Support

4.      Multiple Browser Support

5.      Rich Media support and Digital Asset Management

6.      SharePoint Workspace

7.      Sandboxed Solutions

8.      Stsadm command-line tool is superseded by Windows PowerShell 2.0

9.      Redesigned Central Administration web site

10.  Shared Service Provider (SSP) no more exists (SharePoint 2010, all services are running as independent Service Application. You can select and configure from available services to run on an application server. You can also select and configure only required services for a particular web application)

11.  Business Connectivity Services (BCS)

12.  Developer Productivity Enhancements

13.  SharePoint Designer Enhancements

14.  Business Intelligence Enhancements

15.  Enhancements related to Large List Handling

16.  Workflow Improvements

17.  Social Networking Capabilities

18.  Deployment Advancements

I felt that doing this would enable a person who understood SharePoint 2007 get a grasp of 2010 in one shot, rather that go through the maze of documentation thats available.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007	SharePoint Server 2010
Office client required to view and edit documents uploaded to document libraries (Download and open)	Office Web Application enables Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Visio documents, using Silverlight or HTML with JavaScript (Depending on Browser Support)
No Co-Authoring Capability	Co-Authoring Capabilities available for Word, PowerPoint (with client software) and Excel (Available over the web)
Lot of post backs	Fewer post backs for default actions – more Ajax usage
No inherent support of Ajax or Silverlight	Fully supported
Static themes. You just pick a theme and its applied across the site, no preview	You can select a theme , customize it and preview before applying it on the site
No bookmarking, tagging or rating capability	Its all there
Content Types scoped to site collections	New concept of having a Content Type hub which can be shared across web applications
Media files would have to be downloaded before playing	Progress download feature available (not streaming)
BDC used to store info in SharePoint	BCS reads data real-time (with some caching for performance)
5 million item limit in document library	10 million
Views are CAML driven	Views XSLT based
To query a list we had to use CAML	Queries via LINQ, JavaScript and Silverlight API’s
No restriction for installation	Ability to prevent people from installing SharePoint (Managed at the AD level)
Shared Services scoped to Farm	Shared Services architecture changed to make it more flexible and ability to share across farm
Profile synch could be done by anyone	Additional permission check for account to carry out profile synch
Basic web Analytics	Web analytics capability enhanced
Search results are static	Clicking on a search result affects the search results for the other searches for the same keyword
To limit issues with rogue code that could bring down the server, CAS had to be defined /maintained for different applications. This was not easy to do and Admins used to say – no code allowed	Sandbox available that restricts the scope of code. Deployment is also easy, the code just needs to be uploaded by the site admin, no need for intervention from the SharePoint farm admin to run scripts on the server
People with contribute access could upload .aspx pages in a document library. It was possible to restrict, however it would restrict everyone from uploading .aspx pages	People with contribute access cannot load .aspx pages
Contributors could edit tool pane parameters	Not editable by contributors
Explorer view on browser	Opens up Windows explorer with web dav access
Simplistic Mobile Page OOTB	Able to create richer mobile pages using OOTB features
Usage of outlook for offline access	SharePoint Workspace used for offline access – more capability eg. ability to synch up lists (even external content from BCS)
Not possible to have a common document ID that is associated with a document regardless of which document library it moves into	Document ID can be defined and associated to the document regardless of where it is located(within the site collection)
To upload a document or page, one needs to go to that appropriate site/subsite and library and upload	Content organizer moves document to appropriate libraries based on metadata rules which can be defined
When a file with a same name is uploaded, it creates a new version	Option to have another version or append a unique ID to the document being uploaded
Fixed layout with defined web part zones where web parts can be placed	More “Fluid” UI; ability to place web parts without having web part zones
Retention policy allows only delete or invoke workflow by default	Multiple other options – eg send to another library etc
EBS – to store docs out side SharePoint, possible but not easy to configure	RBS - managed by SQL
Requires Server OS to install(32 or 64)	Can be installed on Win 7 (64 bit) and Win 2008 (64 bit)
No field validations	Field validations available
Workflows created in SPD or VS.Net – not possible to move a workflow developed in SPD to VS.Net	Workflows can be defined in Visio, Imported to SPD with rules added and then moved to VS.Net
Table based layouts	Div Based layouts (better for accessability)

55. What is the use of SharePoint_Config database?

SharePoint 2010 uses SharePoint_Config database to store farm configurations and contents. This database gets automatically created whenever you deploy the farm for the first time.

56. What is a Content database?

SharePoint 2010 uses content database to stores content for one or more Site Collections. Content can be items, documents, documents versions, pages, images etc.

You can deploy multiple Content Databases for a single web application.

57. What sharepoint databases are created during the standard install?

Ans. The databases that are automatically created when you run the sharepoint products configuration wizard for sharepoint server 2010, standard edition -
1. Secure store database - the secure store service application database stores and maps credentials, such as account names and passwords. Prefixed with "secure_store_service_db_".
2. State database - the state service application database stores temporary state information for infopath forms services, the chart web part, and visio services. Prefixed with "stateservice".
3. Web analytics staging database - the staging database temporarily stores un-aggregated fact data, asset metadata, and queued batch data for the web analytics service application. Prefixed with "webanalyticsserviceapplication_stagingdb_"

4. Web analytics reporting database - the reporting database stores aggregated standard report tables, fact data aggregated by groups of sites, date and asset metadata, and diagnostics information for the web analytics service application. Prefixed with "webanalyticsserviceapplication_reportingdb_"
5. Search service application administration database - the administration database hosts the search service application configuration and access control list (acl), and best bets for the crawl component. This database is accessed for every user and administrative action. Prefixed with "search_service_application_db_".
6. Search service application crawl database - the crawl database stores the state of the crawled data and the crawl history. Prefixed with "search_service_application_crawlstoredb_'.
7. Search service application property database - the property database stores information that is associated with the crawled data, including properties, history, and crawl queues. Prefixed with "search_service_application_propertystoredb_"
8. User profile service application profile database - the profile database stores and manages users and associated information. It also stores information about a user's social network in addition to memberships in distribution lists and sites. Prefixed with "user profile service application_profiledb_".
9. User profile service application synchronization database -the synchronization database stores configuration and staging data for use when profile data is being synchronized with directory services such as active directory.prefixed with "user profile service application_syncdb_".
10. User profile service application social tagging database - the social tagging database stores social tags and notes created by users, along with their respective urls.prefixed with "user profile service application_socialdb_".
11. Managed metadata database - the managed metadata service application database stores managed metadata and syndicated content types. Prefixed with "
managed metadata service_".
In addition to all the databases created with standard edition, enterprise addition install adds two more databases :
1. Performancepoint service application database - the performancepoint service application database stores temporary objects, persisted filter values, and user comments. Name prefix "performancepointserviceapplication_.."
2. Word automation services database - the word automation services database stores information about pending and completed document conversions.name prefix "wordautomationservices_..."

note : you do not have to use these naming conventions. You can either specify database names when you create them, or change the database names after they have been created.