SharePoint Office Pocket Guide: Document Collaboration in Action

I am an IT Administrator and we have installed SharePoint Services. The first hurdle is always training the users. I found this book to be very informative and easy to follow and therefore a good training tool. I recommend it to the our users for learning the ins and outs of Sharepoint. It leads the reader through the steps of using SharePoint. It has lots of good information for a new user in a concise format.

Microsoft is banking on SharePoint being a major selling point of the new version of Office. But you might be struggling to get your mind around what exactly SharePoint Office is. Jeff Webb has written a pocket guide that helps give a structure to that task... SharePoint Office Pocket Guide. Contents: Why Use SharePoint?; Start with SharePoint; Share Meetings with Outlook; Workplaces with Excel; Document Libraries with Word; Gather Data with Lists or InfoPath; Office Version Compatibility; Online Resources; Index A little disclosure up front... I make my living doing software development on the IBM Lotus Notes/Domino platform. This is the same ground that SharePoint is trying to stake out for their own... collaboration software. As such, I just *may* be a bit biased about the software itself. But from a book perspective, Webb does a pretty good job highlighting what SharePoint can offer. After going through the book, I at least have a mental framework as to how SharePoint works and what it takes to modify the software. I don't know how useful the book would be as a regular reference point once you've started to use the software. Some of the material seems to be high-level coverage (like the InfoPath information) that wouldn't be used once you've gone beyond the basics. And after seeing all the additional software you need to span the entire spectrum of SharePoint (FrontPage 2003, Office 2003, InfoPath 2003, Office Reader, Visual Studio.NET), it seems like you'd quickly outgrow this book. But giving it to an end-user as initial training could definitely fulfill a need... As a quick way to figure out what it is you don't know, this book works well...

What can you say about SharePoint in 72 pages? Quite a lot. This tiny tome won't fit in your pocket unless you wear bigger jeans than me, but it does fit in my purse. I suppose Purse-Guide doesn't have the same ring, though. On to business: this guide is just the core stuff you need to know if you use SharePoint Service sites from Microsoft Outlook, Excel, and Word. It teaches you how to: Choose the type of site to create. Create sites and workspaces. Add members. Change pages by adding/changing web parts. Create PDF Libraries (!!!). Link desktop documents to workspace copies. Reconcile changes among users. Review change history. Create lists. Build look-up tables. Creae highly customized list data entry forms. And a lot more. It even has an index and an appendix for online resources. I've seen quite a few bigger user guides with less info. It doesn't cover installation and admin stuff that most users don't care about. (Warning to system administrators: you'll need a bigger book!) I'll stop now before this review gets longer than the Purse, um...Pocket, Guide. -- Tara