Monday, February 14, 2011

My "Mastering Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010" book is releasing for purchase on Valentines day!



UPDATED UPDATE:
Just a quick update-- the book, Mastering Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, is in stock and available on Amazon, Prime shipping, two day delivery. (Yay) Interestingly, almost as soon as they had some in stock to sell, they were down to one book. I have to assume that is because of the pre-orders. And if that is the case, big thank you to all of you who pre-ordered.

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Microsoft-SharePoint-Foundation-2010/dp/0470626380/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=IW4IHPKD5J3PF&colid=1DPHWYF9PWK9R

Due to the difference in the name on my SharePoint books, the WSS book has "C.A. Callahan" on it, and the SPF book just has "Callahan", Amazon has had some confusion concerning the byline for the books, and which book goes to what author page. They are sorting it out, but if you do notice there is some oddness there, they are working on it as we speak.

In addition, we have sorted out the tiny, little mistakes in the original product description of the SharePoint Foundation book, so now it more closely represents the content inside.

 UPDATE:
Turns out that the book is available from the Wiley site to purchase today (Valentines day): http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470626380,descCd-tableOfContents.html, but it is not yet available on Amazon (I must admit, I was a little disappointed). I will be updating this post with the actual date the book will be available for shipment from Amazon as soon as I find out.

.....

The day has finally come. As of Monday Feb. 14th, 2010, Valentines day, Mastering Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010-- the book I've been working on for at least a year-- has been printed and is available for purchase (and shipment).

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Microsoft-SharePoint-Foundation-2010/dp/0470626380/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=IW4IHPKD5J3PF&colid=1DPHWYF9PWK9R

The cover of the book has gone through a few incarnations. First, it was going to look like my previous Mastering Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 book; a white Mastering Series cover with burgundy and black text, and a compass on the bottom half of the cover. Kind of classy.

Then, I discovered that the cover had been changed, showing a stark, white server room with people in motion, and an orange box in the middle containing the title of the book.

But, as of last week, I noticed yet another cover for the book- hopefully, this is the cover that will be the final one- of a person standing at a workstation in front of a server rack (in a room full of servers apparently), all in silhouette, with a green box in which the name of the book is located. I rather like the look, and green is my favorite color.

The first part of the description of the book, something I did not write, is not entirely what the book is about (the publishers do try). This book is basically the updated version of the last- so it is a comprehensive look at SharePoint Foundation (as much as I could cram into about 1300 pages) from the ground up:

  • From how to plan and prepare for SharePoint Foundation, to both types of installation (a chapter is devoted to each)
  • To how to use SharePoint (from the interface, to web parts, to lists, libraries, sites, subsites, workspaces, site collections and web applications)
  • To how to administer SharePoint (users and permissions, maintenance, monitoring, and disaster recovery)
  • To more advanced topics, such as a detailed, step by step look at how to migrate from WSS 3.0 to SharePoint Foundation, to an introduction to PowerShell for SharePoint, and a quick reminder of how to use STSADM (SharePoint's command line administration tool)
  • And finally advanced installation and configuration- covering detailed step by step information of how to, install additional servers for the farm, with a detailed overview of how to load balance them (using Windows Server's own network load balancing service as an example), as well as how to set up SSL, Kerberos, external data types using Business Data Connectivity (or BCS for some people) and SharePoint Designer 2010, and finally, a quick look at what an administrator needs to know about installing Office Web Apps.

As you can see, this book contains far more information than just what has changed since the last version (and doesn't really go into Exchange Server at all). Instead it is a one stop shop to help server administrators master SharePoint Foundation, giving you the grand tour, cover to cover.

And keep in mind-- there are bonus chapters on the web for the book: one is a lot of extra material, things I wanted to keep in the book but didn't have space, concerning extra coverage of web parts, lists and libraries. The other is about 24 pages of tables that go along as an addendum to the PowerShell and STSADM chapter. It is an extensive and convenient list of PowerShell and their corresponding STSADM commands, organized loosely by where their equivalent setting would in Central Administration. This bonus material is being completed and uploaded as we speak (well, you know what I mean), so feel free to stop by and grab them (the link to the content is listed in the introduction to the book).

So if a thorough and detailed book intended to give IT administrators mastery over SharePoint Foundation (and deep preparation for the foundational functions of SharePoint Server 2010 as well), then this book may be for you.

Special thanks to all of my reader reviewers and loyal attendees over this last year. The reader reviewers read every version of every chapter, giving me precious feedback, and answering my questions about if the information I was covering was what the readers want and if how I covered it will work for them, given the fact that all of this stuff had to be fit into just 1300 pages (or less-- the last book, without all the new features of SharePoint Foundation, was 1100 pages). It was a long, rather arduous labor of love for me, and is flatly all written for the audience of the WSS 3.0 Mastering book and all the students, attendees, and others who need a thorough, practical explanation of SharePoint Foundation. I tried to give you all what I would have needed if I was looking for a book to teach me, as server admin, what I needed to know to get my server up and running, and keep it running through thick and thin. Remember, this is not in any way a book for developers. There is no coding (except, maybe, when explaining how to use PowerShell), this is just for administrators who actually manage SharePoint, from top to bottom.

There should be a link on the right side of this blog that takes you to the Amazon page for ordering Mastering Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, for your convenience. Feel free to give it a click and take a look (you can see if the cover has changed again, for starts...).

Something to remember: Now that the book is done, I will be posting a lot more on this blog, as this is the way I keep in touch with my readers concerning changes to the product due to service packs, new things I've learned, and any presentations I am doing-- particularly the free ones, I want to do a lot of free presentations in relation to the book.

Please feel free to leave me comments or post to my errata account (servergrrl.wss at gmail dot com) if you find any errors or issues with the book. I was, by far, not the only person who worked on the book (it turns out it takes a village to write a book). And between me rushing to finish (or rushing my contributors), and the technical editor, developmental editor, copy editor, proof reader, production editor, compositor, and even indexers, things I wrote, and pictures I took, may have changed far outside of my control by the time the book is printed (notice the number of editors, they are in charge of editing sentence structure, grammar, layout, capitalization, and more, and can do so without me). If there is an error, I really, really want to know personally-- so I can fix it here for you and all who might need to know the correction before they come across it too.

I'm happy to have done this work for you. I hope you enjoy it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ordered the book from Amazon.ca today. Can't wait to dig into it.

Callahan said...

Thank you Wes! Please let me know what you think of it. It was a challenge to write. : )

Ricardo said...

We bought the previous book and found it excellent. When we decided to finally set up a SharePoint site for our firm, we looked for the new edition. We were not disappointed after buying it, and are really grateful for all the work that had to be put into the book to make it happen.

We followed up some of the links in the book ok, but that for the bonus chapters at sybex.com did not work. Could you look into this?

Thanks again for all this insight.

Callahan said...

Thank you Ricardo, for your kind words. I am glad that the SPF book is working out for you.

Thank you also for bringing to my attention that the extra materials link for my book at Sybex is not available.

Most of the links in the book were referred to by myself or my contributors to access resources we knew were good (because there were often screenshots of the products they pointed to-- so we couldn't have gotten the products without using those links).

However, I had to trust that the link Sybex gave me was going to be good for those resources after the book published. Obviously something has gone wrong there. I will be contacting them to see what the problem is as soon as possible. I had assumed the link was there and working (for at the very least, the powershell/STSADM appendix, there had been some confusion with the editors about my web parts/lists/libraries content). So thanks again for letting me know. Please keep an eye on this comment thread, I'll posting here as to the outcome of this issue. : )

Callahan said...

Ricardo,

Could you please contact me directly via email (my email's in the introduction of the SPF book)? I've been having a heck of a time finding people this summer, between vacations and people travelling for conferences. I'd like to send you the content directly while waiting for them to get back to me.

Arnie said...

Is this a good book to use if one will be implementing Office 365 with Sharepoint?

Callahan said...

Arnie,

I hadn't intended it to be for Office 365 (it hadn't come out yet when I wrote it). But it covers a lot of the fundamentals of SharePoint, regardless of "where" it is. Depending on your Office 365 subscription, you will be able to do a lot of the administration, at least at the site collection level. Also, as far as I know- the vast majority of the Using section of the book is relevant.

BTW-- I am currently working (again) on the bonus material for the book that will be online at the Wiley site for the book (finally) later this year. It will augment the Web Part, List, and Library chapters (actually, it's all the material they made me take out). So in addition to what's in the book, check back here for when I'm done and you'll have oodles of additional tips, tricks, and info that will very likely be useful for someone using Office 365. HTH

Anonymous said...

Bonus material for the book is still not available at the Wiley book link. I do see an ebook available now but still do not see the bonus content. I sure could use that extra webpart/list/lib material for a project I'm working on right now. :) The book itself is incredibly helpful and well written. I'm really interested in what was cut prior to its publication. Thank you! Shayne

Callahan said...

Shayne,

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. There should be at least one bonus chapter available online. I'll check into this again and see where they are. Their website is glacially slow to change. I am really disappointed about that.

The content that was cut was largely info about web parts (particularly doing nifty things with content editor and page view web parts, web part libraries and dashboards), more stuff with lists (particularly wanted to work with more conditional stuff, intro SPD so we could look at customizing buttons and adding more workflows), and more library stuff (again with the web part library, further playing with library metadata, docicon.xml, pdf/rtf ifiltering, and an update on the infopath library since that changed after the book went to print. I also wanted to do more with Office web apps than the brief, single server intro I did, keep ADAC, since no one else mentions it, and do a quick demo of forms-based authentication to tie up the claims based web app Charles created in his site collection chapter. It kind of seems like an open wound to me not being dealt with.

Thank you for your kind words about the helpfulness of the book. I spent more than a year writing it (and fighting with the editors for practically every, single screenshot). Please don't be surprised if I self-publish next time. LOL

Could you please contact me directly via email or the feedback form on my little www.callahantech.com site? I might be able to hook you up with the rough draft (not formatted all pretty for print) of my bonus web parts/lists/libraries chapter to help you with your project while we wait for Wiley to catch up.

Thanks.
-callahan