MOSS Interview Questions And Answers

MOSS stands for Microsft 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.

Architecture of MOSS:

Office Sharepoint Server: This layer manages excel services, infopath forms services, project server, enterprise search, policy, single sign on, business data catalogs.

Asp.Net Forms: This layer lies beneath Office Sharepoint Server layer. It is the layer responsible for Asp.Net based sites.

Windows Sharepoint Services: This is a collection of windows services which is used by sharepoint to connect to the database and can be used for development purposes.

Development tools: On the left is the collection of various development paradigms that can be used to perform development and create various webparts, or read and get information from WSS using Visual studio.

Page layout defines the look and feel of a Web page. Content for the page is stored in fields on the page. When you view or edit a page, the content is displayed in the field controls.

The types of fields on a page are determined by the content type for the page. Each content type contains columns. When you create a content type, you add column templates to the content type for each field. Column templates determine the default field control that is associated with the columns as well as the kind of content the field can contain, such as a single line of text, a hyperlink, or a picture.

Types of page layout columns:

Scheduling Start Date: displays the date and time when the page is visible on a site.

Scheduling End Date: It contains the date and time in which the page is no longer visible on a site.

Contact: contains the name of the person or group who created the page.

Contact E-mail Address: Page Content: contains the name of the page layout associated with each instance of a page. contains the e-mail address of the person who created the page.

Contact Name: contains the name of the person who created the page.

Contact Picture: contains the picture of the person you can contact about the page.

Page Content: contains the name of the page layout associated with each instance of a page.

Six pillars of MOSS2007:

Collaboration: SharePoint allows for collaboration by integrating workspaces, tasks, forums, surveys, blogs, RSS feeds and Wikis.

Portal: SharePoint is a portal framework built using multiple portlets known as web parts. It offers Master pages which can be used for maintaining consistency across the portal. The portal offers a single sign on access or information along with various search capabilities. The portal also has seamless integration with Visual studio, which can be used to build custom web parts to be used in SharePoint portal.

Enterprise search: MOSS includes ACL-aware search across both local and remote data stores with features that enable specialized search for people and expertise. It offers Business data store integration which helps in indexing the databases for searches.

Web & Enterprise Content Management: MOSS offers document management capabilities including versioning capabilities, check in/out, document locking, rich metadata, workflows, policies, role-based access controls on different levels i.e. library, folder, document levels.

Forms driven Business Process: MOSS offers XML based InfoPath forms which are available on a variety of platforms including mobile devices.

Business Intelligence: Websites in MOSS offers a rich dashboard on macro level. The B.I. capabilities offered include server-based Excel Services and Excel Web Services API's, line of business application and data repository integration, and more sophisticated abilities to monitor key performance indicators.

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.

Synchronous event are the ones in which the caller needs to pause to wait for a response. The fact that it waits for a response means that the call is a “blocking” call to the event handler. This gives the thread that encountered the event an opportunity avoid executing code that the event identifies undo the effects of code that the event identifies.

Asynchronous event is one in which the caller continues without pausing for a response. This allows concurrency between both the caller and the method being called.

Advantages:

Sharepoint provides simple user experience because of simple and consistent interface.
Provides good control over the content. It allows effective content management to increase the business value.
Simplify organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information.
It allows us to group and connect people based on the kind of information.
It allows data sharing without leaking out the sensitive information.

SharePoint’s structure is made up of Site Collections and Sites. Explain them

Site collections: SharePoint is a collaborative medium which uses websites. The structure involves site collections which then include a list of sub-sites, all structured in a hierarchical manner. All the sites under a site collection have a common set of administrative settings, which enable maintaining consistent look and feel, features and branding among those sites. Every site collection has a top level site to begin with. The advantages of organizing a site collection are:

Sharing of libraries, galleries, branding, and consistent look and feel.

Unified way of administering multiple sites in a single collection including, security, policies, features, reports, BI etc.

Provides scalability in terms of a web farm, as each site can use its own content database which can be moved around as well.

Enables sharing of site columns, content types, web parts, authoring resources, workflow and other authoring features.

Enables unified navigation, search capabilities.

Sites: Sites are based on templates and may or may not have unique content and settings. Every site may have a unique template as needed. Some of the features of sites:

One can use language specific templates to create various sites

Define unique users/groups for every site.

Have every site its own welcome page and or other pages.

Use master pages or define unique layouts

Manage colors and skins through themes

Have different settings on sites based on regional settings

Have unique search capabilities within different sites

Have unique workflows in different sites.

Master pages provide a base look and feel and standard behaviors that are needed for all of the pages in your site. The content page combines with the layout of the master page to form the complete output. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation is built on top of Microsoft ASP.NET, therefore, it supports master pages for defining elements that are common to all pages.

Advantages of Master Pages:

People can save their time and resources by making design changes in one place they will be reflected in all pages that use the master page. The User interface can be reused.

More consistent pages and a better end-user experience

Ways to author content:

Browser-based authoring: Content creators and editors work directly in the web browsers through MOSS based features like Page editing toolbar, HTML editor toolbar.

Smart-client authoring: Content creators and editors work in any of the authoring applications and then use MOSS for document conversion to convert the content into a Web page format like HTML.

Workflows are implementation of business processes allowing people to collaborate on documents through various project tasks assigned to individuals. They enhance productivity and organization of work in an organization. This enables people to only concentrate on tasks given to them. It’s basically a planned series of tasks assigned to individuals to achieve an outcome.

Workflows included in MOSS:

Approval

Collect Feedback

Collect signatures

Disposition approval

Three-state

Group approval

Translation management

Overall MOSS workflows target at higher productivity keeping collaboration and business processes in mind.

Components of workflow architecture:

One can create workflows using Visual Studio2010 workflow designer. Every single workflow is compiled into its own dll. One needs to create a Workflow definition (XML based) to use it in a farm. The xml consists of the following information:

Name, GUID and description of the workflow

Location of any custom forms being used by this workflow

Correct class within the assembly that is to be called.

Each server farm contains an association table for workflow, which links various workflows to the content type, list or document it applies to. It also includes information regarding how the workflow is initiated i.e.by users or automatically along with the tasks associated with that workflow.

In Moss, a method activity is one that performs an action, e.g.: creating/updating a task. However, an event activity is a cascading one which runs in response to an action which has occurred.

Ways to initiate a workflow:

Once a workflow has been linked to a document, one can start the workflow by selecting the workflow that you want from the list of workflows available for the document or item. If needed, one may have to fill a form with the information that is needed by the workflow. Based on how the workflow was configured, it might be possible to customize it and start it.

There are basically 3 ways, Manually, When new list item is added, and When a new list item is updated.

Steps to implement workflows in MOSS:

Add workflow to a document library, routing document to different people for approval
Document author starts the workflow and creates document approval tasks, and assigns these tasks to various participants/people.
Author sends an email to various participants with task instructions and a link to the document in question.
As participants complete their actions one after the other, they can view the status of the document.
The workflow ends when all participants have completed their tasks regarding the document.
Author of the workflow is notified via an email after the workflow has ended.

Types of workflow supported:

Sequential: Sequential workflow as the name suggests simply depicts the fact that there is a collection of tasks which need be completed in a sequence one by one. The workflow progresses as each and every single task is completed in the workflow.

State: This category of workflow includes collection of states of the document (which it can be in). The workflow progresses based on how the state of the document changes and progresses.

MOSS has the capability for a workflow participant to fill an initiation form to start a workflow. The initiation form can have fields that support:

Single line of text

Multiple lines of text

Number (up/down counter arrows)

Yes/No (Checkbox)

Choice (dropdowns)

Date and time (calendar)

Types of input forms:

Association, Initiation, Modification and Task edit.

MOSS has the capability for a workflow participant to fill an initiation form to start a workflow. The initiation form can have fields that support:

Single line of text
Multiple lines of text
Number (up/down counter arrows)
Yes/No (Checkbox)
Choice (dropdowns)
Date and time (calendar)
One can use these to create forms by using custom application pages (aspx pages), which are deployed to run out of the _layout directory on MOSS server or using Microsoft Office Infopath 2007

DPM is designed for the Sharepoint Administrator using a variety of wizards and workflows to help ensure protection of data. It provides the following benefits in terms of MOSS:

Provides Built in support for Sharepoint services (WSS) and MOSS
Provides consistency checks for windows sharepoint server farms
Re-validates only those parts of a windows sharepoint services replica for which data backup is inconsistent.
Provides support for MOSS with Mirrored SQL Server databases.
Presents the data to be protected in the same context as user accesses it. Sharepoint Administrators simply select the farm to be protected, DPM understands what components need to be backed up

Data Protection Manager provides the ability to backup an entire sharepoint farm including the SQL Server databases, metadata, farm configuration files and indexes for federated search. Bakups can be automated to occur upto 4 times an hour based on the need. DPM starts by backing up a baseline copy of the sharepoint environment. It then there onwards performs full backups on regular basis using the sharepoint VSS writer and underlying component VSS writers to identify blocks or fragments of the farm and content databases which have changed. It is designed for sharepoint administrators and provides them with wizards and workflows to help protect the data. It represents data to be protected in the same context as the user accesses it.

Difference between MOSS and MOSS for Internet sites:

MOSS
Content, information, and applications are meant to be used by internal people/employees.

Needs License for MOSS and CAL (client access Licenses) for each client accessing it.

Used for Intranet Portals

MOSS standard licenses for database and servers.

MOSS for Internet sites
Content, information, and applications are meant to be used by external people.

Does not need CAL. License only needed for MOSS for Internet Sites.

Used for extranet/Internet facing portals.

Acquire External Connector (EC) licenses for each copy of the Windows Server 2003, SQL Server software that will be accessed by your external users only.

Sharepoint based websites can be configured to be password protected to restrict access to users. Only registered users can then access it and an invitation to those users is sent via email. Moreover, they also support roles, enabling administrators to restrict certain members based on their roles to certain permissions. When adding a new user, one may store their email address and request sharepoint to send an email to the user to enable them to access the sharepoint based website. Shrepoint itself provide with web pages to administer users, user groups, roles and permissions to ensure security and ease of user management on sharepoint based websites.

To make a sharepoint website public, enable anonymous access for the entire site. One can then pass on the url for the website through emails etc and allow public users to access the sharepoint website.

Steps to make a sharepoint website public:

Login as an administrator
Click on site settings
Click on Go to Site Administration
Click on Manage anonymous access
Choose one of the three conditions on what Anonymous users can access:
Entire Web site
Lists and libraries
Nothing

To make My Site public turn on anonymous access. Steps to do so:

Click Site Settings, On your Products site.
Under Administration, click Go to Site Administration.
On the Site Administration page, under Users and Permissions, click Manage anonymous access.
In the Anonymous Access section, click Entire Web site or Lists and libraries.
To turn off anonymous access, in the Anonymous Access section, click Nothing.
Click OK

Advanced features of MOSS 2007:

My site personal site: Provides users an opportunity to aggregate information into “for me, by me, about me”.
User profiles and profile store: Enables every user to store profile information.
Audience targeting: Allows use of Webpart based pages, Web parts, and content to target distribution lists and groups.
Infopath forms services: Enable designing web based forms and distribute them on intranets, internet. User can use the forms in a browser, or even mobile devices supporting browsers without any client components.
Business data catalog: Allows for integration of external data into MOSS. This provides the users with a consistent GUI experience. Enhanced workflow engine
Provides BI and reporting capabilities
Provides records management capabilities.

A collection of sites along with the top level site is known as a single site collection in Sharepoint. While creating a new Web Application, one has to follow creating a site collection to specify the content of the web application. A web application can thus even contain thousands of site collections. The web application is needed to host those site collections. Web application is the logical & physical partition/container within IIS to create portals.

The Sharepoint Site Server has search capabilities which are more advanced using SharePoint. It uses digital dashboard technology, which provides a nice interface for creating web parts and also allows showing them on dashboards pages. Site Server on the other hand, does not have anything as advanced as that. The biggest difference would be Sharepoint Portal Server’s document management features which also integrate with web folders and MS Office.