Editorial Review
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is the next generation of Microsoft SharePoint technologies. These products expand on SharePoints information-sharing and collaboration capabilities, which allow you to create true enterprise information management, information sharing, and collaboration solutions.
SharePoint 2007 Users Guide: Learning Microsoft's Collaboration and Productivity Platform is the follow-up edition to the successful SharePoint 2003 Users Guide (Apress, 2005). This book provides guidance about the new workflows, interface, and other technologies within SharePoint 2007. Authors Seth Bates and Tony Smith describe SharePoint in a variety of environments, and have the expertise and ability to stand behind this useful guidecatered to anyone who works with SharePoint technologies in any capacity.
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Customer Reviews
Okay but wordy 
2008-03-28
There are several books available for SharePoint installers and admins and designers, but there really aren't many out there for end users. This is one of the few, and it does cover most of the important subjects. It has a few shortcomings:
+ The language is not very approachable. Long sentences, tedious writing, and a bit too formal.
+ It makes assumptions about user permissions. It often says, "You can do x, y, and z," but the truth is that the user has to have the right permissions in SharePoint to do all those things.
+ The screenshots have no callouts, so you have to study them closely to find what's important.
+ The authors take the old-style documentation approach, in which they describe the program in great detail, but rarely tell you how to use the program to accomplish real world tasks. For example, they frequently mention that document workspaces allow for collaboration, but never tell you what that collaboration might look like.
Despite those shortcomings I'm giving the book a generous 4 stars because I did learn about SharePoint by reading it. If your environment also includes Office 2007, you might want to wait for the end-user book by Vanessa L. Williams in the For Dummies series (NOT "SharePoint 2007 for Dummies," which is for admins.)
Overly verbose 
2008-03-20
I found this book to have an overly verbose and repetitive writing style, reading almost like an advertisement for SharePoint. I kept thinking to myself `get to the point'. If you enjoy reading for reading's sake you might enjoy this book. However, if you are looking for tips and tricks to becoming SharePoint wizard you'll find yourself bogged down in the long-winded passages and begging for more substance.
Just what I was looking for 
2008-01-01
I've got a bookshelf full of generic, IT-oriented Sharepoint administration books. They cover everything under the sun with respect to designing, deploying, configuring, and administering Sharepoint... if you're a network engineer. But this is the first book I've seen that I could just hand to a customer or a manager to help them start using the product as it was intended. It's full of easy-to-follow instructions and even some good ideas for scenarios on building different workspaces. I've bought this book twice. It should be part of the deliverables for any Sharepoint project.
Very helpful 2007-09-21
Recommended for "Power-Users," or those people that are comfortable working in Office, etc. Not for techies, per se, and perhaps a bit much for the average user. Get it for those people that will comfortably read a 300 page book on a computer program and then actually do something with it. Don't get it for those whose permissions you wouldn't dare leave without significant restrictions.
Has been very helpful to me as someone new to SharePoint. Only 4 stars because it's a bit much for the average user that we have in our organization -- I 'm not sold that I could distribute this as a User's Guide and expect increased understanding of how it works from the typical user. Perhaps it takes this much detail to present the information, but the lack of a general "how-to" or "quick-start" section makes me think that most users will be intimidated by the size and scope of the book and never crack it open.
However, from a Power User perspective, this book is excellent. The writing is clear and well-organized. I've been able to find just about everything I've needed to understand and answered most questions that have come to mind. I like how the book presents the different choices available, without shoe-horning you into the author's preferred choice. Comparing it to explanations available online, the information it typically presented better in this book.
Excellent book for various skill-level users. 2007-09-07
This book is easy to use both as a learning tool and a reference tool. The many examples provided give good background on the context of the desired function, and explicit, step-by-step instructions. The book has lots of "usage" suggestions.
Decent SharePoint 2007 User's Guide 2007-08-20
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is the next generation of Microsoft SharePoint technologies. These products expand on SharePoints information-sharing and collaboration capabilities, which allow you to create true enterprise information management, information sharing, and collaboration solutions.
SharePoint 2007 Users Guide: Learning Microsoft's Collaboration and Productivity Platform is the follow-up edition to the successful SharePoint 2003 Users Guide (Apress, 2005). This book provides guidance about the new workflows, interface, and other technologies within SharePoint 2007. Authors Seth Bates and Tony Smith describe SharePoint in a variety of environments, and have the expertise and ability to stand behind this useful guidecatered to anyone who works with SharePoint technologies in any capacity.
Valuable reference guide to make the most out of SharePoint functionality 2007-08-05
We have learned our lesson that the more we customize in SharePoint 2003, the harder it is to upgrade to SharePoint 2007. Going forward, we want to leverage more of the out-of-the-box functionality and stay away customizations. This is a great reference book for making the most out of SharePoint. If you know the functionality you want in team-collaboration sites (e.g. project team site, deal site, product site) or information-sharing sites (e.g. research & publication site, HR & benefits site), it is a valuable resource to understand various building blocks and know which tool to use.
I do not recommend this book for developers, but found to be useful for power-users, business analysts, functional analysts, content managers, MsOffice specialists or anyone else who wants to learn what you can do with SharePoint.
A bit of a disapointment 2007-07-09
For a technology book, it's well below par.
The majority of the content in this book is just a repackaging of the help available in SharePoint; and much of that is pretty well obvious. I knew zero (nothing) about SharePoint before getting this book. I found that the organization and presentation of information in the book didn't parallel any sandbox/tutorial workflow, nor did it approach topics from any broader "good design" perspective. To date, well more than 90% of my SharePoint answers have come from the web, not this book.
The chapter on "list concepts" was helpful, and probably saved me some time and effort. For that alone it was worth the $26. But overall, I was hoping for a better book based on the early reviews I read (Note: only the April-07 reviews were here when I bought the book).
Our end-users love this book!! 2007-06-07
I am a network engineer working for a renowned pharmaceutical company. We implemented SharePoint 2007 back in January. Training our end-users was a real challenge until I got a hold of this manual. I consider the SharePoint 2007 User's Guide as a great supplement to end-user training. A excellent end user reference book that is well written and easy to follow. Our older SharePoint 2003 users that want or need to brush up their skills see real value in this book. You will not be the least bit disappointed with this buy. I highly recommend it.
User's Guide great for its intended audience 2007-06-05
For any orgnaization that is implementing SharePoint for end-user use, this book is an extremely valuable. The documentation on Microsoft's website and within the help links within the Sharepoint portal are nearly unusable for an end-user, and definitely cannot be used as an initial learning guide. This book takes up the slack. If you have "power" end-users in your organization who will be using the out-of-the-box features of Sharepoint to customize their portals, this book is for them. It can also be used as a reference for learning how to implement features and navigate through the various setup menus.
S. Taylor (stusrt) - This is not a technical reference - it is for end users - "SharePoint 2007 User's Guide". While this book touches on how to programatically customize Sharepoint, it is not the main purpose. Once you have programmed your portal, and now need to release it to end users, give THEM this book. You'll be happy about how few questions you will get back about using Sharepoint, since they will be well informed.
