Introduction

In 2003 Microsoft released Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003, making their first true move into enterprise content management (ECM). It may not be a stretch to say they also created an entirely new technology space: collaborative document management. Seven years later, Microsoft launched the fourth version of SharePoint Services, now known as SharePoint Foundation (MSF), and the new server product is now called Microsoft SharePoint Server (MSS). These releases included new and refined features specifically targeted at the document management needs of an organization.

The rapid adoption of these ECM features inspired this book, which covers many major topics of this sophisticated platform. Most of the content comes from experience either building products on SharePoint 2010 or implementing them on customer sites. We hope that this cumulative experience will help others who are trying to create and meet the challenges of their own document management processes.