Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Our regional Sharepoint Specialist write this list of links and products up for a customer of ours that talks about:

• What Development Best Practices & Guidance should be given to Sharepoint developers to ensure good development practices
• What Operational tools are available to monitor Sharepoint Servers for more than just uptime but also utilization & security
• What processes should be practiced from an operations perspective to continue to maintain a Sharepoint farm

DEVELOPMENT

• Developing SharePoint Applications:  This is our latest guidance on building custom applications in SharePoint.  It provides sample/reference projects and various best practices with various aspects of the development process.  (There is a CHM file in the download for this that is a great place to start.)
  SharePoint Design Basics: This gives some guidance on some of the fundamental challenges that developers will encounter when building SharePoint applications.
• SharePoint Server Developer Center: This is a great starting point for most of our documentation around SharePoint development.  This is just one of those sites that’s good to know for reference on how to accomplish various tasks.
• SharePoint Developer Training Site:  This site contains some really good training and learning materials on various topics related to SharePoint development tasks.  Includes webcasts, online videos, samples, and more.
• Development Best Practices Checklist (non-Microsoft blog post):  Checklist of general things to keep in mind when doing SharePoint development.
• 10 Best Practices For Building SharePoint Solutions: This article is specific to SharePoint solutions (which should always be used in SharePoint development).

UTILIZATION

• Enable Usage Reporting in SharePoint:  This is how to configure the usage report capabilities of SharePoint out of the box.
• Nintex Reporting 2008:  Tool from Nintex that provides various types of reports on SharePoint usage, trends, and system activity.
• Quest Site Administrator for SharePoint:  Tool from Quest Software which gives more detail in the usage and security of SharePoint
• Universal SharePoint Manager v2007:  Tool from iDevFactory that provides reporting on: Account Security Management, Environment Management, Sites Management, List & Item Management, User Management, and more.
• AvePoint SharePoint Monitoring & AvePoint SharePoint Report Center:  SharePoint Monitor provides a real-time, graphical topology of your entire Microsoft SharePoint environment, including all your servers and their functions, relationships, roles, services, and system health. It lets you explore your entire deployment, with search filters by Domain, Server Name, IP address, and Site Collection.

OPERATIONS

• Best Practices Resource Center for MOSS 2007:  This site helps with information to keep your system available and performing well.  Includes everything from planning to ongoing maintenance.  Look at the Operational Excellence section for ongoing best practices.
• Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for SharePoint:  This tool will check for common issues and best security practices. The tool generates a report that can help you optimize the configuration of your system.