Sharepoint Resource Center

How it usually goes.

You start working on a solution, you plan it, tell client how long things should take (and somehow it always seems easier than it actually is), you start implementing things and, SharePoint being SharePoint, you inevitably run into some limitation or issue. You spend time researching, you realize a given functionality you needed can't be achieved out-of-the-box because of some silly SharePoint gotchas, you investigate some workflow extension or STSADM custom add-on to allow you to work around the issue. This takes time, you need to push back deadlines, explain the limitations to the client who will, rather understandably, say "oh, by shouldn't you have known this? You're a SharePoint specialist!"

We've all been there, haven't we?

The idea behind the "To be aware of" pages is to address this scenario to some degree. How about having pages for each functionality or area that document the different limitations, gotchas, most common issues and ways to resolve them? This could make things a bit easier. I start working on a solution - I know it will need to use InfoPath, I go to the "InfoPath>to be aware of " page and review limitations, common issues and gotchas I'll be likely to run into. I'm in a much better position now to evaluate my options, estimate the time required and plan how to resolve any issues up-front rather than running into them as I go along, spend lots of time researching, troubleshooting and finding that "Oh, I didn't know I couldn't do this or that" or "I didn't know about this limitation and I will need an extra day to work-around it" when I'm already well into the project...

So that's the main idea. At the same time, whenever I find some useful bit of information I know I should remember about, I can easily find the right page to put it on and be confident that next time I work with that area I can refer to it very easily rather than going "Oh, I remember there was this gotcha - it's documented in one of my 400+ bookmarked links... now, how the hell am I going to find it now..?"

Example 1.

The article "How to deal with orphaned SharePoint sites"  describes the process of troubleshooting orphaned sites. It gets tagged under "Sites > Orphaned sites". However, it also gives a good tip about setting your RDP connection when working remotely with STMADM. Now, this is something worth remembering so I also add the article to my "STSADM - things to remember about" page.

Example 2.

I read an article "How to Require a Unique Title in a SharePoint List" and tag it under "Fields > Title". However, I know this information will be useful next time I work with lookup columns. I create a page called "Lookups - things to remember about" and note "By default lists allow for several items with the same name to be created. This can cause issues when a list with such items is referenced in a lookup. You can avoid this issue using Jquery - see this article"

I am adding things to the pages as I go along so most of them will only have very limited content at this stage. I hope this will change as I add and "process" more articles. I also hope, if you think this approach makes sense, you can add your own findings and make this site more useful.