Questions to be asked in interview
Hi,
Can someone tells me what sort of questions should be asked on an interview for a SharePoint consultant?
Infact would it be possible to tell me what is the difference b/w a SharePoint Consultant and a SharePoint Developer?
Can you also give any sort of other ideas you might have about this?
Thank you
Ta
Gemma
Answers
First, lets talk about the five roles within SharePoint:
-
Information Worker - People who use the site. They can be in charge of an individual list, maybe even a site, but no more than that. Most times they just have enough privilege to add documents to your document library and Check-in / Check-out items.
-
SharePoint Site Admin - People who are delegated the responsibility of maintaining a site collection. These users are very much like a Power Users group within SharePoint. They have access to create additional subsites, create lists, restore documents using the Recycle Bin for other users, and so on.
-
SharePoint Server Admin - People who are responsible for creating additional Web Applications, maintaining existing ones, enforcing Quotas on site collections, verifying backups, etc. Overall they are in charge of provisioning SharePoint and maintaining a healthy SharePoint environment.
-
SharePoint Designer - People who are delegated the responsibility of customizing the SharePoint user experience, but do so in non-developer way. Typically these people are in charge of creating workflows using SharePoint Designer, adding content through the content management interface or through SharePoint Designer, and possibly are in charge of updating Layout pages or master pages to give your sites a more company intranet feel than a SharePoint intranet feel.
-
SharePoint Developer - People who are delegated the responsibility of extending the capabilities of SharePoint via solution packages and features. Solution packages and features include things like: customized lists, customized site definitions, webparts, custom content types, extremely customized workflows, custom menus, etc.
With that being said, The SharePoint Consultant would most likely take the role of SharePoint Server Admin. They might (until somebody internally can be brought up to speed) be the SharePoint Site Admin as well. Possibly (as in my case) they might even be the SharePoint Developer role as well, but don't count on that. There aren't that many developers who understand the server-side of things, and vice-versa. This is especially true with SharePoint.
Some questions to ask:
-
What is the purpose of SharePoint Products and Technologies?
- Tell me the difference between MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0?
- How does SharePoint integrate with our servers (list off server appliations you have like IIS, Exchange & ISA)?
- What about Exchange Public Folders?
- How does SharePoint integrate with Office client?
-
Describe how you implemented SharePoint in your last location.
-
Given our company's architecture, how would you implement our SharePoint environment? Nothing fancy, just a quick overview (a whiteboard or notepad will do...erase the whiteboard or shred the paper in front of them once they have comleted, so they don't think you are trying to get free consulting out of this).
I'm sure there are more to ask, but here are some answers they should supply (or thereabouts):
-
The purpose of SharePoint Products and Technologies is to provide an easy way to disseminate information to employees in a collaborative environment. Also, a way to provision sites and workspaces, data, security, etc without the developer bottleneck.
-
Please read my other post for that information: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1903414&SiteID=1
-
IIS is used to render SharePoint content from the database to the end-user. Exchange can be used as your outgoing email server for alerts, and also can be used in MySite for user email integration. ISA is your firewall, and can have publishing rules defined specifically so SharePoint can be securely viewable via an extranet environment
-
Exchange Public Folders are being phased out for SharePoint. SharePoint can have the same characteristics as Public Folders, such as document libraries to store documents, discussions, announcements, public calendars, etc. By default Exchange 2007 does not have public folders turned on.
-
Whenever Office 2003 + is installed locally, some features (such as multiple upload) lightup. Also, within MySite, a user with Office 2003 + will get a prompt to basically integrate MySite as a new placeholder location within the Office 2003 + save as dialog (the left-hand side large location icons). Office 2007 has the capability of doing Server-side properties, local drafts (a downloaded version of the document for offline editing), and publishing (for example to a blog)..
-
Some answer goes here. Determine whether he is BS'ing you at some point.
-
If it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, don't both with this question. Also, I can't stress enough how much you need them to feel they aren't giving you free consulting, so definitely erase their proposed implementation in front of them, so they know you are not looking for a free lunch. Obviously you need to briefly describe your organization for this to work. Hopefully they come up with something worthwhile. Site collections are security and quota boundaries, so I always use a department-based site collection architecture. I would (depending on the number of employees, departments, etc) probably recommend the root site being the generic company portal, and then creating site collections under /departments/ managed path. Basically an architecture similar to http://server/ - CompanyWeb, http://server/departments/hr/ - HRWeb, http://server/departments/it/ - ITWeb, etc.
I hope you found this useful.
-
All Replies
First, lets talk about the five roles within SharePoint:
-
Information Worker - People who use the site. They can be in charge of an individual list, maybe even a site, but no more than that. Most times they just have enough privilege to add documents to your document library and Check-in / Check-out items.
-
SharePoint Site Admin - People who are delegated the responsibility of maintaining a site collection. These users are very much like a Power Users group within SharePoint. They have access to create additional subsites, create lists, restore documents using the Recycle Bin for other users, and so on.
-
SharePoint Server Admin - People who are responsible for creating additional Web Applications, maintaining existing ones, enforcing Quotas on site collections, verifying backups, etc. Overall they are in charge of provisioning SharePoint and maintaining a healthy SharePoint environment.
-
SharePoint Designer - People who are delegated the responsibility of customizing the SharePoint user experience, but do so in non-developer way. Typically these people are in charge of creating workflows using SharePoint Designer, adding content through the content management interface or through SharePoint Designer, and possibly are in charge of updating Layout pages or master pages to give your sites a more company intranet feel than a SharePoint intranet feel.
-
SharePoint Developer - People who are delegated the responsibility of extending the capabilities of SharePoint via solution packages and features. Solution packages and features include things like: customized lists, customized site definitions, webparts, custom content types, extremely customized workflows, custom menus, etc.
With that being said, The SharePoint Consultant would most likely take the role of SharePoint Server Admin. They might (until somebody internally can be brought up to speed) be the SharePoint Site Admin as well. Possibly (as in my case) they might even be the SharePoint Developer role as well, but don't count on that. There aren't that many developers who understand the server-side of things, and vice-versa. This is especially true with SharePoint.
Some questions to ask:
-
What is the purpose of SharePoint Products and Technologies?
- Tell me the difference between MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0?
- How does SharePoint integrate with our servers (list off server appliations you have like IIS, Exchange & ISA)?
- What about Exchange Public Folders?
- How does SharePoint integrate with Office client?
-
Describe how you implemented SharePoint in your last location.
-
Given our company's architecture, how would you implement our SharePoint environment? Nothing fancy, just a quick overview (a whiteboard or notepad will do...erase the whiteboard or shred the paper in front of them once they have comleted, so they don't think you are trying to get free consulting out of this).
I'm sure there are more to ask, but here are some answers they should supply (or thereabouts):
-
The purpose of SharePoint Products and Technologies is to provide an easy way to disseminate information to employees in a collaborative environment. Also, a way to provision sites and workspaces, data, security, etc without the developer bottleneck.
-
Please read my other post for that information: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1903414&SiteID=1
-
IIS is used to render SharePoint content from the database to the end-user. Exchange can be used as your outgoing email server for alerts, and also can be used in MySite for user email integration. ISA is your firewall, and can have publishing rules defined specifically so SharePoint can be securely viewable via an extranet environment
-
Exchange Public Folders are being phased out for SharePoint. SharePoint can have the same characteristics as Public Folders, such as document libraries to store documents, discussions, announcements, public calendars, etc. By default Exchange 2007 does not have public folders turned on.
-
Whenever Office 2003 + is installed locally, some features (such as multiple upload) lightup. Also, within MySite, a user with Office 2003 + will get a prompt to basically integrate MySite as a new placeholder location within the Office 2003 + save as dialog (the left-hand side large location icons). Office 2007 has the capability of doing Server-side properties, local drafts (a downloaded version of the document for offline editing), and publishing (for example to a blog)..
-
Some answer goes here. Determine whether he is BS'ing you at some point.
-
If it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, don't both with this question. Also, I can't stress enough how much you need them to feel they aren't giving you free consulting, so definitely erase their proposed implementation in front of them, so they know you are not looking for a free lunch. Obviously you need to briefly describe your organization for this to work. Hopefully they come up with something worthwhile. Site collections are security and quota boundaries, so I always use a department-based site collection architecture. I would (depending on the number of employees, departments, etc) probably recommend the root site being the generic company portal, and then creating site collections under /departments/ managed path. Basically an architecture similar to http://server/ - CompanyWeb, http://server/departments/hr/ - HRWeb, http://server/departments/it/ - ITWeb, etc.
I hope you found this useful.
-
Thank you very much for replying in that much detail
I'm glad.
Just out of curiosity looking at the amount being paid to SharePoint consultant what sort of path I would take to become one?
Bearing in mind that I already work with some SharePoint sites and also develop some webparts.
Ta
Gemma
Feel free to send us an email at help@sharepoint911.com. We would be happy to relay our experiences we have taken and what works and what has not.
Nicola Young
Gemma wrote: Thank you very much for replying in that much detail
Just out of curiosity looking at the amount being paid to SharePoint consultant what sort of path I would take to become one?
Bearing in mind that I already work with some SharePoint sites and also develop some webparts.
Ta
Gemma
We are in the middle of creating a course that is for SharePoint Administrators. There are a lot of server products you need to know before you even should touch SharePoint. A good SharePoint consultant would know SQL, IIS, Windows Server 2003 (Group Policies, Active Directory, delegation, Performance Counters, etc), ASP.NET 2.0 configuration files and Code Access Security (CAS policies), Exchange, possibly Live Communication Server, possibly ISA, and the list goes on. Our particular course goes over everything I've listed up to CAS policies. We are debating as to the delivery method right now, but we feel there are enough "point-and-click" SharePoint courses out there. Our course is aimed to teach you how to implement SharePoint Solutions.
Hi Curtis,
Where abouts you're going to start the course. Can you email me course details including fee and delivery method to gemma-j|at|hotmail.co.uk.
I reside in north east of england.
ThanksGemma
I would be interested in such course, I live in south east England (place is not a problem any where is fine), please post here if you know any.
Cheers
A
I will post here when we finish it. We are still in the middle of Q & A testing it now.
Any update on this please?
Andrew
