First a confession: I'm going to be almost entirely enveloped in the SharePoint for Project Managers, um, project that I mentioned in my last post for all of this week and into the next. As you may have gathered from my last post, I'm already a good ways down the rabbit hole and, as a result, what passes for "the norm" ‘round these parts may be M.I.A. for the next little while. I'll still be coming at you daily, but don't be surprised if the standard "here's what I learned" tends to be almost entirely project management-centric for a bit.
To start the week, however, we'll begin with something that started as research in the project management space, led to a reminder to follow up on something I first heard about at TechEd, and and ended in the post you're now reading. Yes, this means that as an added bonus for all of you who may be clamoring to go "behind the scenes," this post will also serve as an example of how a SharePoint Blank post comes to be. So buckle up and enjoy the ride!
While reading meetdux.com, a recently launched SharePoint blog featuring a post entitled 5 Essential Tools for Project Management (in other words, a title that was like catnip to me given my current focus), I also checked into another entry on SharePoint Hacks End Users Love. Hey, I'm an end user, and I love hacks, especially if I sense that they might be blog-worthy, so naturally I checked that post out too. As it turns out, one of the "hacks" that Dux recommends is what Microsoft calls "the Fantastic 40."
I first heard that phrase during Tom Rizzo's Intro to SharePoint session at TechEd earlier this month and, comic book geek that I am, my ears immediately perked up. OK, granted, the subject matter has nothing to do with Marvel's "first family," the Fantastic 4, but I'd be willing to place a gentleman's bet that those heroes were the inspiration for the name of this suite of SharePoint application templates that Microsoft offers for free.
With this reminder, I diligently went in search of more information on the fantastic 40, and what did I discover? Well, I discovered that these 40 templates are available for download individually, or in your choice of two packages (of 20 tempates each). The packages are broken into Site Admin Templates and Server Admin Templates. Translation: At first glance, these appear to be way over my head given my current stage of SharePoint learning. I'll have to take a closer look at some point when time permits but, for now, consider this my passing on the knowledge of the existence of these (free!) templates that Microsoft makes available to users of WSS 3.0 and up.
As a final note, Dux also helpfully points out that over at Techblog, you can see screenshots of what (most of) the Fantastic 40 templates look like once they're installed. In truth, based on the screenshots, they don't look scary, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised when I have the time to investigate further. Until then, however, I invite you to perform your own investigations and, by all means, feel free report back here!
Posted
Jun 30 2008, 08:08 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Bamboo Nation's de facto managing editor and, while he has learned much about SharePoint in his first year, he gleefully awaits the release of SharePoint 2010, and the reset button that release will represent for SharePoint Blank.