8 Great SharePoint Beauties: Posters and Diagrams for Admins and Devs

When you’re the only SharePoint admin or dev in the building, sometimes it gets a little lonely. What better way to spruce up that bare cubicle, and, in the process, bring some SharePoint knowledge to the neighborhood, than to put up a SharePoint diagram or poster from Microsoft? At the least, they provide at-a-glance information you’ll find handy. At best, the posters help educate staff, whether they’re IT or dev or not, and can break the ice in conversations with SharePoint users who might take your behind-the-scenes role for granted.

 1. SharePoint Server 2010 Insights

This poster shows the business intelligence (BI) tools available in SharePoint Server 2010 and their function and architecture. The BI tools include the Microsoft Excel and PowerPivot Add-in, Excel Services, PerformancePoint Services, Visio Services, and Reporting Services and Report Builder. What’s nice for newbies is that the chart has a “Getting Started” section that lays out scenarios where the tools perform best. Download it at tinyurl.com/ycm3ex8.

 2. SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Approaches

Want an at-a-glance view of how you might upgrade to SharePoint 2010 if your organization would only give you the funding to do so? This poster helps you understand the in-place, database-attach, and hybrid approaches to upgrading from SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010. It also lets you compare approaches. Getting the funding, though, is up to you. See tinyurl.com/33ducq9.

 3. SharePoint 2010 Products Deployment

Get the basics of deployment information, such as the different deployment stages and environments, plus a flowchart that illustrates the steps for installing and configuring SharePoint 2010 products. See tinyurl.com/33ducq9.

 4. Business Connectivity Services Model

Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is a set of services and features in SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 that lets you integrate data from external systems into solutions based on SharePoint. Find your way around BCS with this poster, which shows BCS architecture in SharePoint Server 2010 and provides information about how to create solutions that are based on the service. See tinyurl.com/33ducq9.

 5. Deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Geographically

In the “Oldies but Cooler-Looking-GraphicsGoodies” category is this poster. Besides, if you’re on MOSS 2007, you might want to see if you deployed SharePoint correctly between the branch office in Toronto and the home office in greater metropolitan Omaha. Find it at tinyurl.com/33ckhzn.

6. Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010

Can you sketch a picture on your lunchtime napkin of the common ways to build and scale farm topologies, including planning which servers to start services on? No? But what if you’re at lunch with some management type who asks? Better be prepared with this download at tinyurl.com/35y79cr.

 7. Hosting Environments for SharePoint 2010 Products

Does the CIO (or maybe it’s the marketing VP who reads Wired) have a yearning to get your SharePoint implementation into the cloud? Get an overview of hosting concepts, enterprise hosting, multi-tenant or shared hosting, and hosting administration by downloading this poster at tinyurl.com/37kner2.

 8. SharePoint 2010: SharePoint Developer Platform Wall Poster

In the pretty-is-as-pretty-does category, this organically inspired visual aid shows devs the SharePoint ecosystem according to, well, devs. Or maybe according to Microsoft marketing. Download for presentation to your favorite devs at tinyurl.com/36plycs. This high-level schematic should whet their appetites for more.