SharePoint Admin Interview Questions and Answers

1. What do you know about the Microsoft SharePoint?
Answer: SharePoint is a document storage and management system that has wide applications in organizations. It simply enables organizations to store their documents in an error-free manner on different domains without worrying about anything. However, the scope and applications of SharePoint are not just limited to this; they have a lot of other applications as well. The users are free to get a lot of favorable outcomes in the server domain as well. (sharepoint admin interview questions and answers)

2. What are the Layout Pages in SharePoint?
Answer: A Layout page defines the Layouts(structure including Web part zones) of a content page in SharePoint. Layout pages are not the same as Master Page. A Layout Page is contained inside the content area surrounded by the mater Page.

3. What permissions are required to perform operations?
Answer: You need to be a member of the WSS_ADMIN_WPG group to perform deployments for the SharePoint server. Also, you need to be added into administrators group on a computer on which SharePoint Server or WSS 3.0 is installed. In addition to this, you need access to the required SharePoint databases so that you should not get errors while deploying SharePoint solutions.

4. What are the Permission levels in SharePoint?
Answer: Permission levels in SharePoint are:

  • Limited Access – They can view Application Pages, Browse User Information, Use Remote Interfaces, Use Client Integration Features, etc.
  • Reader – Limited Access permissions plus: View Items, Open Items, View Versions, Create Alerts, Use Self-Service Site Creation, View Pages.
  • Contributor – Read permissions plus: Add Items, Edit Items, Delete Items, Delete Versions, Browse Directories, Edit Personal User Information, Manage Personal Views, Add/Remove Personal Web Parts, Update Personal Web Parts.
  • Design – Contribute permissions plus: Manage Lists, Override Check-Out, Approve Items, Add and Customize Pages, Apply Themes and Borders, Apply Style Sheets.
  • Administrator – Has full control of the Web site.
  • Full Control – All permissions. (Software Training online)

5. Explain the concept of Content-type in SharePoint?
Answer: SharePoint has a facility of Contents, hence the Content-type is referred to as a reusable collection of settings and metadata to represent a particular content. For example, an employee content type may have a set of metadata like employee_id, employee_name, salary, etc. It helps organize the content in a more meaningful and organized way. It also supports the inheritance of all properties and appearances.

6. What is a SharePoint Farm?
Answer: SharePoint Farm is a collection of one or more SharePoint server(s) working together to provide a set of
SharePoint Services. Servers in a SharePoint Farm normally share common resources and owns a single Central Configuration database.

Web Applications Vs Site Collections Vs Sites in SharePoint.
SharePoint Site is a website. SharePoint allows us to create websites of specific types like a Personal site, a Team Site, a social media site, blogs or a Wiki Site, etc.

On the other hand, a Site Collection in SharePoint is a collection of SharePoint sites that share common features like Content types, Templates, Site columns, permissions, Web Parts, etc.

A Web Application is a collection of Site Collections in SharePoint OR in order way a site collection resides in a
web application. Normally a SharePoint web application corresponds to a website in IIS means when a SharePoint Web application is created, it creates a WebSite and an Application Pool in IIS.

Above can be understood by the following diagram:

WebApp Vs SiteCollection Vs Site.

7. What are Master Pages in SharePoint?
Answer: Master Pages in SharePoint serves the same purpose as that of ASP.NET Master Pages. Certain parts of a web page normally remain the same as a header, footer or navigation bar, etc. So, We create Master Pages with these common parts to achieve a consistent look and feel for a SharePoint Site.
Using Master pages provides lots of benefits including:

Common Controls in one location only
Writing less Code and Centralized Updating
Better User Experience
Flexibility
Easier management of SharePoint Sites. 

8. What is a Sub Site?
Answer: A subsite is a single SharePoint site within a site collection. A sub-site can inherit permissions and navigation structure from its parent site or can be specified and managed independently.

9. What is Site Columns?
Answer: 
A site column is a reusable column definition or template that the user can assign to multiple lists across multiple SharePoint sites. Site columns are useful if user organization wants to establish some consistent settings across lists and libraries.

10. What Are Content Databases?
Answer: A content database can hold all the content for one or more site collections.

11. How can you say that SharePoint can enhance employee engagement towards the work?
Answer: Employees have to handle a lot of burden and pressure when it comes to managing information, data or documents. It often results in common mistakes. The SharePoint is equipped with so many features and the users are free to keep up the pace in the long run for managing everything easily and coming up with superior outcomes. It assures employees to have quality in their work and they can save a lot of time. Also, the documents can be managed, located and accessed anytime the need for the same is felt. Thus, the overall engagement of the employee towards an objective can easily be enhanced.

12. How Is Sharepoint Portal Server Different From The Site Server?
Answer: SharePoint Portal Server:
Web site creation for information sharing and document collaboration is treated as services by SharePoint Portal Server.
SharePoint server services are key information worker infrastructure that provides additional functionality to the MS Office system applications. Site Server:
Manages websites with multiple technologies
Content management, product management, order processing, advertisement serving are some of the functionalities. 

13. What Is The Difference Between Classic Mode Authentication And Claims-based Authentication?
Answer: As the name implies, classic authentication supports NT authentication types like Kerberos, NTLM, Basic, Digest, and anonymous. Claims based authentication uses claims identities against a trusted identity provider.

14. What Is A Site Collection?
Answer: A site collection contains a top-level website and can contain one or more subsites web sites that have the same owner and share administration settings.

15. How the Web interface in the SharePoint can be used?
Answer: When it comes to configuration, the SharePoint needs a web browser. The web-based interface simply enables users to have direct access to several configuration capabilities. However, it all depends on the level of permission the user has. Depending on the same, a user can have a lot of applications.

  • The web interface can simply enable users to manipulate the entire structure of the content.
  • The users are free to add or remove apps
  • Navigation options can easily be modified
  • A lot of features of the product can easily be enabled or disabled
  • Custom designs can easily be uploaded
  • Integration can be done with Microsoft products
  • Basic workflows can be configured easily
  • Metadata management can be done in a very reliable manner
    Customizations can be uploaded

16. What are the various Input forms that you as a user can create for a WorkFlow in SharePoint?
Answer: These are Modification Form, Installation Form, Task edit Form as well as Association form.

17. How can you say that SharePoint is Collaborative Software?
Answer: SharePoint has a lot of groupware abilities due to which it is widely known. The users are free to get the results in a manner they cannot expect with traditional document managing approaches. It has been equipped with a lot of features such as project scheduling. Moreover, the users are free to access it in a social collaborative manner. In addition to this, enterprises can share mailboxes. Also, the storage of all the documents related to a specific project can be accomplished in a very reliable manner. 

18. In the SharePoint, how the users can create a Task Notification?
Answer: First of all, open the designer and opt to create a fresh task list. The next step is to create a workflow that is associated with the task list. The terms and conditions for use are them imposed in the next step. The mailing address is to be mentioned after this and then the same is assigned to the subject lookup. After this, the workflow is activated and finally the same is published. 

19. What is the purpose of the callout function present in the SharePoint?
Answer: It is a feature that enables the users to simply access different commands on the list. Some key examples are handling navigation links, adding new items and monitoring the tasks. On the navigation list, all the tasks can be accomplished in one go and the users have no reason to worry about.

20. What do you mean by the term Farm in SharePoint?
Answer: In SharePoint, the farm is nothing but a collection of SharePoint Servers having the configuration database similar.

21. What Has Changed With Ssp In Sharepoint 2010?
Answer: In SharePoint 2010 Shared Service Providers (SSP’s) are replaced by Service Applications. Services are no longer combined into an SSP. They are running independently as a service application. The service application architecture is now also built into Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, in contrast to the Shared Services Provider (SSP) architecture that was only part of Office SharePoint Server 2007.

A key benefit here is that all services are installed by default and there is no SSP setup.

Additional improvements to the service application model include:

The services architecture is extensible, allowing third-party companies to build and add services to the platform.
Services are managed directly in Central Administration (rather than a separate administration site).
Services can be monitored and managed remotely.
Services can be managed and scripted by Windows PowerShell™.
Shared services communications take place over HTTP(S). Shared services do not directly access databases across farms.
Most new services are built on the Windows Communications Framework. They have optimization built into their protocol, using binary streams instead of XML for data transfer. Test results show improvements in network throughput with this change.

22. What are Content Types in SharePoint?
Answer: It is a WSS type definition which is present in the SharePoint. It is quite flexible and reusable. It defines the column and the overall behaviors or an object in a document library.

23. What Are Web Application Policies?
Answer: Enables security policy for users at the Web application level, rather than at the site collection or site level. Importantly, they override all other security settings. 

24. What do you mean by CALM in the SharePoint?
Answer: It stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language. It is the custom XML language in the SharePoint which is used for defining some important objects as well as the content types.

25. What Are Web Applications In Sharepoint?
Answer: An IIS Web site created and used by SharePoint 2010. Saying an IIS virtual server is also an acceptable answer.

26. When Would You Use Claims, And When Would You Use Classic?
Answer: Classic is more commonly seen in upgraded 2007 environments whereas claims are the recommended path for new deployments.

27. What Has Changed With 12 Hive In Sharepoint?
Answer: Three New Folders have been added in 12 hive structure.

UserCode – files used to support sandboxed solutions.
WebClients – used for the Client Object Model.
WebServices – .svc files .
How would you re-deploy the old custom solutions in SharePoint 2010? Changes are needed to the old Solution files?

SharePoint 2010 object model contains many changes and enhancements, but our custom code will still compile and, will run as expected. You should, however, rewrite and recompile any code that refers to files and resources in “12 hive”.

28. What is a SharePoint Solution File? How does it differ from WebPart .cab files in legacy development? What does it contain?
Answer: A SharePoint solution file is essentially a .cabinet file with all a developer’s custom components suffixed with a .wsp extension that aids in deployment. The big difference with SharePoint solution files is is that a solution: allows deployment to all WFE’s in a farm is highly manageable from the interface allowing deployment, retraction, and versioning Can package all types of assets like site definitions, feature definitions (and associated components), WebParts, etc. Can provide Code Access Security provisioning to avoid GAC deployments And much more.
What is a .ddf file and what does it have to do with SharePoint Solution creation?
A .ddf file is a data directive file and is used when building the SharePoint solution bundle specifying the source files and their destination locations. The important thing for someone to understand is that the .ddf file will be passed as a parameter to the MAKECAB utility to orchestrate the construction of the SharePoint solution file.

29. What Are The Hardware And Software Requirements For Sharepoint 2010?
Answer: Hardware requirements :
Processor 64-bit, four-core, 2.5 GHz minimum per core.
RAM 4 GB for developer or evaluation use, 8 GB for single server and multiple server farm installation for production use.
Hard disk 80 GB for installation For production use, you need additional free disk space for day-to-day operations. Add twice as much free space as you have RAM for production environments.
Software requirements :

The 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Standard with SP2. If you are running Windows Server 2008 without SP2, Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies 2010.

30. What do you mean by MOSS?
Answer: It stands for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and is a full version of a portal-based platform for effective managing and creating the documents and web services.

31. Is it possible to manage the projects in the SharePoint? How?
Answer: Yes, it is possible and for this, there are several facilities available in the SharePoint such as
dashboards that contain custom KPI. The information regarding the graphs and status updates can be grabbed from the same. Also, their other features that can help a lot in this matter.

32. What do you mean by the term “OneDrive for Business”?
Answer: One Drive for Business means all the documents related to an organization are kept in a single drive which can be on a cloud. A lot of synchronization can easily be assured without compromising with the quality and security of the documents. The authorized users are free to share and explore the entire information without any restrictions. You simply need not worry about anything when it comes to accessing the documents. The SharePoint is a good approach that can be trusted for this. It is capable to cater all the data needs in a cloud as well.

33. What Are Requirenments For Sharepoint 2010?
Answer: SharePoint Server 2010 will support only 64 – bit. It will require 64 bit Windows Server 2008 or 64 bit Windows Server 2008 R2. In addition to this, it will require a 64-bit version of SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit version of SQL Server 2005.

34. What are the features of SharePoint that makes it a reliable tool according to you?
Answer: SharePoint is a good tool that has been provided some of the most basic to dynamic features and they are spotlighted below.

It is capable to follow the sites, documents, people, as well as tags
Previews of files and documents can easily be created
Group sharing is possible
Discussions forums are good enough to derive any sort of information
Data integration can be done easily
Security updates are available concerning the time

35. What type of data or the information is there in the content database in SharePoint?
Answer: It provides information regarding the report models,
Information on all the reports that get published
Various permissions associated with the different tasks
Properties of different applications
Sharing of data resources and how this can be done
Managing the resources

36. Tell the procedure of creating a list in SharePoint?
Answer: This can be done by first tapping on the app link and adding a custom list. Under the site contents, you can then open the app section. The next step is to click on the custom list and mention the description. This is how a list can be created in the SharePoint.

37. What sort of applications does SharePoint have in Custom Web Applications?
Answer: SharePoint has vast application in Custom Web Applications. All the users are free to get the results in the way they want through this approach. SharePoint is capable to offer an extra later of services which simply make sure of quick prototyping of all the web applications. Developers can make sure of integrating the corporate directories as well as the data sources through the various standards imposed on document assessment. SharePoint also has information management capabilities that are good enough to be trusted in a lot of development platforms. Moreover, there is a dedicated app store that is equipped with applications that are best for encapsulating the resources.

38. How can you say that SharePoint is a better option than traditional data sharing document approach?
Answer: SharePoint Traditional Approaches

  • Data can be accessed securely and reliably There are more security concerns
  • Multitasking is possible with files, documents and reports The same is not allowed
  • Can handle web applications development and content management Not all traditional tools in this class are capable of the same

39. What are the benefits of using SharePoint in an organization according to you?
Answer: There are certain benefits that SharePoint can bring in an organization and a few of them are spotlighted below.

It is possible to replace an existing corporate file server with the help of this tool
It has been equipped with features such as access control remotely. This often makes it a secure approach
Documents can easily be archived and a lot of storage space can be saved easily
It has scalable features when it comes to confidentiality and authentication. The users are free to keep up the pace simply
SharePoint is economical and is good enough to be trusted for the long run
It can easily cut down the need for new staff.

40. What are the steps required for the SharePoint to act like an Organizational Platform?
Answer: The steps that are required to make the SharePoint act like an organizational platform is as follows:

1. The individual groups that are already present in the SharePoint consist of the collaborative web site that can contain the data and the communication tools to communicate between different objects of the SharePoint.
2. The access to the team and the appropriate group of members will be restricted or limited due to the automative tools that are present.
3. The storing of relevant information can be centralized and maintained according to the organization.
4. The communication can be maintained and streamlined so that it will be easier to use and communicate with the parties.
5. The involvement of IT is minimum and familiar tools and technologies are used as web, and windows operating systems.

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