SharePoint Interview Questions And Answers

1. What is SharePoint?
Answer: SharePoint is Microsoft’s enterprise information portal. It can be configured to run Intranet, Extranet and Internet sites.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 allows people to connect and collaborate.
A SharePoint enterprise portal is composed of SharePoint Portal and Windows SharePoint Services.
SharePoint Server is designed medium to large company-wide enterprise portal.

2. Where is the PowerShell located in SharePoint?
Answer:
The PowerShell is located in the below path:
On the Start menu, click All Programs -> Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products -> Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
In comparison, which is faster – a Web Part or a User Control?
In comparison, a Web Part is faster than a User Control. A User Control in SharePoint is loaded by a web part which adds overhead. User Controls, however, gives you an Interface to add controls and styles.

3. Mention some of the OOB features of SharePoint that aid with the governance of an environment?
Answer:
Some of the OOB features of SharePoint that aid with the governance of an environment are discussed as follows:
1) Site templates – This feature is used for consistent branding, site structure, and layout which can enforce a set of customizations that are applied to a site definition.
2) Quotas – This will limit the amount of storage a site collection can use.
3) Locks – This feature will prevent users from either adding content to a site collection or using the site collection.
4) Web application permissions and policies – This feature is used for comprehensive security settings that apply to all users and groups for all site collections within a Web application.
5) Self-service site creation – This feature will enable the users to create their site collections, thus must be incorporated into a governance scheme.

4. How to take IIS backup in SharePoint Server?
Answer:
Step1: Start –> Administrative Tools–>IIS Manager
Step2: Right Click on Computer Name –> All Tasks–> Backup/Restore
Step3: Click on Create Backup
Step4: Name the Backup File and make the backup file password protected
Step5: Done!!
Step6: Check the Backup file in C:WINDOWSsystem32inetsrvMetaBack it will be in 2 names.
Step7: restore them click on Restore option.

5. How is Sharepoint 2010 capable to handle multiple organizations on a single server?
Answer: SharePoint 2010 provides n-tier scalable with the server farm that runs the multiple organizations on a single server.
– SharePoint 2010 gives additional functionality to set up the platform that can be used for cloud computing as part of the Business.
It allows the development to be done on a single server so that multiple organizations can be setup in synchronization with each other.
It provides the provision to build a site that is designed to be run on a server and used by other users at the same time.
It has a central location for management and performs activities that can be given in an organization. (E learning)

6. What are ClassResources? How do you reference and deploy resources with an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?
Answer: ClassResources are used when inheriting from the SharePoint.WebPart.WebPartPages.WebPart base class, and are defined in the SharePoint solution file as things that should be stored in the resources directory on the server. It is a helpful directory to use to deploy custom images. In ASP.NET 2.0, typically things such as images are referenced by embedding them as resources within an assembly. The good part about ClassResources is they can help to eliminate recompiles to change small interface adjustments or alterations to external JavaScript files.

7. What are the content types?
Answer: A content type is a flexible and reusable WSS type definition (or we can a template) that defines the columns and behavior for an item in a list or a document in a document library. For example, you can create a content type for a leave approval document with a unique set of columns, an event handler, and its document template and attach it with a document library/libraries.

8. Can a content type have receivers associated with it?
Answer: Yes, a content type can have an event receiver associated with it, either inheriting from the SPListEventReciever base class for list level events or inheriting from the SPItemEventReciever base class. Whenever the content type is instantiated, it will be subject to the event receivers that are associated with it.

9. What are the types of input forms that can be created for a workflow?
Answer:
You can create four different types of input forms including
1. An association form
2. An initiation form
3. A modification form
4. A task edit form.

Note that these forms are optional when you create a workflow template.

10. What is meant by CAML?
Answer: Custom action represents a link, toolbar button, menu item, or any control that can be added to a toolbar or menu that appears in the UI.
E.g. “New Folder” button in your document library is a custom action or “View All Site Content” in your Site Settings is a custom action.

11. What is meant by a SharePoint Theme?
Answer: A Theme is a group of files (CSS, images) that allow you to define the appearance (look and feel) of content pages in SharePoint. A Theme defines the design of various components.
E.g. Content Page background-color, button color, web part title color, etc. to give a different look and feel to your site.

12. What is a Site Collection in SharePoint?
Answer:
1. A site collection is a set of web sites.
2. Every site collection has a top-level site, created when the site collection is created.
3. There might be multiple site collections in web application and each site collection may have multiple child sites.

13. How the WSS3.0 basic installation differs from the advanced installation?
Answer:
1. When we choose the basic installation, Windows Internal Database (WID), a relational database based on SQL server technology, is installed for the WSS3.0 databases. This WID has only 4 GB limitations. While if we go for advanced search, WSS 3.0 uses the installed SQL server for the databases.
2. When we use basic installation, the application pool uses the Local System account.
3. Also once we go for Basic installation, we are unable to add more servers to the farm.

14. How WSS 3.0 differ from MOSS 2007?
Answer:
1. Windows SharePoint Services (3.0) are freely available with Windows Server. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 is a licensed version. WSS 3.0 can be freely downloaded from Microsoft site.
2. MOSS 2007 is based on WSS3.0 with some additional features like Enterprise Search, Business Data Catalog (BDC), User Profile, Excel Services, Single-Sign on, additional Workflows, My site feature, etc.

15. How to deploy wsp?
Answer: In Command prompt, navigate to the 12-hive bin folder, then write the command to add the solution i.e.
Stsadm -o addsolution -filename file location
Then go to “central administration -> operations” under “global configuration” there is “solution management” click on that.

Then click on “wsp file name”, and then click on “deploy solution” for deploy it, for retrieve click on “retrieve solution”, for remove it click on “remove solution” after retrieving it.

16. What is meant by Excel Services?
Answer: The Excel Services are used to allow sharing, securing, managing, and using Excel 2010 workbooks in a SharePoint Server Web site or document library.
Excel Services consists of the Excel Calculation Services (ECS), Microsoft Excel Web Access (EWA), and Excel Web Services (EWS) components.

17. What is meant by Secure Store Service (SSS)?
Answer: Secure Store Service is nothing but a secure database for storing credentials that are associated with application IDs.

18. What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?
Answer: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a collaborative enterprise portal that is built upon WSS 3.0. MOSS 2007 allows people, teams, and expertise to connect and collaborate. Unlike WSS, SharePoint Server is not free and requires an additional license. MOSS 2007 comes in two versions – Standard and Enterprise. The main components of SharePoint 2007 are collaboration, portals, enterprise search, enterprise content management, business process and forms, and business intelligence.

19. What is the Farm in SharePoint?
Answer:
1. The farm is a collection of SharePoint servers having the same configuration database.
2. Configuration DB stores all the required information to run the farm.
3. Each farm is administered through a central administration
4. There is only one configuration database per farm.

20. What does the content database handle in SharePoint?
Answer:

The SharePoint database handles

  • Published reports
  • Reports models
  • Shared data sources
  • Properties
  • Resources
  • Permissions

21. How is security managed in SharePoint?
Answer:
Authentication
SharePoint can run under various IIS modes to authenticate its users. The modes include Anonymous, Basic, Integrated Windows or Certificates Authentication (over SSL).

Authorization
SharePoint security facilitates the regulation of access privileges of users and groups as well.

Impersonation
.NET Impersonation which is utilized by SharePoint allows an application to run under the context of the client accessing an application.

Deployment and Code Access Security
.NET Code Access Security (CAS) provides a security model. It can restrict the operations that can be performed as well as the resources that can be accessed by managed code.

22. Mention what are the new features of SharePoint 2013?
Answer:
New features in SharePoint includes

Ability to follow people, sites, tags and documents
Company or organization feeds
Preview of files and documents straight into the news feed
For group sharing and collaboration use of @ and hashtags
Complete integration of social feature with window phone 7 and 8
New site definition for communities that have many promising features like moderation, discussion, reputation model, membership, etc.
Security and document activity updates in the feed
Facility to follow data integration with the consolidated feeds web part
Improved discussion forums.

23. What is the web part?
Answer: Web parts consist of xml queries to full SharePoint lists or document libraries. You can also develop your own web parts and web part pages.

24. When should you dispose of SPWeb and SPSite objects?
Answer: According to the best practices, you should always dispose of them if you have createdthem in your code. You can dispose them in the Finally block or you can use the “Using” clause so that they get disposed of when not required. If you are using SPContext then you need notdispose the spsite or spweb objects.

25. What are the best practices for SharePoint development?
Answer:

Some of the best practices are:

1. You should always dispose of SPsite and SPWeb objects, once you refer them in your code. Using the “Using” clause is recommended.
2. Use RunwithelevatePrivilages to avoid errors for end users.
3. Try writing your errors to SharePoint error logs (ULS Logs). Since it a bad idea to fill-event log for your production environment.
4. Use SPQuery instead of the for-each loop while retrieving Items from the list.
5. Deploy additional files used in your web part to 12 hives. Use your solution package todrop the files in 12 hive. Also, make sure that all the references (for e.g. Css or .js files) getremoved when the solution is retracted. Also See: Best Practices to Improve Site Performance.

26. What is the main difference between using SPListItem?Update() andSPListItem.SystemUpdate()?
Answer:
Using SystemUpdate() will not create a new version and will also retain timestamps.

27. What are the monitoring features that are baked into SharePoint 2010?
Answer: The data about the state of the system is captured by the Diagnostic logging. The health and usage data collection uses specific timer jobs to perform monitoring tasks, collecting information about:
1) Performance Counter Fata
2) Event Log Data
3) Timer Service Data
4) Metrics For Site Collections and Sites
5) Search Usage Data

28. What is the difference between Library vs List?
Answer:
– The library is used to store the document whereas Lists are the container of similar items in the form of rows and columns.
– Core documents like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can be created using a Library while you can not create a document in a List. The list can be used to attach a document.

29. How Does SharePoint work?
Answer: The browser sends a DAV packet to IIS asking to perform a document check-in. PKMDASL.DLL, an ISAPI DLL, parses the packet and sees that it has the proprietary INVOKE command. Becauseof the existence of this command, the packet is passed off to msdmserv.exe, who in turn processesthe packet and uses EXOLEDB to access the WSS, perform the operation and send the resultsback to the user in the form of XML.

30. What is the difference between a Site Definition and a Site Template?
Answer: Site Definitions are stored on the hard drive of the SharePoint front end servers. Theyare used by the SharePoint application to generate the sites users can create. SiteTemplates are created by users as a copy of a site they have configured and modified so that they do not have to recreate lists, libraries, views, and columns every time they need a new instance of a site.

31. How do you create a Custom action for an item in a list?
Answer: This can be done by adding a new feature to SharePoint. You would need to usecustomaction tag in your elements.xml file and will have to set various properties likeimageurl or UrlAction for your customaction. You can later add this feature into the SharePoint using the stsadm install feature command.

32. How would you bind this CustomAction to a specific list?
Answer: To do this you can either create a new list type(again a feature) and use the listtypenumber for the new list in your Registration Type property of the Custom action. TheCustomAction will then show up only for the items of this list type. or You can create a new content type and then use that content type’s id in your custom action to bind the custom action to items of just that content type. Add the new content type to the list where you need this custom action.

33. What do you mean by Field Control?
Answer:
– Field controls are ASP.NET 2.0 server controls. They provide basic field functionality in SharePoint.
– They also provide basic general functionality such as displaying or editing list data as it appears on SharePoint list pages.

34. Which class is used to retrieve data from multiple lists?
Answer:
– SPSiteDataQuery class is used to retrieve data from multiple lists.
– It queries the data from multiple lists across different sites in a collection.
– Usually, it is used in list aggregation, where list data from team sites or other subsites are collated and presented in a single interface.
– It aggregates the data from SharePoint lists only while ignoring data from external lists.

35. What is the difference between Site Definition and Site template?
Answer:
1. To create or use site definition you need server admin access, but site template can install from web UI by site owners.
2. Site definition supports feature stapling, but for site template, additional features must be activated in the gallery.
3. Site definitions are stored in the hard disk, but site templates are stored in content DB.
4. Site definition can provision multiple webs, but site templates for single web only.
5. Creating site definition is relatively complex then site template creation.

36. What is BDC and how it differs from BCS?
Answer: BDC (Business Data Catalogue) is used to connect an external database and view it in a share point.
BCS (Business Connectivity Services) is new in SharePoint2010. Using BDC one can only read from an external database, but using BCS one can read and write into the external Database.

37. What is a Sandbox solution?
Answer: When users writing custom code then it is not trusted, its failure causes on the entire site. So the sandbox solution concept is used. In that case, the program is only written for a particular site & the solution is uploaded on the same site. The solution size limit is decided at the time of site creation & if size increases or code showing bad performance then it is easy for the administrator to stop the working of solution.

38. What is Farm in SharePoint?
Answer:
– The farm is a collection of SharePoint servers with the same configuration database.
– All the required information to run the farm is carried in Configuration DB. There exists only one configuration database for each farm.
– Central administration is used for the administration of each farm.

39. Explain an ancestral type. How is it related to content types?
Answer:

– An ancestral type is the base type that the content typed is derived from.
– It defines the metadata fields included with the custom content type.

40. What is the Search Server and Search Server Express?
Answer: SSX can only deploy on a single server on the farm. You cannot add more than one server to make search high availability. The search server can be scaled in the same fashion as SharePoint Server providing high availability for search.

41. What is SharePoint Delegate Control?
Answer:
a. With the help of delegate control, we can take any OOB control of SharePoint and replace it with our custom control without any modification in the SharePoint page. So that new custom control overrides the existing one.
b. So the delegate control provides one of the options to add control (either server control or user control) on a SharePoint page.
c. This is one of the important features of SharePoint, introduced in WSS v3 and so in MOSS 2007.
d. For example: In master page Search Box control is included as

e. The above lines instantiate the delegate control object.
f. This delegate control object uses features to locate the control which is specified in ControlId. So there must be the features (it includes the feature at any scope) that create and deploys the SmallSearchInputBox control.
Thanks and Regards
Parham

42. Where do you deploy the additional files used in your web part, like css or javascript files, and how do you use them in your WebPart?
Answer:
You can deploy the css or javascript files in the _layouts folder in SharePoint’s 12 hives. Touse them in your web part, you need to first register them to your web part page and then specify a virtual path for the file for e.g. _layoutsMyCSS.css See Code examples at using external Javascript, CSS or Image File in a WebPart.

43. How to create a list in SharePoint 2013?
Answer:
In SharePoint to create a list, from the setting menu
– Tap on “Add an app” link to add a custom list
– It will open your Apps section under “Site Contents”
– Now click on “Custom List” under your Apps
– Enter a Description and Name of the list and click on create. This will create a list in Share

44. What are the ways to create input forms for workflow?
Answer:
1. You can create your forms by using custom application pages, which are standard .aspx pages deployed to run out of the _layouts directory. ( disadv: a lot of code required when compared to Infopath approach)
2. Using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 (disadv: picks up a dependency on MOSS, i.e. it cannot run in a standalone WSS environment)

45. SharePoint Team Services (STS)?
Answer: SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has MUCH better document management. It has check-in, check-out, versioning, approval, publishing, subscriptions, categories, etc. STS does not have these features, or they are very scaled back. SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has a better search engine and can crawl multiple content sources. STS cannot. STS is easier to manage and much better for a team environment where there is not much Document Management going on. SPS is better for an organization, or where Document Management is crucial.

46. Is it possible to link the SharePoint to an external data source? Answer: SharePoint itself cannot reference an external data source but, SharePoint data can be opened with Access and Excel as an external data source. Thus, SharePoint can be referenced as an external data source.

Note: Browse latest Sharepoint Interview Questions and Sharepoint Tutorial. Here you can check Sharepoint Training details and Sharepoint Training Videos for self learning. Contact +91 988 502 2027 for more information.

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