From Saifullah Shafiq, ‘A Practical Guide to SharePoint 2013’ is a simple and effective way to learn the ins and outs of Microsoft’s popular application. Contending that many businesses could solve their issues simply by utilizing SharePoint’s myriad of capabilities, Shafiq offers his guide as a tool for getting the most from SharePoint, and for implementing its technologies into day-to-day operations.

Frederick, MD -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/13/2014 --Saifullah Shafiq is the President of Wali Systems Inc., a company that has been providing SharePoint consulting, staffing and development services for many years. An expert on SharePoint, Shafiq is announcing the release of his latest book, ‘A Practical Guide to SharePoint 2013’.

Spurred on by SharePoint user community requests, Shafiq decided to publish the book in order to meet the demand. “We couldn’t help but hear the constant questions, and so we answered by producing this book”, stated Shafiq. “Wali Systems has been an active member of the SharePoint community since 2006, and has been providing support and help to the community in the form of technical articles, applications, code samples, forum discussions, blogs, and books”.

Shafiq’s SharePoint blog (http://blog.walisystemsinc.com) is one of the most read blogs on SharePoint technology.

‘A Practical Guide to SharePoint 2013’ is Shafiq’s fifth book on the application. Offering useful tips and exercises to help readers learn SharePoint quickly, Shafiq prides himself on his ‘no-fluff’ approach to education. With his guide, companies can fully harness the power of SharePoint, since it is – as Shafiq points out – the #1 Intranet solution on the market today.

A powerful tool in itself, ‘A Practical Guide to SharePoint 2013’ is a must read for company leaders and employees everywhere.

Synopsis
This book is a complete practical guide. It’s full of useful tips and exercises to get users started in no time! It has no fluff, just practical exercises that will provide users the knowledge and know-how to implement SharePoint solutions easily and professionally. SharePoint has a steep learning curve. Without a book like this, it will probably take users months to learn SharePoint. This book will save users great deal of time because it contains ready-to-use solutions and expert advice from someone who is a subject matter expert. This book has everything that users need to equip themselves to work professionally on SharePoint projects. The author is a 7 times awardee of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award.

SharePoint is a huge product. Each component or feature deserves a separate book. Discussing all great features in detail in one book is not possible. Author has tried to include the necessary content that will help users get started straight away. For beginners, the main problem they face is to setup an environment for SharePoint deployment. This book shows how to prepare the environment and then install each piece of software one by one.

The initial chapters of the book focus on SharePoint infrastructure and deployment and show how to install SharePoint 2013 on a clean machine. The intended audience of these chapters is people who are looking to become SharePoint 2013 administrators. Network administrators who are not SharePoint administrators but want to learn SharePoint administration will gain lot of useful information from these chapters. Chapters in the later part of the book contain information on some of the popular features of SharePoint 2013. These chapters discuss creating web-enabled InfoPath forms, securing sites with SSL, setting up Extranets, etc. These chapters are for the power users and advanced users who are comfortable with using SharePoint.

The book guides users in a step-by-step format and explains everything needed to install the software. This includes preparing the machine for the installation. Each exercise in the book is accompanied by screenshots so that even if a user gets stuck during the exercise, he can refer to the screenshot to get a better understanding of the step he is stuck on. Clear and crisp screenshots make this book unique. Some of the topics discussed in the book are advanced but explained in a very simple way with the help of screenshots.

This book is structured to build logically on the skills you learn as you progress through it. After the initial introduction and deployment chapters, the book moves into the more advanced part of the platform. Each chapter focuses on a new feature. If you are an advanced user, you can skip the initial chapters and go directly to the topic that you are interested in. All source code and files used in the exercises are available on the book’s website. Some of the topics discussed in the book are as following:

SharePoint Deployments - Configure Active Directory, SQL Server, IIS Roles!

SharePoint Cloud - Setup SharePoint in the cloud

Office 365 Development – Create your first SharePoint app in the cloud

SharePoint Modern Apps - Modern, state of the art applications using HTML5 and SharePoint 2013

Extranets

Business Processes - Leverage Business Connectivity Services to build Line of Business applications

Web Parts Development – Understand and learn to develop web parts

Electronic Forms - Learn to program web-enabled electronic forms using InfoPath

Public Websites - Design a branded public website using SharePoint Online/Office 365

SharePoint 2013 Search – Learn Search configuration, customization, Managed Metadata

SharePoint 2013 Branding – Learn how to brand sites to look elegant, classy and professional

As the author points out, SharePoint has so many capabilities – many executives and leaders are unaware of them.

“Microsoft has invested tremendously in this product and it has evolved over the years and has become a must-have product. It provides team collaboration, document sharing and management, Search, Social integration, and so on but since it is a big product and companies usually do not have well-trained resources to perform the operations, they get into trouble and complain about the product,” says Shafiq.

Continuing: “Many companies complain about SharePoint and the problems they face when implementing solutions. They complain that they had invested in the infrastructure and software but did not get satisfactory results. The problem is not with the technology or the product. The problem is that users are not properly trained. There is a shortage of good SharePoint resources. Companies hire half-baked developers and expect them to deliver top-notch solutions. To fill this void, good SharePoint books are needed and our new book is a big step in the right direction.”

‘A Practical Guide to SharePoint 2013’ is available now from Amazon: http://amzn.to/1dFpzKb

About Saifullah Shafiq
Saifullah Shafiq is CEO of Wali Systems, Inc., a company that provides SharePoint development, consulting and staffing services. Saifullah is a SharePoint MVP since 2007 and has written 5 books on SharePoint technology. He has also authored several ebooks and technical articles on SharePoint. He has been working with SharePoint since its first release. He started his career as a web developer 14 years ago. He has been contributing to the IT communities since 1999. His technical work (articles and applications) has been published on hundreds of programming related web sites. He has also written for different IT magazines.

Saifullah is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist. He runs a SharePoint user group that has 500 members.

Recently, Saifullah launched a SharePoint jobs portal called Hot SharePoint Jobs (http://hotsharepointjobs.com) that uses latest social media recruiting tools and is quickly gaining popularity.

Saifullah actively participates in technical communities and events. He is a member of several online forums and responds to users queries. Saifullah invites everyone to connect with him using the following links:

Twitter: @sshafiq
Facebook: http://facebook.com/saifullah.shafiq
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sshafiq
Blog: http://blog.walisystemsinc.com