There is no shortage of online tutorials that help you to get the most out your SharePoint environment. However, most of us — whether we’re dealing with a site or collaboration community building — don’t have time to learn every nook and cranny involved in SharePoint implementation. What you really need is to become a SharePoint Jedi. You need a tool, or a force, that can do the heavy lifting and even perform mind reading. This is where automation comes in.
When it comes to SharePoint, you can automate virtually any process associated with your SharePoint platform. This is often where sophisticated third-party tools come into play. Whether you’re working with site icons, web elements or collaboration processes, it can be automated with a few lines of code in your development environment.
Real-World SharePoint Jedi Mind Trick: Automating SharePoint Deployment
In recent years, there has been a growing need for robust SharePoint Deployment automation. While it would be nice to customize each deployment within your organization, few IT and web development professionals have the time, funds or resources to carry out this type of resource-heavy project. Remember, the key to being a SharePoint Jedi is automation. Use SharePoint automation to make all of your heavy-duty deployment processes run smoothly.
Easy-To-Use Tools for Automation
- PowerShell – Every Jedi master needs to have the right tools to carry his or her objective. The best way to think of PowerShell is as your lightsaber. Using PowerShell for automation isn’t 100% necessary, but it does make your life easier as it works seamlessly with the SharePoint platform. For the uninitiated, PowerShell is Microsoft’s own task automation framework. In PowerShell, processes are automated using a string of code elements called Commandlets or CMDlets. With CMDlets you can build and manage web applications that carry out complex automated tasks within the SharePoint framework.
- STSADM.exe – This has become the de facto out-of-the-box tool for automating complex SharePoint processes. It also isn’t limited to the processes within the SharePoint user interface (UI). In fact, since STSADM is a command line tool, you can use scripts to implement powerful process automation not included within the SharePoint framework.
- Team Foundation Server – If your main goal in the automation process is to simply deploy SharePoint quickly and effectively this automation tool comes in handy. Essentially, the tool lets you deploy automated builds and run them from a Team Foundation server. Within this platform you can easily monitor and manage automated deployments to ensure everything is functioning correctly. This automation tool is best suited for large-scale deployments within enterprise-level organizations, though you can still use it in smaller environments
Now that you have some tools to put to some good use, you can attack some of your automation processes with a Jedi master’s wit. That is, you will no longer have to do all the heavy lifting yourself. Let the automation robots work overtime in your production environment to ensure your applications are operating at the highest levels possible within the SharePoint framework.
