After completing some SharePoint 2010 training that was very focused on code and “under the hood” concepts, I needed a book to walk me through the basic tasks found in SharePoint. I found Plain & Simple – Microsoft SharePoint 2010 by Johnathan Lightfoot and Chris Beckett to be the perfect book to get me through the day to day tasks involved with SharePoint 2010.
This book is a “getting things done” type of book. There is a little bit of concept explanation, but primarily the book walks you through the steps of accomplishing various tasks in SharePoint 2010: Lists, Views, Workflows, Security, and more. Nearly every page contains screen shots, as well as numbered steps to accomplish the task described. What really impressed me was how the screen shots were tagged in conjunction with the numbered steps, so you could easily locate the necessary buttons with the task. This detail is very important since the web interface has a lot of buttons and controls to work with. You won’t find in depth coverage of any given concept in this book, but that is fine. You can use this book to easily get a new site up in SharePoint 2010, and then use a more detailed book to configure the site in more detail.
I highly recommend this book to any new users to SharePoint 2010, as it will help you get familiar with the SharePoint 2010 environment and common tasks. I also recommend it to SharePoint programmers as a reference point. Plain & Simple – Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is straightforward, simple, and an essential resource to any SharePoint user or developer. You can get this book through O’Reilly Books at http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735642287