What's new in Central Administration (Windows SharePoint Server)

  • Article

Applies To: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

 

Central Administration has been completely redesigned and expanded. Central Administration is now the following:

  • A fully functional SharePoint site.   This means that you can take advantage of standard SharePoint site functionality such as lists, libraries, and Web Parts. For example, you can post content that needs to be shared with all server farm administrators to a document library on the Central Administration site, or you can add a Web Part that contains emergency contact numbers to the Home page of Central Administration.

  • Organized so that you can more easily find the functionality that you need.   Instead of multiple pages at different levels (for example, the virtual server administration pages), Central Administration has three main pages: Home, Operations, and Application Management. Most administration tasks can easily be accomplished from these main pages, without having to navigate down an additional level. For example, to create a site collection previously, you first had to navigate to the Virtual Server Settings page for the appropriate virtual server, and then you had to create the site collection. Now, this task can be completed directly from the Application Management page with one click.

  • Has a home page which gives you quick status of and a reference for tasks that need to be completed. The Home page has three main Web Parts:

    • Administrative Tasks   This list gives you easy access to tasks that need to be completed as soon as you install. Because this list is a SharePoint list, you can customize it to include prioritized tasks that are important to your organization.

    • Farm Topology   This Web Part helps you see at a glance which services are running on which servers, and which servers you have in your server farm.

    • Resources   This list is fully customizable, so you can display the appropriate links to key resources for server administrators in your organization.

  • A site that follows the same security model as other SharePoint sites.   To add server farm administrators, you add them as members of the Farm Administrators group, just as you would add users to the Members or Visitors group for any other SharePoint site.