SharePoint Server 2013 is a versatile platform that empowers organizations to manage content, collaborate seamlessly across departments, and integrate diverse business processes with ease. As enterprises increasingly rely on SharePoint for enterprise collaboration and document management, the 70-489 exam remains essential for professionals looking to establish their proficiency in developing advanced SharePoint solutions. This exam tests a wide range of technical abilities, from customizing search functionality to implementing Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and content management strategies.
The Microsoft 70-489 exam, Developing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Advanced Solutions, is designed to assess a candidate's ability to develop and deploy sophisticated SharePoint solutions. This includes both server-side development and client-side customization, which are essential for delivering powerful, flexible solutions that meet the needs of businesses. SharePoint developers must possess in-depth knowledge of how SharePoint integrates with other enterprise systems, external data sources, and how custom solutions can be built and optimized to improve business workflows and collaboration.
In preparation for the exam, candidates will need to focus on a variety of key SharePoint features. For instance, integrating SharePoint with external data sources using BCS is a critical topic, as is the ability to create and manage customized search results and refine the search experience. This is coupled with content management functionalities, which are essential for developing a cohesive and organized content structure. As the landscape of SharePoint continues to evolve, the 70-489 exam remains a crucial assessment for demonstrating advanced expertise.
To successfully pass the exam, developers must delve deeply into the advanced customization of SharePoint’s capabilities. Understanding how to implement solutions that handle large volumes of data efficiently, integrating third-party applications, and ensuring optimal performance are central themes. In addition to building custom search functionalities and refining the user experience, developers must be adept at creating solutions that scale effectively across an organization. This includes leveraging tools like Content Processing Extensions and Managed Metadata, which will be covered in-depth during the exam.
One of the most powerful capabilities within SharePoint 2013 is its ability to integrate with external systems through Business Connectivity Services (BCS). This feature allows organizations to extend the functionality of SharePoint by connecting it to external data sources such as databases, web services, and enterprise systems. As part of the 70-489 exam, it is essential for candidates to understand how to configure and implement BCS solutions, particularly when dealing with external content types (ECTs) and external data integration.
BCS allows developers to create External Lists that bring external data into SharePoint for manipulation and interaction. This external data can include SQL databases, web services, and even proprietary business systems. It is critical that developers understand the various methods for connecting to these external data sources, as well as the challenges involved in ensuring data integrity and security. A deep knowledge of oData, WCF services, and SQL connectors is crucial for integrating SharePoint seamlessly with external business applications. Candidates must be able to demonstrate their proficiency in developing custom solutions that meet an organization’s unique needs.
Moreover, implementing external content types and mapping them to SharePoint content types is essential for ensuring that data from external systems is accessible in a structured and organized manner. Understanding the difference between external and SharePoint content types, and how to map them correctly, will enable developers to create solutions that are both flexible and scalable. For instance, creating custom connectors and implementing advanced features such as external data filtering, search integration, and data synchronization is critical for ensuring that data from external sources is always up-to-date and can be used effectively within SharePoint.
Developers will also need to optimize the performance of BCS solutions, particularly when dealing with large datasets or high-frequency queries. This includes configuring the external data access service to minimize delays and improve responsiveness. Proper configuration of query throttling and batching mechanisms is key to ensuring that SharePoint maintains high performance even under heavy workloads. Performance optimization strategies for BCS solutions will be heavily tested in the exam, requiring developers to think critically about how to balance functionality with scalability and efficiency.
One of the most important aspects of SharePoint 2013 is its powerful search capabilities. SharePoint’s search functionality can be customized to meet specific business needs, and it is essential for developers to understand how to tailor the search experience to provide more relevant and actionable results. The 70-489 exam covers advanced search customizations in detail, including creating custom search result types, refining the search experience, and optimizing the search infrastructure.
Developers will need to demonstrate their ability to work with FAST Query Language (FQL) and Keyword Query Language (KQL). These two query languages are fundamental for building dynamic and flexible search queries in SharePoint. FQL and KQL allow developers to craft complex search queries that can search across large datasets, filter results based on custom metadata, and present the results in a user-friendly format. These languages are essential tools for customizing search results to meet the unique needs of the business.
In addition to query languages, SharePoint 2013 allows developers to create custom display templates, which control how search results are presented to users. These templates can be customized to provide rich, interactive, and visually appealing results that improve user engagement and experience. Customizing result types and configuring refiner definitions further enhances the search experience by allowing users to filter results based on specific criteria. This level of customization enables organizations to optimize their search functionality for business-specific needs, ensuring that users can easily find the information they need.
One of the key features that developers must master is the search query rules functionality. Query rules allow developers to influence how search results are displayed based on certain conditions. For example, developers can create rules to promote or demote specific results, or to redirect users to a specific page or content based on search terms. This level of customization allows organizations to create highly tailored search experiences that are aligned with their business goals.
The SharePoint search engine also supports the integration of external data, and developers must be able to configure external search results to bring in data from third-party sources. For businesses that rely on external content sources, integrating these results into SharePoint’s search infrastructure is essential for delivering a unified search experience. Developers need to understand how to map external data to managed properties and how to configure search connectors to include external content in search results.
The ability to manage and process large volumes of content is a cornerstone of SharePoint’s functionality. In SharePoint 2013, developers have the power to create advanced content management systems that can handle everything from document storage and retrieval to metadata management and document lifecycle tracking. For the 70-489 exam, mastering content management policies, document sets, and content organizer rules is crucial for building scalable and maintainable solutions.
SharePoint 2013 also introduces content processing extensions that allow developers to implement custom solutions for enriching content as it is indexed by SharePoint’s search engine. These extensions can perform tasks such as entity extraction and classification, enhancing the accuracy and relevance of search results. Developers must understand how to implement these extensions effectively to optimize content indexing and search performance.
Performance is a critical aspect of SharePoint development, and developers must know how to design solutions that can handle high traffic and large amounts of data. Optimizing SharePoint’s performance involves techniques like caching strategies, reducing the number of queries, and optimizing JavaScript loading to improve the user experience. SharePoint also provides several tools for measuring and troubleshooting performance issues, including application diagnostics and health score rules.
One of the most important performance optimization techniques is scalable aggregation. By implementing scalable aggregation strategies, developers can ensure that SharePoint remains performant even under heavy loads. This involves designing solutions that can handle increasing amounts of data without sacrificing speed or user experience. Understanding how to scale SharePoint applications and optimize query performance will be essential for passing the 70-489 exam.
Developers must also be proficient in designing client applications that are optimized for performance. This includes minimizing the amount of data requested by client applications, using client-side cache, and ensuring that client applications interact efficiently with SharePoint’s server-side components. This is especially important for mobile applications or web-based solutions that need to perform well across various devices and network conditions.
In SharePoint 2013, content management is not only about storing and retrieving documents, but about creating an environment where businesses can manage and share information effectively across teams. As organizations grow and content volumes increase, SharePoint’s content management system provides a way to maintain organization, streamline workflows, and ensure compliance. For SharePoint developers, mastering these content management solutions is a core competency required to pass the 70-489 exam and build scalable, efficient solutions.
The ability to define, enforce, and manage content types is central to SharePoint’s content management system. Content types are reusable collections of metadata and document templates that define the characteristics of items in libraries and lists. Developers must be proficient in creating and customizing content types to meet business needs. This includes designing content types that cater to specific business processes, such as contracts, invoices, or project documents, with customized metadata to support better document management and categorization.
Developers are also expected to implement document sets, a feature that allows for grouping related documents together into a single entity. This provides a way to manage collections of documents as a unit, ensuring consistency in metadata and improving overall document lifecycle management. Document sets are particularly useful in industries like legal and financial services, where specific document templates must be grouped and processed together. Understanding how to use document sets effectively allows developers to streamline workflows and reduce the chances of errors in document management.
SharePoint 2013 also introduces content organizer rules, which enable automatic routing of documents based on specific properties such as metadata or document type. These rules can be configured to ensure that documents are filed in the appropriate libraries or folders as soon as they are uploaded. This feature saves valuable time for end-users and ensures documents are appropriately stored without manual intervention. Developers must know how to configure these rules to create an efficient and intuitive document management system that aligns with the organization’s needs.
A vital part of content management is the creation of information management policies (IMPs). These policies allow businesses to automate critical document handling processes such as retention, versioning, and approval workflows. Implementing these policies ensures that documents are compliant with legal and regulatory requirements, such as retaining documents for a set number of years or ensuring that sensitive documents are encrypted. Developers must be well-versed in configuring and applying these policies across various content types and document sets, allowing organizations to maintain compliance while improving efficiency.
For businesses that operate across multiple regions, multilingual support within SharePoint is a crucial consideration. SharePoint 2013 allows organizations to implement multilingual sites where content can be translated and presented in different languages. This capability is essential for businesses operating globally, ensuring that teams can access and share content in their native languages. Developers must understand how to create a multilingual environment in SharePoint, managing site variations, content translation, and ensuring consistency across different language versions of content.
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is one of the most powerful features of SharePoint 2013, providing a way to integrate external data sources into the SharePoint environment. As organizations increasingly rely on diverse data systems, BCS enables SharePoint to act as a central hub for accessing and managing external business data. In the 70-489 exam, proficiency in designing and implementing BCS solutions is essential, as it is a core component of building advanced SharePoint solutions that connect the platform with external systems.
BCS enables developers to integrate external data such as customer databases, accounting systems, or even web services directly into SharePoint. This is done by defining external content types (ECTs), which serve as the bridge between SharePoint and the external system. By defining an ECT, developers can ensure that external data is presented seamlessly within SharePoint, allowing users to interact with external data without leaving the platform. This integration makes it easier for businesses to access and update external data from a familiar interface, reducing the need for separate applications or manual data entry.
A critical aspect of BCS is the ability to create external lists, which are SharePoint lists that display data pulled from external systems. These lists behave just like any other SharePoint list, but the data is stored outside SharePoint. This makes it possible to manage and work with external data within SharePoint’s powerful collaboration tools, such as workflow automation, version control, and search. Developers must know how to create, configure, and secure these external lists to ensure that external data is presented accurately and efficiently.
For businesses with complex data structures, it is important to create associations between external data and SharePoint content. This can be achieved through creating relationships between external content types, much like defining relational data in a database. For example, an external list for customer information might be associated with a SharePoint list for customer projects, allowing users to view and edit customer projects while referencing data from the external customer system. Mastering the creation and management of these relationships is critical for designing seamless integrations that enhance business processes.
BCS solutions also require developers to understand performance optimization. Querying external data can introduce latency, especially when dealing with large datasets or remote data sources. It is crucial for developers to know how to optimize external data queries to reduce load times and improve the user experience. Techniques such as batching requests, throttling data access, and caching can significantly improve the performance of BCS solutions, ensuring that data retrieval is fast and efficient.
Another critical aspect of BCS is security. When dealing with external data, security concerns are paramount. SharePoint 2013 offers various options for managing authentication and authorization for external systems, ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive data. Developers must understand how to configure secure connections to external systems, including credentials management and the use of claims-based authentication to ensure that access is both secure and scalable.
Search functionality in SharePoint 2013 has been significantly enhanced compared to previous versions, making it a powerful tool for organizations to quickly find relevant information. Customizing search to meet specific business needs is an essential skill for SharePoint developers, and it plays a central role in the 70-489 exam. The ability to build customized search queries, define query rules, and implement display templates is crucial for optimizing SharePoint’s search capabilities and ensuring that users can easily find the information they need.
SharePoint 2013 allows developers to customize search queries using two main query languages: FAST Query Language (FQL) and Keyword Query Language (KQL). FQL is an advanced query language that allows developers to construct complex queries with filtering and sorting criteria. KQL, on the other hand, is a simpler, keyword-based language that makes it easy to perform basic searches across SharePoint content. Both languages are essential for crafting dynamic and flexible search queries that can handle complex business needs, such as filtering search results based on specific metadata or keywords.
The ability to create custom display templates is another powerful feature for SharePoint developers. Display templates control how search results are rendered on the front end, allowing developers to create visually appealing and interactive search results that enhance the user experience. Custom display templates can be used to show results in a variety of formats, including tables, lists, and cards, and can include custom actions, such as sending email notifications or redirecting users to specific pages. Developers must be skilled in creating and modifying display templates to match their organization’s branding and usability requirements.
Along with display templates, developers can configure refiners to allow users to filter search results based on specific metadata. This can be particularly useful for organizations with large volumes of content, as it enables users to narrow down results to find exactly what they need. Configuring refiners requires an understanding of how to map metadata fields to managed properties and how to configure these properties to be used as filter criteria in search results.
One of the most powerful aspects of SharePoint’s search functionality is the ability to define query rules. Query rules allow developers to influence how search results are presented based on specific conditions, such as the query terms used, the user’s role, or the content’s metadata. For example, query rules can be used to boost certain results, display promoted content, or even redirect users to different pages based on their search terms. Understanding how to configure query rules and optimize them for business goals is critical for enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of SharePoint’s search results.
SharePoint’s search engine can also be extended to include external content through custom connectors. By configuring connectors, developers can integrate external data sources, such as customer databases or third-party applications, into SharePoint’s search results. This is particularly valuable for organizations that rely on a variety of data sources, as it allows users to search for content across multiple systems from within SharePoint’s interface. Developers must know how to create and configure these connectors to ensure smooth integration and accurate results.
As businesses increasingly rely on SharePoint for document management, collaboration, and business processes, ensuring that SharePoint performs optimally is more important than ever. SharePoint developers must be proficient in designing solutions that can handle high volumes of traffic and data without sacrificing performance. For the 70-489 exam, mastering performance optimization and scalability techniques is essential.
Caching is one of the most powerful tools available for improving SharePoint’s performance. By caching frequently accessed data, developers can reduce the load on SharePoint’s database and improve response times. SharePoint provides multiple caching mechanisms, including object caching, output caching, and page-level caching. Developers must understand when and how to implement these caching strategies to maximize performance, particularly when dealing with large volumes of data or complex queries.
Another key strategy for optimizing SharePoint is to minimize the number of server requests made by client applications. This can be achieved by designing batch operations, which allow multiple operations to be performed in a single request, reducing the amount of data sent across the network. Batch operations are especially important for mobile applications or remote workers who rely on SharePoint over slower connections. By minimizing server requests, developers can significantly improve the performance of SharePoint, particularly in distributed environments.
JavaScript optimization is also a critical consideration for SharePoint developers. Large JavaScript files can slow down page loading times and negatively impact the user experience. Developers must be familiar with techniques such as minification, compression, and asynchronous loading to ensure that JavaScript files are optimized for performance. Additionally, leveraging Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for serving static assets like images and scripts can further enhance performance, especially for organizations with a global workforce.
Scalability is another important consideration when designing SharePoint solutions. SharePoint 2013 is designed to scale from small teams to enterprise-wide solutions, but it requires careful planning to ensure that performance is not compromised as the system grows. Developers must design solutions that can handle increasing traffic, larger datasets, and more users without significant performance degradation. This includes optimizing queries, ensuring efficient data storage, and configuring SharePoint’s infrastructure to handle heavy workloads.
By focusing on these performance and scalability strategies, SharePoint developers can create solutions that are not only powerful but also efficient, ensuring that SharePoint can continue to meet the demands of businesses as they evolve. Understanding how to design solutions that optimize speed, reliability, and scalability will be crucial for passing the 70-489 exam and ensuring success in real-world implementations.
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2013 allow organizations to extend SharePoint’s capabilities by integrating external business data into the platform. As businesses increasingly rely on a variety of systems and databases, the ability to connect SharePoint to external data sources is crucial. The 70-489 exam emphasizes understanding how to configure and implement BCS solutions to create a unified experience where users can access and manage external data directly within SharePoint.
The first step in implementing a BCS solution is defining external content types (ECTs). External content types serve as the bridge between SharePoint and external data sources, allowing SharePoint to interact with external systems as if they were part of the SharePoint environment. These content types map external data sources, such as SQL databases, web services, or proprietary business applications, into SharePoint’s familiar interface. Once ECTs are defined, developers can create external lists, which allow users to interact with external data just like they would with SharePoint lists.
Creating external lists is a key aspect of the 70-489 exam. Developers must understand how to map external data to SharePoint content types and ensure the proper configuration of data access. These lists can pull data from any number of external sources, and they allow users to perform tasks such as filtering, sorting, and editing data from outside SharePoint. This seamless integration of external data into SharePoint’s native interface provides a significant advantage for businesses looking to streamline workflows and improve efficiency by reducing the need to switch between different systems.
One of the most powerful features of BCS in SharePoint 2013 is the ability to implement associations between external content types. These associations allow developers to link external data to SharePoint’s native content, creating a more integrated and dynamic solution. For example, a developer might create an association between a customer list in SharePoint and an external data source containing customer orders. This allows users to view customer orders within the SharePoint interface, enhancing the overall user experience and improving data accessibility.
The performance of BCS solutions is a critical consideration, especially when dealing with large volumes of external data. Optimizing queries and minimizing the impact of external data sources on SharePoint’s performance is key to ensuring that SharePoint remains responsive and scalable. Developers must understand how to configure query throttling to limit the number of queries that can be executed at a time and how to use batching to combine multiple requests into a single operation. By optimizing these interactions, developers can ensure that BCS solutions perform efficiently, even when working with complex datasets.
In addition to performance optimization, security is also a critical aspect of BCS solutions. When integrating external data, developers must ensure that the appropriate authentication methods are in place to protect sensitive data. SharePoint 2013 offers several authentication mechanisms, including claims-based authentication and Windows authentication, to ensure that only authorized users can access external data. Configuring secure connections to external systems and managing credentials are essential tasks for developers implementing BCS solutions, as they ensure that data is protected and that users can access it safely.
Search functionality in SharePoint 2013 is a core feature that enables users to quickly find the information they need. For developers preparing for the 70-489 exam, understanding how to customize SharePoint’s search capabilities is essential. SharePoint’s search engine allows developers to modify search behavior, create custom search result types, and fine-tune search relevance. This flexibility ensures that organizations can tailor search experiences to meet specific business needs, providing users with more accurate and actionable search results.
One of the primary tools for customizing search functionality is Keyword Query Language (KQL). KQL allows developers to create dynamic, flexible search queries that can filter and sort results based on a variety of parameters. This includes using keywords, managed properties, and metadata to refine search results. By leveraging KQL, developers can craft advanced queries that provide users with more relevant results, tailored to their specific search criteria. This flexibility makes it possible to build highly customized search experiences that align with business requirements.
In addition to KQL, SharePoint 2013 offers FAST Query Language (FQL), which is a more advanced query language for building complex queries. FQL enables developers to create queries that can filter results based on custom metadata, perform full-text searches, and integrate external data into search results. FQL is particularly useful for organizations with large amounts of content or complex data structures, as it allows for highly granular searches. By mastering both KQL and FQL, developers can build search solutions that provide precise, relevant results for users across an organization.
Another key feature for customizing search in SharePoint 2013 is the ability to create custom result types. Result types define how search results are displayed to users, and developers can customize them to meet specific business needs. For example, an organization may want to display search results in a table format for certain types of documents or show thumbnail images for media content. Custom result types allow developers to create personalized, engaging search results that improve the user experience and ensure that search results are presented in the most useful format.
Along with custom result types, refiner definitions allow developers to filter search results based on specific criteria. Refiners are particularly useful when dealing with large sets of search results, as they enable users to narrow down results based on attributes like document type, metadata, or keywords. By creating custom refiners, developers can provide users with the ability to filter search results based on their specific needs, making the search experience more intuitive and efficient.
Another important feature of SharePoint search customization is the ability to define query rules. Query rules allow developers to modify how search results are displayed based on specific conditions, such as the search terms used or the user’s role. For example, query rules can be used to promote certain results based on keywords, filter out irrelevant content, or redirect users to specific pages based on their search intent. By implementing query rules, developers can optimize the search experience, ensuring that users find the most relevant content quickly and efficiently.
Content management and metadata are two critical components of SharePoint 2013’s capabilities. SharePoint provides powerful tools for managing and organizing documents, lists, and other types of content. For developers preparing for the 70-489 exam, understanding how to manage content types, implement managed metadata, and create content processing extensions is key to delivering effective SharePoint solutions that meet business needs.
Managed metadata is a powerful feature in SharePoint that allows organizations to create a consistent taxonomy for categorizing content. By using term sets, businesses can define a standard set of terms for tagging content, which ensures that documents are classified consistently across the platform. Developers must be able to create and manage term sets and assign them to content types to ensure that documents are tagged appropriately. This is especially important in large organizations where consistent classification of content is crucial for compliance, search, and reporting purposes.
One of the key benefits of managed metadata is the ability to create metadata-driven navigation. By leveraging term sets, developers can design dynamic navigation menus that adapt to the content being viewed. For example, as a user browses a SharePoint site, the navigation menu can dynamically update to show relevant categories or subcategories based on the content type or metadata tags assigned to the page. This enhances the user experience by providing intuitive navigation and making it easier for users to find relevant content.
In addition to managing metadata, developers must also be proficient in content processing extensions. These extensions allow organizations to enhance their search experience by enriching content as it is indexed. For example, developers can create extensions that automatically extract entities (such as names, dates, and locations) from documents and add them to SharePoint’s search index. This improves the relevance and accuracy of search results by ensuring that key data points are indexed and searchable. Understanding how to create and implement content processing extensions is crucial for enhancing SharePoint’s content management capabilities.
SharePoint 2013 also introduces content organizer rules, which automate the process of routing documents to specific libraries or folders based on their metadata or content type. These rules help ensure that documents are properly stored without requiring manual intervention, reducing the risk of documents being misplaced or stored incorrectly. Developers must understand how to configure these rules to create an efficient content management system that aligns with business workflows.
Finally, document sets are a powerful feature for managing collections of related documents. Document sets allow organizations to group multiple documents together, ensuring that they are stored and processed as a single entity. This is especially useful in industries like legal and financial services, where multiple documents must be handled together as part of a process. Developers must understand how to create and manage document sets to ensure that they work effectively within SharePoint’s content management framework.
As SharePoint 2013 continues to be used by organizations to manage large volumes of data, ensuring that it remains performant and scalable is critical. Performance issues can arise when SharePoint is handling a large amount of content, serving many users, or integrating with external systems. For developers, optimizing SharePoint for performance and scalability is a key part of designing robust, enterprise-level solutions. The 70-489 exam evaluates developers’ ability to design solutions that can scale effectively while maintaining high performance.
One of the most important performance optimization techniques is caching. Caching frequently accessed data helps reduce the load on SharePoint’s database and improves the responsiveness of the system. Developers must be familiar with SharePoint’s various caching mechanisms, such as object caching, output caching, and page-level caching, and know when to apply each one. For example, output caching can be used to store the results of expensive queries or operations, while object caching stores individual objects for faster retrieval. By optimizing caching strategies, developers can significantly improve the performance of SharePoint solutions.
Another key consideration for performance optimization is minimizing the number of server requests. SharePoint applications often make multiple requests to the server to retrieve data or perform actions. By reducing the number of these requests, developers can improve the performance of SharePoint solutions. One way to minimize server requests is through batching, which allows multiple operations to be performed in a single request. This reduces the amount of data sent across the network and helps improve the responsiveness of SharePoint applications.
Optimizing JavaScript loading is also essential for improving SharePoint’s performance. Large JavaScript files can slow down page loading times and negatively impact the user experience. Developers must use techniques such as minification and compression to reduce the size of JavaScript files and ensure that they load quickly. Additionally, asynchronous loading can be used to ensure that JavaScript files are loaded in the background, so they don’t block the rendering of the page.
Finally, SharePoint 2013 offers several tools for measuring and troubleshooting performance. Developers must be proficient in using SharePoint’s diagnostic tools to identify performance bottlenecks and address them before they become critical issues. This includes using tools like UlsViewer for viewing diagnostic logs, Health Analyzer for monitoring the health of SharePoint farms, and PerformancePoint Services for analyzing performance metrics.
By focusing on caching, query optimization, JavaScript optimization, and troubleshooting, developers can ensure that SharePoint performs efficiently even under heavy load. These strategies are essential for building scalable, high-performance solutions that meet the needs of modern businesses.
SharePoint 2013 provides an incredibly powerful framework for managing content and metadata, transforming it from a simple document storage solution to an enterprise-grade platform for organizing and automating business processes. Content management is no longer about just storing documents, but about structuring them in ways that make them more accessible, relevant, and useful to end-users. When preparing for the 70-489 exam, mastering SharePoint’s capabilities in content management and metadata organization is fundamental to implementing solutions that are both scalable and efficient.
At the heart of SharePoint’s content management capabilities are content types. These are essential for categorizing and organizing documents and other content types within SharePoint. Content types define the behavior and metadata of items, such as documents, list items, or calendar events. They enable organizations to standardize how information is classified and stored across the entire platform. Developers must be skilled in defining and customizing content types to meet specific business needs, from adding metadata to setting default document templates. By leveraging content types, developers can ensure that documents are consistently tagged and categorized, making them easier to search, access, and manage.
Another key feature in SharePoint 2013 is the Managed Metadata Service (MMS), which allows for centralized management of metadata. This enables organizations to create term sets that standardize how information is tagged and categorized across SharePoint sites. With the MMS, businesses can define a hierarchical set of terms and ensure that documents and list items are consistently tagged, improving searchability and organizing content in a way that meets compliance and governance requirements. For developers, it is essential to understand how to configure the MMS, create and manage term sets, and map metadata fields to term sets. This capability enhances the organization of content, making it easier for users to find and use.
The integration of managed metadata with content types allows for more robust content classification. Developers can link term sets to content types to ensure that every document is classified in a standardized way. This classification can then be used to control document workflows, trigger approval processes, or categorize documents based on their content. Furthermore, document sets allow developers to group related documents together, ensuring that documents are stored and managed as a cohesive unit, making document management much more efficient.
SharePoint 2013 also allows developers to automate document management using content organizer rules. These rules help route documents to the correct location based on their metadata or content type. For example, a document with a certain metadata tag might be automatically routed to a specific document library or folder, minimizing manual sorting and reducing human error. These rules can be set up to run in the background, ensuring that documents are filed appropriately as soon as they are uploaded. This automation saves time and ensures that content is always organized according to company policies.
By using content types, managed metadata, and content organizer rules, SharePoint developers can create a highly effective and automated content management system. These tools allow businesses to organize their content consistently, improving collaboration and ensuring that documents are easy to find and manage. For developers aiming for the 70-489 exam, it is crucial to understand how to configure and customize these elements to meet specific business needs and ensure that content management processes are as efficient and effective as possible.
The search functionality within SharePoint 2013 is one of its most powerful and flexible features. As businesses grow and their data sets become more complex, the need for an efficient and highly customized search experience becomes even more critical. For developers preparing for the 70-489 exam, mastering SharePoint’s advanced search customizations is a must. The ability to tailor search queries, define result types, and implement search refiners allows organizations to provide users with more relevant and personalized search results.
The Keyword Query Language (KQL) is one of the foundational tools for customizing search queries in SharePoint 2013. KQL allows developers to build flexible search queries that can filter, sort, and refine search results based on a variety of parameters. KQL makes it possible to create queries that target specific managed properties, metadata fields, and even custom filters. By understanding how to use KQL effectively, developers can craft highly refined searches that yield more accurate and relevant results, improving the user experience and enhancing productivity.
For more advanced search needs, SharePoint 2013 also provides FAST Query Language (FQL). FQL is a more powerful query language that allows for even greater customization and flexibility in search queries. With FQL, developers can create complex queries that can search across multiple data sources, perform full-text searches, and apply advanced filters. FQL is particularly useful for organizations dealing with large datasets, as it allows for granular searches that can handle even the most complex data structures. Mastering both KQL and FQL will enable developers to create search solutions that are not only efficient but also highly tailored to the organization’s needs.
Once search queries are defined, developers can further refine the search experience by creating custom result types. Result types dictate how search results are presented to users, and customizing them can drastically improve the user experience. For example, developers can create custom display templates that change how search results are formatted, from simple lists to more interactive and engaging formats like tables, galleries, or cards. This customization allows organizations to present results in a way that makes the most sense for their business processes, improving usability and accessibility.
Additionally, refiners in SharePoint 2013 allow users to filter search results based on specific criteria. By configuring refiners, developers can allow users to filter results by metadata, document type, or other properties. Refiners make it easier for users to narrow down large sets of search results and find the information they need quickly. For instance, a user might want to filter search results to only show documents from a specific project or from a specific author. By creating and managing refiners, developers can enhance the search functionality and make it more useful to users.
One of the most powerful features of SharePoint’s search engine is the ability to define query rules. Query rules allow developers to manipulate how search results are displayed based on specific conditions. For example, a query rule might promote certain documents to the top of search results based on their relevance or the search term used. Query rules can also be used to trigger actions such as redirecting users to a particular page or displaying custom messages. By implementing query rules, developers can ensure that users see the most relevant results, improving the overall search experience and increasing user satisfaction.
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is a feature of SharePoint 2013 that enables seamless integration with external data sources. This allows SharePoint to interact with systems and applications outside its native environment, making it possible to display and manage external data within SharePoint lists and libraries. For developers preparing for the 70-489 exam, understanding how to design and implement BCS solutions is crucial for building comprehensive, data-driven solutions within SharePoint.
The first step in working with BCS is defining external content types (ECTs). ECTs serve as a bridge between SharePoint and external data sources, such as SQL databases, web services, and line-of-business applications. Developers must be proficient in creating ECTs that map external data to SharePoint content types, ensuring that data is presented in a consistent and manageable way within the SharePoint interface. These ECTs are critical for enabling SharePoint to interact with external systems and for ensuring that the data is displayed and managed in a manner that meets business requirements.
Once external content types are defined, external lists can be created to display the external data in SharePoint. External lists behave just like SharePoint lists, but the data is stored outside SharePoint. This means that developers must ensure that the external data is always accessible and up to date, providing users with the most accurate information available. Configuring and optimizing external lists is a key part of the 70-489 exam, as it tests the developer’s ability to seamlessly integrate external data into SharePoint and ensure it functions correctly within the SharePoint environment.
Associations between external data and SharePoint content are another critical aspect of BCS. Developers must be able to create relationships between external content types and SharePoint lists, ensuring that external data can be used alongside native SharePoint content. For example, a SharePoint list of customers might be associated with external data containing information about customer orders. By creating these associations, developers can enable users to view and interact with data from external systems directly within SharePoint, streamlining workflows and improving overall data accessibility.
Finally, developers must ensure that their BCS solutions are optimized for performance. Querying external data can introduce delays, especially when dealing with large datasets or external systems that are located on remote servers. Developers need to understand how to optimize queries to minimize the impact on SharePoint’s performance. Techniques such as batching and query throttling can help reduce the load on SharePoint’s server and improve responsiveness. Additionally, implementing caching strategies ensures that frequently accessed external data is quickly available to users, reducing the need for repeated queries to external systems.
As organizations grow and rely more heavily on SharePoint for collaboration and document management, ensuring that SharePoint can scale effectively to handle increased traffic and data is paramount. Developers preparing for the 70-489 exam must understand how to optimize SharePoint’s performance and scalability to meet the needs of an expanding user base. Proper performance optimization ensures that SharePoint remains responsive and efficient, even as usage increases and data volumes grow.
One of the primary techniques for optimizing SharePoint’s performance is caching. Caching reduces the load on SharePoint’s database and increases the speed at which content is delivered to users. Developers must understand the different types of caching available in SharePoint, including object caching, page caching, and output caching, and how to apply them to improve performance. Object caching stores frequently accessed data in memory, ensuring that it can be quickly retrieved without having to query the database. Page caching stores entire pages in memory, while output caching stores the results of specific operations, reducing the need for repeated database queries.
Another important performance optimization strategy is minimizing the number of server requests. SharePoint applications often require multiple requests to the server to retrieve data or perform actions. By reducing the number of requests, developers can improve the speed and responsiveness of SharePoint. Techniques such as batching requests allow multiple operations to be performed in a single request, reducing the load on the server and improving performance. Batch operations are especially useful in environments with high traffic or where mobile devices need to interact with SharePoint over slower connections.
Optimizing JavaScript loading is also essential for improving performance. Large JavaScript files can slow down the loading of pages, especially in mobile or remote environments. Developers must ensure that JavaScript files are optimized for performance by using techniques like minification and compression. Minification removes unnecessary characters, such as whitespace, from the JavaScript code, reducing file sizes. Compression further reduces file sizes by encoding the code in a more efficient format, improving load times and ensuring that SharePoint pages load quickly.
In addition to optimizing performance, developers must also design SharePoint solutions for scalability. SharePoint 2013 is designed to scale from small teams to large enterprises, but developers must ensure that the infrastructure is configured to handle increasing data volumes and user traffic. This involves optimizing database queries, reducing the number of requests to external systems, and implementing load balancing techniques to ensure that SharePoint can handle traffic spikes. By designing solutions that can scale with the organization’s growth, developers can ensure that SharePoint remains performant and reliable as it evolves.
Understanding how to implement these performance optimization techniques is essential for passing the 70-489 exam and building SharePoint solutions that are both efficient and scalable. By focusing on caching, request optimization, JavaScript loading, and scalability, developers can create SharePoint solutions that meet the needs of modern businesses and are capable of handling the demands of an ever-growing user base.
Mastering the advanced features of SharePoint 2013 is essential for developers aiming to excel in the 70-489 exam and build effective, scalable solutions that meet the evolving needs of businesses. SharePoint offers a vast range of tools and functionalities that can be tailored to create powerful collaboration platforms, efficient content management systems, and seamless integrations with external data sources. By understanding how to leverage these capabilities, developers can design SharePoint solutions that not only meet the technical requirements but also address the specific business goals and challenges that organizations face today.
The journey to mastering SharePoint 2013’s advanced solutions begins with understanding its core components, including Business Connectivity Services (BCS), custom search functionality, and content management systems. BCS allows organizations to extend SharePoint’s functionality by integrating external data, enabling users to work with data from various sources directly within SharePoint. Customizing search functionality and refining the user experience are key to ensuring that SharePoint becomes a valuable tool for information retrieval, enhancing productivity and collaboration.
Furthermore, content management in SharePoint goes beyond just storing documents. It involves the intelligent categorization of content, the automation of document processes, and the enforcement of organizational policies through features like content types, document sets, and content organizer rules. By mastering these features, developers can ensure that SharePoint becomes a powerful, centralized platform for managing business-critical information, reducing manual intervention and ensuring compliance with business rules.
Performance optimization and scalability are also critical areas for SharePoint developers to focus on. In an increasingly data-driven world, SharePoint must be able to handle large datasets, accommodate growing user bases, and deliver fast, responsive experiences. By leveraging caching, batching, and JavaScript optimization, developers can ensure that SharePoint solutions remain performant even under high traffic and large data volumes. Additionally, understanding how to scale SharePoint to meet the needs of a growing business will allow developers to build solutions that are future-proof and capable of supporting long-term business growth.
As businesses continue to rely on SharePoint to streamline their processes, improve collaboration, and manage their content more efficiently, the demand for skilled SharePoint developers will only increase. Successfully passing the 70-489 exam demonstrates not only technical expertise but also an ability to understand the business needs behind SharePoint solutions. By mastering these advanced features and best practices, developers can contribute significantly to their organization’s success and advance their careers in the world of SharePoint development.
In conclusion, the path to mastering SharePoint 2013 advanced solutions is challenging but highly rewarding. Whether working with Business Connectivity Services, enhancing search customizations, optimizing content management, or ensuring performance and scalability, each of these areas requires deep technical knowledge and a strategic approach. Developers who can navigate these complexities and provide valuable, scalable solutions will be well-positioned to excel in the 70-489 exam and in their professional careers.
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