Require documents to be checked out before they can be edited settings in SharePoint document library

Have you always wondered why documents are checked out to you when you copy files to SharePoint document library from file explorer. It is because of the 'Require documents to be checked out before they can be edited' settings in Document library settings>General Settings>Versioning settings>Require Check out section. If it is set to 'Yes' new documents(in this case copied documents) are checked out to you. If it is set to 'No' then you can easily transfer files from windows file explorer.

Connect to Office option in SharePoint

If you want to save attachments in outlook email directly to SharePoint there is an option called 'Connect to Office' that can help you. It essentially adds 'SharePoint Sites' in the Favorites and add Internet Shortcut(.url) to your site in it.

By using the Connect to Office option(see below) in document library, you can conveniently access commonly used SharePoint libraries from a Microsoft Office program.

To use please open ‘Document library’ . On the Library tab, in the Connect & Export group, click the arrow next to Connect to Office.

Then click Add to SharePoint sites.

A “Library added” message is displayed, indicating that the current SharePoint site has been added to the shortcut bar of the Office Save As and Open dialog boxes. The site also appear as a favorites link ‘SharePoint Sites’ in the file explorer.

Doing above will be useful if you want to save documents directly from outlook email message. You can click on ‘Save As’  from the outlook email and select specific SharePoint document library folder.

'Per-location' view settings in SharePoint 2010

You may be wondering what 'Per-location' view settings does in SharePoint 2010 as it is not very obvious. As for general views there is nothing to select.

But things change when you start adding folders in the list. Now you have something to change. If you are wondering where this goes your guess is correct. You can add or remove views that are available to specific folders.

Also you can configure available views for any node in metadata navigation. For more details please refer to good blog in the url http://blog.vossers.com/2009/12/27/per-location-view-settings-in-sharepoint-2010-views-per-content-type/. I learnt about it from the aforementioned url

Creating alerts only on a part of items in a document library

Normally alerts are created for all items in  a document library. If you like to create an alert that notifies you on changes related to part of items then create a view that includes only those documents (shown below).

If a metadata column needs to be added to the content type or document library go ahead with it and use it as filter for the view.
Now you will get alerts only on items that are filtered in the view.

Difference between Master Pages, Page Layouts and Content Type

Master Pages are used by all pages in the site and used specify the common elements that all pages in the site should have. The Master Page is nothing but a text file with .master extension. The key is Master Pages is used across all the pages in the site. In SharePoint every page need to have Master Page. By default SharePoint specify default.master as the Master Page. So whether you like it or not a page in SharePoint will have a Master page (even if you do not specify one).

The Page Layout is specifically used in the SharePoint Publishing Site. A page layout is a file with aspx extension. A page layout also will be associated with a master page and inherits elements from Master Page. A SharePoint publishing site will have Pages document library where the items contain the content of the page. Each page will have a content type and columns in the content type will be used to create the content of the page. The item in the pages document library will be associated with a content type (for contents) and page layout(to specify the layout).

Hope the above makes things clear.

SharePoint Audience Targeting - In simple words

Sharepoint list items or documents can be made to appear(also known as targeting) only to specific people or group. The specific people or group are known as Audiences.

Audience targeting does not change the permission of the list item or documents. It only affects whether it is visible to a group of users or not.

Audience targeting can be used in the following three cases.
1.list items or document in SharePoint List or Document library
2.Web Parts
3.Navigation Links.

You start by selecting 'Enable Audience Targeting' in the Audience Targeting Settings of a list.After that when you create new item or edit an existing item a people picker field (titled 'Target Audiences') will appear and any user with Author access can specify Target Audience.

The target audience can be specified in a web part under 'Advanced' configuration options. A people picker field is available to select the users.

Outlook 2007 integration with SharePoint 2010

From SharePoint 2010 document library you can select 'Connect to Outlook' to sync with outlook. SharePoint 2010 and Outlook 2010 both use the Ribbon - the standard UI used across the Microsoft Office Products.
Once you synchrnoize a document library from SharePoint it appears as a folder in the Outlook navigation Pane under SharePoint Lists. You can edit the documents off-line in outlook and synchronize back to SharePoint.
Synchronized content in Outlook is kept only in read only mode and so cannot be deleted from SharePoint by deleting from the local copy. You can synchronize SharePoint Task List.
But Out of the box SharePoint Lists cannot be viewed from Outlook. The option 'Connect to Outlook' is not selectable and appear in grey for OOTB SharePoint Lists. RSS feeds,Contacts and Calendars can be synchornized between SharePoint and Outlook.