When you are working with SharePoint, you might find yourself wondering about some of the new terms that don’t seem to have obvious meanings. The word service is one of these terms, and it doesn’t just have relevance in SharePoint. It also has significance in computing, but more on that later. This article discusses what services are in SharePoint, how they work. And how to connect services together to perform tasks in your SharePoint system.
Access Services
SharePoint Access Services makes it possible to develop customized data-driven business applications that consume information from a SharePoint site. When you choose Access as your development environment, developers can create stand-alone desktop or server-based applications using features of Access such as navigation and forms. They can also take advantage of built-in Web services technology to communicate with SharePoint sites so that their applications can be easily integrated into an organization’s overall business processes.
App Management Service
This service is used for managing apps for your organization. It supports acquiring and deploying apps from an app catalog. Updating and uninstalling existing apps, and providing a single place to manage permissions for accessing installed apps from any location. This service also allows you to see what apps have been acquired or deployed to specific locations.
In addition, it provides information about how much of a quota is being consumed by acquired apps. If you don’t use Office 365 ProPlus or Microsoft Office desktop applications that require add-ins, then you can disable App Management Service without affecting other services.
Business Data Connectivity Service
One of SharePoint’s key features is its ability to connect to, store, and make available data from external sources. Business Data Connectivity (BDC) enables developers to extend out their custom applications by providing a web service-based interface to database and business logic that resides outside of a given Web site.
This provides custom applications built on top of SharePoint with a wide variety of services through which they can access. And manipulate data stored in other applications. Microsoft has made BDC available as part of Microsoft Office server products including Exchange Server. Outlook Web Access for Exchange Server, Office Information Worker Solution Accelerator Pack for SQL Server, and SQL Reporting Services.
Central Administration
In Central Administration, administrators can control various aspects of your farm like security, site collection management, and service application deployment. Central Administration is where you’ll need to go to install a new SharePoint farm or upgrade an existing one. You can also use it to shut down or move sites and set up new service applications for search and user profiles. If you’re looking to get more granular with your administration tasks, check out PowerShell cmdlets.
Claims to Windows Token Service
This service issues security tokens based on claims, which can be Windows security tokens or SAML 2.0 tokens, to applications and services that need them. This is a non-Windows service. The Claims to Windows Token Service (C2WTS) is a web service that runs on both Internet Information Services (IIS) 7 and IIS 8 and that allows applications to request security tokens from other services in the environment. You can set up C2WTS so that it grants requests for various types of credentials.
Distributed Cache
Provides access to services that scale with load, as well as other Web applications and services. This provides increased scalability and performance on large, clustered solutions. When a user submits an edit page request. Distributed Cache intercepts that request and checks its cache for a copy of the data associated with that page. If no copy is available locally, it retrieves it from its origin server using versioning. Afterward, it updates its local cache with the new information. It then sends back a modified version of that page to be stored in SharePoint’s content database. If a cached copy was available locally, Distributed Cache returns it directly to users without having to go through any external servers or databases. The result is faster response times and reduced network traffic between servers.
Document Conversions Launcher Service
The Document Conversions Launcher Service enables editing of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other file types from within SharePoint. It uses .NET to launch applications with specific document-conversion settings and parameters. This service was first introduced in Office 2007 as a new feature of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It is included in both SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
This new service lets you edit documents by launching an application outside of your browser without leaving your site.
Excel Calculation Services
An Excel Calculation Service is a background process that adds intelligence to your spreadsheet without any coding. Use calculation services if you want to extend Excel’s capabilities by using Microsoft Office. Third-party add-ins, and web services without modifying code. The result of a service can be either persistent or transient: Persistent data remains available even when an end user closes and reopens a workbook.
Transient data is only available while an end user has a workbook open in Excel. For example, a sales tax rate for each state might be stored as persistent data so it will always display properly regardless of whether an end user opens and closes a workbook.
Machine Translation Service
The Machine Translation Service provides access to information stored within a Microsoft Translator Hub and allows that information to be indexed for search. Customers can use it to translate sites and other documents into languages other than those supported by Microsoft Translator. Including domain-specific languages such as legal and medical. For example, users can get Microsoft Word help with translation of a document or page through the use of a machine translation service.
Conclusion
Microsoft SharePoint is a collaborative platform that has quickly become one of today’s most popular business solutions. The cloud-based solution provides users with a centralized location to manage and share information and documents, making it easy for teams to work together regardless of location. Microsoft regularly offers free or low-cost trials to users, making it easy to test drive before committing. To learn more about Microsoft’s services and other options for collaboration software, contact a technology expert at your local CompuCom office.