What is SharePoint Designer ?

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 — is a large, sophisticated desktop application from Microsoft. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 is the tool for customizing sites based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010. It provides features for:

• Creating or Editing master pages and page layouts
• Creating or Editing CSS (cascading style sheets)
• Designing or Editing workflows 
• Connecting SharePoint to different external data sources using BCS (Business Connectivity Services).
• Creating or Modifying lists, libraries, and views of data

SPD 2010 has undergone lots of changes. Users who open the product will note that SPD is now focused only one thing: SharePoint. With SPD 2010, it is possible to make most settings changes to a SharePoint site directly from the tool itself. Previously, in SharePoint 2007, if you wanted to make a change to the settings of a list, you needed to open a web browser, go to the list settings page for the list, and then make the Change. Most changes that were previously made through the web browser can now be centrally accessed and changed through SPD 2010. This is a big help if you are trying to make several changes to different aspects of your site. The new user interface not only makes it easy to make the changes, but also makes the process of making the changes far more efficient than in the past. SPD 2010 will continue to be a free product, which makes it an invaluable tool for any SharePoint developer, even if you just use it as a simple web design or SharePoint debugging tool.

Note: You should be connected to a site to use SPD 2010. It was possible to edit local copies of master pages or page layouts with SPD 2007, but it is no longer possible in SPD 2010. For example, you can’t e-mail yourself a copy of a master page and edit it at home if you don’t have access to a SharePoint server. If you try to edit the file without first opening a site, you will get an error.

Who are the users of SharePoint Designer?

SharePoint Designer is powerful tool and it is important for any user of the product to have a basic level of training to ensure that using the product in accordance with the internal governance policies of the user’s organization.

SPD is ideal for following users:

Information Workers: This are the primary audience for this tool, SPD enables users to manage and customize their sites without having to depend on the IT department to make the changes for them. Information workers are normally Business users, Power users, SME’s (Subject matter experts) for their particular areas and they are using SharePoint to organize, collaborate and improve business process. As these users are not developers, SPD enables them to create custom, no-code solutions to business platforms without the need of developer.

Developers: SPD is very handy tool for developers to learn a number of reasons. When any new requirements are provided to developers and they are asked for estimation, they must know the various approaches. It is often quicker and easier to build a solution in SharePoint Designer than to develop a custom application. It is also useful tool for developers to quickly prepare prototype of functionality before developing it.

Administrators: Administrators are the ones who are responsible for the servers. With SharePoint Designer 2010, they are the ones who have the rights to control who can use SPD. If user requests the permission to use SPD 2010, it is important that administrators understand what they are agreeing to. What do you want to allow? What do you want restrict? To make the best decision, it is important that administrators have an understanding of SPD’s capabilities.