Viewing All Team Project Portal Sites

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Today, I received e-mail from Matt asking why he can’t find all of the team project portal sites in the list of Sites and Workspaces found at https://Application-TierComputer/_layouts/lcid/mngsubwebs.aspx?view=sites. After all, this list includes all subsites beneath this top-level site, right? Technically speaking, yes it does. But I’ll explain below why the team project portal sites aren’t technically subsites, which is why they aren’t listed.

During team project creation, the process templates included with Team Foundation Server (MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement) have tasks for SharePoint to create the team project portal sites as top-level sites. These sites appear in the /Sites subfolder of https://Application-TierComputer.

First, let’s review some terminology from the SharePoint Glossary:

  • site collection   A set of Web sites on a virtual server that have the same owner and share administration settings. Each site collection contains a top-level Web site and can contain one or more subsites. There can be multiple site collections on each virtual server.
  • subsite   A complete Web site stored in a named subdirectory of the top-level Web site. Each subsite can have administration, authoring, and browsing permissions that are independent from the top-level Web site and other subsites.
  • top-level Web site   The default, top-level site provided by a Web server or virtual server. To gain access to the top-level Web site, you supply the URL of the server without specifying a page name or subsite. (Note – SharePoint can also have multiple top-level Web sites on the same virtual server. See site collection )
  • virtual server   A virtual computer that resides on an HTTP server but appears to the user as a separate HTTP server. Several virtual servers can reside on one computer, each capable of running its own programs and each with individualized access to input and peripheral devices. Each virtual server can have its own domain name and IP address. (Note – SharePoint Central Administration includes the default Web server on the physical computer in its list of virtual servers, not just the virtual ones.)

A common misunderstanding, I think, is that people presume a Web site has one top-level site at the root of the Web site (e.g., https://Application-TierComputer). Of course the definition SharePoint provides for top-level Web site in its Glossary doesn’t make that obvious, but the definition for site collection states that each site collection has a top-level site, and each virtual server can have multiple site collections.

The reason you can’t find team project portal sites listed anywhere is because SharePoint doesn’t provide a page for listing all top-level sites. There is a sample chapter from Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Inside Out on Creating Custom Administration Tools, which includes a sample Web part you can create for adding this functionality.

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