The Quick Launch bar contains hyperlinks to specific pages on your SharePoint site.

Whenever you add a page to your site, you have the option of including a hyperlink to that page on the Quick Launch bar.

The Announcements list is a place to post important information for your whole team, such as an announcement about an upcoming symposium or a reminder to bring a potluck item to the lunch tomorrow. The five most recent announcements in the Announcements list are displayed on the home page by default. You can also click the Announcements list heading to go to the full list of announcements.

When you create your SharePoint site, a built-in announcement is displayed automatically. You can edit or delete this announcement, as desired, and add your own announcements from either the home page or the Announcements page.

The Events list is intended to help you communicate about your team's events — whether those are meetings, key deadlines, or work schedules. When you create your SharePoint site, this list is empty. You can add your team's events to the list.

The Links list is intended to include hyperlinks to your team's favorite Web pages or sites (such as your organization's Internet site). When you create your site, this list is empty.

The Home hyperlink on the top link bar links to the home page.

The Documents and Lists hyperlink on the top link bar links to a page that displays all the document libraries, picture libraries, lists, discussion boards, and surveys currently in your site. You can use this page to navigate to the lists and document libraries in your site. You can also use a link on the page to see any sites, Document Workspace sites, or Meeting Workspace sites below your site.

The Create hyperlink on the top link bar links to a page that enables you to create new pages and components for your site. By using this page, you can create items such as a list that is like any of the built-in lists, a list based on an existing spreadsheet, a document library, a discussion board, a survey, or a new page for your site.

The Site Settings hyperlink on the top link bar links to a page where you can change your personal information, change the name and description of your SharePoint site, change site content, and perform site management tasks, such as changing personal settings or setting up new team members for the SharePoint site. You must be a member of the Administrator site group to perform site management tasks.

The Help hyperlink on the top link bar opens a separate browser window containing the Help system for Windows SharePoint Services. Use the Help window to find information about Windows SharePoint Services and "how to" steps for using your SharePoint site.

SharePoint sites can contain other SharePoint sites (called subsites) in a hierarchy. The Up to Site Name hyperlink (where Site Name is the name of an actual site) appears only if your site is a subsite of another SharePoint site. This link helps you navigate up a level to the parent site.

The list toolbar provides hyperlinks to pages that contain forms for adding and editing items in a list, document library, or discussion board.

Some pages, such as the one that displays the Tasks list, provide a selection of views so that you can see the data in various ways.

A default view of the data is the view that automatically appears when you follow a hyperlink to the page — for example, when you click Tasks on the Quick Launch bar. You can see other views by clicking their names in the Select a view list.

The Actions list contains links for modifying list settings, creating alerts (notifications of changes to the list) and more.

The menus for items and files give you quick access to frequently-used commands. What appears on these menus changes, depending on whether you are looking at a list or a document library. For a list, you see commands such as View Item, Edit Item, and Delete Item. For a document library, you see View Properties, Edit Properties, and Delete. This menu also contains an Alert Me command that lets you sign up to be alerted whenever a document or item changes.

Document libraries provide a central place to store and share your team's documents. Your site contains a default document library — Shared Documents — that you can get to from the Quick Launch bar on the home page. You can create additional document libraries to store documents for a specific project, or you can create folders inside Shared Documents for different types or categories of documents.

Picture libraries provide a central place to store and share pictures. It is similar in concept to a document library, but gives you special ways to view the pictures (such as showing only thumbnails or showing all pictures in a filmstrip).

The Contacts list lets you store and share information about people. For example, you can use this list to share your team member's home phone numbers, or to store your customer information.

The Tasks list helps you organize team tasks (work items that your team needs to complete), and assign them a status and priority as well as a due date.

The Issues list helps you manage a set of issues or problems, and assign them a status and priority as well as a due date.

Discussion boards provide a forum for conversing about topics that interest your team. For example, you could create a discussion board for team members to suggest activities.

Surveys provide a way of polling team members.