Understanding SharePoint Technology

SharePoint is a business solution from Microsoft that provides a server infrastructure to support the needs of information gatherers and workers of any organisation.

These needs include collaboration, knowing who's online, document storage, and the ability to inform and be informed. Different organisations needs to assure information workers the need to audit, monitor, organise, retain, and protect collected information.

SharePoint makes it possible for companies to engage all their information workers through the tools they are using already - Office clients (such as Word, Excel & PowerPoint), Internet browsers (such as Internet Explorer), and email clients (such as Outlook).

Obviously, SharePoint works best with Office 2007. Whether you're using Office 2007 or OpenOffice, SharePoint gives employers a means to connect with workers where they work - at their desktops.

SharePoint Intranet?

A SharePoint Intranet is a platform that offers office tools and workspaces for people to colloborate and communicate with team members, track projects, coordinate deadlines, provide workflow procedures, process corporate reports, managing document life cycles and share information resources.

What is an Extranet?

An extranet is the online information hub for your external networks or stakeholders (clients, partners, suppliers, providers) and normally have 24/7 access to the most up to date information where possible.

Communicating with external stakeholders quickly, easily and consistently is more important that ever.

• Simplify the communication process
• Access information, respond quickly and easily
• Consolidate, manage and share documentation
• Securely share information
• Foster networked community

What is a Portal?

Portal pull together information from various sources (people, systems) into the one centralised location. Portals are designed to be the first port of call when looking for specific information, corporate news, documents, forms, policies, procedures and such.

• Centralise information
• Consolidate, manage and share documentation
• Manage and control access
• Simplify communications
• Collaborate
• Search and access information quickly

History behind MOSS?

MOSS is the the third version of original SharePoint 2001. The SharePoint 2001 was an Exchange-based application that offered the basic team services capability and a more advanced portal capability.

Next to that is SharePoint 2003 which consisted of two different server applications: One was Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (commonly referred to as WSS), a collaborative web-based framework based on ASP.NET 1.1 - the data repository of which became SQL server. The other, SharePoint 2003 Portal Server, was for enterprise portals, and added personalization, enterprise search, single sign-on and other features.

The 2007 edition of the SharePoint is truly a revolutionary upgrade. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is based on the ASP.Net 2.0 Web Parts framework, and has Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) built into its underpinnings. MOSS 2007, in addition to personalization and a hugely upgraded enterprise search capability, offers content management capabilities such as workflow and publishing approval templates, metadata management and enforcement, records expiration, and document policy management; InfoPath Forms Services; Excel Services; a business data catalog; and far more.

- Sourced from the Pro InfoPath 2007

Why MOSS? for business...

MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) 2007 is the fastest growing product in Microsoft's history and seems to have been branded as the Swiss Army knife for business solutions.

Its six focus areas are collaboration, portal, search, ECM (enterprise content management), business process management, and business intelligence.

Related article here - InfoWorld

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is a platform that offers specific kinds of tools (MS Office) and workspaces for people to collaborate and communicate with team members, track projects, coordinate deadlines, provide workflow procedures, process corporate reports, managing document life cycles and share information resources. The 'Team Sites' can be used to collect, archive corporate knowledge and enable transparency in the completion of each of the projects and activities that is critical in the medical practice.

Components of a SharePoint

• Team Sites and Workplaces – a central location, where individuals can capture and share ideas, and work together on documents, tasks, contacts, and events. It's the next best thing to being in the room together.

• Libraries allow users to manage document records, forms, wiki, picture, slide (PowerPoint) and reports in intuitive and effective ways through versioning, document policy and life cycles.

• Lists provides a way to communicate using the announcements, contacts, discussion boards (forums), calendars, tasks, issue tracking and surveys.

• Workflow* is a collection of steps and data that define the direction that can be taken to complete a task or procedure.

• Alerts give users the ability to be notified when information has been added or changed.

• Web Parts allow existing information to be organised and presented appropriately and provide additional corporate logic and applications that can be incorporated into the business operations, adding more functionality to the intranet.

• Navigation and Search provides a quick way to access / locate information through the use of metadata resources.

• Business Intelligence enables decision workers to be well-informed choices based on the data and reports gathered and presented. It includes several reporting tools for analyzing workflow history. You can use these tools to find holdups in your workflow or determine whether a group is meeting its performance targets and make recommendations.