An Intro to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - The SHIFT

This is the first of a series of articles on SharePoint.

 Do you wish there was a technology that could save you time and make your life simpler? A tool that improved communication and the flow of business? SharePoint is emerging as a leading platform to meet these challenges.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is showing a strong and expanding presence within organizations. Microsoft reports $800 million in SharePoint sales in 2007, more than a 35% increase over fiscal 2006.

What Does SharePoint Do?

SharePoint is difficult to describe because it is not one product, but a powerful integration of business tools – some of which your organization uses today and others which may be aspirational in nature. Think of it as an expanded, easy-to-use intranet or extranet.

Part of the Microsoft Office portfolio of products, SharePoint used to be viewed as a collaboration and productivity application. Today, organizations are starting to use it as an advanced application development platform that can be used to build serious applications which streamline business processes. Besides collaboration, SharePoint provides portal, enterprise search, content management, business process and forms, and business intelligence capabilities.

SharePoint Capabilities

Collaboration	Allows teams to work together effectively, collaborate on and publish documents, maintain task lists, implement worksflows and share information through the use of wikis and blogs
Portals	Create a personal MySite portal to share information with others and personalize the user experience and content of an enterprise Web site based on the user’s profile
Enterprise Search	Quickly and easily find people, expertise and content in business applications
Content Management	Create and manage documents, records and Web content
Business process and forms	Create workflows and electronic forms to automate and streamline your business processes, such as the approval process for expense forms
Business Intelligence	Easily access critical business information, analyze and view data, and publish reports to make more informed decisions

Source: Microsoft Corporation

 

These capabilities are being used by organizations to increase productivity and improve decision-making by enabling employees and partners to:

• faciliate collaboration
• find organizational resources
• manage content and workflow
• search for experts and corporate information
• implement business processes

With SharePoint, you can quickly create sites that support specific content publishing, content management, records management, or business intelligence needs. You can also conduct effective searches for people, documents and data, participate in forms-driven business processes, and access and analyze large amounts of business data.

Like any full featured software product, SharePoint’s expansive functionality and myriad benefits can seem difficult and time-consuming to implement. But getting started simply requires the creation of an intranet or extranet and one or two killer applications, such as people search or enterprise-wide organizational charts.

Microsoft Product Offerings

Capabilities	Windows SharePoint Services 3.0	Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard Edition	Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Edition
Collaboration	X	X	X
Portals		X	X
Enterprise Search		X	X
Enterprise Content Management		X	X
Business Process and Forms			X
Business Intelligence			X

Source: Microsoft Corporation

 

The Bottom Line

SharePoint integrates with your existing platforms and systems to provide a better way to collaborate, find documents and people, and analyze business data.

For more information on SharePoint, visit these web pages:

Help and How-to: Introduction to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Microsoft  
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 product guide – Microsoft
SharePoint Features at a Glance - Microsoft
Getting Started with Portals and Collaboration – mindSHIFT

Next in this series on SharePoint: Improving Team Collaboration with SharePoint