Sharepoint 2007 – Reliable Solution for Small and Medium Enterprises

Sharing of data along with collaboration from different sources is a basic necessity for all small and medium business enterprises. Effective collaboration of data from various sources at one place along with sharing helps the user to find all the information at a single place. This increases productivity even if the resources are reduced.

Microsoft SharePoint presents a safe and secure way to collaborate and share all your data with your team. Microsoft SharePoint, a family of products from Microsoft enables organizations to have one stop solutions for collaboration, content management, business processes and portal development.

The term SharePoint refers to either of these:

·         Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

·         Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

The SharePoint family consists of

1.    Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

2.    Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

3.    Microsoft SharePoint Designer (SPD)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) or SharePoint 2007

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) or SharePoint 2007 is the latest version of SharePoint Server (SPS) 2003 with improved integration with Microsoft Office applications and web 2.0 collaboration functionality like blogs.

Features of SharePoint 2007

1      Integration with Microsoft Office 2007:

MOSS closely integrates with all Microsoft Office applications rendering all Office documents in web pages.

a)    InfoPath 2007:         Microsoft InfoPath forms can be hosted on the web browser using MOSS and InfoPath Forms Services. The user can easily view the forms and fill them using the browsers.

b)    Excel 2007:    All Excel worksheets can be easily loaded on the SharePoint site. The users can then edit the sheets using the browser.

c)    Outlook 2007: SharePoint document libraries can be easily accessed and synchronized using Office Outlook like other Outlook folders.

d)    Access 2007:     Access can be synchronized using SharePoint to view data and create reports even if the user if offline.

e)    PowerPoint 2007:      PowerPoint slides can be shared with other users using SharePoint 2007.

2      Search:

MOSS 2007 helps in enterprise search. It indexes all the documents stored in document libraries and user groups to facilitate the search.

3      Business Data Catalog:

The Business Data Catalog (BDC) feature enables business data from backend server applications like SAP to be viewed by the web based interface of SharePoint without writing any code.

Benefits of SharePoint

·         Ability to manage and control the content.

·         Easily organize and manage documents

·         Ease to secure business information

·         Improve team productivity by the easy-to-use collaborative tool

·         Advanced file sharing with robust capabilities

·         Cost effective foundation for web based applications

·         Provide sophisticated controls for securing company resources

·         Ease to track the progress of projects