Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a new server application that is part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Your organization can use it to facilitate collaboration, provide content management features, implement business processes, and provide access to information that is essential to organizational goals and processes.

By using site templates and other features in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can can quickly and efficiently create sites that support specific content publishing, content management, records management, or business intelligence needs your organization may have. For example, it is possible to create enterprise-level sites, such as organizational portal sites or Internet presence sites, or specialized sites, such as content repositories or meeting workspaces. These sites enable you to collaborate and share information with others, whether they are inside or outside of your organization. In addition, you can use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to conduct effective searches for people, documents, and data, to design and participate in forms-driven business processes, and to access and analyze large amounts of business data.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services

You may wonder what the difference is between Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, and how they relate to one another.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a product that uses the Windows SharePoint Services technology. Any features available in Windows SharePoint Services are also available in Office SharePoint Server 2007, including the ability to create centralized lists and libraries, blogs, Wikis, and team workspaces, such as meeting workspaces.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 relies on Windows SharePoint Services to provide a consistent, familiar framework for lists and document libraries, site administration, and site customization. However, Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers enhanced or additional features that are unavailable on a Windows SharePoint Services site. For example, Office SharePoint Server 2007 uses the same search technology as Windows SharePoint Services but includes additional features that are especially useful to employees in large organizations, such the ability to search for business data in SAP, Siebel, and other business applications.

Collaboration

By using the following features in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can work more efficiently and effectively with other people in your organization.

• Use site templates to collaborate or manage meetings. When you create a new Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, you can start by selecting one of several different kinds of site templates for collaborating with other people and managing meetings. For example, the site templates in the Collaboration group are designed to help teams within an organization work on projects, collaborate on documents. For example, by using the Document Workspace site template, you can work with other people on a document or a set of documents. The site templates in the Meetings group are designed to help teams within an organization manage different kinds of meetings. The templates in this group support everything from basic meetings to decision-focused meetings or even social events.
• Share documents, contacts, tasks, and calendars. You can synchronize your Office SharePoint Server 2007 calendar with Outlook. You can enter all-day events, and specify more types of repeating, or recurring, events. You can track team projects more effectively, with visual day and month views.
• Brainstorm easily with wiki sites. A wiki site enables you to brainstorm ideas, collaborate on a team design, build an encyclopedia of knowledge, or just gather routine information in a format that's easy to create and modify. Your team members can contribute to wikis from their browser — they don't need a word processor or special technical knowledge.
• Share ideas with blogs. A blog, sometimes known as a weblog, consists of frequent short posts. The posts are displayed in order starting with the most recent post. With Office SharePoint Server 2007, it just takes a few clicks to create a blog, post to a blog, subscribe to updates to a blog, and customize a blog. You can enable a blog to accept comments, or you can turn comments off. Some possible uses include an executive's journal for sharing thoughts and vision, a community for building customer relationships, or an informal site where teams can share news and tips.
• Receive updates to lists and libraries with RSS. Lists and libraries make use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology, so members of your workgroup can automatically receive updates. RSS is a technology that enables people to receive and view updates or feeds of news, blogs, and other items of interest in a consolidated location.
• Manage projects. You can create a Project Tasks list, which includes a Gantt chart. A Gantt chart is a type of visual overview of project tasks that you can use to monitor the dates and progress of team tasks.
• Send e-mail to Office SharePoint Server 2007 You can use e-mail to participate in discussions, meetings, and documents in a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. Just as you send e-mail to your team to discuss tasks and projects, you can also send e-mail to a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, or a specific list or library. You can also archive e-mail that's sent to a site or list, so that your team members can easily follow a discussion on a site instead of having to find messages in their clogged Inboxes.
• Manage documents and some types of lists offline. You can take your important work with you wherever you go. With some e-mail programs that are compatible with Office SharePoint Server 2007, such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you can work offline on files in a library and items in the following types of lists: calendars, contacts, tasks, and discussions. When you connect back online, you can update your files on the server. List items are updated automatically.