ThreeWill works with a number of products from Microsoft to help our clients manage information more effectively. They include SharePoint 2007 as the hub technology along with client technologies like Groove and InfoPath. Let's discuss a number of key areas that pertain to managing information more effectively and discuss how the new version of Office and SharePoint address these areas.
Getting Data into a Central Repository
The first step in managing information is getting the data into a central repository. SharePoint 2007 makes this easy by allowing users to stay in familiar programs like Microsoft Office. They can edit and upload documents from within Microsoft Office without having to leave the environment. In addition to providing the ability to read and write documents, you have a toolbar in Office that provides you with additional metadata about the document (for example, you could associate a document with a specific client or project). Also, you can easily add content to sites by using email or even through an RSS interface. You can e-mail discussions, documents, pictures, and calendar items to a SharePoint site.
Accessing the Repository
Once the data is in the repository, it must be accessible and easy to view. There are many user interface improvements to address getting information in SharePoint. One of the primary complaints that Microsoft heard about SharePoint 2003 was around the navigation within a site. Some of these problems included not being able to easily navigate from one site to another and not knowing where in the site structure the user was located. One of the major enhancements to SharePoint is with the use of new navigation menus. These navigation menus provide users with more than one view of the site (for example, www.threewill.com uses the breadcrumb control which you can see near the top of the page). Each of the navigation menus solves the problems that customers felt when trying to navigate in SharePoint 2003. Some of the more common controls that users will see immediately are the breadcrumbs control, the top navigation control, and the enhanced quick launch bar. In order to provide customers with more options to view data, Microsoft not only enhanced the document libraries, but also added many new web parts to view the data stored in SharePoint 2007. This will now allow users to define the view of data they are most interested in. With the addition of RSS and Alerts, you can stay on top of information in SharePoint 2007 more easily. For example, you can specify to be notified about updates to lists on your site. And now that Outlook has a built in RSS Reader, you can use Outlook as your central application for managing information. SharePoint 2007 uses the ASP.NET mobile controls to generate mobile pages that are consumable by industry standard mobile web browsers. The page that is generated for mobile devices only shows a limited set of data based on the type of device that is in use.
Searching the Repository
Along with being able to view data, search has become a critical part of the way that we manage information. Search in SharePoint incorporates documents, people, business data, and Web pages to produce ample and relevant results. This gives you a central repository for searching for information across the enterprise. You can use SharePoint as one platform for building your Intranet, Extranet, and Corporate Presence Internet sites. This means you have powerful search mechanisms across all these sites.
Mobilizing the Repository for Offline
Today’s workforce has become more mobile – you need your data whether you are online or offline. This has been a challenge with previous versions of SharePoint. Now, you have some options for taking your data offline and then synchronizing changes when you get back online. For example, Microsoft Outlook provides a way to work with calendars, tasks, and discussions in an offline format. Also, Microsoft Office now has a new tool called Groove 2007 that you can use for working with SharePoint files in a workspace offline. ThreeWill has been using and developing solutions for Groove and it has proven to be a great tool for allowing us to stay productive, whether we are online or offline.
Finally, Securing the Repository
You have a number of new security options available in SharePoint 2007. A security trimmed user interface is one that only allows users to see actions that they can perform. An example of this would be if you had functionality on a web site that allowed users to add announcements to the site, but only authorized users could add the announcements. When an authorized user viewed the web page, the link "add an announcement" would be visible, while an unauthorized user would not see the link and would not know the functionality existed. SharePoint provides this functionality and only displays user interface elements that the user can perform. You also have item level security in SharePoint 2007, a feature that was clearly needed to build enterprise applications that utilize SharePoint lists. Finally, the ASP.NET 2.0 authentication providers allow you to secure you information in SharePoint a number of different ways based on the sensitivity of the data in the site.
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