Information Strategies - Why SharePoint 2007?

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Infostrat - Microsoft’s SharePoint Partner in Washington, DC

About Our SharePoint Practice

Why SharePoint 2007?

WSS Versus MOSS

SharePoint 2007 and Windows Server 2008 FAQ

Ten Things To Know About SharePoint 2007

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Here is a brief list of just some of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) improvements:

Architecture

SharePoint now complies with Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 1992 and HIPPA Act of 1996.
SharePoint is built on the .NET Framework 3.0 and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).
SharePoint runs on IIS 6.0 or later.
SharePoint can run on SQL Server 2000 or 2005 (2005 required for BI).

Portal

Includes support for several new enterprise site templates:

1. Enterprise Portal Template
2. Corporate Internet Presence Site Template
3. Application Portal Template
4. The Roll-Up Portal Template

The Enterprise Portal template automatically creates several sub sites including:

Sites Directory
Document Center
News page with RSS capabilities
Report Center
Search Center
Access to My Site

Enhanced Site Directory

The Sites Directory is a catalog of sites that can be grouped into categories

Enhanced My Site (the user’s personal portals)

Enables you to target the information to specific groups
Enables end user to aggregate content in one location
Deliver info about themselves to the enterprise, to defined set of colleagues

Search

Microsoft has implemented a common search engine across the entire SharePoint platform. The MOSS version can search any type of content whereas WSS Search can only find WSS content.

Key enhancements in the following areas:

Enterprise scalability
Contextual relevance
People and business data search

Content Management

Integrated document management
Records management: Using content types, you can now manage bits of information like email messages. Ability to audit what happens to the document and place expiration dates on documents.
Rights Management (RMS) is embedded in SharePoint 2007. Implementing RMS requires a working knowledge of PKI.
Web content management with policies and workflow
Enables users to create and publish content to public web site.

InfoPath Forms Services (Enterprise CAL)

InfoPath Forms Services is a server technology built on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and is an ASP.NET version 2.0 application.

Provides:

Web forms-based front ends
Data Validation
Line of business (LOB) actions
Pluggable single sign-on

Business Intelligence (Enterprise CAL)

Microsoft Office Excel Services: Server-based Excel spreadsheets and data visualization
Report Center: The Report Center site template provides an out-of-the-box BI portal experience, along with dashboards, KPI and Filter web parts, and report libraries. Filters enable dashboards to be personalized by communicating shared parameters among Web Parts on a dashboard. The parameters passed can be automatically applied based on user profiles, SharePoint lists, and so forth.
Business Data Catalog: For connecting to line of business data in other systems for exposure in SharePoint. Users can then search that information from SharePoint, or it can be surfaced into Web parts for display to users, or the data can be used in lists and libraries in SharePoint.

Windows SharePoint Services V.3 Improvements

Large list indexing which enables searching across large lists for specific information.
Multivalued Lookups: Can use a list that is a lookup to another list. Also provides a link fix-up component to show dependencies between lists.
Replaced the SQL Full-Text Index Engine with the SharePoint Server 2007 Search engine.
New Change log that keeps track of changes to a library, list, or item. Can be pulled via API or Web Services.
AutoCopy: enables you to automatically copy an item to one or more locations on a scheduled basis.
Previous limit of 64 columns in a list expanded to 2000.
Data Restore – Three Level Recycle Bin
- Document library level
- Site collection level
- System administrator level

Enhanced Security

Users will no longer see links they do not have permission to access.
Versioning and per-item security for all list items in all list types.
Auditing Engine: Can audit every action a user performs. Audit trail for documents are not stored with the document so the audit trail remains even if document is deleted.