| The history of the personal computer has presented many challenges to managing and accessing information for end users. In addition, since organizations began using the Internet, they have become increasingly interested in a single site that provides organized views of their corporate information. This concept is known as a portal . This portal concept has become an extremely powerful tool that allows users to aggregate content and applications from a variety of information sources, while at the same time providing meaningful sorting and classification of the knowledge. Simply stated, information can be logically consolidated such that users can utilize a standard Web browser to access a single Web site to access to content that resides in various locations across the organization. With SharePoint Portal Server, Microsoft offers a breakthrough solution designed to integrate the two closely related issues of managing documents and simplifying how users find, share, and publish information. The power of Microsoft Office 2000 and SharePoint Portal Server seamlessly connects people, content, and data in enterprise systems through a single set of familiar tools, thereby making this combination of products the core of any document management solution. Current Challenges Over the years , companies of all sizes have accumulated important intellectual capital. Administrators spend a great deal of time organizing and managing the information in an effort to make it available and easy to find. Yet, the end users within the organization spend countless hours searching for specific information that is relevant to their daily tasks and responsibilities. Take some time to review your intranet site and interview users or other administrators within your environment. After browsing through intranet sites, you may consider asking the following questions: -
How familiar are you with the content on your intranet site? -
How easy or difficult is it to find the information you are looking for when your intranet site is accessed? -
When you access the site, do you have to search for information, or is the site set up in a way that allows you to browse through a list of categories or topics to quickly access relevant information? -
If you do have to search for information, does the search engine return relevant results, or do you find yourself having to scroll through many different links to verify whether the results meet your needs? The preceding questions are just a small example of the types of questions you will want to ask. When these questions are asked, you will likely discover your end user community is not fully aware of the types of information available. In addition, you will likely find that end users have attempted to search for key information at some point in the past, and became frustrated due to not being able to find what they were looking for. Furthermore, once these end users do become aware of the locations for discrete pockets of information, they often become less likely to return, as the value of the data is not fully comprehended within their day-to-day activities.  To learn more about the types of questions to ask your end users and other planning requirements that should be considered prior to implementing SharePoint Portal Server, see "Planning a Deployment for ABC Company," p. 520. It is important to discover where information resides today within most organizations, as well as how this information is currently accessed. Administrators and end users place content on file servers, database servers, and within public folder shares on your messaging server. On a file server, the administrator must enable a hierarchical share and expose it in a manner such that the data can be securely accessed by required end users. Many times this is done by establishing a top-level folder with a series of subfolders which categorize the content according to relevance of data or security access to the data. Public folders on your messaging server are established in the same manner, and exposed through the Outlook client. While information sharing in this manner was sufficient over the last few years, the problem is that end users have to navigate through various hierarchical folders to locate desired content. This process is time-consuming and often frustrates the end users. We will discuss the concept of Categories , which allows administrators to logically group data for timely and efficient access when a search is made. SharePoint Portal Server as a Solution SharePoint Portal Server can be used in a variety of scenarios and can by used by many different types of users. For example, an IT director may be considering introducing SharePoint Portal Server within the organization to provide a consistent enterprise portal interface for providing information as a solution. A second example might be an IT administrator looking for better methods for managing and publishing information for the end user community. A third example might find that a power user is looking for a quick community solution for a departmental or line of business within an enterprise. SharePoint Portal Server can provide document management, content and index search services, and a collaborative applications platform for a customizable out-of-the-box dashboard site that can be accessed with a Web browser. The primary benefit SharePoint Portal Server provides is the ability to find, analyze, and organize information of all types. The view that is ultimately presented to the user can be specifically tailored to the needs of that particular end user or group of users, such that information is presented as a solution according to the way the user works. This customization for the end user is done by customizing the workspace according to groups of users. If end users need individual customization, you can enable additional levels of personalization using personal dashboards. For more details on customizing personal dashboards to meet specific end user requirements, see "Customizing Dashboards," p. 343. SharePoint Portal Server allows you to present a customized workspace view of key information to your readers no matter where the information physically resides, while filtering unnecessary information from the reader's immediate view. It is about managing information and creating a custom view of key information that fits the business needs for the way your organization needs to work. It's about presenting information in a way that creates order out of chaos. -
Microsoft BackOffice ” SharePoint Portal Server is one of the newest additions to the Microsoft BackOffice family that integrates document management and search capabilities with standard Microsoft Office tools that you probably use every day. -
Dashboard ” The flexible Web-based dashboard site allows documents to be easily found, shared, and published. -
Explorer and Office ” SharePoint Portal Server was designed to work well with Web browsers, Windows Explorer, and Microsoft Office applications for creating, managing, and sharing your organization or individual business unit's content. The product integrates document management capabilities such as check-in, checkout, document profiles, and document publishing. The functionality can be implemented using a variety of interfaces, which will be described in greater detail throughout this book. -
Wizards ” SharePoint Portal Server is also designed for departmental professionals who are not necessarily a part of the IT organization. The "all-defaults" four-screen setup wizard allows for a rapid installation with a fully operational departmental server that can be immediately used to provide value to a particular department. The dashboard site offers a single customizable foundation for accessing information drawn from a wide variety of content sources while maintaining the security of the documents. Additional wizards can be used to register data sources for an out-of-box initial dashboard site that potentially could be structured to crawl parts of an Internet, intranet, Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000 server public folder hierarchies, Lotus Notes 4.6a+ and R5 databases, local file systems, and networked file servers within a few short hours of installation. While we discussed a few solution examples, Part V of this book discusses several real-world scenarios. The chapters within Part V provide much more detail on using SharePoint as a solution. |
