In order to solve these problems, the KMIT team envisioned a template-based, rapid deployment tool to create collaborative sites easily and quickly. These sites needed to support intergroup and intragroup collaboration as well as function as a central location for group members to see and do their work. KMIT chose to build RapPort on SharePoint Portal Server because of its out-of-the-box capabilities, including:
- Document management. Document profiles, check-in and check-out, versioning, and simple approval and publishing, along with seamless Office XP integration.
- Customizable portal. Easy-to-customize dashboard site using Web Parts. Includes category browsing for information organization.
- Search. Crawls full content and metadata of documents stored locally or on other platforms including Web sites, file shares, and Microsoft Exchange public folders for inclusion in an index.
- Collaboration features. Notifications when content in documents, folders, categories, search results change; searchable, document based discussions