Integrating SharePoint 2003 with Microsoft Office Products

Although Microsoft Office products are not required for users to access Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 sites, the use of Office products enriches the SharePoint 2003 experience, and the Office 2003 products are designed to tightly integrate with both Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

Previous versions of OfficeOffice 2000 and Office XPare compatible with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services but don't have the same level of integration as Office 2003 products. Because some organizations have upgraded to Office 2003, or support a mixture of Office versions, and customers or partners outside the organization may not have Office 2003 either, this allows them to take advantage of many features offered by SharePoint. Office 2000 and Office XP allow users to save and open files from SharePoint sites, view and edit a shared attachment, and allow inline discussions. Because alerts are delivered through Exchange emails, they can be delivered to Office 2000, XP, or 2003 Outlook users.

Some highlights of the enhanced features available when Office 2003 products are used with SharePoint 2003 products follow. Chapters 9, "Using Word 2003 and Excel 2003 with SharePoint Technologies," and 10, "Using Other Office 2003 Products with SharePoint Technologies" provide a more complete overview of the different features offered by members of the Office 2003 family: Word, Excel, Access, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Project, Visio, and the new InfoPath and OneNote products.

Workspaces from Outlook

Another way to easily create a shared workspace is through Outlook 2003. When a file is inserted into an email, Attachment Options are offered, and, when selected, the Attachment Options pane becomes available, which offers a choice between sending the attachment(s) as Regular Attachments or Shared Attachments. If Shared Attachments is chosen, each recipient of the email has the option of accessing a document workspace when the file is opened. The document workspace contains the Announcements, Shared Documents, Tasks, Members, and Links Web Parts, and can be further customized by the workspace creator or members of the site with Web Designer or Administrator rights.

SharePoint meeting workspaces can also be created from Outlook meetings. A meeting workspace is a SharePoint web page similar to a document workspace as described earlier in this chapter but is customized with Web Parts that pertain to an online meeting. A meeting workspace includes Objectives, Attendees, and Agenda Web Parts by default. As with other SharePoint web pages, it can be customized by administrators or users with appropriate rights.

If Outlook 2003 is in use, SharePoint events can be linked with personal calendars, and Outlook vCards can be imported to lists. Chapter 13 provides additional information on the uses and capabilities of workspaces.

Public Folder Integration with SharePoint

Windows SharePoint Services can be configured to allow Exchange 2000 or 2003 Outlook users to attach a document to an email, and when it is sent to a public folder, it will be automatically added to a document library every time the Public Folder is checked for new messages. This can be useful for less sophisticated users because they can simply save or email a document to a shared folder and not have to be trained on the SharePoint processes and tools. Also, users who are out of the office and need to submit standard company forms such as sales orders, but may not be able to browse the Internet for security reasons, can email the form to a SharePoint-enabled Public Folder.

Note that there are security considerations to keep in mind, because the document library must be configured to accept documents from anonymous sources, which may not be ideal.