In the Real WorldData-Centric Collaboration

In the Real World Data-Centric Collaboration

Collaboration is the watchword of Office System 2003 and its members. A Google search of the microsoft.com site returns about 15,100 instances of the word. Similarly, Bill Gates and Microsoft marketing folk use phrases such as "knowledge workers without limits" and "empower[ing] knowledge workers." More than 800 microsoft.com pages contain both "collaboration" and "knowledge worker." Most of this book's readers probably are knowledge workers or persons responsible for assisting knowledge workers.

The role of corporate knowledge workers is to produce information that's useful to other organization members, customers, suppliers, other "business partners," or all of these groups. The usefulness of the information is related directly to the workers' knowledge and skill set. The problem is that most such information whether generated by computer or handwritten on a business form is unstructured or at best semi-structured. Some analysts suggest that more information resides in Excel worksheet files than in all the world's databases. If you add Word document files to the mix, the conclusion is undoubtedly correct. Business email contains an enormous amount of unstructured information, especially if your organization is required to archive messages for several years.

The goal of Office Systems 2003's XML feature set is to enable generating human-readable, structured information from the productivity applications running on 90% or more of today's PCs. Creating structured information requires adherence to a standardized XML schema (.xsd file) for identical or similar documents. Another requirement is separating presentation of information from the underlying data; formatting for viewing or printing is the province of XSL, XSLT, and XML Formatting Objects (XML-FO). InfoPath achieves this objective by generating a validated XML document from an XSD schema, which you provide or InfoPath generates for you. An auto-generated XSLT transform (.xsl file) writes the HTML code that's required to display the form in IE. You can open and edit the InfoPath XML file in Word or Excel 2003. If you extract and apply the .xsl file for the form in Word, you can view but not edit the form. Predictable and consistent document structure is critical to sharing data between applications as well as your colleagues.

One of the most useful capabilities of InfoPath is email routing of forms, such as expense reports or purchase requisitions, through the workflow process. Recipients with InfoPath can edit the form and add digital signatures to authenticate specific actions. Those without InfoPath can add text and digitally sign the forwarded message. Over the next few years, an increasing percentage of business and governmental email messages will originate from XML form editing applications. The benefits of structured messages to the information gathering and analysis process will far outweigh the added cost of storing the XML documents in databases. The next version of SQL Server, code-named Yukon when this book was written, has a native XML data type that enables SQL-like queries against XML documents.

Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Portal Server, and Exchange Server are Microsoft's primary offerings for information sharing. WSS is the logical portal candidate for small- and medium-sized organizations (SMOs) because it's easy to set up and manage, and WSS client access licenses (CALs) aren't required. Shared InfoPath form libraries can emulate a small-scale document database. For example, the library can contain forms for all changes or the latest change to the a query/data entry form's table(s). Lists make the contents of linked Access tables or queries accessible to any authorized WSS user on an intranet or via the Internet. You can control whether users have read-only, read-write, or no access to data-centric forms and lists by their WSS group membership.

Consider collaboration when you design your Access databases and applications, even if InfoPath, SharePoint, or both aren't on your immediate horizon. Collaboration by sharing structured data primarily in the form of XML documents with associated XSD schema is in the early-adopter stage today, but its momentum is increasing. It won't be long until forms-based XML editors, such as InfoPath, become as common as Microsoft Word on users' desktops and entry-level portals, such as WSS, become the central information source for teams, workgroups, and departments.