Chapter 11: Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server

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One of the more strangely named Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server products, but nevertheless one that is gaining a lot of attention, is SharePoint Portal Server. Designed originally by the Microsoft Office group as a departmental information sharing/finding and organizing solution, its appeal is fairly widespread since it provides a way of storing and searching large amounts of business data and documents.

11.1 The Portal

Portals are fast becoming the standard way of collecting information from different sources and then presenting it to users in a unified corporate manner across an intranet.

SharePoint Portal Server creates a Web portal or dashboard during installation. This provides a central access point for finding and managing documents and information. Users will interface with the portal via a Web browser such as Internet Explorer and will typically:

  • Search for information

  • Subscribe to new or updated information

  • Browse through information sorted by categories

  • Check documents in and out

  • Review document's version histories

  • Approve documents for publication

  • Publish documents

The portal or dashboard is fully customizable so that an organization can tailor it to its specific look and feel, adding information feeds that may be important for its market sector. Figure 11.1 illustrates a typical portal.

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Figure 11.1: A typical portal.

Microsoft Digital Dashboard technology is used to organize and display information. This consists of a digital dashboard with reusable and customizable Web Parts that can present information from a wide variety of sources, including Microsoft Office documents and Web sites.

In addition, you can allow users to create customized 'personal' dashboards to organize and present information that is especially relevant to them. This could be project- or department-related information such as a sales group or marketing team. Web Parts can be created directly from Office XP or by importing Web Parts from a centralized catalog (see Figure 11.2).

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Figure 11.2: The Web Parts catalog allows users to customize their portals.



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Microsoft  .NET. Jumpstart for Systems Administrators and Developers
Microsoft .NET: Jumpstart for Systems Administrators and Developers (Communications (Digital Press))
ISBN: 1555582850
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 136
Authors: Nigel Stanley

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