| You can adopt SharePoint technology through two products, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and SharePoint Portal Server (SPS). The two are quite closely aligned and, unlike in their previous versions, based on the same technology foundation. The difference is that SharePoint Portal Server contains some features that are not part of Windows SharePoint Services. Windows SharePoint Services includes: -
Integration with Microsoft Office . Integration is tightest with Office 2003 but earlier versions are supported to a lesser degree. For example, you can create a SharePoint document workspace from within Word 2003. -
Web parts . Both SPS and WSS are based on the web part architecture using building blocks developed for .NET. You can use FrontPage to edit SharePoint pages. -
Document management . WSS provides document libraries with features including check-in, check-out , version control, and collaborative authoring. -
Presence awareness . Users can see who is online from the team and contact them via email or instant messaging. -
Alerts . Users can subscribe to content and receive email notification of new postings and updates. -
Threaded discussions . Users can create discussion groups for asynchronous text discussions. -
Inline discussions . You can create discussions that are stored along with the documents in a document library. SharePoint Portal Server provides features that build on the basis of WSS but take it much further. Microsoft offers a white paper on its web site to help users choose between WSS and SPS entitled "Deciding When to Deploy Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003," at www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/evaluationoverview.asp. The following features are among those found in SPS but not in WSS: -
SharePoint search engine . Microsoft's most powerful search engine is found here, as described in Chapter 13. -
News and topics areas for posting content . These include several web parts for viewing summaries and complete items. -
My Site personalization . Users can customize their view of the portal, with public and private views of these pages. -
Information targeting . The audiences feature allows information to be mapped to groups of users. -
Single sign-on for enterprise application integration . This feature streamlines access to multiple applications. -
Advanced alerts . In addition to alerts on the document library, SPS contains alerts for people, news, lists, site directory, areas, and other portal elements. -
Integration with BizTalk Server . SPS offers third-party integration of leading CRM and ERP packages via BizTalk Server. -
More advanced management features . SPS includes more powerful administrative tools than WSS for creating and maintaining sites. SharePoint Portal Server contains all the functionality of Windows SharePoint Services. Therefore, it is the focus of much of this chapter. If you do not need the features of SPS, you may want to consider the more limited power of WSS. |
