SharePoint 2007

Define customised document management policies to control access rights at a per-item level, specify retention period and expiration actions and track content through document-auditing settings. Policy integration with familiar client applications makes compliance transparent and easy for employees. Integration with Information Rights Management helps ensure that proprietary and confidential information is better protected even if it is not connected to a server.

Organisations can store and organise all business documents and content in one central location, and users have a consistent mechanism to navigate and find relevant information. Default repository settings can be modified to add workflow, define retention policies, and add new templates and content types.

Provide easy-to-use functionality to create, approve and publish Web content. Master Pages and Page Layouts provide reusable templates for a consistent look and feel. New functionality enables enterprises to publish content from one area to another (for example, from a collaborative sites to a portal), or to cost-effectively manage multilingual delivery of content on multiple intranet, extranet and Internet sites.

Forms Services–driven solutions make it possible to more securely and accurately collect information both inside and outside the organisation without coding any custom applications. This information can then be integrated easily into line-of-business systems, stored in document libraries, used to start workflow processes, or submitted to Web services, thus avoiding duplicate effort and costly errors resulting from manual data entry.

Take advantage of workflows to automate and gain more visibility into common business activities such as document review and approval, issue tracking, and signature collection. Integration with familiar Microsoft Office client applications, e-mail and Web browsers simplifies the user experience. Organisations can easily modify the out-of-the-box processes or define their own processes using familiar Microsoft tools such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (the next generation Microsoft Office FrontPage®) or Microsoft Visual Studio® development system.

Create live, interactive business intelligence (BI) portals that assemble and display business information from disparate sources by using integrated BI capabilities such as dashboards, Web Parts, key performance indicators (KPIs), and business data connectivity technologies. Centralised Report Center sites give users a single place to find the latest spreadsheets, reports or KPIs.

Enterprise Search in Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 incorporates people and business data along with documents and Web pages to provide more comprehensive results. The Search Center provides a single integrated location for employees to find content, processes, people and business data relevant to their specific needs. This enables people and organisations to make decisions based on the latest information and facts more quickly.

Excel® Services running on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides access to data and analytics in real time, interactive Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets from a Web browser. Use these spreadsheets to maintain and efficiently share one centralised and up-to-date version while helping to protect any sensitive or proprietary information embedded in documents (such as financial models).

Employees can use new knowledge management tools to get the most from their powerful unstructured business networks, both inside and outside their organisations, thereby connecting with people more quickly and efficiently. By exploring these undocumented business relationships and finding subject-matter experts, individuals are able to make better decisions more quickly.

The Business Data Catalogue enables structured data from line-of-business applications, such as SAP and Siebel systems, to be integrated into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 through Web Parts, lists, people profiles, search or programmatically. Centrally managed connections to back-end systems can be defined once and then reused by end-users to access back-end data without writing any code — easily making business data part of portal content. The Business Data Catalog also provides the ability for Enterprise Search to integrate back-end business data into the search experience, without having to write any protocol handlers, iFilters or custom code.

With smart, standards-based, electronic forms–driven solutions, you can collect business information from customers and partners through a Web browser. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) integration and support for other pluggable authentication providers makes it easier to work with non–Active Directory service sources, thereby simplifying extranet setups and facilitating tighter connectivity with customers, partners and suppliers.

Enterprise Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has great relevance and incorporates enterprise content such as people and business data, along with documents and Web pages, to provide more comprehensive results. Enterprise Search is ubiquitous in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, with tight integration into SharePoint sites, Web Parts, SharePoint lists, people profile, and more. This enables people to look for the information they need wherever they navigate within the portal. Enterprise Search has the capability to search through business data, and the search results can be highly customised; for example, surfacing specific metadata elements of back-end records.

With offline access to SharePoint lists and document libraries, via Microsoft® Office Outlook 2007, you can free yourself from limitations of corporate network connectivity. Tight integration with Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007 further enhances the offline experience for users.

New knowledge management tools empower employees to create and use people networks, both inside and outside their organisations, so they can connect and share knowledge more quickly and efficiently with other people.

My Sites provides a totally personalised experience for users, with a dedicated site for each user. Each site can be used to store, present, view and manage content, information and applications in a controlled fashion. Each site can also be used to present information about the user, such as skills and roles, colleagues and managers, groups and distribution lists the user belongs to, and documents the user is working on. And each site contains stringent privacy control and enhanced security mechanisms, so that each user can choose how much information to present and to whom. My Sites can also be fully customizsd to suit individual requirements.

Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 is built on a scalable architecture, with support for Web services and interoperability standards including XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 also has rich, open application programming interfaces (APIs) and event handlers for lists and documents. This enables integration with existing systems and provides the flexibility to incorporate new non-Microsoft IT investments. LDAP integration support for other pluggable authentication providers makes it easier to work with non–Active Directory sources. Out-of-the-box WSRP Consumer Web Part enables integration with other WSRP-compliant portal solutions.

Users can now create sites, initiate workflows, self-provision applications, access back-end data, define security at a per-item level, restore deleted items and complete other tasks without involving IT. This reduced user dependence on IT improves productivity and also enables the IT department to focus on providing real value-added services to the organisation. With the Business Data Catalogue, you can define and deploy business application configurations to access data residing in back-end systems. This feature can be reused by business users to create personalised views of business data without having to develop any custom code.

Managing a Web server farm, deploying new pieces of content and managing synchronisation across those sites is now much simpler. Deployment can be done in “top-down” or “bottom-up” fashion. Simplify site staging through out-of-the-box Site-starter Templates for common Web sites, with Area and Page Layout templates and preconfigured navigation. And enhanced capabilities to back up and restore content helps IT professionals schedule backups, back up multi-site collections, and then restore each one individually.

These tools help isolate and solve problems faster and improve the operational efficiency of the system infrastructure.