SharePoint Features

Team Workspaces

Your Team Workspace is a Web environment focusing on one or more tasks, projects, or documents, such as a product launch, a company rebranding effort, or a new customer. Team members work together on documents, and periodically update copies that have been saved to the Team Workspace site.

Administrators (and team members with “create sub-site” rights) can generate a Team Workspace site from any compatible Microsoft Office 2007 application (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint), or by using a Web browser to access a document list on the SharePoint site.

SharePoint uses document tracking/versioning, helping your team efficiently track and manage document creation and editing. Creating a Team Workspace site with shared attachments enables team members to email a review link to other team members who then have the ability to scroll back to previous versions or retrieve deleted data.

Meeting Workspaces

A Meeting Workspace site is a productive approach to workgroup collaboration. Similar to a Team Workspace site, it enables team members to manage meetings and documents by using Web parts (page components), lists, and document libraries. Using Microsoft Outlook 2007, you can send meeting notices and invitations to team members. This automatically creates a Meeting Workspace, or you can create a Meeting Workspace in your SharePoint site via a Web browser.

You can also create a Meeting Workspace site for recurring meetings so team members can track the progress of ongoing tasks or projects. Your team members can create a site or workspace for collaboration on Web pages, lists, and document libraries, or they can create a site to manage a new team or project, collaborate on documents, or prepare for meetings.

Discussion Boards

Discussion boards provide a forum for topics that interest your team. For example, you can create a discussion board that enables team members to propose and discuss ongoing activities. Each discussion board has icons for starting, sorting, filtering, switching views, or changing designs. Another feature (Web Discussion) enables users to attach comments to specific SharePoint pages or documents.

Surveys

Surveys enable you to poll team members and obtain feedback from anyone with access to the site. Configure surveys so users respond to items such as meetings, vendor service, or product releases—and display results graphically.

Notifications & Alerts

SharePoint uses email alerts to notify users of important events and changes to lists, items, libraries, and other parts of the site. For example, users can choose to receive email alerts when a document published in a specific library is modified or deleted, or they can elect to receive immediate, daily, or weekly alerts for content included in the portal site index.

Document Sharing

Users can browse a document library to share documents with team members. Document libraries support features such as sub-folders, file versioning, and check-in/check-out. Using a compatible XML editor, create a form library for your XML-based business reports or purchase orders. Using the search engine, team members query most lists and all document libraries that are on the SharePoint site. They can search the entire site or a single list within the site, or they can search for a particular contact in the Contact list.

Announcement, Events, Task, & Contact Lists

Event Lists
Using an event list, post information about important dates or copy/link events to a compatible calendar program.

Announcement Lists
Use an announcement list to post news, status, and other information, and set expiration dates for the announcement.

Task Lists
Use a task list to assign a task to a team member, specify its priority/due date, and indicate its status and progress. Users view individual tasks assigned to them, as well as tasks assigned to other team members.

Contact Lists
Contact lists enable team members to have access to telephone numbers, email addresses, or street addresses of clients, partners and vendors. Copy contact information in the address book to or from a contact list. This requires a compatible address book program such as Outlook 2007 or Internet Explorer 7.0.

Picture Libraries

Store photos and graphics in picture libraries, and enable users to view images as thumbnails, filmstrips, or standard files. A picture library enables you to create a repository of corporate and product logos and images to standardize corporate images, and simplify the daily operations of team members.

Administration Tools

Windows SharePoint services assist site administrators in the following areas:

Block specific files from document libraries to prevent suspicious files from being uploaded to the server
Link a document library with a public folder (based on Microsoft Exchange 2007) to store documents attached to email messages
Add users to a site and enable access to specific sub-sites
Specify permission to enable only specific users to change a list
Support regional settings such as language, time zone, currency type and international calendar formats
“Help” features available on every screen

Site Usage Tracking

Inactive sites occupy space on your server/account, so use this feature to view information to determine how many users visit each site. By establishing a time limit for inactive accounts, you automatically provide site owners with a confirmation link to confirm that their sites are in use, or you can automatically delete unconfirmed sites. This feature lets administrators control the number of unused Websites on your server/account.

Working with Microsoft Office 2007

Integration with Microsoft Office 2007 enables team members to do the following:

Open, save, and upload multiple files to document libraries from Office applications
Link events and synchronize contact information between Windows SharePoint services, and calendar and contacts programs
Create a document workspace site from applications
Attach documents to email, spreadsheet, presentation, and word processing programs
Enhance spreadsheet and database programs in Datasheet view