Benifits Of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Ok, as we are now familiar about the Introduction of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (from now onwards I will name it as MOSS 2007) in my last post, it’s time for us to know about the benefits of MOSS 2007.

MOSS 2007 provides an enterprise with the means to solve a variety of information and data sharing collaboration requirements with a variety of new and upgraded features that give it the functionality to do so.

A fully implemented MOSS 2007 environment provides benefits to a company and its employees, and perhaps its customers, agents, and vendors, in the following areas:

MOSS 2007 provides an enterprise with the means to solve a variety of information and data sharing collaboration requirements with a variety of new and upgraded features that give it the functionality to do so. A fully implemented MOSS 2007 environment provides benefits to a company and its employees, and perhaps its customers, agents, and vendors, in the following areas:

• Familiarity
• Productivity
• Information management
• Information retrieval
• Data accessibility and audit
• Business application interface
• Sharing information
• Single platform solution

The above general categories are discussed below:

FAMILIARITY
All the Microsoft based Desktop applications, e-mail, along with their web browser, their user access, storing data, sharing data, information and documents that any user is accustomed for, will be similar and are very much familiar for the end users through MOSS 2007 System.

PRODUCTIVITY
MOSS 2007 defines variety of built-in Workflows, that simplify the user’s ability to create, track, and retrieve frequently used data to meet their most common business information based functions. Through these Workflows, the end users will be able to easily perform a number of document-based activities, including review, tracking, approval etc.,. The good thing about these Workflows is, it doesn’t need any administrator to meet this functionality by creating new macro-functions (custom code) or programming. However, for the more complex functionalities based on the business requirement, Workflows can be customized by either using SharePoint Designer(formally known as Microsoft office FrontPage) or by using Visual Studio With Workflow Foundation Extensions installed.

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Due to the increasing Business requirements regarding managing the business information, such as, storing the documents and other types of organized data, setting permissions to control, who can access the data, when necessary, based on the company’s policies etc., were provided by MOSS 2007 through its feature called Document Management Policies. The most driving feature in MOSS 2007 is Collaboration among users which also benefit the collaborative work among team members using the portal. MOSS 2007 System can also be used for translating the documents from one language to another, and is also helpful in maintaining the PowerPoint slides in a library to make a Presentation from the existing PPTs in the Library.

Document Policies: Like a written guideline or policy, MOSS 2007 document policies can be customized to include who can and can’t access a document, how long a document is to be retained, what to do with the document when its retention period expires, and whether or not an audit trail should be kept to track who accesses a document and when.

INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
When compared to older versions of business requirements, the need for file sharing has changed a lot among the team members. Now that the user is trying to access a document over the company’s intranet and virtual private network (VPN) may have had some difficulty locating and retrieving the documents, which was made easy by MOSS 2007 system by its features which has the ability to access and use data and documents stored on both local and remote servers throughout the company.

DATA ACCESSIBILITY AND AUDIT
MOSS 2007 system allows users to store the data in one central repository and provides its users with the ability to easily locate, access and retrieve the documents based on their permission levels. As per the Policies in the Document Management Policy defined centrally for the entire system, and specifically to an individual document by its creator, the manager control of information is largely transparent to the end user.

BUSINESS APPLICATION INTERFACE
MOSS 2007 provides a number of “configurable back-end connections” or established interfaces that allow users to access the data managed by a variety of common business and enterprise systems, such as SAP and Siebel, to create individual views of the data. Users can also work through back-end connectors to set up data management interactions with these third-party systems using the Office 2007 applications on their desktops. MOSS 2007 also allows users to create electronic forms that can be used to enter, collect, and distribute data to and from external sources—such as customers, business partners, and vendors—through a web page interface on the company’s extranet or from the Internet and Web. The MOSS 2007 electronic forms feature allows for the definition of data integrity and validation rules, ensuring that data flowing into back-end systems is correct, thus eliminating the chance for data-entry errors or data duplication that could occur if the data had to be reentered manually.

SHARING INFORMATION
MOSS 2007 facilitates information sharing through its Excel Services. Users can have access to up-to-date, real-time spreadsheet data using a web browser from a central source to enable their productivity. MOSS 2007 uses various tools such as Business Intelligence (BI), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the portals to retrieve and display information from a variety of document sources. The BI portal feature includes a number of functions, such as user dashboards and defined information pieces that can be incorporated into a user-defined web page, scorecards, and visual presentation tools called key performance indicators (KPIs).

SINGLE PLATFORM SOLUTION
As MOSS 2007 incorporates the functions of the Office 2007 applications and is based on a scalable, open architecture, it provides a broad-based single platform solution. In larger installations, MOSS 2007, installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, provides a single-source interoperable system solution by extending the capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server and WSS. MOSS 2007 extends its interoperability through its support of Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), which allows it to communicate with other systems and networks seamlessly. This is an important feature in that it allows the MOSS 2007 system to interface with any existing or future non-Microsoft systems the company may have or add.


Further to this, I am going to post about, the "Installation of SharePoint" - Will Catch you soon. - Good Night.

Tags: Benifits of SharePoint, Familiarity, Productivity, Information Management, Information Retrieval, Data Accessibility and audit, Business Application interface, Sharing Information, Single Platform Solution.