Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides you with tools to automate your business processes, build efficient applications on top of the Microsoft SharePoint platform, and tailor your SharePoint site to your needs, all in an IT-managed environment.

Use Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 if you are a solution creator and content author working using SharePoint technologies. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 will enable information workers to develop applications and solutions on top of the SharePoint platform to enable organizational agility, business process automation, and get the full value of Microsoft Office applications on the SharePoint platform.

Top 10 benefits of using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides the powerful tools you need to deliver compelling and attractive SharePoint sites and quickly build workflow-enabled applications and reporting tools on the SharePoint platform, all in an IT-managed environment.

1. Be more productive with next-generation Microsoft Web technologies

Enjoy a new level of support for creating and customizing next-generation SharePoint Web sites and technologies. Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 has deep editing support for the technologies underlying Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services technology, such as ASP.NET 2.0, cascading style sheets, and Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation.

2. Customize SharePoint sites exactly the way you want

Choose the format and content of your SharePoint pages with Office SharePoint Designer 2007 — the customization tool for the entire SharePoint family. You can tailor SharePoint sites to your needs and set brand requirements using the latest ASP.NET technology, established Web standards such as XHTML, and cascading style sheets.

3. Easily make or undo changes across entire SharePoint sites

Make format and layout changes to entire SharePoint sites simply by editing the master page and modifying the SharePoint cascading style sheets. Undo changes to the home page using the Revert to Site Template Page command in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007.

4. Maintain control over site customization

Site administrators and IT managers can control exactly how Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is used to help ensure information workers have an IT-managed and -compliant experience. Set up Contributor Settings for each role defined in the SharePoint site, and control access to specific actions.

5. Create workflows to automate business processes

Automate business processes associated with SharePoint lists and document libraries using the Workflow Designer, a powerful and easy-to-use tool that comes with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Set up custom workflow conditions and actions, link them to your SharePoint data, and deploy them with a single click, without installing server code.

6. Create interactive Web pages without writing code

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 has a full set of tools to help you integrate data into SharePoint pages and present that data using XSLT in SharePoint sites. You can access tools for using XSLT Data Views, List View Web Parts, Web Part connections, ASP.NET controls, and workflow.

7. Integrate business data

Create views and forms for working with a variety of data sources using tools supported by Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Build SharePoint Web pages that present and edit data coming from SharePoint lists and document libraries, XML files, Microsoft SQL Server databases, Web services, and enterprise systems.

8. Develop sites compatible with a wide range of browsers and Web standards

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 has excellent support for creating Web pages based on Web standards such as XHTML and cascading style sheets and meeting Web accessibility requirements for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG and Section 508 (29 U.S.C. 794d), including built-in compatibility checkers for these standards.

9. Build advanced ASP.NET pages

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 supports creating and editing ASP.NET pages. It provides the same level of support as Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for ASP.NET control hosting, property editing, toolbox, and Microsoft IntelliSense technology in Code View.

10. Manage and help protect your site

Use reports in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to help manage your site by checking for broken links, unused pages, cascading style sheets usage, and master page usage. Site backup and restore features make it easy to save your site to a single file for helping to protect data or moving it to another server running Windows SharePoint Services technology.
 

Build solutions faster to enhance team productivity and efficiency

Use Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to create and deploy interactive solutions on the SharePoint platform, without having to write code.

• Automate business processes such as document approval, custom event notification, and other collaboration tasks with the Workflow Designer.
• Create reporting and tracking applications using data views and forms to easily gather and aggregate data from outside your site and from SharePoint lists and document libraries on the Web site.
• Get started fast with pre-built Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Application Templates, which are fully customizable and extensible using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007.
• Extend your solutions by building advanced interactive Microsoft ASP.NET pages. Insert and edit controls with the same powerful activity menus and control property grid previously found only in development tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

The Workflow Designer automates business processes like automated task assignment and notification associated with SharePoint lists and document libraries by setting up custom workflow conditions and actions and linking them to the SharePoint data. View a larger image.

Design compelling SharePoint sites tailored to your organization’s needs

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides the professional-quality design tools you need to create great-looking SharePoint pages that are compatible with a wide range of browsers. Enjoy an intuitive design experience through a high-quality what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor, format SharePoint pages quickly using cascading style sheet (CSS) tools, and easily change the layout and format of your site through full support of ASP.NET master pages.

Manage your master pages with professional-quality design tools that enable you to easily manage styles, layout, and format. View a larger image.

Site administrators and IT managers: maintain control of your sites

Site administrators and IT managers can control exactly how Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is used to help ensure information workers have a managed and controlled experience. Set up Contributor Settings for each user role defined in your SharePoint site, and control access to specific actions such as making changes to your master pages and CSS. Specify how pages, files, and folders can be used, quickly roll back changes across your site, and help ensure that your site is properly managed and audited for browser compatibility and Web accessibility. 

Use the Contributor Settings dialog to manage Contributor Groups, Editable Regions, and more. View a larger image.