Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Web applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, instead of relying on separate fragmented systems. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.

Top 10 benefits: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Provide a simple, familiar, and consistent user experience

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is tightly integrated with familiar client desktop applications, e-mail, and Web browsers to provide a consistent user experience that simplifies how people interact with content, processes, and business data. This tight integration, coupled with robust out-of-the-box functionality, helps you employ services themselves and facilitates product adoption.

Boost employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities

Take advantage of out-of-the-box workflows for initiating, tracking, and reporting common business activities such as document review and approval, issue tracking, and signature collection. You can complete these activities without any coding. Tight integration with familiar client applications, e-mail, and Web browsers provide you with a simple, consistent experience. Modifying and extending these out-of-the-box workflow processes is made easy through tools like Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (the next release of Microsoft Office FrontPage).
 

Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content

By specifying security settings, storage policies, auditing policies, and expiration actions for business records in accordance with compliance regulations, you can help ensure your sensitive business information can be controlled and managed effectively. And you can reduce litigation risk for your organization. Tight integration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with familiar desktop applications means that policy settings are rendered onto client applications in the Microsoft Office system, making it simpler for employees to be aware of and comply with regulatory requirements.

Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value

Business users and content authors can create and submit content for approval and scheduled deployment to intranet or Internet sites. Managing multilingual content is simplified through new document library templates that are specifically designed to maintain a relationship between the original version and different translations of a document.
 

Simplify organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems

Give your users access to business data found in common line-of-business systems like SAP and Siebel through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Users can also create personalized views and interactions with business systems through a browser by dragging configurable back-end connections. Enterprise-wide Managed Document Repositories help your organizations store and organize business documents in one central location.
 

Connect people with information and expertise

Enterprise Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) incorporates business data along with information about documents, people, and Web pages to produce comprehensive, relevant results. Features like duplicate collapsing, spelling correction, and alerts improve the relevance of the results, so you can easily find what you need.
 

Accelerate shared business processes across organizational boundaries

Without coding any custom applications, you can use smart, electronic forms–driven solutions to collect critical business information from customers, partners, and suppliers through a Web browser. Built-in data validation rules help you gather accurate and consistent data that can be directly integrated into back-end systems to avoid redundancy and errors that result from manual data re-entry.
 

Share business data without divulging sensitive information

Give your employees access to real-time, interactive Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets from a Web browser through Excel Services running on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Use these spreadsheets to maintain and efficiently share one central and up-to-date version while helping to protect any proprietary information embedded in the documents (such as financial models).
 

Enable people to make better-informed decisions by presenting business-critical information in one central location

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 makes it easy to create live, interactive business intelligence (BI) portals that assemble and display business-critical information from disparate sources, using integrated BI capabilities such as dashboards, Web Parts, scorecards, key performance indicators (KPIs), and business data connectivity technologies. Centralized Report Center sites give users a single place for locating the latest reports, spreadsheets, or KPIs.

Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is built on an open, scalable architecture, with support for Web services and interoperability standards including XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The server has rich, open application programming interfaces (APIs) and event handlers for lists and documents. These features provide integration with existing systems and the flexibility to incorporate new non-Microsoft IT investments.
 

Manage content and processes

Simplify compliance efforts and keep business information more secure through a comprehensive set of tools to manage and control electronic content. Streamline the everyday business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity by using electronic forms and out-of-the-box workflow processes that users can initiate, track, and participate in through familiar Microsoft Office applications, e-mail, or Web browsers.

Control documents through detailed, extensible policy management

Define customized 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.

Centrally store, manage, and access documents across the enterprise

Organizations can store and organize 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.
 

Simplify Web content management

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 site to a portal), or to cost-effectively manage multilingual delivery of content on multiple intranet, extranet, and Internet sites.

Extend business processes across the organization

Forms Services–driven solutions make it possible to more securely and accurately collect information both inside and outside the organization 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.

Streamline everyday business activities

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. Organizations 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
 

Improve business insight

Effectively monitor business drivers, empower better informed decisions throughout the organization, and proactively respond to important business events.

Present business-critical information in one central location

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. Centralized Report Center sites give users a single place to find the latest spreadsheets, reports, or KPIs.

Quickly connect people with information

Enterprise Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 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 organizations to make decisions based on the latest information and facts more quickly.

Share business data broadly while helping to protect sensitive information

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 centralized and up-to-date version while helping to protect any sensitive or proprietary information embedded in documents (such as financial models).

Take advantage of your unstructured business networks to drive better decisions

Employees can use new knowledge management tools to get the most from their powerful unstructured business networks, both inside and outside their organizations, 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.

Unlock business data

The Business Data Catalog enables structured data from line-of-business applications, such as SAP and Siebel systems, to be integrated into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 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
 

Simplify internal and external collaboration

Share knowledge, find information, and collaborate more easily and more securely both within and across organizational boundaries. Leverage your partner and customer network, and use your personal networks to connect to other people effectively.

Enhance customer and partner relationships

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 directory service sources, thereby simplifying extranet setups and facilitating tighter connectivity with customers, partners, and suppliers.

Ubiquitous Enterprise Search

Enterprise Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 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 profiles, 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 customized; for example, surfacing specific metadata elements of back-end records.

Work when and where you want

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.

Connect and share knowledge

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

Personalize operations

My Sites provides a totally personalized 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 customized to suit individual requirements
 

Empower IT to make a strategic impact

Increase responsiveness of IT to business needs and reduce the number of platforms to maintain by supporting all intranets, extranets, and Web applications across the enterprise with one integrated platform.

Get enhanced interoperability support

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 (MOSS 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.

Enable IT to focus on more strategic tasks

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 organization. With the Business Data Catalog, 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 personalized views of business data without having to develop any custom code.

Simplify deployment, management, and system administration

Managing a Web server farm, deploying new pieces of content, and managing synchronization 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 multisite collections, and then restore each one individually.

Robust system monitoring, usage tracking, and monitoring tools

These tools help isolate and solve problems faster and improve the operational efficiency of the system infrastructure. Get enhanced interoperability support. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 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.