Sharepoint

[Bad boy Warrior]

I dont fully understand what Sharepoint is (on WS2003) well i have a basic idea that its some kind of website but dont understand the need how its a benefit. Does anyone have any scenarios or a site that takes me step by step to do something basic with it so i understand?

Cheers

[cluberti]

This is a pretty good overview:

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/colum...1083377,00.html

[Bad boy Warrior]

Thanks for that link cluberti......makes more sense. Is there a step by step guide on how to set it up and start using it?

cheers

[cluberti]

The Microsoft step by step starting guide is a good, quick read on it:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;DisplayLang=en

If you need something more in-depth, consider the blog on this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/harsh/archive/2006/06/07/620989.aspx

Or, if you can, acquire the actual book on just this topic :

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Sh...p/dp/073562075X

[duendeskt]

thanks a lot, pretty usefull information.

YEY!!!

[TravisO]

The simplest answer is that it's an "intranet in a box". But it scales far our of some neat uses such as assigning a point person in each dept, and that person can WYSIWYG their way into limited editing their own sites, plus you can also use the server to double as an Extranet box that publishes different info to a public website, and even supports the ability for certain people to approve content before it goes public.

It can also index your server shares and private user drives and act as a company search server that respects file permissions. So even though it indexed your private files, they will only appear in your search results. But if you mark a file as readable or editable to your coworkers or boss, then they will see it and be able to edit it too. It will integrate with MS Office so they just click a link and the document will appear in Word or Excel and it saves back to the server, very slick.

That's the pros, the cons are that it's very technical to use both as an admin and as an end user, it's hard to simply it for the users. So don't expect any non technical 50yr old employee to be able to use it at all. It's very dense, there are links everywhere. I haven't used the newest version, which is suppose to improve the ability to custom theme the site, which may allow you to simply it more.

Also MS pushes tons of free addons that do all kinds of web applications, graphing, etc.

Edited February 19, 2008 by TravisO

[fizban2]

Just deployed our Development Sharepoint 2007 site, 2007 is leaps and bounds easier then 2003. Like travis said though, there is alot of out of the box functionality that you get that will suite most situations, but to customize it to fit your business needs perfectly you will most likely be looking at development training to get it right.

just and example of extremely customized Sharepoint site being used for internal/external/partner portal sites

http://www.kroger.com

[aspenjim]

I'm just learning sharepoint myself....

here's a link to some good examples, albeit from 2003...

http://www.sharepointsample.com/templates.htm