SharePoint

SharePoint encompasses two separate Microsoft products – Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). WSS is included with the Windows Server 2003 and 2008 license, while MOSS is a separate product that must be purchased.

SharePoint does many, many different things. But at the end of the day, SharePoint is about collaboration. With out-of-the-box SharePoint, your company can:

• Share and edit documents, track document version history, and institute a check-in/check-out policy so that changes are controlled and never lost due to overwrites.
• Publish wikis. Multiple people can add to and edit each wiki, much like Wikipedia. This is an excellent way to extract knowledge on a topic from multiple people and keep the information as a reference for others. A good example would be creating a company-wide best practices wiki.
• Share calendars.
• Track data in custom lists. Examples could include sales leads, partner contact information, or vendor details.
• Create profiles for everyone in your organization. People can post their interests and areas of expertise. All profiles are indexed for search. This is a great help in larger companies where you know that you need someone in engineering who knows about condensers, but aren’t sure exactly who that might be. Just search for them.
• Use SharePoint Search to find any information on your corporate SharePoint site.
• Use SharePoint security to control who has access to specific content.
• Easily create new sites and new pages with no programming required.

SharePoint is also a platform for custom development. When designing SharePoint, Microsoft ensured that it was easy for application developers to extend. This is done by creating pluggable widgets known as web parts, by creating new application pages, or by deploying additional out-of-the-box SharePoint functionality.

SharePoint isn’t limited to sharing information within your company; some or all of your SharePoint application can be securely accessed by partners and vendors. You can even open it to the entire web.

At Iron Horse Software, we’re experts in deploying, configuring, and developing for the SharePoint platform. If you have collaboration pains, we can help. Give us a call to discuss how your company can use SharePoint to take the pain out of collaboration.