Microsoft SharePoint offers a user-enabling solution for collaborative document and portal management that cuts the cord with IT.

BY PAUL ROLICH

Last month I wrote about Microsofts SharePoint. These technologies provide an environment that enables users to share information, collaborate with others on document creation and modification, and create inward- and outward-facing portals and Web sites. Insurance companies may depend upon customers for their existence, but documents and data are their lifeblood. Policies, policy interpretations, compliance documents, sales programs, standard letters, and forms are essential for the day-to-day management of a modern insurance company.

SharePoint technologies offer a platform where that data and those documents can be managed and delivered properly. Using SharePoint, the lifetime of a document or piece of data can be managed through version control, check-in/check-out process, and access control.

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) are those services that come free out of the box with Windows Server 2003. Windows SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) is an add-on that extends the features contained in WSS.

While SharePoint Portal Server is part of the Windows Server System, it also is a part of Microsofts office products division. Likewise, word on the street has it Microsoft Content Management Server (CMS) will move to the office products division, ensuring further integration between CMS and SPS is planned. Microsoft acquired the software firm NCompass in 2001 and rebranded its Resolutions content management system as CMS 2001. Microsoft engineers went to work and released CMS 2002 as a .Net server system using a SQL server back end to store configuration and data. CMS 2001 did not use a database for document storage. In March 2004, a SharePoint-CMS connector was released that provides a limited ability to publish SharePoint documents on a CMS-managed Web site. Connecting a collaborative, scalable document management system to a Web content management system raises interesting possibilities.

On the Microsoft front, having closely connected teams working on both products simultaneously leads me to believe they eventually may become one product. Right now, there is very little out-of-the-box integration and some quirky system requirements (such as the necessity of running CMS and SPS on the same box for the connector to work). It also is necessary to install SQL Server on the Windows 2003 Server before you can install CMSeven though you probably never will use the instance of SQL Server. Performance considerations dictate running SQL Server on its own box. But dont try to install CMS 2002 on a W2K3 server because it wont work. You must get the installation script with Service Pack 1a already applied. CMS 2002 insists on having a Microsoft Java VM before it will install. There are lots of integration issues between these two products right now. Expect those issues to disappear as Microsoft rewrites the rest of the NCompass code base.

Right now, CMS and SPS both have the ability to create Web sites that can be administered by nontechnical personnel. Both have Office 2003 connectors that allow users to publish and modify documents and Web sites using Office tools. Both use SQL Server 2000 to store data and Web site configuration. I cant imagine Microsoft not rolling the best features of these two server products into one killer server application that can manage knowledge flow from one end of the enterprise to the other. Of course, before Microsoft does that it will need to get its sales and marketing folks on the same track. At the present time, SPS can be had for around $6,000 while CMS retails for more than $40,000.

So, exactly what do you get when you fork over the extra bucks to extend WSS to the SharePoint portal product?

Enhanced search functionality
Audiences
News and Topics
My Site with personal and public views
Alerts
Single sign-on
Integration with Microsoft BizTalk Server

Find Your Data

Most discussions of SharePoint Services start with their ability to index and search Web content. The Microsoft Web world before SharePoint relied on Index Server. Microsoft Index Server was integrated with NT Server 4.0 (and subsequent) operating systems and Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Server). As its name indicates, Index Server crawled and indexed outward-facing Web sites as well as intranets and extranets. I remember a few years ago we were having periodic performance issues with our Web site. Some creative techie at one of our customers set up his index server to crawl our site. I guess he figured having direct links to National Underwriter data would have been useful. Unfortunately, that is not the correct use of index server (and this guy had our stuff set to index continuously). Another thing: Index Server was not designed to index dynamically created Web pages. With WSS, users can extend that search to include all Web content. Placing all site information and documents in a database enables indexing of all data, even if it never has been served up. Additionally, since most WSS installations are using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (as opposed to the available desktop database engineMSDE), we are able to utilize the SQL Server 2000 full-text search engine. In short, WSS provides an enhanced ability for users to search content for a single WSS portal site.

Did you get my emphasis on single portal site above? Most of us are responsible for data integration for very large, very complex organizations. Creating portal islands for the claims division and the training division and the advanced sales department is not acceptable. An organization of any significant size or complexity will want to use the features found in Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

Heres what SPS throws into the mix:

Search multiple Web servers, file servers, exchange folders, Lotus Notes servers, and other databases.
Return results from all of the various elements of SharePoint portals including people, teams, documents, lists, etc.
Control search scopes.
Search secured Web sites (SSL).
Create advanced searches based on previous searches, properties, metadata, specific content areas, etc. This includes the ability to force certain search results to the top by controlling keywords. This is pretty cool. Imagine you have a certain document you always want to be returned at the top of the relevancy list when a user enters a particular search term. This can be handled easily and administratively in SPS.

Audiences

Your thousands of users do not all require the same information or access to your corporate portals. Claims adjusters have significantly different needs for information than their supervisors or the executive team. An SPS portal integrates easily with Microsoft Active Directory to serve up only the content a particular group needs. As claims adjusters log on to the portal, they are served only the content they are deemed to require. You can provide special announcements, news, or lists targeted to any particular group. As with most of the functionality in SPS, this ability can be handled administratively.

Web Parts

Web Parts are customizable components for corporate portals. Web Parts can plug into existing back-end systems, such as Siebel or SAP, to present customized views to a desktop. Then, from one interface, employees can access internal data, external feeds, and collaboration tools. Microsoft and its partners have created more than 100 Web Parts that allow companies to plug Microsoft applications, MSN services, and enterprise-level applications into a digital dashboard. Web Parts are completely functional modular units that have the ability to be placed on a SharePoint template and offer full functionality with the click of a button. Some examples of Web Parts are discussion boards, document libraries, topic lists, etc.

News and Topics

SPS provides Web Parts for news areas on a portal site. A news area can be as simple as a manually updated news publishing area using the built-in rich text editor or the office connector. It can be as sophisticated as a connection to a third-party news source such as Hoovers, Factiva, MSN, or MSNBC news feeds.

Topics can contain lists, discussion boards, document libraries, and other collaborative features. Portal-site topics in SPS offer different ways to navigate to site content. Documents can be grouped and organized in multiple content areas that will make sense to the user.

My Site

Personal sites. Think my.yahoo.com for your corporate intranet. Each empowered user has the ability to create his or her own unique portal site. Using simple administrative tools, users have the ability to take the content to which they have access or rights and arrange that content in a way that makes sense for them. Web Parts can be dragged and dropped to predefined areas within a standard template, enabling creation of custom pages with user-created document libraries, discussions, contacts, and alerts. Managers may choose to create their own site and then share that site with others in their department using the public view component of My Site.

Single Sign-on

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables a single point of access to multiple systems, such as Microsoft Office System programs, business intelligence, and project management systems, and existing line-of-business applications, including third-party and industry-specific applicationsthose from SAP AG, PeopleSoft Inc., and Siebel Systems Inc., for example. There is a significant integration between Microsoft BizTalk Server and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 that will allow leveraging any of the more than 300 available BizTalk Server application connectors.

System Requirements

SharePoint Portal Server is designed to run on any of the many varieties of Windows Server 2003 (Standard, Enter-prise, Datacenter, Web). W2K3 must be configured as a Web application server with the following components: Microsoft ASP.NET, IIS 6.0. Windows SQL Server 2000 should be running on a separate box (or server farm) for maximum efficiency. The load on an SPS system is on the database, not the front end. I anticipate all of this really cooking when Yukon (SQL Server 2005) sees the light of day.

Take a Look

Microsoft SPS truly is enabling software. It frees the business user from running to IT for each and every little modification required on the corporate or divisional intranet or portal. A regional sales manager can create a portal or Web site for his entire department. Using simple administrative tools and Microsoft Office 2003, he can create or upload sales collateral, pricing, sample contracts, customer lists, schedules, and discussion boards. This regional sales portal can be configured as the default home page or digital dashboard for the entire staff. Every individual will have access to the current, correct document for any situation. Alerts can be set to notify the staff when changes are made to key documents. A daily news item can be added easily. Topics will be arranged so users easily can navigate to the information they need.

Did I say the business user can do all this without involving IT? Of course I did, because that is one of the really appealing features of SPS. Empowering business users to control their own data is a sure way to get their buy-in for new technology. Collaboration is here to stay. Document management is here to stay. Portals are here to stay. Microsofts SharePoint technology deserves a look, even if you ultimately decide upon a different solution.

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