mjanes 's List: Sharepoint Research

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), is a product in the Microsoft SharePoint family of products, and runs on top of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). MOSS builds on WSS by adding both core features as well as end user web parts to it. Its main strength is enabling an organization’s information to be organized and aggregated in one central, web-based application and provide a taxonomy for corporate data.
• The architecture is composed of Web Server front ends running the WSS application with MOSS plugging-in functionality where required, generally a search service which crawls the data store creating an index, a number of other services, and the database back-end, a standard enterprise architecture
• One of the weaknesses of the tool is its own ease of use. Administrators may be tempted to start one port 80 and build a single site collection with sub-sites underneath, exposed to the company as a home page and sub-pages. Though this makes sense for a large organization or one with bespoke portals using custom Web Parts or Forms Server, it can cause problems. All the sites in a site collection will be stored in the same database, which can become too large to effectively back-up. Moreover, bespoke development using the same Web Application and Application pool can bring a company-wide intranet down.

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• Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) currently in version 3 provides all the objects underpinning all Microsoft SharePoint technology. WSS is provided as a free download from Microsoft for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or later and is added to the Microsoft .NET Framework.

• The SharePoint Object Model provided by WSS offers objects to support collaboration and document management functionality, centralized repository for shared documents. WSS also provides support for blogs and wikis. WSS supports browser-based management and administration.

   

  WSS allows web based document collaboration can be shared for collaborative editing. SharePoint provides access control and revision control for documents in a library.
• Installation of WSS on a server makes available a collection of web parts that can be embedded into web pages to provide a certain functionality. SharePoint includes web parts such as workspaces and dashboards, navigation tools, lists, alerts (including e-mail alerts), shared calendar, contact lists and discussion boards.
• The web sites can be configured to return separate content for Intranet, Extranet and Internet locations. In WSS these deployments have no licensing implications but do so when Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is used.

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• The platform is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), which is included with Windows Server and available as a free download for those with Windows Server licenses. Services such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) provide additional functionality and features and are licensed accordingly.^[2]

• Microsoft identifies the following as part of the current SharePoint products and technologies family:

   
   
  • Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS)
   
  • Search Server 2008 Express
   
  • Search Server 2008
   
  • Forms Server 2007
   
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 MOSS Standard
   
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 MOSS Enterprise
   
  • Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007
   
  • Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
   
   

  Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, a free^[3] editor to help administrators develop and customize SharePoint solutions, is also in the SharePoint family.
• MOSS search provides the ability to search metadata attached to documents.
• A free version, Search Server 2008 Express, is also available. The express edition features the same feature set as the commercial edition, including no limitation on the number of files indexed. However, it is limited to a stand-alone installation and cannot be scaled out to a cluster.^[6]. Various plugins for indexing third party files, for example Adobe's Acrobat (pdf) files, are available.
• It is the successor to FrontPage 2003.
• Through a next-generation family of data controls (like the DataView WebPart) and XPath, SharePoint Designer enables developers to manipulate data from SharePoint or external sources (such as Microsoft SQL Server) without coding directly against the .NET Framework.

• Evaluations of SharePoint by industry analysts have varied. In late 2008, the Gartner Group put SharePoint in the "leaders" quadrant in three of its Magic Quadrants (for Search, Portals, and enterprise content management).^[7]

   

  In contrast, independent evaluation firm CMS Watch issued customer research indicating,^[8] "Customers readily shared their frustrations: Redmond’s rather belated embrace of Web 2.0, SharePoint’s poor support for individuals working on multiple different teams, as well as its cumbersome and incomplete integration with Outlook."^[9]

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• first released as part of the Microsoft Office 2003 suite of programs in late 2003 and later released as part of Microsoft Office 2007.
• Initially given the codename XDocs, the main feature of InfoPath is its ability to author and view XML documents with support for custom-defined XML schemata. It can connect to external systems using XML Web services through MSXML and the SOAP Toolkit, and back-end and middle-tier systems can be configured to communicate by using Web services standards such as SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL. Additionally, because InfoPath documents are raw XML, it is possible to directly repurpose the data in other XML processors.
• In InfoPath, the user can complete a form while off-line. InfoPath may check some fields on the form for validity, and the user can attach a digital signature. The user later connects to the server and submits the form (in XML form), which may be routed for approval. When the user connects to the server, the form template may be automatically updated.

• Infopath can be used for things like:

   
   
  • Data input forms - for example collecting all the specs for a new employee
   
  • Electronic checklists that guide the user step by step through predefined work
   
  • Forms to coordinate work between multiple persons, where one person begins with filling in some fields (like: Customer, Goal, etc.) and passes the form to the next person, and so on. This is similar to paper forms that are used in many businesses to get work done.
• As a member of Office products, InfoPath has a different usage scenario from the other applications, such as Word and Excel. To use InfoPath to fill in a form, a user must have a designer develop an InfoPath template first.
• The most common usage of InfoPath is to integrate it with Microsoft SharePoint technology using InfoPath Form Services (included in the enterprise commercial version of MOSS) or as the separate Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 product.

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• When used in the context of web development, an API is typically a defined set of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request messages along with a definition of the structure of response messages, usually expressed in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. While "Web API" is virtually a synonym for web service, the recent trend (so-called Web 2.0) has been away from Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) based services towards more direct Representational State Transfer (REST) style communications^[5]. Web APIs allow the combination of multiple services into new applications known as mashups

• 2010 ships to customers in the spring of 2010

• Here are five of the biggest impact, promised improvements to enterprise content management (ECM) that I’ve seen with my own two eyes, and even used (albeit with mixed success as the ‘lab’ demos are not all working as promised, and a demo is in fact just a demo):

   

   

   

  1-     Publishing platform – the entire publishing platform is, in essence, a wiki. You can choose to lock down wiki or public authoring rights, extend them to some, or extend them to all. However, it is possible to create sites as wikis. The wikis come with complete version control, history and permissions, and the rich editor or “ribbon” functionality (as seen in Word 200).

   

  2-    Web content management (WCM) – communications professionals rejoice: publishing news and other static content just got a lot easier. The new publishing includes the new “ribbon” user tool that opens when you click on a page or a document, or you simply hit the edit button at the top of a page. Instead of opening a content ‘template’ the new publishing features in-context editing: click on whatever piece of content you want to “edit”, and edit right there on the page (just as you would a wiki). New image tools allow for better control and manipulation of photos, and you no longer have to make the extra step of uploading a photo to a document library before you input it into the page – you can now pull images right from your hard drive, or a website URL.

   

  3-    Records management (RM) – Microsoft has invested a lot of money in improving RM in 2010. Among the many features that have impressed, users or administrators (or someone else that has permission to do so) are able to lock down a document in a document library, as a record. And with a right click, can send that document to a Record Center with confirmation. Additional Life Cycle controls have been added.

   

  4-    Digital asset management (DAM) – yes, SP 2010 actually includes DAM – you no longer have to use a third-party option to professionally manage images, video and other multimedia.

   

  5-   Taxonomy & meta data – perhaps the single, most impressive upgrade or enhancement to SharePoint is the addition of true taxonomy and meta data  controls. All content now comes with a Managed Meta Data Service Term set that can be inherited from the global taxonomy (site collection), can be built upon or controlled by an administrator, or open to all users (or a combination). In other words, when content is created, be it a page, document, wiki, meta data can be added on the spot, as determined by the publisher or limited to a pre-determined set or tree of terms that is locked down. End readers and users can ‘tag’ the content as well with term tags, ratings (1-5 starts) and “I like it.” What is most encouraging about the use of meta data is that it can be “forced” or a “mandatory field” for all content (we all know that most organizations have options to input meta tags on content, but most content authors ignore it if given the choice).

• SharePoint 2010 (SP2010) has not been reconstructed, and is not the best solution for any organization in any scenario — it can be expensive, very expensive, and it contains far more than most organizations will ever use. But, the enhancements are more than cosmetic with impressive additions and upgrades to the feature set — when compared to MOSS 2007.

• On The Plus Side of SharePoint 2010

   

  • My Profiles (formerly My Sites) — including more social media and better associations between individuals.
  • Office integration — Better integration with MS Office particularly for Access and Excel Services — improving the supportability of those inevitable Access applications.
  • Business Intelligence — Impressive upgrades to dashboard reporting and monitoring through Excel services.
  • Service Application architecture — Moving away from the Shared Services model and to independent service applications.
  • Developer Story — Across the board the story for development with SharePoint is better. Better tooling. Better APIs. Better materials.
  • External Connectivity — BDC is now part of SharePoint Foundation as Business Connectivity Services (BCS) with more powerful connectivity and workflow. For example, expense reports can be done in SharePoint and automatically imported into the accounting system; purchase orders can be routed through approvals before automatically being created.
  • SharePoint Designer — A full-fledged SharePoint editor that knows and understands SharePoint, not just an HTML editor. Administrators have control of whether SharePoint Designer can be used or not for individual sites, and can control which features are enabled.
  • Offline Support via SharePoint Workspace — Previous support for offline work was limited or only available via a 3rd party solution. SharePoint 2010 is now a platform for retrieving data while you’re offline as well as posting new data while offline.
  • Trusted code, Cleaner code — Code can be run against SharePoint data in a trusted way, and applications can be built client side. Out-of-the-box sites now generate much cleaner mark-up (well-formed XHTML; table-less markup), are accessible (WCAG 2.0 AA) and are much lighter (refactored markup, compressed JavaScript & CSS files).
  • SharePoint Online (hosting) — SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management sites can be deployed to the cloud and avoid up-front licensing, hardware and staffing costs.

  There's Still Room For Improvement

   

  • Web content management — Much improved with the addition of social media, metadata controls and the ribbon interface for the editor, but far from best-in-class.
  • Search — Too many search experiences between Foundation, standard SharePoint and FAST (and FAST is quite complicated to setup).
  • Increased complexity — 2010 may cause organizations headaches; many firms felt 2007 was pretty complicated to maintain and 2010 is a good bit more complex (it’s new found flexibility around service applications has created some of the complexity).
  • Security — Generally acceptable for many, but SharePoint Designer access “still isn’t as controllable as large enterprises might want.” Some of the scenarios that SharePoint supports including running in the Sandbox and long running workflows make it difficult to hold on to the original user’s identity.
  • Uneven administration — No single administrative panel for an entire farm (security configuration remains a good example); fine-grain controls (e.g. quotas are applied to site collections, not sites).
  • Coded workflow — Converting declarative workflow to coded workflow. Declarative workflows, created by SharePoint Designer, are not easy to convert into a coded workflow.
  • Bulk pages — Lacking features to manage bulk pages (e.g. publishing multiple pages at a single time, such as a magazine).
  • Reusable content — Lacking features to reuse content for entire pages or sets of pages. SharePoint 2010 includes a feature called Reusable Content, but this is scoped only at snippets of content rather than entire pages.
  • E-commerce — If you’re looking to buy and sell online, there are better available options.
  • Size — There’s so much you can learn about SharePoint and so many features that you can spend your entire time working with SharePoint and never end up working with a particular feature or set of features.