Datasheet
Chapter 1: Microsoft Offi ce SharePoint Services 2007 (MOSS)
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People Search
Ever wondered who in your organization was qualified to administer first aid? If that information is
included in a user ’ s profile, SharePoint will find that person for you; you simply search for people with
that particular skill. Many organizations hold such information on paper copy or listed on individual
web pages. Others simply post the information on a notice board. MySite and your personal profile can
provide up - to - date information like this either by permitting you to update your profile yourself or by
populating this information automatically from directory records held centrally. It ’ s more likely that you
will enter this information yourself, as many central directories do not go to this depth of detail nor are
they always up to date. After all, individuals move around within a company or upgrade their skills. In
some organizations, this feature of MOSS is used as a self - promotion tool, allowing individuals to expose
skills they have that would otherwise go unnoticed.
For those using WSS, Microsoft has released Search Server Express 2008, a free add - in to WSS to
extend its searching capabilities to almost match those of MOSS 2007.
MySite
MySite is a great feature in SharePoint and can serve as your single point of entrance to the entire
system. MySite is your personal space on the server and provides you with access to virtually everything
located within a company SharePoint environment. Any document that you have written and that is
stored on the server can be presented to you via MySite. This gives you a single point of reference to
access materials from all web sites to which you have access. Within your MySite you can enable access
to your Outlook email inbox, tasks, and calendar with a few mouse clicks. You can customize the MySite
area to just show you things that are of immediate interest to you and ignore much of the rest.
MySite can also function as a useful business social networking tool, as it contains items that can list
your colleagues and all sites of which you are a member. You can create and update a personal business
profile that will be available to any user accessing this site, and this in turn can be personalized
according to which category the user falls into; for example, your immediate line manager can have a
different view of information in your MySite than another colleague. MySite also allows you to add
information to your public profile such as skills held and responsibilities.
This information can then be searched by colleagues within the organization.
MySite is also useful as a training tool. You can customize the pages, add different features, and
generally play with layout of information without actually doing any of this on your business sites. In
my organization, MySite is used to demonstrate SharePoint features to staff, who use their own MySite
to try out new approaches to organizing and sharing information.
Audiences
In many organizations, information is put up on the web in the expectation that, using some sort of magic,
other people will automatically know it’s there and available. In many cases, the magic fails and people
remain unaware that the latest information is available. In turn, this system also relies on individuals
searching for the information in the first place. MOSS and the use of its Audience feature permit you to
push information out to selected groups of people. Only those individuals who are members of the MOSS
audience will receive the information. It ’ s worth noting that this is not a secure feature and should not be
used as such. Anyone who knows the URL to information can simply type it into a browser and open the
documents.
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