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Part I: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007
and the access vehicle of choice for this has been the Internet. For example, Google Documents and
Google Apps can be accessed via a browser. In the Microsoft world, Office Live allows you to save and
store information, with the browser being the tool of choice to provide the interface to these web storage
locations.
In the business world, documents and other information tend to be stored on file servers to which staff
are given access, emails contain a huge amount of corporate information in terms of both content and file
attachments, USB keys are widely used as a storage medium, and of course the hard drives of the
PCs are in use every day. All of these spaces and devices contain useful business information that, by
their nature, they lock away.
This wide variety of document and information storage locations also makes it difficult to see the whole
range of information available within a company. Not only is information hard to find, but there are
many legal requirements with respect to business documents, and it can be difficult if not impossible for
a company to meet its responsibility with regard to data regulations when information is spread all over
the place with few controls over its management in place. For example, how do you ensure that
documents required to be retained by your company for legal reasons are actually stored centrally? How
do you find all the required documents if you are subject to litigation? When documents are stored in a
multitude of places, it is difficult to get a global picture of any particular activity, as the information
could be located on a hard drive, in an email, or even on a USB stick. Software like SharePoint is an
attempt to pull all of these diverse storage locations together and allow you to get a picture of all the
information about a particular topic or organization. To SharePoint, it doesn ’ t really matter that you
have information stored on file servers, other hard drives within an organization, or inside large
databases — SharePoint, once configured, can discover it all.
SharePoint also makes it easier for teams within an organization to work together on common projects
and tasks and share information. SharePoint ’ s core function is to enable you to work without others to
meet business goals in the most efficient way possible. All of the features are there to assist you to
achieve this goal — to work with, create, manage, and discover information.
While MOSS and WSS work in other web browsers (such as Firefox) they do work best when using
Internet Explorer 7. However, the limits are few and it is possible to successfully run sites for users of
Apple Macs and Firefox with little trouble. Browser support is discussed later in this chapter.
Site Structure
It helps when working in this environment to at least have a basic understanding of how a SharePoint
web site is structured. For example, my organization is split up into multiple divisions, each of which
has a MOSS site. In technical terms this is known as a site collection . Within the site collection each
distinct business area has a team site, below which each team is free to create additional sites. The site
collection itself is managed by an administrator, who has full control of the area. Each divisional site also
has a site owner, who is responsible for the individual site. Basically, each business area has its own
self - contained and - managed intranet site with overall management of the entire structure and services
falling to system administrators. For example, the finance division would have an overall intranet site
called Finance. Within that site would be a set of subsites for Purchasing, Income, Salaries, Fees, and so
on. The system administrators manage the more technical aspects of SharePoint and ensure that the
service is maintained.
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