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Part I: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007
the staff, either within specific business areas or across an entire organization. In an educational
environment, wikis can be used to support instructing students with pages created by teaching staff and
contributed to by students.
Project Management
Used in a loose sense, in terms of project management, SharePoint provides you with the ability to assign
and manage tasks and projects via the Internet. Information on progress can be monitored using a Gantt
chart view within a SharePoint site. Tasks can be managed by SharePoint using email to notify others of
the assignment of a task or its completion. For more advanced use, SharePoint can be integrated with
Microsoft Project Server if required. Two types of task lists are provided by SharePoint, a standard task
list and a Project Tasks list. Chapter 2 looks at both types in more detail.
Surveys
SharePoint surveys offer you a quick way to carry out a poll of colleagues or external users. Surveys can
be as simple as a few questions or can contain branching questions, whereby the respondent ’ s answers
are used to branch off to a different set of questions. Surveys are quick to set up and provide a useful, if
somewhat basic, tool that you may require. Responses to the survey are presented in a graphical format
and can be exported to other applications for further analysis.
Web - Based Discussions
Depending on the environment you work in, web - based discussions may or may not prove useful to
you. For example, in the environment in which I am working, higher education, web - based discussions
are a great tool that can be used to engage students in various topics. In fact, sometimes grades depend
on the quantity and quality of student interaction with web - based discussion forums. While not as
sophisticated as some web - based discussion groups, SharePoint discussions are an excellent tool.
Discussions can be used in a formal, controlled sense within a company to discuss company proposals or
documents, they can be used within project or business teams, or even opened up to external users, for a
quick customer survey for example. Discussions in SharePoint lack some of the basic features found in
more sophisticated online forums, but they do get the job done, and like a lot of SharePoint features, they
can be replaced by third - party tools or improved by using free add - ins downloaded from the web.
Calendars
SharePoint calendars are useful animals and can be used to manage any date - based information. With
Outlook 2007, they can be updated directly within the SharePoint site, or if linked into Outlook 2007,
from within Outlook 2007. For users of earlier versions of Outlook, the SharePoint calendars can only be
updated from within SharePoint.
SharePoint calendars are a great way to keep members of a team informed about important business dates
(for example, report due dates). They can be customized within SharePoint to restrict the information
shown. Information they contain can be rolled up across sites to display aggregate information, but
another SharePoint object must be used to achieve this. The default graphic calendar cannot be used to
display information from multiple calendars located on other sites or even within the same site. However,
third - party tools can be used for this, as they provide better functionality than standard SharePoint
aggregation tools. SharePoint calendars can be presented in a graphical form or as a standard list. Which
format you choose depends on the amount of screen real estate you have available, as a graphical
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