SharePoint server is a software product from Microsoft that enables you to improve collaboration and provide streamlined access to organisational information for staff within your company. SharePoint does this through the use of Intranet pages, which are basically internal websites that only people within your company can see, or selected external users as you see fit.

You can use these websites for a multitude of purposes, but to name a few; you can create websites to manage all of your company documents in a structured manner, provide project management environments, internal company collaboration environments for staff to communicate through using Wiki’s, Blogs, task lists, and much more. There are free templates available for virtually hundreds of different uses.

Document Management with Microsoft SharePoint allows you to pull all of those documents, emails, videos and web pages into one central categorised location and gives you the ability to control version history, access permissions and manage document lifecycle processes. For example, modifications to certain documents must be approved by a manager before being modified, or must be checked by a particular person before going to final draft. Workflows can be designed, so at each stage of a document’s life tasks can be assigned to individuals responsible for them. This is all done through a single point of access, your internal website, Microsoft Office Application or Third Party application and moves away from the cumbersome method of storing all files within shared folders. Document Management allows business to save documents in a final state, satisfying legal requirements for retention of information through the use of a ‘Vault’, once a document reaches a certain age or status it can be automatically shifted into the ‘Vault’ and retained indefinitely.

Project Management within SharePoint provides staff with a feature rich project management application, to schedule key project tasks and deliverables. For anyone who has ever used Microsoft Project before, it will look familiar as it is based on the same software. Staff are given a rich environment within which they can create one or multiple projects, assign tasks to other staff members, schedule key dates and cut-off points, report on progress and track time spent. This can all be tied into Microsoft Outlook with a simple add-in to provide an even richer experience for staff who are already familiar with Microsoft Outlook.

Staff Collaboration within SharePoint provides users with a rich environment within which they can communicate and collaborate with each other. Provide bulletin boards, document libraries, discussion boards, calendars, and announcements for staff to create a rich working environment. Users can collaborate in live environments over Word documents, or presentations. These collaborations can be extended to partners, clients and public facing portals. Provide staff with their own Wiki’s or Blogs, these can be used for staff to track useful information and make it available to other staff members. These technologies extend the investment in existing Microsoft Office applications, and are accessible through a single webpage.

Tie all of these features in with Microsoft Search, which allows you to quickly search through all of your company data for a particular item, content type or topic and you have a very powerful business tool. Microsoft SharePoint Server comes in two flavours, a full blown feature rich version called Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and a free version with less bells and whistles called Windows SharePoint Server 3.0. Depending on your requirements, the free version may enable you to get that internal website you’ve always talked about up and running doing everything you need, so if you would like to know more, ask your friendly CCL site engineer about which may be best for you.