It may not contain a tiny pair of scissors
or a wine corkscrew, but Microsoft’s latest iteration of Office SharePoint Server (MOSS 2007) certainly is the Swiss Army
knife of software.
“Companies are using MOSS 2007 to collaborate, manage content, implement business processes and workflows, and create
access to information that is crucial for
organizational goals and operations,” says
Bill Russell, executive vice president of
Allegient. “The breadth of MOSS 2007 gets
to the heart of what most knowledge workers struggle with on a day-to-day basis.”
Smart Business recently spoke with
Russell about the breadth and features
embedded in Microsoft’s Office SharePoint
Server 2007.
What features of MOSS 2007 are most appealing to small and medium-sized companies?
The breadth of collaboration and content
management is the capstone of the many
capabilities that this cost-effective, portal-based platform provides. It integrates
extremely well with Microsoft Office and
Outlook, allowing businesses to take full
advantage of their existing desktop document, spreadsheet and e-mail applications.
MOSS 2007 also pushes the ability for end-users to manage Web content and not use
technical staff. This will allow businesses to
deploy new information more quickly, to
meet customers’ needs quicker and be more
agile in responsiveness to market changes.
Another attractive feature is the improved
search capability. In concert with content
management, the search function has the
ability to search across an entire enterprise.
Why is MOSS 2007 superior to previous versions and other platforms?
The major improvement is clearly the
richer and highly integrated Web development, content and management capabilities. MOSS 2007 allows a small firm, which
might have had multiple Web sites, with all
different looks and feels, to present a more
transparent experience to its Web users.
They can manage their content more easily and quickly, with little need for their IT department’s assistance. Where appropriate the MOSS 2007 development environment makes it much easier for companies
to build and integrate Web parts, or small
applets, like a ‘ticker’ of their stock price or
the latest headline news. It makes it very
easy to buy or build these applets, integrate
them and update the site in look and feel,
for the information.
A second enhancement from other versions is the included dashboard/business
intelligence features that can be utilized to
notify companies about how certain parts
of their business are doing, as an example.
What unique or hidden features are included
in MOSS 2007?
The platform allows companies to build
and integrate workflows, or use the
improved, packaged workflows to mirror
parts of or complete business processes.
The most popular workflow included in
the platform is what’s called an approval
workflow. MOSS 2007 gives you a basic
approval workflow that you can configure
to match your needs.
MOSS 2007 also features integrated
Infopath, a set of capabilities that allow a
company to easily build forms that can be
included on a Web site and filled out by the user for any number of business needs or
applications.
Many businesses have spent enormous
amounts of time and money to build Excel
spreadsheets, which they use to run their
business. Certain editions of MOSS 2007
include a powerful set of what are called
‘Excel Services’ to take advantage of these
existing applications so companies can
leverage them.
What processes might companies first tackle
with MOSS 2007?
MOSS 2007 embeds powerful and intuitive
tools for providing more structure and efficiency to everyday business or knowledge
worker processes. For example, MOSS 2007
allows business users to create, publish and
manage Web content. The toolbars mirror
the familiar features in Microsoft Word,
allowing authorized users to change fonts,
colors and other appearances right inside
the pages. Companies can use these capabilities to move more of the content management back to business users and save
their IT technical team for the more complex requirements.
Companies can also leverage the package’s much improved document management capabilities and collaboration features
around those documents. Creating group,
team or individual workflows that allow a
knowledge worker to get work done is
another very fundamental, generic work
process included that can be applied across
any business.
Should companies use outside resources to
implement MOSS 2007?
Some small firms are implementing it right
now with their existing IT staff, and frankly,
they’re getting themselves in some difficulty
because they’re not using enough outside
expertise and help to get a good start. The
outside resource can help identify one or
two areas of what we refer to as low-hanging fruit, or obvious business processes, that
could quickly improve with MOSS 2007’s
capabilities.
BILL RUSSELL is executive vice president of Allegient. Reach
him at (317) 564-5701 or [email protected].