SharePoint Portal Server: What is it?
The Microsoft Office System provides information workers with the tools they need to get their jobs done – not just desktop applications but servers, services, and solutions as well. Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 addresses servers.
SharePoint Portal Server is an application built on top of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. Before we can look at SharePoint Portal Server, you need to understand Windows SharePoint Services. Windows SharePoint Services is a technology you get in Windows Server 2003. It is an engine for serving up in a very scalable, very available, very self-serviced and extensible way, tens of thousands of Web sites to hundreds of thousands of users. The sites come to you without you doing anything extra out-of-the-box with document collaboration, information sharing, and team productivity tools. Using SharePoint sites for sharing-type applications or collaboration activities, instead of file shares, is sensible and effective.
From the point of view of a developer, SharePoint sites are not just collaboration sites. Windows SharePoint Services can deliver several different types of sites including the out-of-the-box Document Workspace sites for document editing and management, and Meeting Workspace sites for meeting management. You can use Windows SharePoint Services as a development platform to build additional sites on, and on which to create collaboration applications and information-sharing applications. Microsoft Office Project Web Access is a great example of an application built on top of Windows SharePoint Services.
Whereas Windows SharePoint Services is designed mainly for document and other collaboration, SharePoint Portal Server helps collect, organize, and provide easy access to enterprise information. With SharePoint Portal Server, sites are personalized, and more accessible, discoverable, and searchable. It provides a single point of access for people, teams, knowledge and applications. In addition to the features of Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 adds the following:
- News and Information topics
- An intranet site directory to help organize your intranet
- Personal Sites with personal and public views
- Audience Targeting services
- Index and search functionality
- Alerts that notify you when changes are made to relevant information, documents, or programs
- Integration with Microsoft BizTalk Server
- Single sign-on functionality for enterprise application integration
SharePoint server 2007:
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds upon the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 infrastructure to provide a true enterprise portal platform. This article describes the technologies that Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 delivers on the six major enterprise-focused themes for the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Individual Impact, Enterprise Content Lifecycle, Collaboration, Knowledge Discovery and Insight, Information Worker Solutions, and Fundamentals.
The Office SharePoint Server 2007 feature enhancements and new additions provide the components needed to build a fully integrated enterprise portal.
In This Section
Office SharePoint Server 2007 introduces new technologies, including the following:
- Business Data Catalog
Enables integration between enterprise portal and line-of-business (LOB) applications. - Document Management
Provides control, organization, publishing, offline capabilities, draft item security, rights management, and records management. - Web Content Management
Enables site branding, creation of custom converters, building of multilingual sites, and building of content deployment solutions. - Office SharePoint Server 2007 Excel Services
Enables interaction with your spreadsheets (view, calculate, create snapshots, extract values) through a Web browser or programmatically through a Web service. - Office InfoPath Forms Services Capabilities in Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enables interaction with form templates designed with Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 through a Web browser.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 also brings enhancements to existing technologies, including the following:
- Search Provides enhanced capabilities in portal sites, team sites, content management sites, and custom headless search applications.
- User Profiles and Audience Targeting
Provides improvements for property management, imports, privacy and security, and My Page, plus the addition of memberships, shared context, and colleague's quick links. - Single Sign-on
Provides enhancements to include a pluggable mechanism to allow alternate single sign-on providers.
Briefly Description:
- Business Data Catalog
:
The Business Data Catalog feature of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides an easy way to integrate business data from back-end server applications, such as SAP or Siebel, with your corporate portal to provide rich solutions for end users without writing any code. You register business data exposed in databases or through Web services in the Business Data Catalog by creating metadata that describes the database or Web service. The Business Data Catalog then uses this metadata to make the right calls into the data source to retrieve the relevant data.
After you register a data source in the Business Data Catalog, the business data entities are available for use by any of the following business data features:
Business Data Web Parts Generic Web Parts that display any entity from the Business Data Catalog, without deploying new code. The Web Parts provide customization, Web Part connections, and the standard Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services look-and-feel capabilities (paging, filtering, and style).
Business Data in Lists New field type that allows you to add any entity defined in the Business Data Catalog to a SharePoint list or document library.
Business Data Actions Business Data Actions bridge the gap between Office SharePoint Server 2007 and a native application user interface by providing a link back to the back-end data source. You can use Business Data Actions to build applications with write-back scenarios, such as a Customer Profile view that allows a user to update profile information directly in a back-end server application, such as SAP or Siebel. Actions are implemented as links, so you can also use actions to perform simple actions such as send an e-mail message or open a customer's home page.
Business Data Search Offers full-text search of the data sources registered in the Business Data Catalog. You can create new search result types based on the specific data entities registered in the Business Data Catalog.
Business Data in User Profiles You can augment Office SharePoint Server 2007 user profiles from any external data source registered in the Business Data Catalog.
- Document Management :
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a set of client and server document services to help users manage and work with the growing volumes of content today's business processes generate.
Control
Office SharePoint Server 2007 has several features that provide improved control of access and versioning of documents:
Enforce check in and checkout You can now enforce mandatory check in and check out of Office SharePoint Server 2007 content.
Check out to local This feature lets a user check out a document and open it for editing on their client computer by using one option button.
Minor versioning Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports minor versioning. Based on settings the site administrator specifies, users can also have the option to choose whether to increment the major or minor versioning when they check an edited document back into a document library. Users can also add version-specific comments when checking in the document.
Document Information Panels
Often in document management systems, users are asked—usually at the point when they are saving their documents—to provide metadata (properties) for their documents. In many cases, users do not give the request any serious consideration, perhaps because of the placement or timing of the request. Document information panels are designed to enable users to specify all the properties on a document at once, in one place, at any point when they are working with that document.
A document information panel is a form that is displayed within the client application, and which contains fields for the document metadata. Document information panels enable users to enter important metadata about a file anytime they want, without having to leave the Microsoft Office system client application.
For more information, see Document Information Panel Overview.
Content Reuse and Distribution
Office SharePoint Server 2007 has features to support the distribution and reuse of content.
Important among these is the concept of live copies. A live copy is a document a user has copied to another SharePoint site location, but that retains a pointer to the original document. When the original document is edited, Office SharePoint Server 2007 notifies the user, who has the option of updating the copy with those changes as well.
In addition, Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers rendition support, which enables users to locate the same content that has been saved in a different file format.
Document Converters
You can offer content in a variety of formats through the use of document converters.
A document converter is a custom executable file that takes a document of one file type, and generates a copy of that file in another file type. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes an extensible framework for you to enable your own custom document converters for the document libraries in a given Web application.
For more information, see Document Converters Overview.
Draft Item Security
Draft item security gives a site administrator the ability to review submitted content before making it visible on the site. This feature employs the improved versioning Office SharePoint Server 2007 now offers: Administrators can elect to review content submitted as minor or major versions before making it visible.
Adding Custom Rights-Managed File Formats
The extensible architecture of Office SharePoint Server 2007 enables developers to create their own rights management converters for additional file formats beyond those natively supported by Office SharePoint Server 2007. Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports the rights-managed file formats for Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint.
Using this extensible architecture, developers can create pluggable rights management converters that convert custom file types to rights management formats when the user downloads them, and then convert those files back to non-encrypted file formats when the user uploads them for storage in the document library.
Implementing rights management requires two things:
- A file format that has rights management built into it.
- An application that understands rights management and can display the file format with the various access levels determined by rights management.
Maintaining Content with Records Management
Records management is concerned with maintaining a company's most important information in the most organized way. Information technology creates an abundance of information, and we need to invent new ways of managing those electronic documents. We must ensure we have everything we need, as well as ensure we get rid of everything we do not need.
Records management addresses the long-term storage and management of items of value to a company. In such a context, a record represents something important to a company, be it a document, list, or other item of information.
Defining Policies for Handling Content
An information management policy is a set of rules for a certain type of important content. Policy enables administrators to control and evaluate who can access the information, how long to retain information, and how effectively people are complying with the policy itself. The most common creators and enforcers of policy are compliance officers, records managers, IT staff, and members of similar professions.
With Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can apply policies that enable you to manage your content according to your business processes. While Office SharePoint Server 2007 contains several policy features you can customize for your needs, it also contains a range of extensibility tools that enable you to create, customize, and deploy your own policies and policy features.
The predefined policy features contained in Office SharePoint Server 2007 include the following:
- Retention
- Auditing
- Document bar codes
- Document labels
For more information about the information management policy framework, see Introduction to Information Management Policy.
Document Storage Using the Record Center
Windows SharePoint Services provides an intuitive, robust environment for document collaboration and storage. However, many corporations have records management and regulatory compliance needs that necessitate maintaining separate servers that are used to manage official business records and other highly regulated material. This presents a challenge to records managers: how to easily, and consistently, move documents from the SharePoint collaborative sites to the more strictly controlled environment of a records repository server. Windows SharePoint Services provides functionality designed to enable records managers to automate the process of moving documents into a records repository.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides powerful tools to help records managers move their important documents, and related metadata, into a regulated records center:
- Records Center Web Service Records managers can use the Records Center Web service to automate the process of moving documents from SharePoint sites into a records center, be that another, more strictly regulated SharePoint site, or a third-party repository.
- Records Center Site Template The Records center site template provides records managers with a records center solution right inside. The site template fully implements the Records Center Web service, and is customized for use as a records center.
Document Processing Using Search and Process
Search and process operations enable you to use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to perform a search query, and then perform a specific, custom action upon each list item returned by the query. For example, you might need to identify a certain set of documents, based on specific document metadata, and then move those documents into a records repository.
In addition, you can specify a list of people who are sent an e-mail message with the results of the search and process operation.
For more information, see Search and Process Overview.
Records Management Reporting Tools
Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides tools for both audit and policy reporting. Audit reporting enables you to track events that occur on documents within a site. For example, you could track which user deleted a given file. Policy reporting enables you to gather information on how policies are being implemented within a site. Policy reporting examines an entire site and returns information concerning what policies are in use, and the percentages of use for each policy. You can then take this information and compare it against what you thought the policy use would be, or compare to see who is using policies in different percentages from the overall averages.
- Web Content Management
:To use the web content management features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, turn on the Publishing feature on a site. Then brand the site so that it has your organization's look and feel. You can provide users a way to edit the site within the context of the Web, and you can deploy content through a staging server into production. On a site with the Publishing functionality turned on, you can also create a multilingual site by creating a source site and then having that site translated into other languages, which are published as separate sites.
Branding Your Site
You can build a corporate Internet site by using Office SharePoint Server 2007, and customize it to look exactly as you want it to by modifying the basic building blocks of Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web pages: master pages and page layout. First, create a master page that defines the overall look and feel, or chrome, for the site. Master pages contain controls that are shared across an entire site; these controls include navigation, search, and language preferences.
For each type of page on the site, you create a page layout, which is a template to which users can add content to create new pages.
If the page is intended to explain a particular topic in detail—for example, if it contains text, graphics, or other information about a single topic—create a page layout with field controls.
If the page is intended to convey summary information about the content in a site—for example, a Welcome page—you can use the following field controls that are included with Office SharePoint Server 2007:
- Content Query Web Part
- Summary Links field control and Web Part
- Table of Contents Web Part
These Web Parts and field controls have a standard look and feel. You can customize the look and feel of field controls and Web parts to match the design of your Web site.
For more information, see Common Page and Site Customization Tasks.
Creating Custom Converters
Just as the Rich Client Authoring framework enables users to convert Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents into Web pages, you can create your own custom converters to change almost any type of file into a Web page. For example, you can create a converter that changes an XML file into an HTML Web page, given a specific XSL.
For details, see Page Publishing Using Document Converters.
Building Multilingual Sites
Often you must maintain many versions of a Web site, all of which derive from a common master or source site. This scenario is most common when creating multilingual Web sites (MLS). For example, global companies commonly create many different versions, or variations, of their corporate presence Web sites, one for each independent market in which they operate.
The Office SharePoint Server 2007 variation system is designed to help alleviate much of the complexity of managing related Web sites by managing the relationships between items in the source and target sites and using those relationships to create a process to synchronize the content between sites.
The variation system is a one-to-many system. You choose a source site and link it to any number of target sites. Changes you make in the source site then appear in each target site. Each set of target sites has only one source site.
The variation feature is targeted specifically at sites that are designed for publishing authoritative content. To that end, only pages and publishing sites can participate in the variations process. Other types of sites, such as team sites, cannot participate in the propagation process, nor can lists and list items. Only pages from a pages library and documents and images that those pages reference, can be included.
To learn more about variations, see the Variations and Multiple Languages Sites section.
Creating Content Deployment Solutions
IT professional can manage most Office SharePoint Server 2007 content deployment scenarios through a Web browser interface. For unusual cases, such as those in which the source and destination sites are not connected by a network, you may need to create a custom content deployment solution.
Content deployment is built around the idea that a single source site collection deploys content to one or more destination site collections. The destinations contain all the same content that the source site collection contains, with the same structure and organization.
A content deployment path defines the relationship between a source and a destination site collection. The source and destination can be on the same server farm or on different server farms. A site collection can have many outgoing paths. Each path has one or more jobs that define the schedule and scope of individual deployment operations, giving administrators a high degree of flexibility over how to deploy content. By default, deployment jobs operate incrementally, copying only content that has changed since the last successful deployment.
There are a few differences between the source and destination site collections:
- Base URL for the site collection The source and destination may be at different levels of the URL namespace on their respective servers. For example, http://mysite may deploy to http://public/mysite. Office SharePoint Server 2007 automatically corrects links to handle this difference.
- Authentication and user information The source and destination may have different security contexts. For example, the source might be on an intranet and give permissions to users in the entire organization, and the destination may use forms authentication to provide read access to the site.
- Content Query Web Part
- Office SharePoint Server 2007 Excel Services:
Excel Services is a new shared service of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Excel Services enables Excel workbooks to be loaded, calculated, and rendered on Office SharePoint Server 2007. Excel Services is designed to be a scalable, robust, enterprise-class server that provides feature and calculation fidelity with Microsoft Office Excel 2007.
Using Excel Services, you can easily reuse and share Excel workbooks on portals and dashboards on Office SharePoint Server 2007. For example, financial analysts, business planners, and engineers can create content in Excel and share it with others by using an Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal and dashboard. They can do this without writing custom code. You can control which data is displayed, and you can maintain a single version of the workbook.
There are two primary interfaces for Excel Services:
- An Excel Web Access Web Part, which enables you to view and interact with a live workbook by using a browser
- Excel Web Services for programmatic access
In addition, you can extend the third component of Excel Services, called Excel Calculation Services, with user-defined functions.
Using Excel Services, you can view live, interactive workbooks with only a browser. This means you can save Excel workbooks and interact with them from within portal sites. You can also interact with workbooks to explore and pivot on data, and you can analyze PivotTable reports and charts by using a browser.
Excel Services supports workbooks that are connected to external data sources. You can embed connection strings to external data sources in the workbook, or you can save them centrally in a Data Connection Library file.
Excel Services also has a Web service. You can use Excel Web Services to load workbooks, set values into cells and ranges, refresh external data connections, calculate worksheets, and extract calculated results such as cell values, the entire calculated workbook, or a snapshot of the workbook.
- An Excel Web Access Web Part, which enables you to view and interact with a live workbook by using a browser
- Office InfoPath Forms Services Capabilities
The InfoPath Forms Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a Web browser form-filling experience based on form templates designed in Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007. Otherwise referred to as a "reach" experience, form templates can be used from computers that may not have Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 installed. This Web experience is built as a feature on top of the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 platform.
Form templates (.xsn files) created in the Office InfoPath 2007 design mode UI are translated into browser-editable forms that run on Office SharePoint Server 2007. Form templates with custom business logic are deployed by an administrator and managed through a global list of form templates in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Central Administration form template management page.
