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Business Reference

This quick reference guide gives you an overview of how you can use Sharepoint to work smarter, not harder.

Better Information Management

Capture, Retain, and Share
Windows SharePoint Services allows you to make it easy for teams to capture, retain, and share best practices and knowledge across your organization. Out-of-the-box secure on-line workspaces give team members the control and autonomy they need by allowing them to update the site using their Web browser.

Collaborate with Document Workspaces
Document Workspaces are used to facilitate collaboration by providing a central location for team members to store documents, related links, and more. New with Outlook 2003/2007 you can send a file in an e-mail message as a shared attachment, which automatically initiates the creation of a Document Workspace site. Those to whom you send the shared attachment are automatically granted access to the site. You can access shared attachment options in Outlook 2003/2007 by making sure that the Attachment Options task pane is visible when you attach a file to a message by clicking Attachment Options.

Store and Organize Information with Lists
Windows SharePoint Services makes it easy to store and organize information by using lists. A list is a collection of information that you share with team members. For example, you can create a sign-up sheet for an event, or you can create a list of ideas. SharePoint team sites include a set of built-in lists. You can immediately fill them with items pertinent to your team. You can also create your own custom lists based on the designs used for the built-in lists, or you can create them from scratch.

Leverage Spreadsheet Data to Create a List
If you have a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible client program, such as Microsoft Office Excel 2003/2007, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later installed, you can create lists that are based on spreadsheets. For example, you can take a contacts list that was created in Excel and easily convert it to a SharePoint list that is posted on your team Web site. You can even choose to keep the spreadsheet and the list synchronized.

Create a Repository for Documents in Libraries
Libraries are like web-based file shares that allow you to share files with site users. The kind of library you use depends upon the kind of files that you are sharing. To share a collection of digital pictures or graphics, use a picture library. If you need to store a group of XML-based business forms, use a form library. For most other file types including documents and spreadsheets, use a document library. A library displays a page that lists each file or folder and its properties, as well as a hyperlink to each file. Libraries are easy to use because you can edit their contents and upload documents to them from your browser.

Edit Using the Tools You Know
When you open a document from a SharePoint site, it opens in the program in which it was created. Documents stay in their native file format to preserve the integrity of the document and to save time because no conversion to HTML is necessary

Create Personal Views of Data
SharePoint sites can display many types of data, including lists of hyperlinks, links to documents, contacts lists, and more. Because each person visiting the site may be looking for different information, SharePoint allows authorized site visitors to create their own custom views of data. For example, you may want to be able to view only members in a contacts list that are in your office, and a co-worker may instead want to view that same list sorted by job title. Views allow you to quickly find the information you need.

Customize Your Site
Many elements in a Windows SharePoint Services site can be customized from the browser. For in-depth customization options you can use a Windows SharePoint Services compatible Web site editing tool such as Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 or Sharepoint Designer.

Easy to Find Information

Access Workspaces from Where You Work
When you open a document that is stored on a Document Workspace and was created with an Office 2003/2007 program, the document opens in that program with the Shared Workspace task pane opened. This task pane improves efficiency and effectiveness because it allows you to add users, find related documents and links, team tasks, and more, all from the programs you use every day like Microsoft Office Word 2003/2007, Microsoft Office Excel, 2003/2007 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003/2007.

Quickly Find What You Need
Windows SharePoint Services makes it easy for you to find the information you need within a workspace using its built-in search engine. This search engine allows you to search for information and resources by keyword.

Filter to View Only Selected Data
You can filter SharePoint lists and libraries within a view to narrow down the data displayed to only specific values in a field. For example, in a document library that displays many different types of documents, you could choose to filter the view to only show files that are Microsoft Word documents.

Sort When and Where You Need It
SharePoint lists and libraries often contain many columns and rows of data. You can easily change the sort order in many views of lists and libraries in order to more quickly find the date you are seeking. You can change sort order in the browser simply by clicking on their column headings. Click column heading again to reverse the sort order.

Stay Connected

Find Out Who is Online
Windows SharePoint Services helps you stay connected by seeing who is available when you need them through built-in integrated presence awareness. For example, the Shared Workspace task pane lists the names of members of the site, and shows whether they are currently online or offline next to their names. If they are online you can initiate an e-mail message, a phone call, or even an instant messaging session.

Stay Updated with Automatic E-mail Alerts
You do not need to continually check your SharePoint site for updates if you sign up for alerts. Alerts enable you to be notified by e-mail of any changes made to the content of your Web site. When you create an alert for a list or library, you can specify the kinds of changes that you want to track. For example, you can have the server alert you when an item or file is added, modified, or deleted. You can specify how frequently you want to receive alerts.

Create New Sites On-demand
When you need to connect with team members or virtual team members for a project, and you have rights to create new SharePoint sites, you can provision a new team site or sub-site from your web browser with just a few clicks. For example, if you are kicking off a new program or initiative you can easily create a new SharePoint site from one of the many available site templates so that you and team members can begin working together immediately. SharePoint even offers enough security and control for you to create team sites outside of your company’s firewall that suppliers or customers or partners could use.

Work Better Together

Communicate Better
Keep everyone synchronized with out of the box announcements, surveys, and discussion boards. Announcements offer an easy and prominent place on the site for users to inform team members of news. Surveys provide a way to ask questions of site visitors and then automatically see responses charted for results at-a-glance.

Survey the Team and Graph the Results
Surveys provide a way of polling team members. For example, you could poll team members to find out what locations they prefer for an upcoming meeting or the best way to handle a business challenge. If your site includes a survey, you can go to it by clicking Documents and Lists in the top link bar and then clicking the survey in the Surveys section. The Graphical Summary view displays a compilation of responses so that you can see survey results at a glance.

Discuss Topics Online
Discussion boards provide a forum for conversing about topics that interest your team. For example, you could create a discussion board for team members to suggest activities. Each discussion board appears on a page that includes buttons for starting new discussions, sorting and filtering discussions, switching to a different view of the discussion board, and changing the design of the discussion board. You can make working on Microsoft Office documents easier than ever by inserting discussions into the documents for in-place communication.

Make Meetings Easier to Manage
Meetings can be easier to organize and manage when they are facilitated by a Meeting Workspace. Meeting Workspaces are Share-Point-based web sites that can be used to store meeting information, agendas, a list of attendees, related documents and links, and more. Meeting Workspaces can be initiated from within Outlook when scheduling a meeting. In Outlook 2003/2007, simply click Meeting Workspace (under the Reminder check box).

Keep Track of Versions
SharePoint built-in versioning makes it easier to work together on draft documents because it automatically stores draft versions of documents. The Version History command is also available in client applications that are compatible with Windows SharePoint Services, such as Word 2003/2007, Excel 2003/2007, and PowerPoint 2003/2007. When you click Version History, a list of the previous versions of the document appears. You can open an old version, restore a version (replacing the current version), or delete an old version.

Prevent Others From Overriding Your Changes
You can use Check-in/Check-out to prevent someone else from making changes to a document on which you are working. You can check out and check in the document from either the document library or a Microsoft Office 2003/2007 program. Users see your changes after you check the file back in.

Control Access to Sensitive Information
Sites created with Windows SharePoint Services can be configured to allow anyone to view them, to restrict access to only a selected group of users, or a combination of both. For example, you could allow anyone in your company to view your team Web site, but you may choose to grant only members of your team the rights to upload or edit content in the site. Additionally, you may only allow a small number of people to have rights to add new users or change the Web site’s look and feel. You can also specify a different set of security and permissions for a specific list or library, or even for a sub-site on an existing site.