Introduction

While organizations have been talking about knowledge management and team collaboration for years, Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services finally provided a feature rich, affordable and scalable solution to these needs. As we wrote in the introduction for the first edition of the book, “every organization can benefit from these technologies,” and we have seen this proven as organizations from 5 users to 10,000 users adopt the technologies.

Another factor which has been driving the adoption of the SharePoint 2003 products is the tight integration between the SharePoint 2003 products and the Office 2003 family of products. Since most organizations have standardized on the Office applications, this integration allows users to quickly master the enhancements offered by SharePoint 2003 (such as the Shared Workspace task pane) and evolve to a more collaborative knowledge management environment.

While many other IT improvements and updates can't be seen or touched by the general user community, the SharePoint 2003 products will change (often dramatically) how users manage, access, and interact with their documents and data, and how they collaborate with others in the organization. It is therefore critical that the organization understand how these changes will impact the end users, and be able to define the benefits to end users. Without a clear vision from the decisions makers and managers in the organization, the end user community may be hostile to the changes and the work that will be involved on their parts to learn to effectively use the new tools and processes.

This book is designed to provide an overview of the vast feature set offered by the SharePoint 2003 products and to discuss strategies and processes for best levering these features. Time is devoted to walking through the discovery and design process to make sure that the goals for SharePoint 2003 are clearly defined, and to build a prototype testing environment as well as a production environment. The standard portal and site level features are covered for both the end user and administrators.

This book is not intended to be a developer's or programmer's guide except from the perspective of providing insight into the use of SharePoint technologies for satisfying business needs.

Colin and Michael have worked with SharePoint technologies in pre-beta and beta form prior to the product release and have worked with clients on implementing the products in test and production environments. The authors have been authors or contributing writers for several books over the past decade and are considered industry experts with SharePoint technologies.

Book Highlights

• Part I, “SharePoint 2003 Overview,” provides an introduction to SharePoint 2003 technologies and highlights the differences between the current and previous version of SharePoint. In addition, a chapter is devoted to how organizations are leveraging the SharePoint 2003 features and capabilities.

• Part II, “Planning and Implementing a SharePoint 2003 Environment,” guides the reader through the transforming of business goals and processes into a SharePoint 2003 ecosystem. Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 installation are covered, as is the configuration and tuning for optimized client access. The process of migrating from SharePoint 2001 is also covered.

• Part III, “Using SharePoint 2003 Technologies,” explores the use of the Office 2003 product line with a SharePoint 2003 environment. Chapters are devoted to SharePoint libraries and lists.

• Part IV, “Managing a SharePoint 2003 Environment,” covers SharePoint security, implementing ISA Server 2004 to enhance the security of the SharePoint environment. The processes required to administer and maintain the SharePoint 2003 environment including different strategies and processes for backing up data and sites are examined.

• Part V, “Extending the SharePoint 2003 Environment,” provides insight into customizing the SharePoint environment, delves more deeply into the power and flexibility of Web Parts, and scaling SharePoint for larger implementations.

The focus of this book is for both IT professionals who need to plan, implement, and support a Windows SharePoint Services/SharePoint Portal Server 2003 infrastructure, as well as for non-IT personnel (such as business consultants, business managers, project managers, and knowledge workers) who want to enhance business communications and information flow processes using a collaboration/knowledge management tool.