Windows SharePoint Services is a component of Microsoft Windows Server 2003. It is provided as a free download, and gives you a powerful toolset for organizing information, managing documents, and providing efficient collaboration environments.

With Windows SharePoint Services, teams can create Web sites to share information and foster collaboration with other users. You can access content stored within a SharePoint site from a Web browser and through desktop applications such as Microsoft Office.

SharePoint sites provide places to capture and share ideas, information, communication, and documents. The sites facilitate team participation in discussions, shared document collaboration, and surveys. The document collaboration features allow for easy checking in and checking out of documents, and document version control.

A SharePoint site can have many subsites, the hierarchy of which, on Web servers, resembles the hierarchy of folders on file systems—it is a tree-like structure. Similar to storing your files in folders on file systems, you can store your files within SharePoint sites. However, SharePoint sites take file storage to a new level, providing communities for team collaboration and making it easy for users to work together on documents, tasks, contacts, events, and other information. This team collaboration environment can greatly increase individual and team productivity.

The collaborative tools provided by Windows SharePoint Services are easy to use, so you can share files and information and communicate more effectively with your coworkers. You can create and use SharePoint sites for any purpose. For example, you can build a site to serve as the primary Web site for a team, or you can create a site to facilitate organizing a meeting. A typical SharePoint site might include a variety of useful tools and information, such as shared document libraries, contacts, calendars, task lists, discussions, and other information sharing and visualizing tools.

SharePoint site users can find and communicate with key contacts and experts, both with e-mail and with instant messaging. Site content can be easily searched, and users can also receive alerts to tell them when existing documents and information have been changed, or when new ones have been added. You can customize site content and layout to present targeted information to specific users on precise topics.

In this exercise, you will locate your SharePoint site and familiarize yourself with its home page.

OPEN the browser.

BE SURE TO know the location of your SharePoint site. If in doubt, check with your SharePoint administrator.

CLOSE the browser

Many Microsoft Office menus and features are integrated closely with Windows SharePoint Services features. You can use SharePoint Services functionality from within your Office applications. For example, you can create a new SharePoint site and save your files to it without leaving your Office application.

A SharePoint site's collaborative content—including documents, lists, events, task assignments, and membership rosters—can be read and edited within Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003. Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 allows SharePoint site event calendars to be viewed side-by-side with personal calendars, and you can also create meeting-specific workspaces on the SharePoint site from Outlook 2003.

There are different levels of integration between different versions of Office and Windows SharePoint Services. The Microsoft Office System provides feature-rich integration with Windows SharePoint Services, while Office 2000 provides only basic integration, and Office XP provides some additional integration features to Office 2000.

Office 2000 provides simple file save integration with Windows SharePoint Services. For example, you can open and save files stored on SharePoint sites from your Office 2000 applications and receive alerts in Outlook 2000. However, Office 2000 users cannot use some advanced features of Windows SharePoint Services, and some features may require additional steps.

Office XP provides additional data integration capabilities, including the ability to have interactive access to data stored on SharePoint sites. For example, you can export list data from SharePoint sites to Excel 2002, and view properties and metadata for files that are stored on SharePoint sites. However, Office XP is not integrated fully with some of the features of Windows SharePoint Services. For example, you cannot use Office XP applications to create document workspace sites, meeting workspace sites, or shared attachments in Outlook 2002.

With Office 2003, you can use Windows SharePoint Services to create documents and workspaces, to organize team meetings and activities, and to access and analyze data from SharePoint sites. Furthermore, you can use data integration between Office 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services, moving data to and from the SharePoint site and creating databases linked to data stored on SharePoint sites. In addition, Windows SharePoint Services integrates with the newer members of the Office System, such as Microsoft OneNote and Microsoft InfoPath. With InfoPath, teams and organizations can develop and deploy dynamic forms; InfoPath is designed to be able to store and aggregate forms on SharePoint sites.

Office 2003 provides many features for teams with members in different locations. The tight integration between SharePoint Services sharing tools and Office 2003 can help these teams improve their productivity. For example, analysts and other users who need live, up-to-date access to data can use Office 2003 applications to work with live data stored on SharePoint sites.

The following table provides an integration comparison for general business tasks that users perform every day between Windows SharePoint Services and different versions of Office.

To share a particular task, document, or project, Windows SharePoint Services provides a specific site environment called a Document Workspace. You can create a Document Workspace site from an Office 2003 application or a browser.

Many organizations use e-mail and shared network folders as their primary document sharing tools. When a user creates a document, they send the document, or a link to the document, to co-authors and reviewers in an e-mail message. With Office 2003, you can automatically create a Document Workspace site and a shared attachment when you use e-mail to send a document to other users for review. A shared attachment is a document that is stored on a SharePoint site and linked to an e-mail message. When you create a shared attachment, Windows SharePoint Services stores the document, and you can then configure the Document Workspace to track document versions. When you turn on version tracking, users can view previous versions of the document, and you can roll back changes if necessary.

The following table compares how different versions of Office work with Document Workspaces.

Windows SharePoint Services integrates with Outlook 2003 much more than with the previous versions of Outlook. For example, you can keep a local copy of your team's calendars and contacts lists that is synchronized with the SharePoint site. You can also import contacts from your Outlook Address Book into a contacts list on a SharePoint site and export individual contacts or events from a SharePoint site to your Outlook Contacts or Calendar folders.

The following table compares the integration features between different versions of Outlook and Windows SharePoint Services.

Integration between Windows SharePoint Services and Excel 2003 enables you to export and import data to and from SharePoint lists. Excel 2003 also provides two-way synchronization between Excel spreadsheets and SharePoint lists, so you can work offline and then synchronize the changes when you reconnect.

The following table compares the integration features between different versions of Excel and Windows SharePoint Services.

Similar to Excel 2003, integration between Windows SharePoint Services and Access 2003 enables you to export and import data to and from SharePoint lists. In addition, linking Access 2003 tables to SharePoint lists provides you with live, up-to-date access to data. You can use Access 2003 to analyze and manipulate live data stored on SharePoint sites.

The following table compares the integration features between different versions of Access and Windows SharePoint Services.

In Windows SharePoint Services, access to sites is controlled through a role-based membership system. This membership system uses site groups. Each SharePoint site user belongs to at least one site group, either directly or indirectly.

Site groups specify what rights users have on a SharePoint site. These rights determine what specific actions users can perform on the site; in essence, each site group is a collection of rights. Windows SharePoint Services has five default user site groups, which include the following:

Both SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services, known together as SharePoint Products and Technologies, facilitate collaboration within an organization and with partners and customers.

As mentioned earlier, Windows SharePoint Services is a collection of services for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 that you can use to share information and collaborate with other users.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is an enterprise portal server built upon Windows SharePoint Services that you can use to aggregate multiple SharePoint sites, information, and applications in your organization into a single, easy-to-use portal.

Because SharePoint Portal Server 2003 requires Windows SharePoint Services, all features of Windows SharePoint Services are available in SharePoint Portal Server 2003. However, SharePoint Portal Server provides additional enterprise-level functionality.