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I have heard that Microsoft SharePoint was used by many companies. Could someone tell me briefly what is SharePoint and why is it popular?
What is SharePoint?
The latest version of Microsoft SharePoint software is really two different products:
Windows SharePoint Services is a free download for Windows Server. In the latest version, known as WSS v3, collaborative web sites templates include basic blog and wiki services along with list templates for Image Libraries, Document Libraries, Contact lists, Calendars, Tasks and much more.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or MOSS for short is built on Windows SharePoint Services. As a member of the Office Server product platform, it leverages the Microsoft Office client software to provide content on the web. Integration with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access and InfoPath provide rich web content from familiar content creation tools.
Why is it so popular
File Sharing
SharePoint originally became popular because it was an easy way to share documents on the web. Many organizations that adopted SharePoint in the 2003 versions capitalized on the ability to upload documents to Document Libaries and share those documents with others.
Company Extranets
One great example of this web based sharing, is a company extranet where users are not all in one location or authentication domain. Using form based authentication, accounts can be created for people across physical and company boundaries. By allowing one place for shared documents around a task rather than a corporate entity, SharePoint goes way beyond the common file share.
Content Management
There are plenty of other Content Management Systems, but MOSS incorporated the functionality of the previously name Microsoft Content Management System which itself often cost more than MOSS alone.
Search Search is greatly improved in SharePoint 2007 technologies. Search results are security trimmed, relevant and performant unlike the previous 2003 version. Bad search in SharePoint 2003 products lead to a lot of dissatisfaction with the product.
what is sharepoint
Sharepoint is really two different technologies: Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS). WSS is free and it comes with Windows Server 2003. MOSS isn't free.
WSS provides lots of out of the box functionality for managing documents and projects online. It manages documents in "document libraries." These are folders with permissions and different views of your documents. Projects, tasks, issues, or any tabular data, is managed in lists. Lists are similar to document libraries. They have permissions and views as well. It provides some simple search as well.
MOSS provides a better search (it's supposed to at least). It also has more publishing capabilities (WSS doesn't). And you have more control over page layouts. It's meant more for internet style sites while WSS is more for intranet sites.
and why is it popular?
WSS is popular partly because its free and partly because it just does so much out of the box. You can solve many common office requests with WSS. Stuff like issue trackers, project management and document management are trivial in WSS. That said, its a jack of all trades - good at many, master of none.
MOSS is probably less popular because its not free and having used it for a year, I don't see as much value in it as WSS. Search isn't that great. It does do a good job of creating a company directory.
I've been working with SharePoint since v.1 and I could tell you that SharePoint is a:
Document management server
Web content management server
Portal solution
Search engine
List-based repository
Collaboration site
Replacement for file shares
etc etc...
...but if I have to summarize in one sentence what SharePoint is I would say:
Sharepoint is Microsoft's Web OS.
That's real the secret of its success. Many people imagined the Web OS as something like these. A Web OS is not something that is meant to look like a desktop OS. A Web OS should be a WEB PLATFORM in which all sort of applications can be built on and users are able to collaborate with.
Think of SharePoint as the 2.0-era version of Windows :-)
Previous answers describe what sharepoint is, but don't do a good job describing why it's popular. Yes, it gives you all that neat doc-management stuff out of the box. Yes, it integrates tightly with Office.
The OOB features are 1/10th of the whole story. Sharepoint exposes a comprehensive .Net object model that lets you customize the thing to your hearts content. People are coding amazing things with MOSS 2007. With the object model, you can build and customize sites via code, in response to external events. You can write custom "web-parts" (controls hosted on special pages) that consume both internal (sharepoint) and external data.
Check out Sharepoint Blogs to see what people are doing with it.
Very good points so far but I'll try my best to add something. :)
SharePoint is not just 2 technologies. It is a set of products and technologies brought together by Microsoft into one immense product that comes in 2 flavors. The 2 flavors are Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). MOSS does come in standard and enterprise.
[Some of the technologies used in SharePoint: Windows Workflow Foundation, ASP.NET, Web Parts, XML (included XPath, XSLT, etc), SQL, Web Services - to name a few I can think of off the top of my head]
No matter the version you choose, SharePoint allows for web-based capabilities to allow users to create, organize, distribute, and maintain information. Because of this, the most common uses for SharePoint sites are intranets and project/team sites.
SharePoint also has incredible possibilities as an application platform. Looking at the web part and workflow pieces alone you can begin to realize the potential. For example, automation of authorization processes within an organization can quickly be developed without any code using SharePoint Designer. (FYI: more complex workflows would require Visual Studio but many simple workflows can be designed using the point and click functionality of SharePoint Designer)
While MOSS only extends upon the WSS, it does add a large amount of functionality that can be very important and useful to a business. Some of the more important features available in MOSS and not in WSS are: records management, document retention and auditing policies, browser based forms (InfoPath forms without installing InfoPath on client machine), and some of the business intelligence capabilities. Amazingly we're seeing interest in the social networking features of MOSS too. (easy to read list of features not in WSS that MOSS has)
Why is SharePoint used? I was doing some research not to long ago on this exact subject and I found a research study that cited 5 key benefits:
Ease of information access
Streamlined internal communication
Increased end-user productivity
Optimized document management practices
IT time savings
Sorry if that turned into a bit of a ramble.
It's a collaboration website. All of the members on a team can update a single calendar and upload shared documents to a single repository.
I think in this case Wikipedia have it right
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is the basic part of Microsoft SharePoint, offering collaboration and document management functionality by means of web portals, by providing a centralized repository for shared documents, as well as browser-based management and administration of them. It allows creation of Document libraries, which are collections of files that can be shared for collaborative editing. SharePoint provides access control and revision control for documents in a library.
In a nutshell Sharepoint is all about corporative management and collaboration features. Your company have a Windows 2003 server? Here you go. WSS 3.0 is here up and running.
SharePoint is the reason I'm considering taking advantage of a suicide booth.
In all seriousness, the rest of the answers are spot on. The differences between WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 commonly trip people up ("why pay for MOSS when WSS is free?" for example). SharePoint is a very complex and rich product that is integrated into other Microsoft applications, like Project Server 2007 and Team Foundation Server.
Why should you care about it? It depends. There are quite a few opportunities out there for experienced SharePoint developers and administrators. It can very quickly become the singular focus of your career if you decide to put a lot of effort into learning it.
Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) is a combination of two previous products, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Content Management System.
It has a large number of features out of the box that are very desirable for any single system, including hosting files with customisable metadata. Page and file publishing that is enabled for end users, excellent search... the list goes on.
Essentially it is designed to enhance and organisations collaboration activities across the entire enterprise, leveraging the organistations existing Office application to create an enterprise system.
Sharepoint, MS OFFICE proxy circa 2003...
remember when you emailed a copy of that word doc out to the whole company, that's what sharepoint is for, but apparently you missed the introductory gotomeeting training course.
Related
I am an experienced ASP.NET C# developer who is investigating using Sharepoint for document management for one of my clients. They want an intranet site with blogs and other stuff in addition but this will need to adhere to their brand guidelines.
Apart from the faff of setting up a working development environment to what extent do you get document management 'out of the box' with just using Windows Sharepoint Services? (the client understandably would rather not line Microsoft pockets further if possible)
Or put another way, how long would it take to add document management to an ASP.NET site?
Thanks
Oliver
WSS will give you all the document management capabilities that you need. If you pair it up with Search Server Express (which is also free), youget a complete solution for zero investment. We've even based a company portal of a major corporation on that. Doing it yourself in ASP.NET is a waste of time to say the least. The SharePoint platform gives you an enourmous value and the learning curve is actually not that tough
You definitely don't want to go and implement something like this yourself when a freely available (and powerful) solution like Windows SharePoint Services already exists. For most requirements I'd say the features in WSS are enough, but it really depends on what your client is looking for. For example you get:
Support for versions of documents
Exclusive check-out
Management of content types
Integration with Office applications
Meta-data
If you need to support records management scenarios, then you'd need features found in the SharePoint Server product. I'd start with WSS and see how far that gets you.
I would highly recommend looking at SharePoint Foundation 2010 over Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It's the latest version of the basic SharePoint infrastructure (with the obligatory name change!).
SharePoint Foundation 2010 is a lot easier to work than WSS in terms of deployment, management and, especially, development. Plus there are new features in Foundation that you can start using.
Don't forget that SharePoint Designer 2010 is also free and is a great tool for customizing SharePoint.
Some links to get you going:
Download SharePoint Foundation 2010
Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010
I want to use a CMS that can be accessed by my clients via the internet. All SharePoint usage I have seen is for intranet sites only. What I am looking to do:
Landing page for all clients, with general information.
Client login to client specific portal page with client specific information.
Accessible via the internet. The clients may or may not have SharePoint.
General and client specific wikis.
I won't be hosting this myself. I would be looking for a hosting provider as well.
I am also looking at using DotNetNuke, which has a lower cost of entry. I am open to suggestions of other CMSs, but my skills are built around C# and ASP.NET.
Before going down the SharePoint path, I wanted to make sure these things are possible.
Thanks!
Update:
Thanks to all that have given me some points to ponder. In summary, here is what I have decided to do (given my current skill set):
SharePoint can be used for my needs (my initial question). Many great example sites.
DotNetNuke as my CMS. I realize other good CMSs are available, but I prefer to stick to the Microsoft stack.
Branding will be easier in DotNetNuke.
The site will not be very big and not used by many. SharePoint will be overkill at this point.
Many of the 'modules' I am looking to use (wiki, forum, ...) seem to have more options/maturity using DotNetNuke.
Biggest Deciding Factor
Integrating a CMS solution with my software product and then installing/implementing this solution for individual clients will have a much larger cost with SharePoint. DotNetNuke will allow me to 'leave behind' the solution with the client without having them to invest heavily in SharePoint if they do not already own it.
Thanks to all!
Ed
Everything you require is supported by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, which is included at no additional cost with a Windows Server license. However, SharePoint does have an administrative and development overhead that you could avoid using a different platform. It doesn't sound like you would really be leveraging any of SharePoint's particular strengths (document management, Office client integration, ad hoc collaboration sites, etc), so it's probably not worth the extra effort.
So in short, the answer to your question is "Yes", but it's probably not your best option with these specific requirements.
Check out the Top 17 case studies for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and several new MOSS-based web sites. There are some nice Internet websites too.
there are heaps of SharePoint sites out there facing the internet. There’s a great list of over 1,000 of them on the WSS Demo site here: http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/websites.aspx
All of the requirements you’ve listed are achievable with the externally facing SharePoint model. There’s an obvious cost impact of going down the SharePoint path versus DotNetNuke but it’s certainly achievable in terms of functionality.
Kentico offers SharePoint Connector which allows to publish SharePoint content to external sites: http://www.kentico.com/cms-asp-net-features/sharepoint.aspx
All the things you mentioned are possible. Note that hosting a SharePoint server can be expensive. Most hosting providers charge you a dedicated server hosting plan.
Also I'm not impressed with the default wiki solution in SharePoint. You might want to consider a 3th party wiki tool and point your SharePoint Search towards it so that the results are shown in your search results. Drawback is that you loose the security trimming.
You might also be interested in the BPOS solution. A (kind of) hosting service for SharePoint that Microsoft is offering.
We build CMS's with ASP.NET using tools such as Umbraco and DotNetNuke etc
A client is asking us if we can build a site in WSS which I think is Windows Sharepoint Services.
Are there any experienced MOSS people out there who can tell me how hard we would find this?
Would it be just like learning another CMS?
Or will it be a nightmare?
Also, what software do we need to build the site in house for testing?
We don't have a MSDN subscription and use free Microsoft tools (Visual Studio Express and SQL Server Express)
Sharepoint is great for use with its own document management features, and it integrates well with Office products.
It's not such a good platform for development. The API is a nightmare, web parts are incomprehensible, and the database has a terrible structure (fields are named NumericField1, TextField2, etc. Yuck).
If you eventually need a web-facing server, MOSS is very expensive.
I will preface this by saying I am currently finally wrapping up a more-than-2 3-year project building one of the largest WCM sites deployed on MOSS in the world. We're talking thousands and thousands of content editors, nearly a million pages, millions of hits per day.
Depending on what you need, it could be moderately painful or extremely painful. MOSS is never a pleasure to use, so at the very least it will be an unpleasant exercise to deploy an out-of-the-box WCM site and make it look kinda like the design you want. However it should not be too terribly time-consuming or overly difficult.
If your needs look more like ours - do you need complex cross-loaded content on your pages? Content syndication and connected content? Flexible editor-controlled layouts? XHTML-compliant markup? Pixel-perfect design? If so, trying to use MOSS will absolutely be a nightmare.
Take note that WSS is not MOSS. WSS is the free version of SharePoint and MOSS is the paid version. MOSS is also the version designed for public facing CMS web sites.
With a bit of reading you should find MOSS relatively straight forward to develop a CMS site on top of. JP's link is a good one and I also recommend reading Andrew Connell's book Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Depending on your requirements, in most cases you can work out-of-the-box with MOSS and SharePoint Designer. If you find you need more than what these can provide your learning curve will jump by quite a lot so tread carefully!
For development you will need at least a MOSS and SharePoint Designer license (as JP suggests MSDN is better and also gives you the option of using Visual Studio). Your client is going to need to fork out the licensing costs for MOSS. I think there are additional costs for public facing web sites but check with your Microsoft account manager.
See some cool stuff you can with public-facing web sites for the product at Top SharePoint.
It's not that hard. I don't find it as easy as DotNetNuke, but it's still fairly straight forward once you have some of the concepts down. There is a really great intro to CMS on MOSS at Web Content Management with SharePoint MOSS 2007. You are going to need least the lowest level subscription to MSDN because CMS is part of MOSS not WSS. Search around for deals on MSDN.
Actually if you are aware of the share point technology , then wont find it difficult to built CMS using it. Designing content management system using share point is actually possible.
I have been tasked with developing some large ERP applications (some legacy apps being rewritten and some new apps) in Sharepoint. As I've come up to speed in Sharepoint, I see the value and ease of creating team sites, and the examples I've found online and in books are all tailored to intranet department portals, or simple line-of-business apps for companies that don't have large legacy ERP systems. I have begun to believe that if one is going to create a large application that interfaces to several different legacy systems and spans several departments, that building custom webparts in Sharepoint just isn't the way to go.
Is Sharepoint a viable application framework for creating and hosting large ERP applications?
If so, can anyone please point me to references describing the architecture of such a system?
If not, can anyone please point me to references that I can cite as arguments for not using it?
As someone who has spent the last 15 years writing ERP applications I would say Sharepoint would be an extremely bad choice upon which to build an ERP product.
The Sharepoint table structures would be very ineffective for producing reports.
There is very limited capability for validating data.
There is no native support that I am aware of for maintaining the integrity of relation ships between documents.
Sharepoint works well as a portal into existing LOB applications, not as a platform to build a data-rich application on top of.
I'm currently deploying a ERP system written in Sharepoint for a client. I've been working on this for about a year now and from what I've seen, Sharepoint introduced as many obstacles as it made things more complicated.
Things made simpler:
Credentials automatically synced to AD.
Document handling and versioning out of the box.
Great Office integration.
Things that sucked:
You need to learn the Sharepoint way of doing things.
You have another dependency in your ERP.
It's pretty clunky.
I would recommend reading Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences From 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs before making a decision
I use SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) at work as part of a larger ERP installation. We heavily use the Business Data Catalog to interface with external systems and make their data visible and searchable within our MOSS portal.
In our architecture, CRUD operations on the ERP data are handled in our ERP line of business systems. MOSS and the BDC then pull the data out of the ERP database and display it as datagrids embedded in various portal pages. For example, the HR site has a MOSS page for tracking the current status of pending performance reports.
Another compelling feature of MOSS and the BDC is the ability to expose BDC datasources to the MOSS search service. For example, when a user searches for John Smith using MOSS search, the public ERP record for John Smith is inlined with the search results. Clicking on the link in the search results redirects the user to the right page in our ERP system, rather than taking them to a MOSS page.
We don't use MOSS exclusively as an ERP system, but we do use it as a presentation and reporting layer on top of our ERP system.
The MS Dynamics AX system utilizes Sharepoint extensively, in fact there are tool kits that allow users to build web parts and so forth that extract data directly out of the base AX objects. Here is a link that talks a little about the Sharepoint integration AX+SP. Currently there is still a significant portion of AX that does not reside within Sharepoint, but their direction appears to Sharepoint enable a significant portion of the application. I do not think that an entire ERP system could reside within the Sharepoint infrastructure, but from an MVC perspective it could certainly become your View infrastructure. It appears to me that this is the very direction MS is heading, but I'm just making hypothesis on their future plans.
Building custom webparts in SharePoint would not be the way to go for complex legacy systems.
SharePoint would still give you a lot of mileage if you created a custom navigation provider for the main navigation (based on an xml file for example). This would allow custom asp.net pages to display "like" they were still part of SharePoint, giving the illusion of one all encompassing app.
I think the only reason people want one huge application has more to do with Information Architecture, look and feel and findability than any technical architecture reasons.
A solution that creates separate websites for appropriate applications that are still skinned and linked into the SharePoint information architecture and still searchable from the main interface could solve the "need" for the "Enterprise" part of ERP, while still creating appropriate solutions for what are really separate applications.
The mental model I use is not so much building the apps "in" SharePoint, but creating a 'window" in SharePoint to expose the app.
There's Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and then there is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). MOSS considerably more expensive than WSS (which ships as part of Microsoft Server licensing).
My question is: what does MOSS do that makes it worth the extra cost?
..and does Microsoft Search Server not compete with the Business Data Cache (BDC)?
Edit: The feature comparision page is helpful in illustrating the numerous features that MOSS has and WSS does not. By the looks of it, most of MOSS's feature set is Enterprise oriented.
How would you describe the differences (or additional benefits) of MOSS over WSS in a couple of sentences? In essence, what are the "big ticket" items in MOSS (and not in WSS)?
Don't assume that WSS is free in all deployment scenarios. We got a nice wake up call when we deployed WSS in a client-facing extranet configuration. One "main site" w/ a bunch of segregated, client sub-sites. Turns out we needed to buy an "intranet license" (can't remember the exact name) for the OS. This is different from the SharePoint internet connector - it actually lets you use Win 2003 w/ an unlimited number of internet users. Not hugely expensive, but it was a couple thousand dollars we weren't expecting on paying...
About WSS vs MOSS:
WSS in not a portal, it's only a collaborative plateform (there are no publishing features in WSS)
MOSS allows you to use user profils, not WSS
Search functionalities are cheap in WSS compare to MOSS (but you can extend them using Search Server Express)
Many others: Infopath, BDC, Additional WebParts, Additional site and list templates
About Search Server and BDC: They do not compete.
Search Server is the MOSS search engine striped out. So you have only search functionalities (you can index SharePoint, WebSite, FileSystem).
The BDC (Business Data Catalog) allows you to view an external business data source, such as a SQL database (not necessarily SQL Server, it can be Oracle, MySQL....) or webservices. You'll be able to view data in your portal, and integrate this data to any of your list.
The BDC also allows you to index this content source if you have SharePoint Enterprise Edition.
Whether it's worth the extra cost really depends on how many of the added features MOSS brings to the table that you're actually going to use.
The following comparison page by Microsoft will definitely help to answer your question.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Edition Comparison
There is a lot built in to WSS but MOSS has a ton of extra stuff as referenced in the other answer.
On the second part of your question.. Search server and Business Data Connector are quite different.. Search server is about finding things... BDC is about merging datasources to be able to use them easily in sharepoint or in connected excel sheets etc.. The focus is on what is being delivered-- search results or data.
I would say if you just need a few collaboration sites for a few internal groups, then wss is just fine. It is when you start using SharePoint for enterprise level applications and as a primary platform for development that you should consider MOSS.