Each component can sit on the same machine or on
different machines, depending on how they are imple-
mented.
Windows SharePoint Services
SharePoint is a Microsoft platform for collaboration and
document management based on Web portals.
Currently, there are two SharePoint offerings from
Microsoft: Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. The
content of this article focuses on WSS because it is a
free add-on to Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and
provides the fundamental document management
functionality. The same concepts can be easily translat-
ed to the more robust MOSS 2007 because it is built
on top of WSS 3.0.
The SharePoint site allows documents to be stored in a
central location and be accessible to many users. A
basic WSS site is shown in Figure 2, with a document
library named "Documents" that is linked via the quick-
launch menu.
Multiple document libraries can be created as deemed
necessary. Each one can contain folders, files, and
reports and can be individually customized by their set-
tings and the views they present to the user.
There are many features that can be specified in a doc-
ument library's settings:
· Version History: Document Version History can be
enabled to keep track of the different revisions for a
particular file. Although this would consume more
space because SharePoint now maintains a new copy
for every modification, this is particularly useful when
applied to reports. Using the version history, a user
can compare previous reports and see who approved
each one if content approval is enabled.
· Check InCheck Out: In some cases, users should
not be able to modify reports. However, in the situa-
tions where they are allowed, the document library
can require that the report be checked out first
before editing. This ensures that multiple users are
not updating the same report simultaneously.
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Putting SharePoint to Work for You, an Internet.com Developer eBook. Copyright 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
Putting SharePoint to Work for You
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Figure 1: Overall architecture.
Figure 2: Basic Windows SharePoint Services site.