This is a big year for Microsoft. In the coming months, they will introduce a number of product upgrades, from operating system to back office to front office, which will take organizational technology to the next level. One that promises to offer significant benefits to companies interested in collaboration is SharePoint Portal Server 2.0. It is a next generation product that extends the original functionality in SPS 1.0 with emphasis on ease of use and user personalization. The product is currently in its second round of beta testing and is scheduled to be available for purchase by mid-summer.

This article will highlight the main features of SharePoint Portal Server 2.0 and detail five reasons why Microsoft-focused customers should preview SPS 2.0 today.

Portal Power

SharePoint Portal Server is, as its name suggests, a portal product. It can serve as the central point in a corporate intranet environment; the starting point for all employees to navigate across company content. SPS 2.0 is structured with a standard home page where key company information, including news and announcements, are presented. This information can be customized to appear (or not) based on the authenticated user’s credentials (i.e. participation in particular Active Directory groups). Content is structured hierarchically and navigation to specific content sites is seamless.

Advanced Searches

SPS 2.0 has taken the powerful search included in the previous version and extended it by making it faster and more robust. Content sites that can be searched and indexed include the documents and general content (news, announcements, etc.) included in both the portal and individual team sites created using Windows SharePoint Services. Specific file structures on separate servers can also be included as content for searches. The advanced search options have been enhanced to allow for specific criteria filters (i.e. author’s last name or document title) as well as introducing the ability to use a Boolean ‘OR’ in extended searches.

Personalization

As mentioned earlier, content seen on the various portal pages can be customized based on the user’s credentials. That is, web parts (or content “buckets”) can be made visible or invisible based on security rules. This gives the portal administrators the ability to personalize content. As an example, a custom web part can be created to show recent sales data. It can be defined in such a way as to only appear on the main page for managers in the organization. Even deeper into the area of personalization is the introduction of the ‘My Site’ page. This is a page that is administered by a specific user and can contain items such as a personal calendar, favorite links and important documents. A user has the ability to control two views of the ‘My Site’ page, private and shared. The private page is what he/she sees only; the shared page is what other portal users see when they navigate to that page.

Administration

Whether at the organization, team or individual level, administration within SPS 2.0 is extremely easy and consistent. Unlike SPS 1.0 where a user needed to go to a separate page to move or add web parts, SPS 2.0 web part administration is all done on the same page using right clicks on the mouse. General site maintenance like user management and theme application is done through a wizard-like process. In general, administration capabilities have been greatly enhanced to allow all users to easily maintain portal content.

Architecture

SPS 2.0 is built using Microsoft .NET technology. The web pages are actually ASP.NET pages (written in C#). It stores all data (document information, personalization settings, etc.) in SQL Server databases. These two key enhancements add for greater scalability and stability. SharePoint Portal Server integrates very closely with the Office products; in fact, it will become part of the Office System family. With Office 2003, users will have even more exposed SharePoint functionality inside the specific Office product. These capabilities will include enhancements like Instant Messaging with team members on a specific document and access to SPS search functionality.