Do you have an intranet?
As the name suggests, SharePoint Portal Server is a portal product. It can be implemented as your employees’ primary “window” into corporate activity and data. For those organizations that do not have an existing intranet, SharePoint Portal Server offers robust and easy to manage content distribution capabilities. The advantage of a portal is its ability to offer a single source for a variety of information. Implementing SharePoint as your organization’s intranet allows you to give employees direct access to corporate news, real-time external data, organizational forms and redirection to all business process applications. In essence, it helps workers get to information faster.

How do you collaborate?
SharePoint Portal Server is tightly integrated with the new Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). WSS is the evolution of the current SharePoint Team Services, a web-based product that allows information and document sharing. SharePoint Portal Server acts like an umbrella over all WSS (or team) sites, aware of how they are connected and who has appropriate security access. The advantage of team sites is that they allow team members to better collaborate by providing a single source where project information, including documents, is saved. Document versioning ensures that the most recent version of a document is accessible to all team members. Meeting spaces allow participants to better prepare for meetings by clearly publishing agendas and objectives. Ultimately, the team site is a single source where all information and activity is properly saved and organized. SharePoint Portal Server provides access to team site information through navigation and/or search capabilities.

How do you find the “right” document?
Most organizations implement some form of document management. Unfortunately, in most cases, it is simply a shared network drive. Trying to find the “right” documents (i.e. e-commerce proposals that we’ve written for manufacturing clients) becomes increasingly difficult. You are left at the mercy of the folder hierarchies and are forced to navigate up and across to find specific files. SharePoint Portal Server helps with document management in two important ways. First, it acts as the single repository for all documents (this can be across many document libraries), giving you the opportunity to tag each document with appropriate attributes (i.e. document type, client name, category type). Second, it has a very powerful search engine that allows you to execute basic or advanced searches against the document collection. Getting to e-commerce proposals for manufacturing clients is now simple, accurate and complete. Document management with SharePoint Portal Server helps employees get to the “right” documents faster.

How do you train new employees?
It is always a challenge for a “junior” employee to advance through the corporate learning curve. Every organization has its own collection of forms, processes and methodologies. It is often left to a mentor to help new employees navigate through specific business processes. The underlying structure of SharePoint Portal Server helps organizations enable all employees, especially new ones, by providing access to internal information (i.e. HR forms) as well as best practices and past projects (WSS team sites). Junior team members contribute more and deliver results faster by having access to relevant data. They acquire a better appreciation for corporate culture and processes. They are better informed and contribute to business outcomes in a more timely fashion.