Building Portals, Intranets, and Corporate Web Sites Using Microsoft Servers

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An excellent place to start is to identify your options in providing collaboration functions and prioritize so you can start with the ones that will produce the greatest impact. Table 12.1 is a checklist of possible collaboration initiatives for your portal.

Table 12.1. Collaboration Features Checklist

Feature

Description

Discussion groups

Asynchronous forum for posting messages. Users can subscribe to receive email notifications of new postings.

Document management

Shared and private document libraries that allow version control for documents of any kind.

Project web sites

Site that contains areas such as discussion groups, document libraries, shared links, shared calendar, and contacts.

Microsoft Project

Tool for advanced project management. Web-based with interface for data entry and reporting.

Chat

Online chat similar to Windows Messenger.

Presence detection

User interface that indicates people currently logged onto portal. Useful in conjunction with chat.

Audio and video conferencing

Real-time collaboration feature.

Whiteboard and application sharing

Window that shares viewing and control of software applications. Whiteboard allows notes and drawings to be shared online.

Team calendar

Group calendar maintained through web interface. SharePoint calendar is independent of Outlook and Exchange calendars.

From this universe of choices, establish your priorities. Next, determine which ones come together as a package. For instance, SharePoint Portal Server offers team sites that provide document management, discussion groups, shared calendar, shared contacts, and other features that may be enabled with a handful of keystrokes and mouse clicks. Figure 12.1 shows all the products that comprise the Microsoft collaboration platform.

Figure 12.1. Microsoft Collaboration Platform (Source: Marc Sanders, "Enabling Enterprise Business Productivity ”An Overview of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003.")

Many organizations build enterprise portals that contain the following:

  • Home page

  • MyPage personalized for each user

  • Search link on home page, and advanced search page

  • Organizational listing (About Us section)

  • Department subsites for collaboration

  • Links to web-based internal applications or web parts that host these applications

  • One or more shared calendars

This is a good place to start, and the rapid progress you will make with out-of-the-box products is bound to be impressive to users and management.

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