Collaboration

The ability to collaborate with co-workers on projects, meetings, discussions and calendars is SharePoint’s key feature. Imagine a real-world situation:

A meeting is called for 25 June; the five staff required to attend are invited using an email sent to each of them. A proposed agenda is attached to the email. Each member of staff responds to the request and saves a copy of the agenda on their PCs. Two attendees suggest changes to the agenda and send a copy to each attendee who save the new copies on their PC and the meeting chairman adds the changes to the initial agenda and sends a new copy out to each member – along with a change in time for the meeting. Once again the copies are saved locally. The chairman advises one team member that some of the changes he has suggested will not be included on the agenda.

One of the members did not receive the updated agenda and another saved it in the wrong place and can’t find it. By the time the meeting takes place nineteen copies of the four agendas have been produced and saved and two people have the wrong copy. One person does not know the meeting time has changed and doesn’t turn up. In addition a further 19 copies are sitting on the Exchange Server. The size of the final agenda is only 40KB, but the company’s storage space has reduced by around 1.6MB and the depleted meeting has only three members with the correct document.

SharePoint does it differently.

The chairman creates a meeting site and lodges the proposed agenda on the site. He adds the attendees to the site and an email is automatically sent to each attendee with the location url of the site. Two members open the site and document and lodge the changes and an email is sent to everyone advising on the changes. The chairman updates the agenda to reflect the changes and an email is automatically sent to all recipients advising on the updated version. He enters reasons for excluding some alterations on the site under discussions and adjusts the meeting time.

This scenario is different to the first as follows:

• Only four versions of the agenda need be stored – all local copies may be deleted.
• Attendees can view all changes and versions on the site.
• The meeting time is available to any of the attendees – even without receiving an email reminding of an adjustment to the start time – users can check the site with internet access.
• Discussions regarding the meeting are held on the site and can be viewed by every member.
• The meeting time is shown on the shared calendar – so all users can see where meeting attendees are.
• The SharePoint search facility allows attendees and other members of staff – if authorised – to view meeting data.
• The meeting space has its own url so attendees can view the details from wherever they are.
• The creation of a website, on the fly, to deal with a meeting is just one example of how SharePoint deals with complex internal processes.
• The meeting may be part of a project which has previously been stored on the shared area and which, itself, contains documents relating to the project.

SharePoint is an open, visible system which shares calendars, documents, projects and discussions in one easily produced workspace. Important documents and emails are stored in one central repository rather than the hard drives of the members and are visible to all authorised personnel. Meanwhile document storage is reduced by a factor of 10.

When dealing with projects, SharePoint is even more powerful. Any authorised member of staff may set up the project using either the standard design templates or those customised for the organisation. The users are added and within seconds the team can share important documents, work on them and incorporate full version control. The project may be discussed within the team - and access can even be allowed outside the organisation for customers to contribute if required. The sites are all available on any browser, wherever in the world the team find themselves. Users may be emailed when content is changed and organisations can even use 2007's powerful, graphical workflow solution to help control the process flow more accurately.

All files may be searched using SharePoint's standard search facilities or enhanced using third-party options such as Concept Searching.

SharePoint is a powerful collaborative system.