Microsoft SharePoint is a powerful collaboration technology that lets an office or department organize, manage, and share information and documents over the Web. A SharePoint server provides users with shared document libraries, discussion boards, announcements, calendar and scheduling functions, notifications, contacts, and task lists.
SharePoint servers come in two versions to fit the size of your organization and the number of users who require collaborative capabilities. SharePoint Portal Server is an enterprise offering for groups or departments with more than 75 users. SharePoint Portal Server offers enterprise search capabilities across servers, multiple portal site support, and sophisticated document-management capabilities. Document-management capabilities include check-in/check-out, versioning, routing, and publishing.
SharePoint Team Services is an office- or department-level solution that supports up to 75 users on one Web server. In fact, one server can host several SharePoint Team Services sites. SharePoint Team Services lets you use Microsoft FrontPage to customize default HTML pages and add themes and shared borders, a feature that SharePoint Portal Server doesn't support. However, SharePoint Team Services limits search capabilities to the local team site and subwebs and limits document management to basic publishing and notification.
SharePoint Team Services is actually a superset of the new FrontPage Server Extensions 2002 and includes all the features of that software. FrontPage Server Extensions adds new security features to support the function of roles in SharePoint, as well as server health monitoring and Web site statistics. FrontPage Server Extensions also adds HTML administration pages, Web site management forms, additional search tools, and server error tracking. In addition, FrontPage Server Extensions improves Microsoft Office XP's Web integration by offering online document editing and the ability to upload and add documents to a SharePoint site.
Let's discuss department-level SharePoint Team Services and how to install and configure a basic SharePoint team site. SharePoint Team Services lets you install a powerful collaboration site and bring it online without any manual coding. Nearly all SharePoint configuration and administration, as well as all user information sharing, occurs through a Web browser interface.
Installing and Configuring SharePoint Team Services
After deciding which SharePoint technology solution will address your needs, you must verify minimum hardware and software requirements before installing the software. In addition, some features, such as enhanced document integration with the Web and online editing, require Office XP. Microsoft recommends that your server run IIS 5.0 or later and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or later to store the SharePoint configuration and site content. However, if you haven't installed SQL Server, you can use the less robust Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) to store the site. MSDE is the SQL Server 2000 desktop engine and is intended for lower volume workgroup servers. If the SharePoint installation doesn't detect SQL Server, it installs MSDE automatically. You can find the complete list of SharePoint Team Services hardware and software requirements at http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/sharepoint/sysreqs.htm.
Insert the FrontPage 2002 CD-ROM or the Office XP Developer Edition CD-ROM, which includes the SharePoint Team Services software. Run setupse.exe from the SharePt folder. Setupse.exe "extends" the existing virtual server by installing FrontPage Server Extensions and SharePoint Team Services. The installation wizard asks a few basic questions as part of the installation, including the SharePoint site type you want to install. You can choose from four site configurations:
- SharePoint-based Web site—Choose this option to install a new (blank) SharePoint Team Services site. Don't choose this option if the site has existing data that you want to preserve.
- SharePoint-based Web site (preserves home page if one exists)*Choose this option to install a new SharePoint Team Services site but preserve any existing home page.
- SharePoint-enabled blank Web site*Choose this option to install SharePoint Team Services with no Web content. You can use this option to create SharePoint subwebs so that each department or division can have its own SharePoint site.
- Blank Web site (FrontPage Server Extensions only)*Choose this option to extend an empty Web site with FrontPage Server Extensions. The site will have no collaboration options.
(On a fresh server installation*or if only one virtual server exists*you don't see these options, and a default SharePoint installation takes place.)
After the installation wizard finishes, your browser presents the active SharePoint Team Services home page, as Figure 1 shows. If you didn't choose one of the above installation methods or if you're extending an existing virtual server, an HTML administration page appears. One more note about FrontPage Server Extensions: Although the SharePoint Team Services installation process installs or upgrades the extensions, you should always check the Microsoft Web site for the latest available version. You can view the version of FrontPage Server Extensions from the HTML Site Settings page. Refer to the Microsoft Web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnservext/html/fpse02win.asp to determine whether to upgrade.