SharePoint is a component in Windows Server 2003 that lets you share Microsoft Office documents with others through web pages. SharePoint sites are designed to be highly dynamic. Team members can easily upload documents, add public announcements, send alerts, track work items, and call meetings right from within Office 2003. SharePoint solves four main problems:
It's difficult to keep track of all the documents in even a small office.
Email isn't a great way to share files.
We work all over the place.
It's hard to create/maintain web sites on your own.
Figure 1-1 illustrates a distributed filesystem in which O'Reilly (my publisher) can share access to the same files I am working on, even though I live in Florida and they are in Massachusetts and California (and sometimes in between).
The files are synchronized over the Internet whenever the file is opened or closed. If Simon (my editor) finds himself somewhere without a good network connection, he can cancel getting the updates but still work on the file—as long as he promises to synchronize it later!
For me, SharePoint replaced zipping files together and then emailing them chapter by chapter as they were completed, reviewed, or changed. In some cases, the zip files were very large and bounced back from the mail server, putting the "dead" in deadline.
SharePoint provides other collaboration tools, too, some of which are shown in Figure 1-2:
- Announcements
Keep teammates informed
- Alerts
Notify you if a document changes
- Task lists
Assign work to team members
- Events
Schedule meetings, deadlines, and get-togethers
- Discussions
Enable online discourse between members
- Contact lists
Enable team members to share email addresses and phone numbers
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