Microsoft
Windows SharePoint: A Web 2.0 Environment in CityU
By
Wilson Wong
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Introduction
With the advancement of broadband internet services and the availability
of huge storage devices at low cost, a new trend of World Wide
Web technology, Web 2.0, becomes more and more widely used. Web
2.0[1], as defined by
Dario de Judicibus, “is a knowledge-oriented environment where
human interactions generate contents that are published, managed
and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture”.
The well-known online encyclopedia on the web, Wikipedia,
is one of the distinguished examples of Web 2.0. Instead of providing
contents by a small group of experts, Wikipedia allows any people
on the net to contribute. Its articles are written and being edited/updated
by people all over the world. This makes its library grow dramatically
and become the largest general reference work currently available
on the Internet. As of December 2007, Wikipedia has approximately
9.25 million articles in 253 languages!
YouTube, MySpace,
and Facebook
are all well-known examples of Web 2.0. The impact of Web 2.0
makes Time Magazine declare “You” as the TIME’s
Person of the Year 2006. Web 2.0 is a “tool for bringing together
the small contributions of millions of people and making them
matter ... it’s really a revolution”. – TIME (TIME’s Person of
the Year 2006, issue Dec 2006)
In view of popularity of Web 2.0, the Computing Services Centre
(CSC) recently tested the most common Web 2.0 platforms, such
as MediaWiki,
TWiki, and Microsoft
SharePoint products to see if any of them is suitable to be
used as the Web 2.0 environment in CityU. The CSC finally chose
the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as CityU’s first
Web 2.0 environment for the following reasons:
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Close integration with MS Office products,
such as Word, Excel, SharePoint Designer 2007;
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Better database management;
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Better users’ control by integrating with Central
Windows Domain Servers to provide single sign-on support for
LAN users;
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Customizable to have wikis, blogs, document
libraries, photo libraries, calendars, tasks lists, discussion
boards, team sites, etc. within a single site collection;
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Contents and functions of Microsoft SharePoint
Services 3.0 are upward compatible with the Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server 2007. Users may consider upgrading to the
latter anytime for more advanced functions such as enterprise
search, portal, workflow, business intelligence, etc. (ref:
[3])
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Overview
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) is a web-based tool
that helps you collaborate and communicate efficiently with your
team members. With WSS 3.0, you may
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log progress of tasks, happening of events,
and etc. with blog;
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share knowledge/information with wiki;
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manage documents in a common repository of document
storage, which support features, such as folders, versioning,
check out, and integration with Microsoft Office;
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exchange ideas using discussion board;
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keep track of on-going tasks with task list;
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mark upcoming meetings, deadlines, and other
important events with calendar;
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make announcements to site users;
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conduct surveys to collect site users’ opinions;
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control users’ access with Windows domain user
accounts;
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and more…
With Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, web designers
can also customize SharePoint sites, and build reporting tools
and applications tailored to specific tasks without writing or
deploying new code. IT professionals can tailor or extend the
WSS foundation to create their own web-based tools and services
specific to their needs.
SharePoint sites are flexible and highly customizable. You may
create a SharePoint site with only a blog, or wiki. You may also
create a SharePoint site collection with several levels of SharePoint
sites to meet different needs of different group of users.
Structure of SharePoint Sites
In WSS 3.0, “components” like wikis, blogs, document libraries,
and etc., are called “lists”. A SharePoint Wiki site, for example,
is actually a blank SharePoint site with a wiki list created on
it.
Multiple lists, such as: wiki, documents library, tasks list,
calendar, and etc., can be created simultaneously on a single
SharePoint site. . You may even have multiple wiki lists on a
single site. These maybe useful if you would like to use wiki
to publish newsletters and store issues of newsletters in separated
wiki lists.
Besides lists,
each SharePoint site can also have multiple subsites, and subsites
themselves can have multiple subsites, further down as many levels
as a user desires. Each subsite can have independent user access
control, or inherit user access control from its parent site. As
such, users can use the top-level site and subsites to divide site
contents into distinct, separately manageable sites for use by different
groups. Thus SharePoint sites are highly customizable and flexible.
They can meet most of the usage demands of Web 2.0 technology.
Conclusion
With the Windows SharePoint Services, you may build as simple
as a plain blog or wiki site; but also with its highly customizable
and extensible features, you may build rich, flexible, and scalable
Web-based applications and Internet sites specific to your needs.
Its close integration with Microsoft Office and Windows Servers
also give you better editing tools and user control.
Reference
1. Windows
SharePoint Services 3.0
2. Windows
SharePoint Services 3.0 Technical Library
3. Microsoft
SharePoint 2007 Edition Comparison
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[1] As discussed
in the previous issue of Network Computing, depending on one’s
focus, different people may have different definition of Web 2.0.
Please refer to the
article for details.
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