Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Web applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, instead of relying on separate fragmented systems. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.

Manage content and processes

Simplify compliance efforts and keep business information more secure through a comprehensive set of tools to manage and control electronic content. Streamline the everyday business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity by using electronic forms and out-of-the-box workflow processes that users can initiate, track, and participate in through familiar Microsoft Office applications, e-mail, or Web browsers.

* Control documents through detailed, extensible policy management. Define customized document management policies to control access rights at a per-item level, specify retention period and expiration actions, and track content through document-auditing settings. Policy integration with familiar client applications makes compliance transparent and easy for employees. Integration with Information Rights Management helps ensure that proprietary and confidential information is better protected even if it is not connected to a server.
* Centrally store, manage, and access documents across the enterprise. Organizations can store and organize all business documents and content in one central location, and users have a consistent mechanism to navigate and find relevant information. Default repository settings can be modified to add workflow, define retention policies, and add new templates and content types.
* Simplify Web content management. Provide easy-to-use functionality to create, approve, and publish Web content. Master Pages and Page Layouts provide reusable templates for a consistent look and feel. New functionality enables enterprises to publish content from one area to another (for example, from a collaborative site to a portal), or to cost-effectively manage multilingual delivery of content on multiple intranet, extranet, and Internet sites.
* Extend business processes across the organization. Forms Services–driven solutions make it possible to more securely and accurately collect information both inside and outside the organization without coding any custom applications. This information can then be integrated easily into line-of-business systems, stored in document libraries, used to start workflow processes, or submitted to Web services, thus avoiding duplicate effort and costly errors resulting from manual data entry.
* Streamline everyday business activities. Take advantage of workflows to automate and gain more visibility into common business activities such as document review and approval, issue tracking, and signature collection. Integration with familiar Microsoft Office client applications, e-mail, and Web browsers simplifies the user experience. Organizations can easily modify the out-of-the-box processes or define their own processes using familiar Microsoft tools such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (the next generation Microsoft Office FrontPage) or Microsoft Visual Studio development system.

source:- office.microsoft.com/

Microsoft SharePoint gets search, file sharing features

Data capture vendor Captaris and security software developer Epok have developed add-ons to Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 that let users search on document images and securely extend file creation and sharing across corporate boundaries.

Captaris, best known for its RightFax software for distributing faxes, recently introduced the TIFF iFilter for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The iFilter takes an image, scans it using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and then stores it in SharePoint along with all its meta data. The resulting file is then available for discovery by SharePoint’s search engine.

IFilter components are used by Microsoft Indexing Service and other Microsoft Search-based products, such as SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services, Exchange Full Text Search and SQL Server FTS.

Captaris, which is in the process of being acquired by OpenText, thinks paper-centric industries benefit the most from its TIFF iFilter such as insurance, governments, health care and financial services.

The iFilter supports Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and works on both 32- and 64-bit versions of the Windows OS, SharePoint Server, and SQL Server.

The Captaris TIFF iFilter comes in three editions: Standard (for two core systems), Pro (four core systems) and Enterprise (unlimited cores).

Standard is priced starting at $299. Pro starts at $499, and Enterprise pricing will be announced before the end of the year.

SharePoint is Microsoft’s fastest growing enterprise software in its history and the company counts 100 million licenses and more than a $1 billion in revenue, according to figures released this summer. The platform also is attracting third-party vendors driven to plug some of the gaps in the platform.

Earlier versions of SharePoint had support for TIFF images, but it was dropped in the 2007 version of SharePoint. Microsoft released a Filter Pack for SharePoint in Dec. 2007, and specifically made apologies for the absence of the TIFF filter in the release.

Experts have also said that SharePoint has gaps in its access control story.

Epok in particular is attacking that need with an update to its cross-organization access management software called Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4. The platform extends user authentication to a company’s partners.

The 2.4 version breaks the restriction that only a user within a SharePoint domain can use Microsoft Office to create, edit, and then save documents directly into SharePoint.

Epok extends that capability to any Office user in any domain as long as they have the needed access rights.

The upgrades also include a reporting system that can show such facts as who has access to a document and when the document expires. And a mouse over feature on user icons shows additional access details and expiration dates.

Epok can automatically enforce those expiration data on a user’s access to certain documents while maintaining the user’s overall access rights.

“SharePoint is creating a control problem and what we see is a huge demand wave for extranet access,” says Nigel Simmons, vice president of product management.

Epok also takes maintenance of permissions for access controls out of the hands of IT and put them in the hands of business users.

In addition, the system can be configured to require users to view and/or acknowledge certain contractual obligations related to data such as non-disclosure agreements.

The Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4 is priced at $25,000 per server.

Source:- networkworld.com/

Microsoft SharePoint update released

Companies using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 could be interested to discover an update to improve the application has been launched, it has been reported.

Microsoft has released an update to bolster the search functionality of SharePoint, fixing a long-term bugbear with the program, according to CMS Wire.

Noting the search features in Microsoft SharePoint have been know to frustrate users, the news provider reveals the recent update provides a federated search function and performance improvements to querying and indexing capabilities.

Furthermore, the infrastructure update for Microsoft Office Server delivers a unified administration dashboard to SharePoint.

"Some additional improvements include a greater granularity for crawl source history and list that shows all running crawls and durations," the publication explains.

The update also includes content deployment and infrastructure fixes for Windows SharePoint Services, MS Project and MS Servers.

A new study from Forrester Research suggests large companies are adopting Microsoft Office SharePoint Server at an increasing rate.


source:- onestopclick.com/

Tzunami Announces a New Version of Tzunami Deployer for Sharepoint 2003 Migration

The Latest Version Offers Enhanced Features for Migrating Content From SharePoint 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS)

Tzunami Inc., the pioneers and one of the leading providers of content migration technologies announced today the release of the latest version of its Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 Migration. Version 2.3 provides enhanced features for migrating content from SharePoint 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) at a lower, fixed-price than alternative systems. Added benefits include full support for Site Templates and lists, maintaining list views, an improved Rule Engine to automate the migration process and overall user interaction.

"Our latest version of Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 Migration has been developed in response to the current demands in the marketplace for an economically viable solution that meets all content migration needs," said Nimrod Berger VP Global Sales and Marketing of Tzunami. "With our vast industry experience, Tzunami has created a solution that is not only technologically sophisticated, offering a rich-user experience, but which provides a strong return on SharePoint technology investment."

Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 Migration is a stand-alone application enabling rapid content migration to advanced SharePoint 2007 structures. Key features include property and value mapping which allows users to manage the migration of metadata while retaining vital enterprise information. Furthermore, the solution fully supports and preserves security settings and handles all types of items, documents and site collections. Whether it is required to maintain the current structure during migration or completely remodel, the solution enables users to model, customize or redefine the structure of the migrated content.

Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2003 is part of the Tzunami Deployer Family of Products. A simple, multi-source tool, Tzunami Deployer seamlessly transfers data from all major legacy Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems as well as customized solutions. Features such as a powerful graphic user interface with easy-to-use drag and drop features, streamline business-critical processes simply and efficiently. Furthermore, Tzunami Deployer automates the entire process of migrating unstructured content and provides remote access to sites, including those behind firewalls. Tzunami Deployer saves time and easily transfers content from multiple sources including: File\Network Shares; SharePoint Portal Server 2001; SharePoint 2003/WSS 2.0; MOSS/WSS 3.0; Exchange Public Folders; LiveLink; DocuShare; EMC Documentum; EMC eRoom; Hummingbird DM; Hyperwave; Plumtree/AquaLogic; Lotus Notes; custom repositories and others.

Source:- marketwatch.com/

MultiFactor SecureAuth(R) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

MultiFactor Corporation, an innovator in 2-factor authentication, Microsoft web application security and VPN Authentication solutions, today announced the availability of SecureAuth 4.5 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, a secure access solution for enterprise portals.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is Microsoft's industry-leading platform for document management, enterprise content search and data aggregation. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is increasingly utilized as the offering of choice for scalable portals to both internal users, extranet partners and customers. The ability of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to expose content, previously only available to intranet users, is unparalleled in portal products.

MultiFactor's SecureAuth, a Microsoft Certified solution is specifically designed for integration into the ASP.NET application framework. SecureAuth offers a deployable, non-phishable, authentication solution that requires no extra servers or infrastructure.

"Office SharePoint Server is a robust platform designed to meet the business needs and resource constraints faced by the enterprise today," said Deb Bannon, SharePoint Senior Product Manager. "The integration of Office SharePoint Server with products like MultiFactor SecureAuth enables the enterprise to further secure content shared across the intranet and with extranet partners."

"SecureAuth utilizes native ASP.NET authentication and data integration features to seamlessly integrate into an Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment. SecureAuth takes advantage of the new forms based authentication features in SharePoint Server 2007 to redirect the user to the SecureAuth solution and then conduct a secure, non-phishable validation," said Garret Grajek, COO of MultiFactor Corporation. "Upon authentication the user is redirected back to SharePoint Server 2007 to obtain the roles and permissions set up by the SharePoint Server 2007 administrative console."

In conjunction with the Office SharePoint Server platform, SecureAuth is able to deliver a secure credential, mapped directly to the individual user. SecureAuth utilizes the existing data store shared by the Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform, thus eliminating the need to create or replicate an additional data store.

About MultiFactor Corporation

MultiFactor Corporation delivers proven two factor authentication, web application security, and VPN security methodologies. SecureAuth is a tokenless authentication solution generates and validates client and server side certificates without PKI. MultiFactor Corporation's real-world security solutions draws from a diversified team of cryptographers, network and Web application specialists and certified security engineers to provide inexpensive and easily deployed security solutions.

source:- marketwatch.com/

Microsoft Posts 14,000 Pages of Office, SharePoint, and Exchange Protocols

Microsoft yesterday announced it has posted 14,000 pages of technical documentation describing how to use the protocols for its Office, SharePoint, and Exchange products. The company says the move brings the total number of pages of technical documentation it has posted to 44,000, and takes another step toward fulfilling the commitment to openness it made in February.

With this move, anybody with an MSDN account can freely access the "preliminary versions" of 14,000 pages of technical documentation for the protocols Microsoft used with Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Exchange Server 2007. Following a review of the preliminary versions, Microsoft expects to release the final versions of the technical documentation by June, at which point it will have decided upon a suitable way to license the information.

The new documentation released yesterday describes the use of protocols for "connection points" between several products, including: Outlook and Exchange Server 2007; Office client applications and SharePoint Server 2007; SharePoint Server 2007 and other Microsoft server products; and Office client applications and other Microsoft server products.

The move follows through on the commitment Microsoft made in February to be less secretive and more open with its customers, business partners, competitors, and open source advocates. As part of that announcement, Microsoft also pledged not to sue open-source programmers for developing software that uses the interfaces.

Microsoft made several other pledges in February that it is in the process of fulfilling. One of these includes the creation of the Open Source Interoperability Initiative, which the company said in February would foster openness between Microsoft and the open source community, including organizing and conducting special events. However, there doesn't appear to be much to this initiative yet except this Microsoft Web page.

Other promises made by Microsoft as part of its Four Principles announcement include enhancing data portability through the creation of new import and export functions in its products (such as Office); enhancing support for open formats (such as ODF) in its products; and adding the capability to change the default file format in its Office applications. A Microsoft spokesperson says the company will announce additional documentation and disclosure schedules in the next several months.

In any event, Microsoft is celebrating the release of the 14,000 pages of preliminary versions of technical documentation. "We believe that providing open, consistent access to these protocols will further unleash the creativity of all developers to work on real-world interoperability solutions," said Tom Robertson, general manager of interoperability and standards at Microsoft.

(Source: itjungle.com)