SharePoint is also offered as part of the Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services) Platform. Read more about BPOS here http://www.microsoft.com/online/services-overview.aspx.
SharePoint 2010 can be analyzed in terms of its capabilities. These capabilities are:
Composites – SharePoint provides a large number of tools and technologies. However, it is by allowing new tools and technologies to be created by combining these existing facilities that SharePoint becomes a powerful platform for addressing business problems. Frequently, business challenges can be addressed without the need for any custom code by using SharePoint Designer to implement code-free solutions.
Content – SharePoint provides Enterprise Content and Records Management (ECRM) facilities. This allows cradle-to-grave management of content within SharePoint while allowing people to use the Office productivity tools with which they are already comfortable. SharePoint allows an organization to implement Records Management in a variety of ways including both in-place and through a Record Center. It provides facilities for consistently applying management policies to content, allowing content to be preserved and subsequently disposed according to approved organization policy.
Sites – A SharePoint site is a basic unit of administration for a SharePoint Web Site. Although there are many different types of SharePoint sites, including document center, record center, wiki, search site, and blogs, they may all be administered and managed with the same set of tools.
Insights – SharePoint allows access to business intelligence information in order to improve the quality of decision-making. Insights – the name given to this capability – allows information from a variety of sources including external databases, line-of-business applications and the Internet, to be combined and analyzed to provide tailored information.
Search – SharePoint 2010 Search provides facilities to allow people to find the information that they need. SharePoint Search recognizes that executing a search query usually represents the beginning rather than the end of a search activity. Through a combination of search refinement and relevance, SharePoint 2010 Search allows a set of search results to be filtered and processed until the right information is returned.
Communities – SharePoint is designed to make it easy for people to work together. Naturally, it is easier to work together when there is a place to do this, and this is what the Communities capability of SharePoint provides. As well as allowing collaboration on deliverable items such as content, SharePoint Communities provides facilities for people to find expertise and like-minded colleagues.
Content – SharePoint provides Enterprise Content and Records Management (ECRM) facilities. This allows cradle-to-grave management of content within SharePoint while allowing people to use the Office productivity tools with which they are already comfortable. SharePoint allows an organization to implement Records Management in a variety of ways including both in-place and through a Record Center. It provides facilities for consistently applying management policies to content, allowing content to be preserved and subsequently disposed according to approved organization policy.
Sites – A SharePoint site is a basic unit of administration for a SharePoint Web Site. Although there are many different types of SharePoint sites, including document center, record center, wiki, search site, and blogs, they may all be administered and managed with the same set of tools.
Insights – SharePoint allows access to business intelligence information in order to improve the quality of decision-making. Insights – the name given to this capability – allows information from a variety of sources including external databases, line-of-business applications and the Internet, to be combined and analyzed to provide tailored information.
Search – SharePoint 2010 Search provides facilities to allow people to find the information that they need. SharePoint Search recognizes that executing a search query usually represents the beginning rather than the end of a search activity. Through a combination of search refinement and relevance, SharePoint 2010 Search allows a set of search results to be filtered and processed until the right information is returned.
Communities – SharePoint is designed to make it easy for people to work together. Naturally, it is easier to work together when there is a place to do this, and this is what the Communities capability of SharePoint provides. As well as allowing collaboration on deliverable items such as content, SharePoint Communities provides facilities for people to find expertise and like-minded colleagues.
Good planning, well defined roles and comprehensive employee training is essential to succeed. There is a huge amount of books, videos, PowerPoint presentations, Blogs and online training lessons for SP 2010, and below you will find a few examples...
The following training video gives a good introduction to what SharePoint is all about.
Wiki functionality is very good for building a Social Knowledge and Quality System The-Wikipedia-Way into the Nets Social Intranet solution. Take a look at the following link for an article describing how this has been successfully done in another company http://articles.geometrica.com/64.html.
Watch this video for a good explanation of the SharePoint Wiki functionality.
Here is another good video explaining the use of Wiki.
My Site Social Collaboration features is explained in the following video.
SharePoint integration with other tools and solutions.
There is a lot of 3.rd party tools build on or integrated with SharePoint. Here you will find a few examples.
NewsGator Social Sites for SharePoint 2010
http://www.newsgator.com/ is a tool for Social Sites and Corporate Microblogging built on the SP2010 Platform. NewsGator Social Sites goes above and beyond SP2010 to make your organization truly social – with improved microblogging, an aggregated activity stream, a full range of mobile clients, and rich social insights. By integrating Social Sites directly into your SP2010 collaboration deployment, you can focus on delivering value to your users and unifying your technology infrastructure – instead of building custom applications or learning and supporting additional technologies. Increase adoption among stakeholders, streamline communication, improve employee recruiting and retention, and boost overall productivity with Social Sites 2010. Social Sites 2010 can help you create a global Enterprise 2.0 environment - remove barriers not only between people and business units, but between disparate cultures – by offering a localized solution in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese.
The following video shows how Accenture is driving Collaboration 2.0 using NewsGator.
IntraFactory
IntranetFactory is a free Modeler service providing a new, unique approach for SharePoint implementations: rapid interactive prototyping. The Modeler allows to build and manage the structure of a SharePoint site ("the Model") independently of the real implementation. It is like Visio on steroids: design your pages by simply dragging & dropping components onto a page, with all SharePoint components (like WebParts and list templates) predefinedpemiddel for å designe og strukturere en SharePoint "portal".
Yammer Integration with MS SharePoint 2010
With the new SharePoint 2010 Yammer Feed Web Part you can see your Yammer feed directly inside SharePoint, eliminating the need to toggle between SharePoint and Yammer. Read more in this Yammer Blog post http://blog.yammer.com/blog/2010/10/yammers-integration-with-microsoft-sharepoint-2010.html and the Yammer press release.
SAP Integration with MS SharePoint 2010 (Duet)
A very important issue for Nets is the integration between SharePoint and the SAP ERP system to gain control of Enterprise Core Master Data (e.g. core data about Nets Customers, Suppliers, Employees, Products and Assets). It's important that such core data are maintained only one place in the company!
http://www.duet.com/index.aspx is a product developed jointly by Microsoft and SAP. Duet Enterprise enables all employees to consume and extend SAP applications through Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010. Duet Enterprise combines the collaboration and productivity supported by Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office with the business data and processing functionality of SAP® applications.
Take a look at the following video for a demo.
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http://www.workengine.com/Pages/default.aspx is a solution to track and manage the full life cycle of project and work across the organization in Microsoft SharePoint. Take a look at this video.
