Typical SharePoint Corporate Intranet Home Page with links to document libraries, lists, calendars and tasks.

Sample SharePoint Corporate Intranet showing a Managers view of a Task Management WorkFlow

What is SharePoint

According to Wikipedia SharePoint is:

"Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) or Windows SharePoint is the basic SharePoint offering, offering collaboration and document management functionality by means of web portals, by providing a centralized repository for shared documents, as well as browser-based management and administration of them. It allows creation of Document libraries, which are collections of files that can be shared for collaborative editing. SharePoint provides access control and revision control for documents in a library. It also includes a collection of web parts, which are web widgets that can be embedded into web pages to provide a certain functionality. SharePoint includes web parts such as workspaces and dashboards, navigation tools, lists, alerts (including e-mail alerts), shared calendar, contact lists and discussion boards. It can be configured to return separate content for Intranet, Extranet and Internet locations. It uses a similar permissions model to Microsoft Windows, via groups of users. Active Directory groups can be added to SharePoint groups to easily tie in permissions. Alternatively, other authentication providers can be added through HTML Forms authentication."

Benefits
While this description is technically accurate it fails to clearly identify the benefits of SharePoint that are truly revolutionary:

• It's ROI is phenomenally better than hand coded alternatives.
  Sophisticated process automation and document control is now available to every company.
• It's an environment designed to be used by department workers and staff, not programmers.
  Sophisticated workflows and processes can be created without writing a line of code.
• It all operates in a browser.
  No software other than a browser is required but if your client has MS Office installed it will automatically incorporate full use of it.
• Windows SharePoint Services is "Free" with Windows Server Standard Edition
  Microsoft SharePoint WSS is included at no additional cost when you purchase the typical version of Windows Server Standard Edition. (While the WSS version is free you still pay for Windows Server and you still pay for user licenses. Also if you buy the MOSS version, it can be quite expensive)

SharePoint now allows the implementation of workflow automation that for most companies had been financially out of reach.

Sample Home page and inside page from a public facing website built using custom masterpages in WSS.  This produces a client facing website that incorporates all of the features of sharepoint: editable in a browser, highly secure, intelligent forms linked to automated work flows.

Obstacles
Every new technology has its sharp edges, and SharePoint is no exception. Fortunately these fall into three areas of company management that most executives are familiar with; employee morale, staff competency and managerial judgment.

• Employee Morale
  Some IT staff may feel threatened by WSS. Since WSS can create miracles of automation without writing any code, people that make their living writing code may take issue.
• Staff Competency in General Computer Skills.
  WSS links and automates administrative processes by using online forms, MS Word Documents, Adobe PDFs, Excel Worksheets and files in folders. Those employees with weak general computer skills will not perform well in this environment. (While, WSS allows these people to be given a "low permission level" or "limited access" to prevent them from causing problems, it's wise to get the staff trained to a acceptable level to maximize the benefits.)
• Managerial Judgment
  The power of SharePoint is extreme and this power can potentially be extended to the entire staff and the public. In this type of connected environment, intelligent, responsible management of "permissions" and capabilities is critical. The most common problem to occur in a SharePoint environment is rapid, uncontrolled and counterproductive over deployment.

Jack Frost Design and SharePoint WSS
At JFD we have a solid understanding and respect for SharePoint. We use the product the same way that many of our customers do.

We pioneered using the technology for public facing websites and we are skilled at configuring it to reduce the possibility of uncontrolled over deployment. We also let ROI be our guide in the development of workflow automation and we never build without a financial goal and a documented blueprint.

If you are interested in understanding more about how SharePoint can be used for:

• Public Facing Websites
• Intranets
• Workflow Automation
• Customer Extranets

...then contact us for a complementary consultation, webinar or online meeting to see what SharePoint can do for you.