Solutions: Sharepoint

Microsoft SharePoint offers a browser-based collaboration and document-management platform. It can be used to host web sites that access shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications like wikis and blogs from a browser.

SharePoint is an enterprise information portal that can be configured to run Intranet, Extranet and Internet sites. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 allows people, teams and expertise to connect and collaborate.

Ward Solutions are experts in delivering SharePoint solutions. We provide organisations with tools and solutions that enable them to connect people, information and systems which lead to increased sales and reduced costs.

Enterprise Content Management

In the modern commercial environment organisations and people often become overloaded with large volumes of unstructured information such as documents, e-mail messages, videos, instant messages, web pages, and more. This content can often exist in a state of unmanaged chaos thus preventing them from being used as valuable assets for better knowledge sharing, improved customer communications, and increased efficiency.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has become a strategic imperative for organizations experiencing:

  • Tremendous growth in their volume of information
  • The need to differentiate themselves through the creation and protection of intellectual capital
  • Increased legislation requiring access to auditable records

Ward Solutions can

  • Help you manage diverse content and ensure information flows across the organisation
  • Satisfy compliance and legislation through document management customisations
  • Ensure all your document revisions are managed correctly
  • Streamline your business processes through powerful forms and workflows

The ability of Sharepoint to integrate with tools such as Microsoft Office, Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange ensures our Document management solutions extend to all areas within the organization. This increases user adoption and enables people to easily participate in their organisations content management strategy.

A Ward Solutions ECM solution provides capabilities such as document management, records management, project management, web content management and forms solutions (using InfoPath Forms).

SharePoint also provides complete control over versioning of documents which is of key importance to industries e.g. architects where numerous revisions of a document can exist throughout the lifecycle of a project.

Records Management

Records management has long suffered from being marginalized as a secondary task. Only now, with the need to ensure compliance with government regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, are organizations starting to prioritize this important aspect of the business cycle. Imperatives in this area include the need for clearly assigned records management responsibility overall and within departments, the need for continuously updated records that minimize outdated information within the organization, and of course, the ultimate need to maximize transparency and protect the organization from audit and legal worries. Finally, a good records management policy ensures the preservation of vital company information in the case of disaster.

A records Management Solution designed by Ward Solutions can do the following;

Organize Records
Office SharePoint Server 2007 has ample tools to organize records once they are in the system. Document libraries define the organization and hierarchy in which electronic files of all types—including documents, e-mail messages, pictures, and media files—are stored.

Protect records
SharePoint ensures the integrity of the files stored within it;

  • It ensures that records are never automatically modified by the system.
  • It has default settings that prevent direct tampering of records, by versioning any changes made to document contents and by auditing specific types of changes.

Retention Policies
Retention policies can be set within the repository to manage the life cycle of various business records. An expiration formula calculates the length of time to retain a record, and an expiration action describes what to do with the record when it reaches its expiration date.

Manage email
Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 have been tightly integrated to help users declare e-mail messages as records using the familiar Office Outlook 2007 client software. IT departments can create organizational folders in Exchange Server 2007 that map to business functions which can then be pushed out to a users Outlook 2007 client using Group Policy. Users can simply drag and drop e-mail messages into these folders from their client computer.

Forms Management

Forms are a key component of any business process and are typically used to capture and validate the data driving the process. The following sections describe the forms capabilities provided in Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007.

Some of the capabilities which Forms can offer your business;

  • Help users to reach more customers, partners, and suppliers
     Organizations can create forms that can be filled out using a variety of Web browsers, allowing a large number of people to initiate a business process such as filling out a loan application or entering a customer service request. This can happen via the Internet, extranet, or intranet.
  • Streamline forms-driven business processes
    Once the forms have been filled out with the required information, they can be submitted to various systems for processing. These systems include SharePoint libraries and Web services connected to line-of-business (LOB) systems such as those from SAP and Oracle. The forms can be associated with workflows configured in the SharePoint document library that initiate the business process on the form.
  • Design, deploy, and centrally manage forms solutions
    Organizations can convert existing forms in Microsoft Office Word 2007 and Excel 2007 to the Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 information-gathering system format, thereby jumpstarting the forms solution design process. Users can employ pre-designed template parts to ensure consistency across all form solutions, and use preconfigured data connections to speed up forms solution design. Users are also enabled to easily deploy and upgrade forms solutions by using centralized management tools, which helps maintain a centralized form solution repository.

Enterprise Search

With increasing amounts of data held by businesses in todays modern world, there is a need to reduce the amount of time it takes your users to track down information stored throughout the enterprise. MOSS 2007 Enterprise search can find information stored most anywhere in your organization including data stored on the desktop, tucked away on an intranet site or locked in a line of a business (LOB) applications.

Enterprise search lets you;

  • Find people in your organization with certain knowledge and expertise. Indexing and searching can be performed on any Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory, including Active Directory distribution lists and SharePoint user groups.
  • Search business data. This includes line of business applications (such as HR applications, CRM, expense reporting, and so on). Traditionally, this sort of data was hard to access outside of the LOB application's normal interface. MOSS search can now retrieve data from any LOB application, such as a relational database or a Lotus Notes database that is accessible through ADO.NET or Web services.
  • Returning Relevancy on all your search results
  • Easy management of the search environment via user-friendly tools for end users and administrators.
  • Security. The query engine in MOSS 2007 filters out results so the list that the user sees only includes documents that the user has permission to access.
  • Customization. With MOSS 2007, you have a number of options for modifying the user interface. The UI can be customized with many of the tools you already use to modify Web sites.

A customized solution from Ward would encompass;

  • Reviewing your enterprise search requirements
  • Implementing a strategy for storing and retrieving company information
  • Configuring and customizing enterprise search to your business needs.

Some of the benefits include

  • Quickly find the information you need, using a familiar search centre interface
  • Pinpoint the most relevant information you need with recommended best bets, authoritative sources, term definitions, hit highlighting, and query correction
  • Retrieve concise and clear search results, using duplicate collapsing, which allows you to quickly review a wide variety of relevant information
  • Let you customise both your search experience and the actions you can take on your search results