Microsoft SharePoint is not a new technology. It has been a part of the Windows server family in some form or another for several years now. Past versions have had many of the same core functionalities of the latest version, SharePoint Server 2007. The differences include the addition of Web 2.0 features like wikis and blogs. The biggest change to me though is the tighter integration with the latest version of Office.

Building a SharePoint site for collaboration and sharing work is still pretty simple. You can quickly set up lists, columns, views, and document libraries, and it doesn't take someone with a lot of experience. It's a rapid development platform for some things including a proof of concept prototype I did for marketing management that took about an hour to construct. The biggest thing I enjoy so far is how well it integrates with Outlook 2007. For example, if I make a list of Contacts in SharePoint, there is a button on that list to link it to my Outlook. Once linked in Outlook, that list is always available for me from within Outlook. If I make changes to a contact in Outlook, it appears in SharePoint, too.

This kind of integration was possible in past versions, but it usually required someone experienced in extending Office applications or third-party plug-ins. Instead of working on my own integration or finding an application out there to better link Outlook and SharePoint, I was able to link Contact lists and even Task lists from SharePoint into my Outlook.

The next step in my evaluation is to determine whether the features that are only available in the non-free version of SharePoint are worthwhile for the scale we want to adopt SharePoint. Based on the reception I got from the staff for my proof-of-concept, I have a feeling that we're going to want to get the full MOSS - Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. One of the components of that product that catches my eye is the inclusion of Forms Server. With Forms Server, it becomes easy to deploy InfoPath-designed forms to a website. Since we collect a lot of information from outside entities, this could be an easy and fast way to build interfaces for the collection of information that can than easily go into a workflow.