IMPLEMENTATION AND APPLICATION OF
MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 SYSTEM IN MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES A PROPOSAL BY INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES © 2007 INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION 1 – INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007
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SECTION 2 – SCENARIOS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 IN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
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1. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Product Overview 2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Product Features 3. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Top 10 Benefits 4. Role‐Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites 5. Collaboration in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 6. Portal Sites in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 7. Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 8. Microsoft Enterprise Content Management 9. Help Boost Employee Productivity By Streamlining Everyday Business Processes 10. Deliver Business Intelligence Through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
1. Automating Government Forms Using The Microsoft Office System 2. Improving Efficiency With Department Of Defense Task Management Using The Microsoft Office System 3. Delivering Earned Value Management For Government Agencies Using The Microsoft Office System 4. Improving Emergency Management Collaboration For Government Agencies Using The Microsoft Office System 5. Improving Policy Development For Government 6. Automating Investigative Case Management For Government Agencies Using The Microsoft Office System 7. Streamlining Legal Case Management For Government Agencies Using The Microsoft Office System 8. Streamlining Case Management For Government Agencies
SECTION 3 – MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 DATASHEETS
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1. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Product Datasheet 2. Automating Government Forms Using the Microsoft Office System 3. Improving Efficiency with Department of Defense Task Management Using the Microsoft Office System 4. Delivering Earned Value Management for Government Agencies Using the Microsoft Office System 5. Collaborative Emergency Management for Government using the Microsoft Office System
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SECTION 4 – MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 CUSTOMER SOLUTION REFERENCES
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1. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Customer Evidence 2. Press Release ‐ Federal Agency Reduces Costs, Speeds Time To Market With Collaboration Tool 3. Case Study ‐ Government Agency Uses Microsoft Process to Analyze and Migrate Lotus Notes Applications 4. Solution Brief – South Holland District Council
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SECTION 1 – INTRODUCTION TO MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007
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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Product Overview Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Product Features Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Top 10 Benefits Role‐Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites Collaboration in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Portal Sites in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Microsoft Enterprise Content Management Help Boost Employee Productivity By Streamlining Everyday Business Processes Deliver Business Intelligence Through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
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MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 PRODUCT OVERVIEW 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 sites 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.
IMPROVE BUSINESS INSIGHT Effectively monitor business drivers, empower better informed decisions throughout the organization, and proactively respond to important business events. • Present business‐critical information in one central location. Create live, interactive business intelligence (BI) portals that assemble and display business information from disparate sources by using integrated BI capabilities such as dashboards, Web Parts, key performance indicators (KPIs), and business data connectivity technologies. Centralized Report Center sites give users a single place to find the latest spreadsheets, reports, or KPIs. • Quickly connect people with information. Enterprise Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007 incorporates people and business data along with documents and Web pages to provide more comprehensive results. The Search Center provides a single integrated location for employees to find content, processes, people, and business data relevant to their specific needs. This enables people and organizations to make decisions based on the latest information and facts more quickly.
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Share business data broadly while helping to protect sensitive information. Excel Services running on Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides access to data and analytics in real time, interactive Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets from a Web browser. Use these spreadsheets to maintain and efficiently share one centralized and up‐ to‐date version while helping to protect any sensitive or proprietary information embedded in documents (such as financial models). Take advantage of your unstructured business networks to drive better decisions. Employees can use new knowledge management tools to get the most from their powerful unstructured business networks, both inside and outside their organizations, thereby connecting with people more quickly and efficiently. By exploring these undocumented business relationships and finding subject‐matter experts, individuals are able to make better decisions more quickly. Unlock business data. The Business Data Catalog enables structured data from line‐of‐business applications, such as SAP and Siebel systems, to be integrated into Office SharePoint Server 2007 through Web Parts, lists, people profiles, search, or programmatically. Centrally managed connections to back‐end systems can be defined once and then reused by end‐users to access back‐end data without writing any code — easily making business data part of portal content. The Business Data Catalog also provides the ability for Enterprise Search to integrate back‐end business data into the search experience, without having to write any protocol handlers, iFilters, or custom code.
SIMPLIFY INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COLLABORATION Share knowledge, find information, and collaborate more easily and more securely both within and across organizational boundaries. Leverage your partner and customer network, and use your personal networks to connect to other people effectively. • Enhance customer and partner relationships. With smart, standards‐based, electronic forms–driven solutions, you can collect business information from customers and partners through a Web browser. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) integration and support for other pluggable authentication providers makes it easier to work with non–Active Directory directory service sources, thereby simplifying extranet setups and facilitating tighter connectivity with customers, partners, and suppliers. • Ubiquitous Enterprise Search. Enterprise Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007 has great relevance and incorporates enterprise content such as people and business data, along with documents and Web pages, to provide more comprehensive results. Enterprise Search is ubiquitous in Office SharePoint Server 2007, with tight integration into SharePoint sites, Web Parts, SharePoint lists, people profiles, and more. This enables people to look for the information they need wherever they navigate within the portal. Enterprise Search has the capability to search through business data, and the search results can be highly customized; for example, surfacing specific metadata elements of back‐end records. • Work when and where you want. With offline access to SharePoint lists and document libraries, via Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you can free yourself from limitations of corporate network connectivity. Tight integration with Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007 further enhances the offline experience for users. • Connect and share knowledge. New knowledge management tools empower employees to create and use people networks, both inside and outside their organizations, so they can connect and share knowledge more quickly and efficiently with other people. • Personalize operations. My Sites provides a totally personalized experience for users, with a dedicated site for each user. Each site can be used to store, present, view, and manage content, information, and applications in a controlled fashion. Each site can also be used to present information about the user, such as skills and roles, colleagues and managers, groups and distribution lists the user belongs to, and documents the user is working on. And each site contains stringent privacy control and enhanced security mechanisms, so that each user can choose how much information to present, and to whom. My Sites can also be fully customized to suit individual requirements.
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EMPOWER IT TO MAKE A STRATEGIC IMPACT Increase responsiveness of IT to business needs and reduce the number of platforms to maintain by supporting all intranets, extranets, and Web applications across the enterprise with one integrated platform. • Get enhanced interoperability support. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on a scalable architecture, with support for Web services and interoperability standards including XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Office SharePoint Server 2007 also has rich, open application programming interfaces (APIs) and event handlers for lists and documents. This enables integration with existing systems and provides the flexibility to incorporate new non‐Microsoft IT investments. LDAP integration support for other pluggable authentication providers makes it easier to work with non–Active Directory sources. Out‐of‐the‐box WSRP Consumer Web Part enables integration with other WSRP‐compliant portal solutions. • Enable IT to focus on more strategic tasks. Users can now create sites, initiate workflows, self‐provision applications, access back‐end data, define security at a per‐item level, restore deleted items, and complete other tasks without involving IT. This reduced user dependence on IT improves productivity and also enables the IT department to focus on providing real value‐added services to the organization. With the Business Data Catalog, you can define and deploy business application configurations to access data residing in back‐end systems. This feature can be reused by business users to create personalized views of business data without having to develop any custom code. • Simplify deployment, management, and system administration. Managing a Web server farm, deploying new pieces of content, and managing synchronization across those sites is now much simpler. Deployment can be done in “top‐down” or “bottom‐up” fashion. Simplify site staging through out‐of‐the‐box Site‐starter Templates for common Web sites, with Area and Page Layout templates and preconfigured navigation. And enhanced capabilities to back up and restore content helps IT professionals schedule backups, back up multisite collections, and then restore each one individually. • Robust system monitoring, usage tracking, and monitoring tools. These tools help isolate and solve problems faster and improve the operational efficiency of the system infrastructure.
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MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 PRODUCT FEATURES Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a new server application that is part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Your organization can use it to facilitate collaboration, provide content management features, implement business processes, and provide access to information that is essential to organizational goals and processes. By using site templates and other features in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can quickly and efficiently create sites that support specific content publishing, content management, records management, or business intelligence needs your organization may have. For example, it is possible to create enterprise‐level sites, such as organizational portal sites or Internet presence sites, or specialized sites, such as content repositories or meeting workspaces. These sites enable you to collaborate and share information with others, whether they are inside or outside of your organization. In addition, you can use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to conduct effective searches for people, documents, and data, to design and participate in forms‐driven business processes, and to access and analyze large amounts of business data. Among other things, you can use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to: • Collaborate effectively with others in your organization. For example, you can use calendars to see when team events are occurring, or use document libraries to store team, divisional, or organizational documents. You can also discuss issues by using blogs or capture and retain information in Wikis, which are user‐managed knowledge bases. • Create personal sites, where you can manage and share information with other users. For example, you can create your own My Site portal, where you can view and manage all of your documents, tasks, links, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 calendar, colleagues, and other personal information from a central location. • Find people, expertise, and data in business applications. For example, by searching the My Sites on your intranet, you can find someone who has a specific skill or interest, even if you don't know their name. You may also be able to find data in a corporate database or enterprise business application, such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. • Manage documents, records, and Web content. For example, your organization may develop a process for retiring or expiring documents after a certain amount of time has elapsed. • Host XML‐based business forms that integrate with databases or other business applications. For example, if you work for a local government agency, you might design permit applications forms in Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 and host them Office SharePoint Server 2007 so that users can then fill out forms directly in a browser. The data entered into the form can be submitted to a database in the government's network. • Easily publish reports, lists, and key performance indicators (KPIs) by linking to business applications, such as SAP, Siebel, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
HOW OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 WORKS WITH PROGRAMS IN THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM Office SharePoint Server 2007 is designed to work effectively with other programs and servers in the 2007 Microsoft Office system. The following list includes examples of what is possible. • If you use Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, you can create a library of PowerPoint slides that can be shared with other users on a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. • If you use Microsoft Office Access 2007, you can take a SharePoint list offline and use the reporting features in Office Access 2007 to view the data and create reports. If you are traveling, for example, you can maintain a local copy of a SharePoint list on your laptop computer, where you can edit and query the list as though it were any other table in Office Access 2007. Forms and reports that use the SharePoint list are fully interactive — and Office Access 2007 can later synchronize the local list with the online list when you bring your laptop back online. • If you use Office Outlook 2007, you can take document libraries offline. SharePoint folders show up just like other Outlook folders. • If you use Office InfoPath 2007, you can design browser‐compatible form templates, publish them to an Office SharePoint Server 2007site, and enable them for use in a Web browser. • If you use Microsoft Office Excel 2007, you can save worksheets on a SharePoint site so that users can access them by using a browser. You can use these worksheets to maintain and efficiently share one central, up‐to‐date version, while helping to protect any proprietary information, such as financial models, that are embedded in the worksheet.
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If you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can customize Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites and workflows an intuitive, what‐you‐see‐is‐what‐you‐get (WYSIWYG) environment. You can tailor SharePoint sites to your needs and set brand requirements using the latest ASP.NET technology, established Web standards such as Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) code, and cascading style sheets (CSS). For example, if you're a business analyst, you might be asked to build and customize a new Office SharePoint Server 2007 site that will be used for collaborating on the development of videotaped customer case studies. In this scenario, you can use Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to creates a brand‐new Office SharePoint Server 2007 site where writers, videographers, and marketing team members can collaborate on the development of video case studies. In many 2007 Office release programs, you can update properties for a server document in a Document Information Panel, which appears as a set of editable fields at the top of a document. For example, in a Word document, you might be required to edit properties for author name, date of creation, and document type. This ultimately makes it easier for you to find what you're looking for on the server. For example, you can quickly find all press releases where the customer property matches the name of a particular customer. In many 2007 Office release programs, you can initiate or participate in workflows, which is the automated movement of documents or items through a specific sequence of actions or tasks related to a business process. Workflows can be used to consistently manage common business processes, such as document approval or review.
OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 AND WINDOWS SHAREPOINT SERVICES You may wonder what the difference is between Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, and how they relate to one another. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a product that uses the Windows SharePoint Services technology. Any features available in Windows SharePoint Services are also available in Office SharePoint Server 2007, including the ability to create centralized lists and libraries, blogs, Wikis, and team workspaces, such as meeting workspaces. Office SharePoint Server 2007 relies on Windows SharePoint Services to provide a consistent, familiar framework for lists and document libraries, site administration, and site customization. However, Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers enhanced or additional features that are unavailable on a Windows SharePoint Services site. For example, Office SharePoint Server 2007 uses the same search technology as Windows SharePoint Services but includes additional features that are especially useful to employees in large organizations, such the ability to search for business data in SAP, Siebel, and other business applications. COLLABORATION By using the following features in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can work more efficiently and effectively with other people in your organization. Use site templates to collaborate or manage meetings When you create a new Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, you can start by selecting one of several different kinds of site templates for collaborating with other people and managing meetings. For example, the site templates in the Collaboration group are designed to help teams within an organization work on projects, collaborate on documents. For example, by using the Document Workspace site template, you can work with other people on a document or a set of documents. The site templates in the Meetings group are designed to help teams within an organization manage different kinds of meetings. The templates in this group support everything from basic meetings to decision‐focused meetings or even social events. Share documents, contacts, tasks, and calendars You can synchronize your Office SharePoint Server 2007 calendar with Outlook. You can enter all‐day events, and specify more types of repeating, or recurring, events. You can track team projects more effectively, with visual day and month views. Brainstorm easily with wiki sites A wiki site enables you to brainstorm ideas, collaborate on a team design, build an encyclopedia of knowledge, or just gather routine information in a format that's easy to create and modify. Your team members can contribute to wikis from their browser — they don't need a word processor or special technical knowledge. Share ideas with blogs A blog, sometimes known as a weblog, consists of frequent short posts. The posts are displayed in order starting with the most recent post. With Office SharePoint Server 2007, it just takes a few clicks to create a blog, post to a blog, subscribe to updates to a blog, and customize a blog. You can enable a blog to accept comments, or you can turn comments off. Some possible uses include an executive's journal for sharing thoughts and vision, a community for building customer relationships, or an informal site where teams can share news and tips. © 2007 INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
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Receive updates to lists and libraries with RSS Lists and libraries make use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology, so members of your workgroup can automatically receive updates. RSS is a technology that enables people to receive and view updates or feeds of news, blogs, and other items of interest in a consolidated location. Manage projects You can create a Project Tasks list, which includes a Gantt chart. A Gantt chart is a type of visual overview of project tasks that you can use to monitor the dates and progress of team tasks. Get mobile access to content You can view portals, team sites, and lists on a mobile device, which helps you stay current on team projects and tasks when you are on the road. For example, lists appear on phones (or other telecommunications devices that support international standards) in a simplified text format, with a link to scroll through the content of each page. You can also receive alerts as lists are updated. Send e‐mail to Office SharePoint Server 2007 You can use e‐mail to participate in discussions, meetings, and documents in a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. Just as you send e‐mail to your team to discuss tasks and projects, you can also send e‐ mail to a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, or a specific list or library. You can also archive e‐mail that's sent to a site or list, so that your team members can easily follow a discussion on a site instead of having to find messages in their clogged Inboxes. Manage documents and some types of lists offline You can take your important work with you wherever you go. With some e‐mail programs that are compatible with Office SharePoint Server 2007, such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you can work offline on files in a library and items in the following types of lists: calendars, contacts, tasks, and discussions. When you connect back online, you can update your files on the server. List items are updated automatically. PEOPLE AND PERSONALIZATION By using the following features in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can connect to people within your organization who have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience. My Site My Site is a personal site that gives you a centralized location to store your content, links, contacts. It also serves as a point of contact for other users to find information about you and for content providers to serve content to you. My Sites provides a dedicated site for every user, which can be personalized by the user and for the user. Each site can be used to store, present, view, and manage content, information, and applications in a controlled fashion. Each site can also be used to present information about the user such as skills and roles, colleagues and managers, groups and distribution lists the user belongs to, and documents the user is working on. And each site contains stringent privacy control and security mechanisms, so that each user can choose how much information to present, and to whom. A separate My Site site is available for every Office SharePoint Server 2007 user. The following is a list of the benefits of using My Site. • It provides a centralized location to view and manage all of your documents, tasks, links, Microsoft Office Outlook calendar, colleagues, and other personal information. • Other SharePoint users can learn how to contact you, your areas of expertise, current projects, and people you know by viewing your public page. • Content providers can use your profile, such as your title, department, or interests, to place information useful to you on your site. • It allows administrators to provide you with personalized Web sites and Web parts. Social networking features Just as you share information with other people in your organization through your public home page, you can also find and connect with other people through the public home pages of their My Site. When a name appears in the portal site, you can click it to view that person's My Site. You can view the site and distribution list memberships, lists, links to sites, people, and documents that might help you to get your work done. You can also see information you have in common. Privacy controls By using privacy settings on your public My Site content, you enable Office SharePoint Server 2007 to display information to only specific categories of people who visit your site. By using privacy groups, you can specify that only certain people can view some of the personal information that you provide on your My Site home page. This can be useful when you want to share personal like your mobile phone number with only your workgroup or your manager. There are five categories of people to whom you can display content — Everyone, My Colleagues, My Workgroup, My Manager, and Only Me. © 2007 INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
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Target audiences By using target audiences, you can display content such as list or library items, navigation links, and entire Web Parts to specific groups of people. This is useful when you want to present information relevant only to a particular group of people. For example, you could add a Web Part to the legal department's portal that contains a list of legal contracts visible only to them. Any item in a SharePoint list or library can be targeted to specific audiences, which is accomplished by using the Content Query Web Part. Any other type of Web Part, and its contents, also can be targeted to audiences. In addition, you can target site navigation links to audiences. Doing so simplifies the user's experience, because they will only see the navigation links that are relevant to them. Presence and availability The Real‐Time Presence Smart Tag icon, displayed virtually everywhere a person’s name appears in Office SharePoint Server 2007, indicates whether a person is online and available to participate in a telephone or audio conference call, instant messaging, or two‐way video conversation. SEARCH Finding the right information or person is what search is all about. This section offers an overview of search‐related features in Office SharePoint Server 2007, such as the ability to find people who have the expertise you need to get your job done. Search Center The Search Center is a site that provides a central location for initiating queries and browsing search results. If you add information about yourself to your My Site page, other people in your organization use the Search Center to locate you, information about your projects, and who you know. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes the following site templates for creating a Search Center: • Search Center Select this site template when you want to create a site to deliver the search experience. The main Welcome page features a simple search box in the center of the page. The site includes pages for search results and advanced search. • Search Center with tabs Select this template when you want to create a site to deliver the search experience. The main Welcome page features a simple search box in the center of the page. The site includes two tabs: one for general searches and another for searches for information about people. You can add and customize tabs to focus on other search scopes or result types. Find documents on your intranet You can search for documents that contain a specific word or phrase, that are written in a specific language, that are created in a specific application, or that have specific properties. Office SharePoint Server 2007 also includes useful features for narrowing your search. For example, you can search for only documents that contain the exact phrase "international society" and are written in either Spanish or Japanese. Find people on your intranet Finding the right person can be critical for getting things done quickly. You can search for someone by name, or you can use other profile details, such as skills, current projects, or title. You can also search for people in your organization's enterprise applications, such as SAP, Siebel, and customized databases. Find business data in SAP, Siebel, and other enterprise applications The Search features in Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help you find information in your organization's enterprise applications. These enterprise applications are specialized business programs for tasks such as accounting, tracking inventory, and managing supply chains. The applications include SAP, Siebel, and custom databases that were created for your organization.
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CONTENT MANAGEMENT The content management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007 fall within three categories: • Document management • Records management • Web content management Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides the core foundation for document management tasks, including the versioning features, descriptive metadata features, workflow features, content types, auditing, and role‐based‐access controls at the document library, folder, and individual document levels. Office SharePoint Server 2007 extends these capabilities to deliver enhanced authoring, business document processing, Web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing. DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT Document management controls the life cycle of documents in your organization — how they are created, reviewed, published, and accessed. No matter where you work, you have no doubt encountered the challenges of document management. Consider the life cycle of the average document. First the document is created, then saved, then perhaps shared with other users, then perhaps modified by other users. As new versions are developed, they must be tracked and organized. With Office SharePoint Server 2007, your organization can enable appropriate policies at every step of the document life cycle, use centralized repositories for storing, managing, and accessing documents, and use labels and barcodes to efficiently track documents. Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers the following features to support document management. Document Center site template The Document Center site template enables organizations to create large‐scale document management sites that support highly structured document management scenarios. Default settings for the Document Center site template support strong content control: check‐out is required before editing, major and minor versions are enabled, support for multiple content types is enabled, and auditing is enabled to track content changes over time. Translation Management Library The Translation Management Library helps organizations create, store, and manage translated documents by providing both views and features that facilitate the manual document translation process. This library features customized a customized view that groups translations by source document, and it also features a Translation Management workflow that can be used to manage the manual translation process. Document conversions framework Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers support for the server‐side conversion of documents from one file format into another. 2007 Microsoft Office system client program integration Many document management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007 are extended powerfully through tight integration with 2007 Office release client programs. From within Office 2007 client programs, users can: • Start and complete workflow tasks • Update the properties for server documents using the Document Information Panel • View information management policy statements for server documents in the Message Bar • Compare versions of server documents within Microsoft Office Word • Insert barcodes or labels into server documents
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RECORDS MANAGEMENT Records management is the process of collecting, managing, and disposing of corporate records (information deemed important for the history, knowledge, or legal defense of a company) in a consistent and uniform manner based on the company’s policies. These policies are shaped by the type of work the organization does, the kinds of legal risks it faces, and the laws and regulations that govern it. Office SharePoint Server 2007 introduces a new set of features for creating and supporting formal records management capabilities in your organization. Information management policies Organizations can define and use information management policies in Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites to enforce compliance with corporate business processes or legal or governmental regulations for the management of information. Information management policies enable site administrators or list managers to control how content is managed. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes several predefined policy features that organizations can use individually or in combination to define information management policies for their sites. These policy features, which can be defined for an entire site collection, or a specific list, library, or content type, include: Auditing, Barcodes, Labels, Form Conversion for Archiving, and Expiration. Additionally, organizations can develop custom information management policies. Information Rights Management (IRM) ) In Office SharePoint Server 2007, organizations can use IRM to limit the actions that users can take on files that have been downloaded from SharePoint lists or libraries. IRM encrypts the downloaded files and limits the set of users and programs that are allowed to decrypt these files. IRM can also limit the rights of the users who are allowed to read files so that they cannot take actions such as print copies of the files or copy text from them. Records Center site template The Records Center site template in Office SharePoint Server 2007 is designed to help organizations implement their records management and retention programs. This site template extends standard Office SharePoint Server 2007 features with additional records management features to provide the following capabilities: • Vault abilities The Records Center site template has several features that ensure the integrity of records that are stored within it. Records are never automatically modified by the system, which means that records that are uploaded to the site and downloaded later will always be identical. The default settings for the Records Center site also prevent direct tampering of records by versioning any changes made to document contents and auditing specify types of changes. Records managers can add and maintain metadata on items separately from the record’s metadata. Changes to metadata are versioned as well. • Records Routing Organizations can define a Records Routing list to automatically route records that are submitted to the Records Center to the appropriate library. • Information management policy enforcement The Auditing, Expiration, and Barcode policy features included in Office SharePoint Server 2007 are useful to records management. • Hold Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides support for managing the legal discovery process by enabling organizations to place records on hold. Records that are subject to litigation or investigations can be added to a Hold list and thereby suspended from records management policies and expiration. Items can be placed on more than one hold at a time. • Records Collection Interface People and automated systems can easily submit content to a Records Center site without necessarily having access or permission to any of the contents of the site. Content can be submitted through a Web service by using the SOAP protocol, or through e‐mail by using the SMTP protocol. Integration with Microsoft Exchange 2007 Office SharePoint Server 2007 is tightly integrated with Exchange 2007. This integration enables organizations to create Managed E‐mail Folders in Exchange that are exposed to users in Office Outlook 2007. Organizations can define information management policies for these folders that specify things like a retention period or quota. Users can also use these folders to send e‐mail to a Records Center site that has been implemented in Office SharePoint Server 2007. Users can drag‐and‐drop e‐mail records from their inbox into the appropriate Managed E‐mail Folder.
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WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes many features that are useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet presence Web sites, and divisional portal sites. These features enable you to author and publish Web content in a timely manner and can ultimately reduce the cost and overhead of managing multiple sites. Template‐based Web pages By using the Web content management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can create, edit, and manage template‐based Web pages. To do this, you create page layouts and thus create and manage the “templates” for your web pages, both for authors and how they create content and readers and how they view content. Publish site templates When you create a new Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, you can start by selecting one of several different kinds of site templates, including templates that support specific content publishing needs your organization may have. The site templates in the Publish group enable organizations design, deploy, and manage enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet Presence Web sites, and divisional portal sites. The site templates in the Publish group all have publishing features enabled, including the page editing toolbar, content editor, and check out. • News site Select this site template when you want to create a site to deliver news articles and links to news articles quickly and easily. It includes sample news page layouts and an archive for storing older news items. It also features an easy‐to‐use layout for readers and news providers. This site template also includes two Web Parts that enable efficient news delivery: RSS Viewer, and This Week in Pictures. • Publishing site with workflow Select this site template when you want to create a site for publishing Web pages on a schedule by using approval workflows. It includes document and image libraries for storing Web publishing assets. For example, you can create a site to display technical articles that must be reviewed by subject matter experts before they can be published. • Collaboration portal Select this site if you want to create a starter site hierarchy for an intranet divisional portal. It includes a home page, a News site, a Site Directory, and a Search Center with Tabs. Typically, this site has nearly as many contributors as readers and is used to host team sites. This type of template can help when you want to create a divisional portal where employees can collaborate and publish documents and Web pages. This site template is available only if you are creating a site collection within Central Administration. • Publishing portal Select this template if you want to create a starter site hierarchy for an Internet‐facing site or a large intranet portal. This site can be customized easily with distinctive branding. It includes a home page, a sample press releases subsite, a Search Center, and a login page. Typically this site has many more readers than contributors, and it is used to publish Web pages with approval workflows. By default, you can create only publishing subsites with workflow under sites that you create by using this site template. This site template is available only if you are creating a site collection within Central Administration. Integration with Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is is a new product for creating and customizing Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web sites and building workflow‐enabled applications based on SharePoint technologies. You can use Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to customize a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. This enables you to design and extend portal sites or portal pages with more flexibility and power than ever before. For example, you can use state‐of‐the‐art editing tools to edit cascading style sheet (CSS) files for SharePoint sites. In‐context Web page authoring You can create Web pages by using the rich‐text editor that comes with Office SharePoint Server 2007. In text editing mode, you can type and edit page content on the page, by using a browser. In HTML source editing mode, you can type and edit page content by using standard HTML. Other features include: • A feature that lets you quickly create, organize, and format links. • A Web part that lets you roll up content from across your site. • The ability to spell‐check the content you author. • The ability to manage and edit boilerplate content, such as copyright statements, in a single location.
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Client authoring Office SharePoint Server 2007 also provides you with the ability to create Web pages by converting documents that you create using other programs. This has many advantages, depending on the program that you use to create the original document. For example, you can use Office Word 2007 documents to create Web pages for your site collection. Advantages to this approach include: • Faster creation You can turn important Office Word 2007 documents — for example, white papers or status reports — directly into Web pages, instead of re‐creating those documents for use on the Web. • Offline working By using Office Word 2007 to create a Web page, you are free to work on the content with or without a connection to the Internet. • Richer authoring feature set Office Word 2007 provides more word‐processing features than are offered by Office SharePoint Server 2007 alone. • Document flexibility You can use Office Word 2007 documents for other purposes too. For example, you can create a new product announcement by using Word and then distribute that announcement in an e‐mail message and on the Web. Site variations Audiences of Web sites can vary in many ways including language, geographic region, browsing device, or company affiliation. The job of producing and maintaining variations of a site can be difficult and time consuming. In Office SharePoint Server 2007, the variations feature allows site administrators to simplify the process of managing variations by maintaining customizable copies of the content from a source site in each target site. This feature is particularly useful for for publishing multilingual sites. For example, you can identify a source (for example, Press Releases – English) and multiple target sites (for example Press Releases – French, Press Releases – Japanese) and Office SharePoint Server 2007 will keep the target sites synchronized with the source site. Site navigation Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes features that make it easy to create and manage the navigational structure for your site. Site Content and Structure page You use the Site Content and Structure page to manage both the content and structure of your SharePoint site collection. In Office SharePoint Server 2007, navigation is dynamically generated from the site collection hierarchy. This means that when you change the structure of the site (for example, if you move a subsite), that change is carried through to the site navigation. Where the item now appears in the site navigation reflects the new location of the underlying subsite. The actions you can take on this page include more than changing the structure of the site. You can manage content by performing other actions on lists and list items. For example, you check out or check in, publish, and copy items. To ensure that the interface for the Site Content and Structure page is familiar to you, it was designed to be similar to Windows Explorer. You can see the site collection hierarchy in the navigation pane as a tree view on the left of the Site Content and Structure page. On the right, items are listed in the list pane. BUSINESS PROCESS AND FORMS Business processes are at the center of any organization, and forms are often at the center of any business process, such as the process of approving expense reports. By using the InfoPath Forms Services technology in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can design browser‐compatible form templates in InfoPath and enable them for use on a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. To fill out a form, users don't have to have InfoPath installed on their computer, nor are they required to download anything extra from the Web. All they need is a browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox. InfoPath Forms Services When you design form templates with Office InfoPath 2007, and deploy them to a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, you can enable a setting that allows users to fill out forms by using a Web browser. That's because Office SharePoint Server 2007 contains the InfoPath Forms Services technology, which — in addition to enabling the deployment of browser‐based forms — provides a central location to store and manage form templates for your organization. The forms you host on the server are called browser‐enabled forms.
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When you publish a form template to a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, you can distribute it not just on your corporate intranet, but also on an external Web sites, such as extranet sites or corporate Web sites. This allows you to collect data from customers, partners, suppliers, and others who are vital to the success of your business or organization. For example, a large insurance company can use a single browser‐enabled form template to collect and process insurance claims, and then deploy that form template to their Internet and intranet sites. If a customer visits the insurance company’s Web site, they can fill out the claim form in their browser. Alternatively, if the customer calls the insurance company to report the claim, an insurance agent can fill out the claim form in InfoPath, by accessing it on an internal site for reporting claims. Or, a government agency can collect data from citizens by posting browser‐enabled form templates on their Web site. Workflows Workflows help people collaborate on documents and manage project tasks by implementing specific business processes on documents and items in a Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. Workflows help organizations adhere to consistent business processes and they also improve organizational efficiency and productivity by managing the tasks and steps involved in specific business processes. Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes several predefined workflows that have been designed to address common business scenarios: • Approval This workflow routes a document or item to a group of people for approval. • Collect Feedback This workflow routes a document or item to a group of people for feedback. • Collect Signatures This workflow routes a Microsoft Office document to a group of people to collect their digital signatures. • Disposition Approval This workflow, which supports records management processes, manages document expiration and retention by allowing participants to decide whether to retain or delete expired documents • Three‐state This workflow can be used to manage business processes that require organizations to track a high volume of issues or items, such as customer support issues, sales leads, or project tasks. • Group Approval Approval This workflow provides a hierarchical organization chart from which to select the approvers and allows the approvers to use a stamp control instead of a signature. This solution was designed specifically for East Asian Markets. • Translation Management This workflow manages the manual document translation process by creating copies of the document to be translated and assigning translation tasks to translators. This workflow is available only for Translation Management Libraries. Single Sign‐On (SSO) The single sign‐on feature permits a person to enter one name and password to use a variety of back‐ end applications. It is used for integrating back‐office systems and business applications that require separate credentials database. Office SharePoint Server 2007 single sign‐on services support the use of custom as well as third‐party pluggable credential providers. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Traditionally, the tools for accessing large amounts of unstructured data for the purpose of analysis were available only to people with years of experience in data warehousing or data mining. Publishing to the Web by using data from multiple sources is something historically restricted to developers and consultants. By using the new features available in Office SharePoint Server 2007, information workers can assemble data from multiple sources and publish that data on the Web. Office SharePoint Server 2007 can link to business applications, such as SAP, Siebel, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, allowing you to easily publish reports, lists, and key performance indicators (KPIs). When you publish reports from the data in one of these systems, you provide strategic or operational data for decision‐ makers. Examples of reports include Microsoft Office Excel workbooks, a SQL Server Reporting Services report, or a Microsoft Office Access report. Executives and line managers rely on timely and accurate reports to make informed decisions. Report Center At the center of the new Office SharePoint Server 2007 Business Intelligence features is the Report Center. The Report Center is a site that provides a central location for storing reports that are common to a group, whether it is as small as a one team or as large as an entire organization. The Report Center site contains special document libraries for storing reports, lists, and connections to external data sources. It also provides access to page templates and Web Parts to help you create pages and lists that contain business information. Within the Report Center, users can search for items by using categories, view a calendar of upcoming reports, and subscribe to reports that are relevant.
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Excel Services Excel Services enables you to store an Excel workbook on a server and then publish any part of that workbook on a Web page. Users need only a browser to view and interact with the live data. The workbook is published on the Web page by using the Excel Web Access (EWA) Web Part. One advantage of publishing workbooks in a Web Part is that all of the calculation occurs on the server. As a result, the business logic in the workbook is never exposed. Another advantage is that there is only one copy of the workbook, and it is stored in a central, secure place. From the Web page, you can give users "view only" rights to limit access to the workbook. For example, you can prevent users from opening a workbook by using Excel or control what they are allowed to view. Excel Services is a server technology that makes it simple to use, share, secure, and manage Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbooks as interactive reports in a consistent way throughout your organization. There are three basic components to Excel Services that interact with each other and together form the overall structural design of Excel Services. • Excel Calculation Services (ECS) is the "engine" of Excel Services that loads the workbook, calculates in full fidelity with Microsoft Office Excel 2007, refreshes external data, and maintains sessions. • Excel Web Access (EWA) is a Web Part that displays and enables interaction with the Microsoft Office Excel workbook in a browser by using Dynamic Hierarchical Tag Markup Language (DHTML) and JavaScript without the need for downloading ActiveX controls on your client computer, and can be connected to other Web Parts on dashboards and other Web Part Pages. • Excel Web Services (EWS) is a Web service hosted in Microsoft Office SharePoint Services that provides several methods that a developer can use as an application programming interface (API) to build custom applications based on the Excel workbook. You must first create an Excel workbook by using Office Excel 2007, and then save the workbook in Excel Services. In essence, Office Excel 2007 is the authoring tool and Excel Services is the reporting tool. A workbook author, often a business analyst, uses Office Excel 2007 to create the Excel workbook, and optionally specify named items for viewing and define parameters. The workbook author then saves the workbook to a document library (or to a network or Web folder) in Excel Services, where it is managed and secured by a SharePoint administrator. The workbook author and other users can create reports, Web Part Pages, and Business Intelligence dashboards that use the workbook. Many business users can access the workbook by viewing it in a browser, and even refresh the data if the workbook is connected to an external data source. With appropriate permission, business users can also copy the current state of the workbook and any interactions made during the current session, such as sorting and filtering, to a client computer for further analysis either as an Excel workbook or a workbook snapshot. Connections to external data sources In addition to using external data sources in Excel workbooks, you can use data from other business applications, such as SAP and Siebel, in SharePoint lists, pages, and Web Parts. Administrators usually create the system connections and can store them in a Data Connection Library in the Report Center. That way, the central pool of connections can easily be accessed and reused by anyone with permissions. However, you can create and store data connections anywhere in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 system. By using connections to external data sources, you can build Web Pages and SharePoint lists that allow users to interact with the data in the external source without ever leaving the SharePoint page. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a visual cue that communicates the amount of progress made toward a goal. KPIs are valuable for teams, managers, and businesses to evaluate quickly the progress made against measurable goals. By using SharePoint KPIs, you can easily visualize answers to the following questions: • What am I ahead or behind on? • How far ahead or behind am I? • What is the minimum I have completed? Each area of a business may choose to track different types of KPIs, depending on the business goals they are trying to achieve. For example, to increase customer satisfaction, a call center might set a goal to answer a specific number of calls within a shorter period of time. Or the sales department might use KPIs to set performance goals, such as the number of new sales calls made per month. KPIs are created by using KPI lists and then are displayed by using special KPI Web Parts. You can store KPI lists in the Report Center or in any other site in Office SharePoint Server 2007, where they can be reused by anyone with permissions to access them. © 2007 INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
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Dashboards A dashboard is a flexible page that displays data from KPIs and Excel workbooks. For example, the human resources division might design a dashboard that employees use to view personalized information, such as their salary or benefits history. Business data in lists You can easily integrate and incorporate information from business applications such as SAP, Siebel, and Microsoft SQL Server into the collaborative environment of Office SharePoint Server 2007 by adding the business data column type to an Office SharePoint Server 2007 list. This way, you have a list of items that use a combination of columns from Office SharePoint Server 2007 and from an external business application. For example, if you work for a consulting company that uses a CRM system, you might store documents, such as proposals, contracts, and presentations, in SharePoint lists and associate those documents with the appropriate customer in the CRM database. This helps keep all of the customer documentation in one place and lets page viewers easily navigate to the customer's record in the business application.
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MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 TOP 10 BENEFITS Provide a simple, familiar, and consistent user experience. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is tightly integrated with familiar client desktop applications, e‐mail, and Web browsers to provide a consistent user experience that simplifies how people interact with content, processes, and business data. This tight integration, coupled with robust out‐of‐ the‐box functionality, helps you employ services themselves and facilitates product adoption. Boost employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities. Take advantage of out‐of‐the‐box workflows for initiating, tracking, and reporting common business activities such as document review and approval, issue tracking, and signature collection. You can complete these activities without any coding. Tight integration with familiar client applications, e‐mail, and Web browsers provide you with a simple, consistent experience. Modifying and extending these out‐of‐the‐box workflow processes is made easy through tools like Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (the next release of Microsoft Office FrontPage). Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content. By specifying security settings, storage policies, auditing policies, and expiration actions for business records in accordance with compliance regulations, you can help ensure your sensitive business information can be controlled and managed effectively. And you can reduce litigation risk for your organization. Tight integration of Office SharePoint Server 2007 with familiar desktop applications means that policy settings are rendered onto client applications in the Microsoft Office system, making it simpler for employees to be aware of and comply with regulatory requirements. Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value. Business users and content authors can create and submit content for approval and scheduled deployment to intranet or Internet sites. Managing multilingual content is simplified through new document library templates that are specifically designed to maintain a relationship between the original version and different translations of a document. Simplify organization‐wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems. Give your users access to business data found in common line‐of‐business systems like SAP and Siebel through Office SharePoint Server 2007. Users can also create personalized views and interactions with business systems through a browser by dragging configurable back‐end connections. Enterprise‐wide Managed Document Repositories help your organizations store and organize business documents in one central location.
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Connect people with information and expertise. Enterprise Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007 incorporates business data along with information about documents, people, and Web pages to produce comprehensive, relevant results. Features like duplicate collapsing, spelling correction, and alerts improve the relevance of the results, so you can easily find what you need. Accelerate shared business processes across organizational boundaries. Without coding any custom applications, you can use smart, electronic forms–driven solutions to collect critical business information from customers, partners, and suppliers through a Web browser. Built‐in data validation rules help you gather accurate and consistent data that can be directly integrated into back‐end systems to avoid redundancy and errors that result from manual data re‐ entry. Share business data without divulging sensitive information. Give your employees access to real‐time, interactive Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets from a Web browser through Excel Services running on Office SharePoint Server 2007. Use these spreadsheets to maintain and efficiently share one central and up‐to‐date version while helping to protect any proprietary information embedded in the documents (such as financial models). Enable people to make better‐informed decisions by presenting business‐critical information in one central location. Office SharePoint Server 2007 makes it easy to create live, interactive business intelligence (BI) portals that assemble and display business‐critical information from disparate sources, using integrated BI capabilities such as dashboards, Web Parts, scorecards, key performance indicators (KPIs), and business data connectivity technologies. Centralized Report Center sites give users a single place for locating the latest reports, spreadsheets, or KPIs. Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on an open, scalable architecture, with support for Web services and interoperability standards including XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The server has rich, open application programming interfaces (APIs) and event handlers for lists and documents. These features provide integration with existing systems and the flexibility to incorporate new non‐Microsoft IT investments.
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ROLE‐BASED TEMPLATES FOR SHAREPOINT MY SITES Every job role is unique and demanding. As people work to drive business outcomes, they have to balance the complexities of interacting with multiple systems, tracking goals, and relating to surrounding processes. IT organizations have been seeking role‐based solutions that can provide information workers with common interfaces to access priority information.
CUSTOM INFORMATION RELEVANT TO YOUR ROLE With personalization becoming an increasingly important business need and the key to effective collaboration, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers My Site, a personal site that pulls together summary views of personal information and provides full control over information "for me, by me, and about me." Role‐Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites are custom templates designed for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and tailored to address the unique needs and requirements of specific roles. They are envisioned as extensions to the standard My Site functionality, providing a personal portal and dashboard data relevant to your role. Role‐Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites can provide enhanced business insight and help drive company‐wide productivity through a common interface to access priority information from varied sources and systems related to job roles, individual responsibilities, and surrounding processes. The templates display information in a way that is familiar and easy, and is built around the way people in the company work, enabling business decision‐making with greater confidence.
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INTEGRATION WITHIN YOUR BUSINESS Role‐Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites are pre‐configured to display, in a common environment, role‐relevant data from sources such as line of business systems, desktop tools, and portals. The templates make use of SharePoint Server 2007 capabilities, such as audience targeting, KPIs, workflows, Excel services, Business Data Catalog, and others. The templates are built using existing out‐of‐the‐box SharePoint Web parts, and are flexible, providing a starting point for custom development. They can be integrated with existing systems, customized, extended, and even replicated. IT departments can quickly deploy role‐based portals, as well as cost‐effective and easy‐to‐use solutions, that integrate with important IT investments. ROLE‐BASED TEMPLATES FOR SHAREPOINT MY SITES Development of the Role‐Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites took into account the extensive research that produced the Microsoft Dynamics Customer Model, a model that focuses on the daily tasks of individual roles within an organization. The research was leveraged to create functionality that is relevant to each role and provide a starting point for your own role‐ based personal portals. Currently available templates include: • Sales Account Manager The Sales Account Manager template helps managers streamline the process of analyzing sales and opportunity information for their overall decision making. The template assists in customer account tracking against a set of performance metrics, such as quarterly revenue, growth, and opportunity. It also provides a graphical view of the geographical distribution of product sales and opportunities. The overall design of this Role‐Based My Site template is to help Sales Account Managers attain their goals of customer satisfaction and revenue augmentation. • Controller‐Financial Analyst The Controller‐Financial Analyst template helps controllers and financial analysts automate the process of analyzing financial data and information, helping them in their overall decision‐making process. The template assists in tracking top performing products and opportunities at different geography levels. It also provides a graphical view of product sales and revenue. The overall design of this Role‐Based My Site template is to help Controllers/Financial Analysts achieve their goals of communicating overall corporate performance, budget, and future growth projection to the management, investors, and other stakeholders. Additional Role‐Based Templates coming soon: • HR Manager • IT Manager • Marketing Manager • Customer Service Manager • Administrative Assistant
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COLLABORATION IN MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 helps your organization get more done by providing a platform for sharing information and working together in teams, communities and people‐driven processes. Office SharePoint Server is an important part of the overall Microsoft collaboration vision and integrates with other collaborative products to offer a comprehensive infrastructure for working with others.
IMPROVE TEAM PRODUCTIVITY High performing teams are a key to better business results. • Give users the ability to create and control their own collaborative workspaces. Make it easy for teams to adapt workspaces to the needs of the project. • Manage projects more efficiently with the project task list template. Visualize task relationships and project status with automated Gantt charts. • Coordinate teamwork with shared calendars, alerts and notifications. Connect team calendars to the desktop with Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007. • Communicate with team members in context using presence and instant messaging. • Make it easy to include and work with team members from outside the organization.
AUTHOR, REVIEW, AND PUBLISH DOCUMENTS Improvements in key document‐centric processes produce better content in less time. • Use document workspaces to streamline the document creation process.
ENABLE DISCONNECTED PARTICIPATION WITH OFFLINE SUPPORT. •
Manage the document lifecycle with integrated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities.
STREAMLINE PEOPLE‐DRIVEN BUSINESS PROCESSES Improved communication and coordination in people‐driven processes means more rigorous execution in traditionally hard‐ to‐reach parts of the business. • Deploy standard site templates to improve common people driven processes like issue tracking. • Drive out process variation with workflow. • Create collaborative applications using integrated application development capabilities.
CREATE, CAPTURE, AND SHARE COMMUNITY KNOWLEDGE Sharing best practices in expert communities drives awareness and adoption of business process innovation. • Broadcast information with blogs and Really Simple Syndication (RSS). • Capture community knowledge with wikis. • Encourage dialogue with surveys and discussions.
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PORTAL SITES IN MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 Portal sites connect your people to business critical information, expertise, and applications. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is a world class Enterprise Portal platform that makes it easy to build and maintain portal sites for every aspect of your business.
Portal sites connect your people to important business resources.
CONNECT YOUR PEOPLE TO INFORMATION AND EXPERTISE Quick, easy access to critical information and expertise means better decisions and more rigorous execution. • A comprehensive portal framework makes it easy to build portal sites that meet the specific requirements of your audience. A flexible, highly scalable architecture supports personal, divisional, intranet, extranet, and Internet sites. • Integrated web content management makes customizing site look‐and‐feel easy. Powerful authoring features simplify content contribution. Centrally managed site design, publishing and deployment capabilities seamlessly integrate cutting‐edge web content management into the overall portal platform. • Cutting‐edge social networking technology makes finding and managing expertise easier than ever before.
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CONNECT YOUR PEOPLE TO KEY BUSINESS APPLICATIONS Consolidated access to existing business applications drives consistent performance of common business tasks. Streamlined development of new composite applications can lead to order of magnitude improvements in important business processes. • A sophisticated application development environment shortens development time for highly customized business applications. • A comprehensive application integration framework allows you to quickly assemble composite applications from existing systems. • State‐of‐the‐art application governance features provide fine‐grained control over the application execution environment.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server delivers a rich development environment for assembling composite applications from services provided by line‐of‐business systems.
CONNECT YOUR PEOPLE TO ROLE‐SPECIFIC RESOURCES Personalized information delivery increases the relevance and value of information. • Audience targeting features allow information owners to decide how, when and where specific audiences consume their information. • The My Site personal site pulls together summary views of personal information, providing full control over information "for me, by me, and about me." • Personalized information rollup allows users to create customized summaries of important information in the portal.
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SEARCH IN MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is the Microsoft enterprise search solution for organizations that want to increase productivity and reduce information overload by providing their employees, partners, and customers the ability to find relevant content in a wide range of repositories and formats. With actionable search results that respect security permissions, Office SharePoint Server 2007 lets users go beyond documents and across repositories to unlock information, find people, and locate expertise in the enterprise. BUILT FOR THE ENTERPRISE In Office SharePoint Server 2007, search results are delivered quickly and relevance is tuned for enterprise and line‐of‐ business data. • Relevance is tuned for enterprise content with the best results across structured and unstructured data sources determined by a rich and broad range of factors. • Robust security, granular administrative controls comprehensive monitoring, analytics, and reporting help ensure compliance and protect intellectual property (IP). • Enterprise‐grade scalability, extensibility, and manageability meet the needs of even the largest organizations. UNLOCK DATA AND EXPERTISE Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides out‐of‐the‐box search for common enterprise repositories and file types as well as for people and experts. With Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can: • Search file shares, Web sites, SharePoint sites, Exchange Public Folders, and Lotus Notes databases out of the box and easily extend search to third party sources and file types. • Index, search, and intelligently display information from line‐of‐business applications, relational databases, and other structured content using the Business Data Catalog. • Leverage "people search" capabilities to find people not only by department or job title but also by expertise, social distance, and common interests. INTEGRATED USER EXPERIENCE Enterprise search functionality is integrated with the collaboration, portals, content management, forms and business intelligence features of SharePoint Server 2007 and can be integrated with other 2007 Office system products to help users easily find, use, and share information and increase productivity. • Find, use and share information in the context of where you are working with the familiar tools you use every day. • Results are displayed more clearly, hits are highlighted, duplicate entries are collapsed, and synonyms are suggested. • Results are actionable and further enhanced through optional integration with tools such as real‐time communications.
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MICROSOFT ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT Over the last several years, organizations have created a huge volume of unstructured content that includes documents, e‐ mail messages, videos, instant messages, Web pages, and more. This content often exists in a state of unmanaged chaos that prevents an organization from properly using these valuable assets for better knowledge sharing, improved customer communications, and increased process efficiency. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) from Microsoft is a key component of an organization's infrastructure that can help companies overcome these challenges. Built on a well‐integrated platform, ECM from Microsoft easily extends content management to every information worker in an organization through integration with familiar tools like the Microsoft Office system. A Microsoft ECM solution can help businesses: MANAGE DIVERSE CONTENT The document management capabilities in the Microsoft integrated ECM solution can help organizations consolidate diverse content from multiple file shares and personal drives into a centrally managed repository with consistent categorization. Integrated search capabilities can then help people find and share this information. IT organizations can also protect the content in this centrally managed repository from unauthorized access. Integrated collaboration capabilities, such as automated workflow, help people work better together to create, review, and approve documents in a more structured way. That way, they no longer have to rely solely on e‐mail to share documents. Mobile workers can also use these documents offline when they are not connected to the network. SATISFY COMPLIANCE AND LEGAL REQUIREMENTS The Microsoft ECM solution also includes integrated records management capabilities that give organizations the capability to store and protect business records in their final state. Expiration policies applied to these records help ensure that the records are retained for the appropriate time period to comply with regulations or corporate business polices, thereby mitigating legal risk to the organization. Audit trails provide proof to internal and external auditors that records have been retained appropriately. Holds can be placed on specific records under legal discovery to prevent their destruction. EFFICIENTLY MANAGE MULTIPLE WEB SITES Integrated Web content management capabilities enable people to publish Web content with an easy‐to‐use content authoring tool and a built‐in approval process. This helps ensure that content is uploaded to Web sites in a timely manner without placing a large burden on IT staff. Templates in the form of Master Pages and Page Layouts enable consistent branding to be applied to all pages, thereby helping to ensure that brand assets are properly used. A single deployment and management infrastructure for intranet, extranet, and Internet sites — as well as for multilingual sites — reduces the cost and complexity for IT departments. STREAMLINE BUSINESS PROCESSES The Microsoft ECM solution enables businesses to streamline content‐driven, collaborative business processes by providing the tools and platform for automating the tasks of these processes. Electronic forms solutions provide a mechanism for gathering and validating input for these business processes across Web sites, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office system programs. Forms can be created once and management tools allow IT to easily deploy and track the use of these forms across multiple channels. These capabilities are provided by Microsoft on a single integrated business productivity infrastructure. This significantly reduces the management burden on the IT organization since they now have a common set of tools and methodologies for managing the solution. Tight integration with familiar tools such as Microsoft Office system programs enables the Microsoft ECM solution to easily extend these capabilities to every information worker in the organization. This reduces the burden on users, who no longer need to learn new tools or change the way they work in order to participate in their organization’s content management strategy. © 2007 INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
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Workflow capabilities help reduce the barriers to user adoption.
Capabilities of ECM from Microsoft The Microsoft ECM solution provides capabilities to manage the entire lifecycle of unstructured content from creation to expiration on a single unified platform. These capabilities include document management, records management, Web content management, and forms solutions. DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT • Save time and easily reuse information. Organize and classify content within a centralized document repository to provide a consistent method for organizing, categorizing, navigating through, and quickly searching for the right information. • Help protect sensitive information. Help safeguard documents with integrated rights management that travels with documents wherever they may go. User access rights can be specified for individual items, and metadata can be removed from documents prior to final publication. • Streamline collaborative document creation. With built‐in document workflows, you can initiate, track, and collaborate on document‐oriented processes directly from within Microsoft Office system desktop programs. Important alerts and task information can be displayed in the document, helping to ensure that workflow steps are properly followed.
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RECORDS MANAGEMENT • • •
Improve legal and regulatory compliance. Apply information retention, protection, and auditing policies to business records to help ensure these records are appropriately retained. Help secure business and vital records. A security‐enhanced repository helps ensure that records are locked in the final state. Easy litigation discovery. Help ensure that information required for legal discovery can be retrieved in a cost‐ effective manner and placed on hold as per the discovery requirements.
Records Repository for long term retention.
WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT • • •
Author and publish content quickly and easily. Business groups can author and publish Web content in a timely manner with easy‐to‐use authoring tools and integrated workflows with minimal IT involvement. Maintain a consistent look and feel throughout your Web sites. Maintain consistency by providing approved master pages and page layouts that enable branding and navigation of the site to be specified once and reused by content authors. Lower deployment and management costs your Web sites. Implement a single multi‐tier infrastructure for publishing content to intranet, extranet, and Internet sites.
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FORMS SOLUTIONS • • •
Automate business processes. Automate many manual tasks by using Windows Workflow Foundation. Create new workflows with tools like Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Gather information using electronic forms. Using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, businesses can create electronic forms which are then deployed to various channels including Web sites, mobile devices, and rich client applications. Rapidly deploy and manage forms solutions. Quickly deploy forms solutions side‐by‐side upgrades to help ensure minimum downtime. View the status of all deployed forms in a single view.
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HELP BOOST EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY BY STREAMLINING EVERYDAY BUSINESS PROCESSES Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides built‐in workflow templates to automate approval, review, and archiving processes. With Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can also create, maintain, and analyze custom workflows, enabling you to streamline your collaborative processes. Electronic forms provided through InfoPath Forms Services are an integral part of such workflows. These InfoPath designed electronic forms make it easy to collect and validate information that drives your business processes. And you can collect and validate this information right from the Microsoft Office client applications you use every day. BROWSER‐BASED FORMS WITH INFOPATH FORMS SERVICES InfoPath Forms Services, which is part of Office SharePoint Server 2007, extends your reach to organizations that do not use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 by allowing you to fill out forms in a common browser or even a HTML‐enabled mobile device.
Fill out Business Process forms in a common browser or on a mobile device.
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With Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can: • Deliver your forms with a consistent user experience regardless of where they are used. Office InfoPath 2007 uses built‐in controls to deliver easy‐to‐use forms with predictable behavior, mouse‐over tips, and built‐in data validation. • Streamline your business process applications through InfoPath forms, which collect and validate the data driving your workflows. • Use built‐in collaborative workflow templates to streamline approval, review, and archiving processes. Or you can create your own custom workflows with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to build interactive collaborative applications. These applications will automatically route documents for reviews or approval, send e‐mail notifications to participants, and archive documents to meet retention policy requirements.
Loan application business process form and related document library and workflow template settings.
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INTEGRATED WORKFLOW AND DOCUMENT INFORMATION PANEL FROM WITHIN MICROSOFT OFFICE CLIENT APPLICATIONS With Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can initiate and interact with workflows right from within your Microsoft Office application. You can also collect and validate important document metadata via the document information panel. Office SharePoint Server 2007 helps you: • Collect important metadata defined by the Windows SharePoint Services library via the document information panel. The metadata may include information such as workflow status, content deadline, routing information, or other properties related to the documents lifecycle. • Create a custom document information panel that contains the rich capability of an InfoPath form, including external data connections, data validation, conditional formatting, business logic, and other controls. • Deploy document templates with advanced document management capability built directly into a document in a way that is easy and straightforward for document authors. • Initiate a workflow or set a workflow status right from your familiar Microsoft Office application such as Microsoft Office Word 2007.
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CUSTOM WORKFLOW DESIGN WITH OFFICE SHAREPOINT DESIGNER 2007 Office SharePoint Designer 2007 makes it easy to add business logic to sophisticated no‐code composite applications with the rules‐based Workflow Designer. With the Workflow Designer tool in Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can use drop‐down lists and check boxes to identify the events that trigger a workflow. You can then specify the actions and responses that follow and even identify the conditions under which other workflow events will occur.
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DELIVER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE THROUGH MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 Business Intelligence with Office SharePoint Server 2007 makes it easy for decision‐makers to access and analyze information anytime, anywhere. You can get up‐to‐date information wherever people work, collaborate, and make decisions, whether it's on the desktop or over the Web. Now, aligning employee's objectives with your corporate goals is as easy as creating a spreadsheet or report. MICROSOFT OFFICE EXCEL‐BASED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Excel Services, part of Office SharePoint Server 2007, extend the capabilities of Microsoft Office Excel 2007 by allowing broad sharing of spreadsheets, improved manageability and security and the ability to re‐use spreadsheet models using a scalable server‐based calculation service and interactive Web‐based user interface. With Excel Services, you can: • Broaden the access and availability of spreadsheets by incorporating interactive spreadsheets into business intelligence portals, dashboards, and scorecards. • Secure and protect confidential information and maintain one version of the truth by locking down access at the server.
Quickly share Office Excel 2007 worksheets by saving them to SharePoint document libraries directly from Office Excel 2007.
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• Reduce development costs, and improve time to market by using Web services to access models and data contained in spreadsheets. • Use Data Connection Libraries to provide an easy way for your users to share, manage, and discover connections to external data repositories without requiring any knowledge of the technical details.
Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet displayed using Excel Services.
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DASHBOARDS AND REPORT CENTER Create rich, interactive business intelligence (BI) dashboards that assemble and display business information from disparate sources by using built in Web Parts. These Web Parts include dynamic key performance indicators (KPI), Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services reports and a collection of business data connectivity Web Parts that can visualize information residing in back‐end line‐of‐business applications.
Personalized dashboard displayed in a Report Center including the Excel Web Parts.
With the dashboard and reporting capabilities in Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can: • Manage reports, spreadsheets, and data connections consistently using the new Report Center—an out‐of‐the‐box site template and document library optimized for report access and management including a report library, data connection library, and a business intelligence dashboard template. • Communicate goals and status to drive results using the new Web Part without writing code. The KPI Web Part can display KPI from Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets, SharePoint Lists, or manually entered data. • Easily access the business information you need by creating dynamic, personalized dashboards using integrated Filter Web Parts. Filters allow dashboards to be personalized by communicating shared parameters amongst Web Parts on a dashboard. The Filter Web Parts presents more relevant information to the user.
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BUSINESS DATA INTEGRATION AND DISCOVERY Seamlessly integrate external data into your applications using the Business Data Catalog (BDC), part of Office SharePoint Server 2007. The BDC simplifies the process of discovering and accessing data residing within backend line of business applications. Discover back‐end, line‐ of‐ business applications. Discover back‐end data quickly using SharePoint search and interact with data through a set of Business Data Web Parts. With the BDC, you can: • Search your business data as easily as you search your other content repositories. Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides an integrated, Enterprise Search experience across your enterprise data ranging from file shares, Web sites, Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes and line‐of‐business applications. • Share business data using the Business data Web Parts that allow for viewing lists, entities, and related information retrieved through the BDC. • Use convenient links that appear beside business objects returned from the BDC to easily create actions without custom coding that open Web pages, display the user interfaces of line‐of‐business applications, launch Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 forms, and perform other common actions.
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SECTION 2 – SCENARIOS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 IN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
• • • • • • • •
Automating Government Forms Using The Microsoft Office System Improving Efficiency With Department Of Defense Task Management Using The Microsoft Office System Delivering Earned Value Management For Government Agencies Using The Microsoft Office System Improving Emergency Management Collaboration For Government Agencies Using The Microsoft Office System Improving Policy Development For Government Automating Investigative Case Management For Government Agencies Using The Microsoft Office System Streamlining Case Management For Government Agencies Streamlining Legal Case Management For Government Agencies Using The Microsoft Office System
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AUTOMATING GOVERNMENT FORMS USING THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM
OVERVIEW Agencies that manage licenses and claims are often asked to do more with less. Government paper forms remain a primary data‐gathering interface, and these forms are often manually intensive and expensive to process. In addition, agency budgets are shrinking and citizens are requesting better access to information at reduced service costs. A government forms automation solution built on the Microsoft Office System can help reduce the costs associated with forms processes, while improving citizen and constituent satisfaction.
SITUATION The new mandate to government agencies is clear: Operate more efficiently and serve stakeholders more effectively. E‐ government initiatives have established new requirements for agencies to create a more electronic working environment with less paper, fewer administrative delays, and fewer redundant work tasks. Most existing government systems were designed to focus on specific objectives instead of the holistic view of organizational operations. Often, these limited systems can result in fragmented work processes that duplicate work, stymie productivity, add cost, and drain resources. These problems can make it difficult for workers to keep up with a large volume of forms and respond to requests in a timely manner.
SOLUTION The goal of a government forms automation solution is to help government agencies process forms more efficiently, achieve cost savings, and meet the demands of an online constituency. Enhance Constituent and Citizen Satisfaction • Improve constituent and citizen satisfaction through online forms instead of phone calls and paperwork • Increase visibility to the status of online form submissions • Enhance access to key, relevant government agency information Improve Government Compliance • Address Government Paperwork Elimination Act compliance concerns • Reduce costs through improved automation of information collection, retrieval, and storage • Reduce errors introduced through hand‐processing of paper forms More Easily Share Information • Decrease resources spent on administration of information and data • Improve multi‐agency communication and collaboration • Reduce costs by requiring fewer people to process paper‐based forms
BENEFITS A solution based on the Microsoft Office System can enable government agencies to more effectively and efficiently attain the following benefits: • Higher cost savings while meeting customer demand for real‐time access to information • Improved access and analysis of information for improved decision making • Reduced time spent on administrative tasks
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CHALLENGES Historically, most existing government systems were designed to focus on specific objectives instead of the holistic view of organizational operations. These outdated and limited systems have resulted in fragmented work processes that can duplicate work, reduce productivity, add cost, and drain resources. Such problems can make it difficult for workers to keep up with the huge volume of forms and respond to requests in a timely manner. As IT groups approach these new projects, they can face many technical challenges: • Paper forms remain the primary data‐gathering interface. This means that IT staff will be required to build systems that provide familiar interfaces for agency staff and citizens in order to keep training costs low • The need for information access while migrating to automation solutions. There are many different systems in use today across government agencies. Choosing a solution that has strong interoperability capabilities is critical. • Management requires lower IT spending. Although not a true technical challenge, the reality is that IT staff will be required to build these new systems while under budget pressure.
WHY CHOOSE THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM? To address the challenges of automating government forms, it is important to choose a platform that is familiar to users, has deep development tools support, and a broad partner network. The Microsoft Office System is an ideal platform choice for a government forms automation solution because it can provide the following benefits: • Interoperates with other systems, using XML and Web services. These features can help enable integration between existing systems and solutions built using the Microsoft Office System. In particular, agencies with legacy data can more easily integrate that data with the Microsoft Office System through XML and Web services. • Uses existing software applications that are familiar and understood by users. Most users are familiar with Microsoft Office System products and technologies, such as Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. This existing familiarity can help keep training costs low for both agency employees and citizens. • Deploys quickly with minimal IT impact. Deploying SharePoint Products and Technologies Web Parts can be done quickly. This can help IT staff work within the budget constraints they are currently experiencing. • Lowers total cost of ownership as a result of using existing investments in Microsoft software products. Many agencies have invested already in Microsoft Office System technologies and products. • Offers a rich network of technology partners experienced with Microsoft Office technologies.
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IMPROVING EFFICIENCY WITH DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE TASK MANAGEMENT USING THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM
OVERVIEW With unprecedented access to real‐time information, the United States Department of Defense needs to give commanders and subordinates the ability to efficiently carry out ever‐changing tasks. Unfortunately, many organizations rely on paper documentation and ad hoc task management solutions that do not meet current administrative needs. Task management solutions based on the Microsoft Office System give staff members the tools they need to collaborate and track task progress in real time, improving unit effectiveness and productivity.
SITUATION As the mission and structure of the Department of Defense (DoD) has evolved, the operational tempo has increased and command and control decisions have become increasingly decentralized. The DoD is a global organization, and senior leadership is tasked with the management of materials, resources, and information. As a result of these changes, the DoD needs solutions that help manage tasks so that work can be done more efficiently.
SOLUTION A task management solution is focused on increasing the ability of personnel to quickly create tasks and manage workflow. In addition, a solution enables senior leadership to view task‐based status reports created by the individuals actually working on the tasks. Specifically, a task management solution helps agencies: • More Easily Manage Tasks. Both task owners and senior leadership can more easily manage tasks through a role‐based dashboard using Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. • Quickly Share Information. A task management solution makes it easy for task owners to change task status and alert senior leadership to changes or issues. • Utilize Existing, Familiar Interfaces. Using an existing, familiar user interface, such as the Microsoft Office System, ensures that a solution is used and adopted and that users have a high degree of satisfaction with the selected solution. By using structured forms to capture data and create task solutions, end users are capable of building solutions themselves rather than relying on IT staff. • Improve Collaboration and Communication. Enable task owners and senior leadership to more easily share information and track results.
BENEFITS A task management solution enables agencies to meet the following needs: • Align individual tasks to the proper resources and track their progress • Effectively evaluate task objectives and effectiveness • Quickly realign resources and priorities as tasks evolve, for effective task completion
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CHALLENGES To meet 21st century demands, national defense departments and agencies must do more with less; at the same time they must become decentralized and rely more on civilian infrastructure. The current tools used by many defense agencies for task management are proprietary, do not scale, and are a hindrance to command staff. Additionally, IT staff at defense agencies are already overburdened and often face the following technical challenges when introducing a new task management solution: • Tracking status of tasks is difficult and project visibility is limited. Today, existing IT staff can determine the right technical approach to managing tasks, including the challenge of choosing between out‐of‐the‐box solutions and custom solutions they build themselves. • Task status and individual tasks are trapped in documents. Data that is captured in forms must be transferred to a system somewhere for analysis. This is a challenge for the IT staff supporting these task management systems. • Existing solutions are too cumbersome for staff and have low adoption and acceptance. Because existing solutions are cumbersome and hard to use, the IT staff members must determine the correct help desk strategy and also focus on how to manage the risk of the solution not working properly or not capturing all the data due to user error. • Personnel cannot easily prioritize ongoing tasks, and resources are consumed by low priority tasks. Often the technology used today simply does not have the capabilities to address these key issues. Because of this, the IT staff members are faced with significant technical challenges to overcome.
WHY CHOOSE THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM? The Microsoft Office System is an ideal choice for a task management solution because it provides the following benefits: • Interoperates with other systems using XML and Web services. This ensures that the existing systems can integrate with the task management system. • Uses existing software applications that are in place and well understood by end users. Most end users are familiar with Microsoft Office and other Microsoft Office System products and technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. This existing familiarity helps keep training costs low. • Deploys quickly with minimal IT impact. Deploying SharePoint Products and Technologies Web Parts is simple, straightforward, and can be done quickly. • Lowers total cost of ownership by using existing investments in Microsoft software products. • Offers a rich network of partners well versed with Microsoft Office technologies.
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DELIVERING EARNED VALUE MANAGEMENT FOR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES USING THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM
OVERVIEW Organizations that manage multiple, complex projects involving several subcontractors often spend substantial time gathering earned value management (EVM) data. Chasing earned value information from subcontractors to meet reporting requirements leaves less time to analyze performance data and improve project management. An earned value management solution based on the Microsoft Office System gives federal agencies the ability to integrate cost, schedule, and technical performance data from multiple sources to meet EVM reporting requirements, reduce costs, and harness EVM information to better manage projects.
SITUATION Recently, the Federal Government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stated that all government agencies are required to report the results of their projects through the Earned Value (EV) process. This analysis is a way to review the success of projects by analyzing the value they earn for the agency. For organizations that manage multiple, complex projects involving several subcontractors, this process can be very time consuming. To perform the right EV analysis, project managers are required to gather a significant amount of data from both internal and external sources. They also must do this on a on a monthly basis and collate the data into structured monthly reports. Spending so much time chasing information leaves little time to actually analyze performance data and use the information to improve project management. Successful project managers realize that the key to success is to minimize the impact of EV analysis so they can spend more time on their current projects.
SOLUTION EVM solutions built on the Microsoft Office System enable agencies to easily integrate schedule, cost, and performance data from multiple sources and subcontractors, which enhances the value of existing IT investments and simplifies EV data collection and reporting. Improve Communication, Collaboration, and Visibility • More efficient teamwork through central location for schedules, task updates, percent complete, issues, and deliverables • More consistent, standard EVM reports based upon OMB set standards • Continuous improvement through a central environment for sharing project lessons learned, metrics, and best practices Streamline Data Collection and Reporting • Begin projects quicker using templates • Automate task assignments to team members for actual data collection • Improve visibility to task status for all team members • Resolve issues associated with tasks before they become larger problems More Effective Project and Program Level Controls • Improve end user satisfaction through integration with familiar tools • Direct integration with Microsoft Office Excel 2003 for immediate one‐click report creation based on live data • Lower IT impact through use of existing software • Ensure quicker task resolution through higher, simpler visibility
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BENEFITS A solution based on the Microsoft Office System enables government agencies to: • Integrate schedule, cost and performance data effectively. • Gather EVM data from multiple subcontractors. • Provide EVM data in formats that can be used across the organization. • Minimize project team resistance to an EVM system. • Gain insights into project performance from a single dashboard. • Enhance the value of existing software investments.
CHALLENGES Today government agencies are required to use earned value (EV) analysis as part the project management process. Almost every agency must start doing EV reporting, which rolls up to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) funding authorities, who will use the data to determine future funding levels. Because of this, agencies must determine the appropriate ways to minimize the impact of EV reporting. They often look to process automation to streamline the reporting process. IT staff at agencies, however, will face some significant challenges in attempting to automate the EVM process: • Communication and collaboration tools will be required to help communicate across many different stakeholders. • Collecting EVM data is costly and time consuming. Because of this, IT staff will have to spend time doing custom integration across many different systems. • IT staff will be required to gather project data and integrate financial data, and might be unfamiliar with understanding all the costs associated with reporting requirements. • EVM data is complex and difficult to manage. IT staff will have to determine the appropriate approach to managing such a large amount of data.
WHY CHOOSE THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM? To address the challenges of Earned Value and to help mitigate some of the technical challenges, it is crucial to choose a platform that is familiar to end users, has deep development tools support, and a broad partner network. The Microsoft Office System is an ideal platform choice for an earned value management solution because it provides the following benefits: • Interoperates with other systems using XML and Web services. This ensures that the existing systems can integrate with the Earned Value management process. • Uses existing software applications that are in place and well understood by end users. Most end users are familiar with Microsoft Office and other Microsoft Office System products and technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. This existing familiarity will help keep training costs low. • Deploys quickly with minimal IT impact. Deploying SharePoint Products and Technologies Web Parts is simple, straightforward, and can be done quickly. • Lowers total cost of ownership as a result of using existing investments in Microsoft software products. • Offers a rich network of partners well‐versed with Microsoft Office technologies.
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IMPROVING EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT COLLABORATION FOR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES USING THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM
OVERVIEW Agencies responsible for mitigating against, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters need the ability to collaborate and share information during an emergency response. Lack of effective information sharing can degrade a common operating picture (COP), which can lead to a fragmented overall emergency response. A collaborative emergency management solution based on the Microsoft Office system gives agencies the ability to ensure they are focused on changing the outcome of a disaster instead of managing information.
SITUATION Today, emergency management agencies face the following challenges: • No clear COP during emergency response and recovery. A key recommendation of the NIMS is the development of a clear COP during emergency response so that the missions, goals, and objectives are clearly disseminated and understood by all levels of government. • No effective solution for cross‐organization information sharing and collaboration. The collaboration tools that exist today might work well for a single agency, but do not work well across agencies. • Need for security without complexity. The time‐consuming process of cross‐certifying systems to encrypt information can delay response and negatively affect the outcome. • Only, unfamiliar online tools are in place today. Common emergency tools such as "break‐glass‐to‐use" systems should be replaced by tools used on a daily basis. These challenges can be overcome. Government agencies will benefit from a collaborative emergency management solution to help them more effectively respond to emergencies.
SOLUTION Solutions built using the Microsoft Office System enable government agencies to improve their emergency management processes in three key areas: Improved Communications and Collaboration • Seamless information sharing • Easy access to contact information • Single point of integration for key information More Effective Day‐to‐Day Operations • Broad solution capabilities enable collaboration across all phases of emergency management • Key information easily available • Common location for all files • Single location for updating and rapidly changing information Better COP • Comprehensive location for requesting resources and information • Ability to see a scorecard of emergency situation status • Rapidly collect, filter, and distribute information as it is obtained to all levels of government
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BENEFITS A Microsoft Office System‐based solution enables federal and state agencies to more effectively and efficiently implement a collaborative emergency management solution and realize the following: • COP and situational awareness during emergency response • Improved day‐to‐day operations • Better, faster decisions using more up‐to‐date information
CHALLENGES IT organizations at government agencies are under increasing pressure to do more with less. IT organizations at agencies will benefit from using the software and technology they have in place today—but this is challenging for a number of reasons: • Often, agency systems that contain key data for effective collaboration are already in place. Those systems need to be “stitched” together, which often costs significant time and money. • Many agencies might already have collaboration systems in place. The challenge is to improve upon the existing systems while enhancing the collaborative experience within a reasonable project scope. • Many end users are not familiar with or are uncomfortable using new systems. Providing users something that is comfortable to use but also valuable is challenging.
WHY CHOOSE THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM? To address the challenges of a collaborative emergency management system, it is crucial to choose a platform that is familiar to end users, has deep development tools support, and a broad partner network. The Microsoft Office System is an ideal platform for a collaborative emergency management solution because it provides the following benefits: • Interoperates with other systems using XML and Web services. Government agencies have unique requirements, since many legacy systems usually exist within their IT environments. • Uses existing software applications that are in place and well understood by end users. Most government agency end users are familiar with Microsoft Office and other Microsoft Office System products. This existing familiarity will help keep training costs low and helps agencies get more from the software they have purchased. • Deploys quickly with minimal IT impact. Many Microsoft Office System products have broad installation and deployment support, and many government agencies have employees with the existing skills needed to deploy these solutions. This helps agencies quickly gain value from their existing staff already resourced to support these solutions. • Lowers total cost of ownership as a result of using existing investments in Microsoft software products. This enables government agencies to make the most of taxpayer funds. • Offers a rich network of partners well‐versed with Microsoft Office technologies. Many Microsoft technology partners are focused on providing support to government agencies.
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IMPROVING POLICY DEVELOPMENT FOR GOVERNMENT
OVERVIEW Making policy is one of the most fundamental government functions. Today, shifting demographic, social, and political fronts require government to develop innovative, citizen‐centric policies faster. With a solution built using the 2007 Microsoft Office system, government agencies can improve how people work together and manage their information. Improvements in collaboration and content management help ensure that key decision makers receive the right information to make better, quicker decisions and respond to the needs of their constituents. Policy development solutions built on the 2007 Microsoft Office system provide government agencies a suite of collaboration and work management tools to create innovative, citizen‐ centric policy.
SITUATION Today, government policy development is often a slow, manual process, in which policy developers rely on time‐consuming paper‐based processes and face‐to‐face meetings. The current processes and methods inhibit transparency and accountability. Some of the challenges include: Organizational silos that make collaboration difficult Inability to capture feedback on proposed policies Lack of security infrastructure, which can pose a threat to sensitive data
SOLUTION A policy development solution built using the 2007 Microsoft Office system meets the needs of government agencies by facilitating collaboration and the sharing of information. Improved Communication and Collaboration • Enables improved visibility into the policy development process by enabling key decision makers to track progress in real‐time • Enables improved multi‐agency communication and collaboration • Enhances teamwork with easy creation of team‐focused, mobile, cross‐organizational workspaces • Displays the current availability status of each team member Enhanced Citizen Experience • Improves citizen satisfaction by providing online policy information • Allows citizens to submit feedback through online blogs Improved Content Management • Stores data in a centralized location • Manages the entire content lifecycle with easy‐to‐use tools • Quickly locates documents indexed by their metadata and content types, and also finds people associated with each document using integrated search functionality Enhanced Security • Improves security of policy storage and transfer • Allows only authorized people to view and work on policy‐related documents • Helps ensure version control of policy documents
BENEFITS By adopting a collaborative policy development solution based on the Microsoft Office system, government agencies can attain the following benefits: • Policy developers can focus on creating innovative and citizen‐centric policies • Decision makers can receive the right information to make better, quicker decisions and respond to the needs of their constituents © 2007 INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
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• Agencies can incorporate citizen feedback into the policy development process
CHALLENGES Some of the key technical challenges that government agencies face in creating policy include: • Key decision makers receive conflicting information because data is stored in disparate and disconnected systems • Developing policy is time‐consuming and still largely dependent on manual processes, such as moving physical files from one office to another • Policy‐related communication can expose sensitive data • The decision‐making process can be extremely slow because agencies lack channels to communicate with each other and with constituents • Specialists across government agencies and departments duplicate effort because they use different systems
WHY CHOOSE THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM? A policy development solution built using the Microsoft Office system facilitates the collaboration and information‐sharing that government agencies need. Such a solution has the following benefits: • Gives people at all levels of the organization access to the aggregated information they need for better and quicker decision making • Automates paper‐based processes by providing simple workflow capabilities for assigning project tasks and tracking status in real‐time • Enables enhanced security for storing and transferring sensitive data • Enables efficient teamwork with a central location for all tasks and issues to be shared To address the challenges of government policy development processes, it is important to choose a platform that is familiar to users, has deep development tools support, and a broad partner network. In addition to the solution‐specific benefits mentioned above, the Microsoft Office system in general is an ideal platform choice because it can provide the following benefits: • Interoperates with other systems, including legacy systems, through XML and Web services • Uses software applications that users already know and understand, such as Microsoft SharePoint Products and Services, and this familiarity helps keep training costs low • Deploys quickly with minimal IT impact, which can help IT staff work within budget constraints • Reduces total cost of ownership as a result of using existing investments in Microsoft software products • Offers a network of technology partners experienced with Microsoft Office system technologies
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AUTOMATING INVESTIGATIVE CASE MANAGEMENT FOR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES USING THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM
OVERVIEW Government agencies that conduct investigative work often do not have the tools required to collaborate efficiently with internal and external stakeholders. Additionally, they often spend a significant time on case administration. This results in a decreased capacity to conduct investigations. With a solution based on the Microsoft Office System, agencies can streamline their processes to plan, develop, and run an investigation, which helps resolve cases faster, and provides better service to constituents.
SITUATION Today, government investigators are focused more than ever on improving efficiency and reducing expenses. Case workers must keep up with case volume while maintaining case processing speed. Additionally, many investigative case management systems that exist today are outdated and built on legacy technology. Not only does it require additional IT resources to staff and support these systems, but they are difficult and cumbersome to use for government investigators and case workers.
Figure 1 Illustration showing how coordinating multiple team members across the investigation is challenging and chaotic
Also, in recent years, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has required that government agencies comply with e‐ government mandates such as the Government Paperwork Elimination Act and Electronic Records Management Standard DOD 5015.2 in order to obtain OMB budget and funding. This has increased the focus on streamlining case management procedures.
SOLUTION Investigative case management solutions based on the Microsoft Office System help government organizations work more efficiently, resolve cases faster, and provide better constituent service. Specifically, a solution could help address the challenges of government organizations by delivering: • Centralized, collaborative process management. By delivering a central collaboration hub with pre‐defined case management workflow processes, case workers and investigators will know exactly which tasks require attention at the right time. • Integrated e‐mail notification. By sending e‐mail alerts and notifications through Microsoft Outlook, case workers will not miss items requiring their attention. • Workflow and approval. Pre‐defined workflow rules help maintain consistency across each investigative case management process, and reduce the chance of errors or variability. • Records management. Once a case is complete, each document associated with the case is archived with appropriate security credentials applied. © 2007 INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
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BENEFITS By adopting an investigative case management for government solution based on the Microsoft Office System, government agencies will: • Streamline processes to plan, develop, and run an investigation. • Resolve cases faster. • Provide better service to constituents.
CHALLENGES Today, there are a number of technical challenges associated with building an investigative case management solution: • Different systems hold key data required for effective investigative case management. Most investigative case management systems require data from many existing solutions. Often, these solutions are built on legacy technology which increases the support and application development costs. • There is no consistent manner to collaborate on projects, which requires many systems to be "stitched" together. Investigative case management solutions require that business processes work together seamlessly. Because these processes are often not integrated, ad‐hoc collaboration solutions must be built around them, increasing the IT support burden. • There is no easy way to maintain key case information in one location. Document management, security, and access control is often added onto solutions, which requires increased development time and effort.
WHY CHOOSE THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM? To address the challenges of an investigative case management process, choosing a platform that is familiar to end‐users, has deep development tools support, and a broad partner network is critical. The Microsoft Office System is an ideal platform choice for an investigative case management solution because it provides the following benefits: • Interoperates with other systems using XML and Web services. An investigative case management solution based on the Microsoft Office System ensures that it will integrate with other legacy systems already in place. • Uses existing software applications that are in place and well‐understood by end‐users. Central collaboration software like Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies help users work in the context of their daily work processes, rather than learn new technologies. This also keeps IT support staff costs lower than if new or custom solutions were introduced. • Deploys quickly with minimal IT impact. Investigative case management systems use many out‐of‐the‐box features of existing Microsoft products and technologies, so they require little deployment time and resources. • Lowers total cost of ownership as a result of using existing investments in Microsoft software products. Many organizations will find they already own key components of an investigative case management solution. • Offers a rich network of partners well‐versed with Microsoft Office technologies. Many proven partners are available to build investigative case management solutions.
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STREAMLINING LEGAL CASE MANAGEMENT FOR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES USING THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM
OVERVIEW Government agencies that manage legal cases often waste precious time and resources on the manual and administrative tasks of creating, finding, copying, and sharing case documents. With a solution based on the Microsoft Office System, agencies can streamline processes to connect people and data within a department or across the entire agency, which helps them manage work more efficiently, resolve cases faster, and provide better service to constituents.
SITUATION Today, efficiency is paramount in all government organizations. Legal departments must keep up with the volume of cases, respond to requests in a timely manner, and stay in compliance with government mandates. Additionally, agencies face continual pressure to stretch their budgets and do more with less.
Figure 1 Illustration showing how legal professionals struggle to keep up with the communication requirements through the complete legal process
SOLUTION Solutions for legal case management using the Microsoft Office System help agencies work more efficiently, resolve cases faster, and provide better constituent service. Specifically, these types of solutions will help address the challenges of government agencies by delivering: • A centralized legal activity portal. Using a centralized document repository keeps all key pieces of information related to a case or matter in one location. This ensures that no information is lost and that it can be easily located. • Integrated work management. By integrating with existing applications such as e‐mail and document authoring, as well as introducing new functionality in the form of online note‐taking, a legal case management solution helps keep information streamlined and organized. • Note capturing capabilities. By using new, innovative applications such as Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, traditional hand‐written, paper‐based notes that often take significant time to summarize or search can become more integrated with existing desktop tools and applications. Notes will be searchable, support audio recordings, and support Tablet PC ink technology.
BENEFITS By adopting a legal case management for government solution using the Microsoft Office System, government agencies can: • Work more efficiently. • Resolve cases faster. • Provide better constituent service.
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CHALLENGES Today, there are a number of technical challenges associated with building a legal case management solution: • Different systems hold key data required for effective case management. Often the work of integrating these systems into the context of daily work processes—for instance, providing key details about legal case management documentation—is technically cumbersome and expensive. • No consistent manner to collaborate on projects exists, so many systems need to be "stitched" together and many pieces of information need to be shared on paper. Many case management processes require that notes be integrated into the software process for compliance. This usually involves scanning or re‐keying the document, which requires more technical resources. • No easy way to maintain key case information in one location. Often legal professionals use many different forms of communication—from taking notes to speaking on the telephone. And these systems all have their own technical architecture to support, requiring expensive IT resources to integrate them into a single case management system.
WHY CHOOSE THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM? To address the challenges of the legal case management process, choosing a platform that is familiar to end users, has deep development tools support, and a broad partner network is critical. The Microsoft Office System is an ideal platform choice for a legal case management solution because it provides the following benefits: • Interoperates with other systems using XML and Web services. Key documents and data can be integrated into the processes that already exist around case management. • Uses existing software applications that are in place and well‐understood by end users. A legal case management solution builds upon already‐supported software such as Microsoft Office Word 2003 and lowers the IT burden. • Deploys quickly with minimal IT impact. With Microsoft partners, organization can quickly deploy a legal case management solution using common technologies and often using support staff already in place. • Lowers total cost of ownership as a result of using existing investments in Microsoft software. Many organizations will find they already own key components of a legal case management solution. • Offers a rich network of partners well‐versed with Microsoft Office technologies. Many proven partners are available for legal case management solution development and customization.
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STREAMLINING CASE MANAGEMENT FOR GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
OVERVIEW As government agencies strive to provide seamless, citizen‐centric services, case management is becoming increasingly important. Agencies often waste precious time and resources on manual and administrative tasks instead of on driving cases toward resolution. With a solution based on the 2007 Microsoft Office system, agencies can streamline processes to connect people and data, helping those agencies manage work more efficiently, resolve cases more quickly, and provide better service to constituents.
SITUATION Case management is at the core of an agency's service model. In the public sector it requires that case workers efficiently and effectively communicate with citizens, branch staff, and third‐party service providers. Case workers must gather case data, review the information, associate it with related cases, provide relevant information to involved parties, and maintain the information for easy retrieval. The nature of each case may vary between government agencies, but agencies at all levels (local, regional, and central) often face similar challenges when it comes to case management: • Agencies lack systems that help case workers collaborate across agency and departmental boundaries • Citizens cannot easily open new cases and find the status of existing cases • Case workers struggle with the case management process, resulting in prolonged case resolution times
SOLUTION Because of increased pressure from citizens to reduce costs and improve services, government agencies need to implement efficient service delivery models. A case management solution built using the 2007 Microsoft Office system can help ensure uniform case processing, shorter response times, and simpler administrative duties by reducing data entry and eliminating wasteful, paper‐based processes. Such a case management solution offers the following features: Connects case workers and systems • Provides a platform for cross‐agency communication and collaboration • Reduces the time to file, submit, organize, track, and complete each case • Improves visibility into the case management process • Enhances teamwork with easy creation and management of self‐service and cross‐agency workspaces Enhances Citizen Experience • Enables citizens to reach agencies more easily and effectively by using browser‐based forms • Enables citizens to track the status of their cases • Helps agency workers track customer cases so that none are overlooked Improves Content Management • Indexes documents by metadata and content type for faster searches • Consolidates views of real‐time case information with an easy‐to‐use dashboard Reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) • Integrates into existing technology platforms, which reduces migration time and training costs • Improves productivity with new features such as the ribbon, which makes product features easier for people to find and use
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BENEFITS By adopting a case management solution based on the 2007 Microsoft Office system, government organizations can attain the following benefits: • Reduce costs by automating paper‐based processes • Respond to citizen needs more quickly by using portal‐based solutions that enable case managers to access and research existing knowledge repositories • Streamline and automate case management tasks so that case workers can spend more time on high‐impact interactions with citizens and spend less time on documenting information • Leverage users' experience with an environment that is still familiar, but redesigned for even better ease‐of‐use
CHALLENGES Government agencies at all levels (local, regional, and central) often face these case management challenges: • Multiple information access points create inconsistent and duplicate data, which hinders compliance • Paper‐based processes increase the risk of manual errors • Lack of connections between government agencies keeps case workers from working efficiently across departments and governmental layers • Citizens cannot track case status • Multiple data sources increase both the number of compliance issues and the potential for security issues
WHY CHOOSE THE MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM? A case management solution built using the 2007 Microsoft Office system offers the following benefits: • Provides a central location for storing all case‐related information • Provides a single interface for accessing all case‐related information • Provides version control and audit control • Improves compliance processes • Provides a more secure environment to connect with partners In addition, the 2007 Microsoft Office system is an ideal solution platform because it can provide the following benefits: • Interoperates with other systems using XML and Web services. This helps ensure that existing systems can integrate with the case management process • Uses software applications that users already understand, such as Microsoft Office Word 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. This familiarity can help minimize training costs and ensure that workers can start using the solution quickly • Deploys quickly with minimal IT impact • Lowers total cost of ownership by leveraging investments in Microsoft software products • Offers a network of partners who are well‐versed in Microsoft Office technologies
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SECTION 3 – MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 DATASHEETS
• • • • • • •
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Product Datasheet Automating Government Forms Using the Microsoft Office System Improving Efficiency with Department of Defense Task Management Using the Microsoft Office System Delivering Earned Value Management for Government Agencies Using the Microsoft Office System Collaborative Emergency Management for Government using the Microsoft Office System
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SECTION 4 – MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 CUSTOMER REFERENCES
• • • •
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Customer Evidence Press Release ‐ Federal Agency Reduces Costs, Speeds Time To Market With Collaboration Tool Case Study ‐ Government Agency Uses Microsoft Process to Analyze and Migrate Lotus Notes Applications Solution Brief – South Holland District Council
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MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007 CUSTOMER EVIDENCE
"Del Monte looks forward to using Excel 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to improve the security of proprietary information and better manage workflow throughout its business processes." — Jonathan Wynn, business lead in Strategic and Capacity Planning, Del Monte Foods "The familiar environment of Microsoft Office Excel and the availability of centralized and Web‐enabled workbooks served as strong drivers to get us interested in the 2007 Microsoft Office system. We’re excited to be in the program and eager to begin building new tools that will significantly improve report generation for our field organization." — Kim Taylor, business analytics and decision support, Information Management, OCD, Johnson & Johnson
OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER – MULTIPLE CAPABILITIES Province of British Columbia: The Province of BC is now working on a number of new initiatives to automate workflow and enable greater collaboration, knowledge management, and information sharing throughout its offices. They plan to pilot an integrated enterprise portal and content management solution based on Office SharePoint Server 2007. The portal will serve as a centralized document repository with role‐based security to allow for quick retrieval of case information in a secure environment. Chevron: Chevron is implementing Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create a more cost‐efficient information management and integrated collaboration system. Using Office Server System 2007, Chevron will be able to reduce the time spent filing and retrieving data, decrease the use of e‐mail for storing large documents, improve worker productivity, and improve compliance with document retention policies. MTV: MTV Networks International is a global media network with a channel reach of 1.4 billion people. MTV’s Information Services and Technology (IS&T) department wanted to reduce the time that was wasted on manual processes. It chose Office SharePoint Server 2007 to solve three business problems with one product. IS&T used the out‐of‐the‐box workflow capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to improve departmental efficiencies by automating a paper‐based process for new employees. IS&T then created a collaboration site for project management. IS&T used the business intelligence capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create a dashboard that provides enriched analytics on application metrics, saving six hours a week with an automated data submission process. MTV plans to replicate similar solutions built on Office SharePoint Server 2007 for the rest of the company.
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COLLABORATION Del Monte: Del Monte will implement a product life cycle management solution for its formula change using the workflow capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Del Monte’s current product life cycle management process stipulates manual tracking of formula change, and the company is in need of an automated, centralized system for managing and archiving its comprehensive list of formulas. CGI: CGI is using Office SharePoint Server 2007 to provide a collaborative workspace solution where staff can jointly work on proposals using the document life cycle management capabilities.
PORTAL AXA: AXA Tech will use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to support intranet access to the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management Solution across the company's global operations. United Properties: United Properties plans to use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to set up a corporate portal that will provide a centralized location where employees can locate and access documents and other corporate information across the enterprise.
SEARCH Monsanto: Monsanto Company, a global agricultural company, faced a license renewal deadline for the search engine it used in more than 20 public Web sites and numerous intranet sites. Search results did not live up to expectations, and the tool was costly and cumbersome to manage. Monsanto evaluated Google and Office SharePoint Server 2007. It chose Office SharePoint Server 2007 for its feature set, and for the value of a search solution that extended enterprise search capabilities from traditional corporate information to people and expertise. Integration between Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the familiar Microsoft Office system programs was another reason why Monsanto decided on Microsoft technologies. Monsanto saved U.S. $250,000 in licensing fees and gained an easily deployable search solution — it took 45 minutes to migrate www.monsanto.com — that is expected to boost productivity. Mary Kay: Mary Kay Inc, one of the largest direct‐selling skin care and color cosmetics companies in the world, was without a viable enterprise search application. After moving its U.S. portal to Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003, the company decided to upgrade to Office SharePoint Server 2007 to leverage the content indexing and search platform functionality. The company now has robust, easy‐to‐use search functionality that will scale along with its global IT improvement and integration efforts.
ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT Chevron: Chevron will develop a centralized enterprise portal created with Office SharePoint Server 2007. The portal will serve as a central document repository where all information can be stored and managed universally. Bank of Thailand: Office SharePoint Server 2007 will provide the document management repository and meeting workspace. Bank of Thailand expects that the new system will make meeting management and coordination much more efficient.
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BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT CGI: CGI is using Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create workflow scenarios that enable staff to better manage proposals in development. New Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 Forms Services technology within Office SharePoint Server 2007 uses server‐based electronic forms to streamline and automate business processes. This technology will enable IBS staff to more effectively manage the collection, distribution, and integration of customer information during the proposal process. MTV: MTV Networks International is a global media network with a channel reach of 1.4 billion people. MTV’s Information Services and Technology (IS&T) department wanted to reduce the time that was wasted on manual processes. It chose Office SharePoint Server 2007 to solve three business problems with one product. IS&T used the out‐of‐the‐box workflow capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to improve departmental efficiencies by automating a paper‐based process for new employees. IS&T then created a collaboration site for project management. IS&T used the business intelligence capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create a dashboard that provides enriched analytics on application metrics, saving six hours a week with an automated data submission process. MTV plans to replicate similar solutions built on Office SharePoint Server 2007 for the rest of the company.
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE ACNielsen: Using Office SharePoint Server 2007, ACNielsen intends to provide its customers with the ability to interact with spreadsheet data through any Web browser. Customers will be able to access and analyze rich market information using enhanced visualization schemes to spot exceptions and discern trends. Johnson & Johnson: Using server‐side Excel Services technology in Office SharePoint Server 2007 will allow data to be automatically refreshed, recalculations performed, and results rendered in HTML format while role‐based authentication can help safeguard information irrelevant to specific users or groups. MTV: MTV Networks International is a global media network with a channel reach of 1.4 billion people. MTV’s Information Services and Technology (IS&T) department wanted to reduce the time that was wasted on manual processes. It chose Office SharePoint Server 2007 to solve three business problems with one product. IS&T used the out‐of‐the‐box workflow capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to improve departmental efficiencies by automating a paper‐based process for new employees. IS&T then created a collaboration site for project management. IS&T used the business intelligence capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create a dashboard that provides enriched analytics on application metrics, saving six hours a week with an automated data submission process. MTV plans to replicate similar solutions built on Office SharePoint Server 2007 for the rest of the company.
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PRESS RELEASE ‐ FEDERAL AGENCY REDUCES COSTS, SPEEDS TIME TO MARKET WITH COLLABORATION TOOL Trend sees government agencies functioning more like businesses, expert says By: Kathleen Lau ITWorldCanada.com (14 Feb 2007) Better IT governance, streamlined workflow, improved collaboration and quicker application development are some of the benefits a Moncton‐based federal government agency experienced after deploying a new content management system. Since the rollout was completed last November, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) has also reduced time‐to‐ market of its services by half, and experienced cost savings in the range of 40‐50 per cent. ACOA is a federal government organization tasked with delivering economic development services directly to organizations, helping with business architecture, research, networking and international outreach. Based on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft InfoPath 2007, the new system now allows ACOA employees in 40 offices across Atlantic Canada to work and share information within 'managed workspaces' in a secure, centralized portal. “The collaborative environment also enhances IT governance by helping the Agency better manage its electronic documents,” says Ron Surette, director general of business intelligence and chief information officer, ACOA. As users function in controlled workspaces, documents created will automatically be stored in the documents repository. The more valuable documents are stored in a secure area where they won't get deleted, he says. Before the rollout, document management processes relied on users remembering to send their documents – via e‐mail for instance – to the repository. Now, accountability is addressed with the document version and author‐tracking functionality, and digital signatures can be applied to indicate work has been completed or approved. "Anything that anybody does is directly accountable to the person who did it," says Surette. Microsoft SharePoint Server and InfoPath 2007 (an application used to develop XML‐based data entry forms), replaced an IT environment based predominantly on Microsoft .Net –the software development environment from Microsoft that was introduced in 2000. While ACOA had been using SharePoint Server 2003 and produced "very good results", programmers lacked the agility to easily go back and make changes to the code when working in .Net, says Surette. "Now that we're using a more collaborative process, we can get clients involved during the design phase." He says with the new technology, ACOA has developed business tools such as customer relationship modules that provide clients with greater flexibility to input more information. The Agency also built an auditor's module that tracks an audit's lifecycle, from creation to recommendations to resulting activities. Reduced costs from the new system stem from its "ready to use" capabilities that eliminate the need for highly‐skilled programmers to do the coding. Integration of Microsoft InfoPath 2007 also proved useful in creating a variety of ACOA‐branded standardized forms that respond to the unique needs of individual groups. The Agency enlisted the help of system integrators, Mississauga‐based NexInnovations Inc. and St. John’s‐based Infotech Canada Inc. to rollout the new applications. According to Surette, ACOA chose these vendors for their common vision of SharePoint as a business tool when "many companies were looking at it as an IT tool." He admits the Agency initially had difficulty identifying a Microsoft vendor who actually understood the concept and value of SharePoint. Implementation was started last March using Microsoft’s Rapid Deployment Program that allows third parties to implement pre‐release applications into a controlled environment at the client site where the technologies are tested, configured and customized by pilot users prior to full rollout. “It’s a great way to get access to technologies prior to market release,” says Todd Irie, director of market segments at NexInnovations. "With that comes project management, a framework for developing a scope of work, early architectural designs, and customized prescriptive guidance." © 2007 INFRALOGIC TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES
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While the program benefits clients, Microsoft gets a return as well, says Erin Elofson, collaboration solutions product manager at Mississauga‐based Microsoft Canada Co. "The advantage is seeing how our customers work with technology early on so we can understand their experience. Besides having access to tools and resources, implementing pre‐release apps can mean being the first out of the gate for a customer,” says Elofson. "These companies get to be an example in their industry of a different way of doing things. And this observation is completely applicable to ACOA,” says Surette. "Many of our clients are high‐tech firms, so we have a culture of innovation." Government agencies such as ACOA are part of a growing trend that sees public sector organizations operating more like businesses, says Alison Brooks, senior government analyst with Toronto‐based analyst firm IDC Canada. "There’s definitely a move towards working smarter and more productively. Looking to standardized application development is one way the public sector seeks to avoid rebuilding the wheel every time,” she says. "This feeds into the whole notion of trying to share between and within jurisdictions."
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