Top 10 Reasons to Use SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Full-featured portal experience right out of the box.

As with SharePoint Portal Server 2001, installing SharePoint Portal Server 2003 results in a full-featured portal offering right out of the box. However, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 improves the out-of-box experience with new functionality, including news; sites directory; topic areas; personal sites (My Site); audience targeting; easy search and browsing capabilities to help users find people, teams and information; and site provisioning to provide the necessary structure to create connected collaboration spaces.

Since SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is built on top of Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint Services, you will receive the many collaborative features found in Windows SharePoint Services sites right out of the box as well.

Performance, scalability and web farm deployments.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 supports a distributed architecture and optimal portal performance by offering flexible deployment options: SharePoint Portal Server 2003 can support server farms with distributed job servers, database servers, search and indexing functionality, and multiple eb front ends. Through Shared Services, enterprise-wide services such as search and personal sites can be provided from one central location and consumed in multiple portal farms. Additionally, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 can scale to 1 million users simultaneously registered in Active Directory® and perform with 250 pages per second throughput.

Personal sites (My Sites).

My Sites have a private view so that users are able to store and access personal content securely, such as unfinished documents and customised news and links, as well as a public view that enables users to publish content such as presentations and finished reports to other users. Public profile information can be synchronised by administrators from directory sources such as Active Directory to allow users from throughout an organisation to find the expertise necessary to accomplish business tasks.


Public view of My Site. View a larger image.

Integration with line-of-business applications.

The deep integration between Microsoft BizTalk® Server and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 means that IT managers can easily leverage any of the more than 300 available BizTalk Server application connectors. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 delivers rich code samples for applications from such companies as SAP, Siebel and PeopleSoft.

Single sign-on.

Single sign-on enables users to access secure data throughout the enterprise with a single login. SharePoint Portal Server securely stores account credentials when users sign on to the portal. When portal-based applications request data from other business applications, such as third-party enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 maps the user's account credentials by validating against Active Directory so that users do not have to sign on to those business applications separately.

Flexibility, personalisation and customisation through Web Parts and Web Part pages.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provides additional Web Parts and Web Part flexibility through personalisation that enables users to customise portal pages in the way that makes sense for them, by simply dragging and dropping Web Parts onto a page. With Microsoft Office FrontPage® 2003, there is full support for Web Parts and Web Part pages - including adding, editing and customising Web Parts, Web Part zones and custom Web Part pages.

Even more, there are many Web Parts to choose from in the Web Parts galleries that ship with SharePoint Portal Server 2003, as well as online at the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Web Component Directory (US).

Topics.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 includes topics that provide intuitive navigation for finding and browsing all types of content, from documents and people to Windows SharePoint Services-based sites. A document or link can appear in several different topics, and topics can include documents stored in SharePoint Portal Server 2003, as well as links to information from additional content sources. Topic security is hierarchical as well as distributed and granular to allow for subject matter experts to own and publish the topics that are most relevant to them.


SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Topic Page. View a larger image.

Integration with Active Directory and Microsoft Office products.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 'crawls' Active Directory to capture user profiles. Users can then manage their own profile information from the portal and also create alerts to see when other users publish or change information.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 gives users a good user experience regardless of their choice of desktop applications. Users can create and manage sites such as document workspaces, add news and events to SharePoint sites within the portal, search, and receive notifications in their browser.

Users have a better experience with Office XP or later applications because of their ability to check in and check out shared documents on SharePoint Portal Server sites. And finally, SharePoint Portal Server integrates with the newest Microsoft Office System applications, such as the Office 2003 Editions, to provide the best user experience with features such as uploading multiple documents, editing lists in grid mode, and creating custom lists from a spreadsheet.

Search.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables users to search full document text and properties for the keywords that they enter. Not only can users search for information, but they can browse and search for people, teams and other sites on the portal.

Key Windows SharePoint Services-shared features.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 personal sites, team sites and topic areas all include full-featured Windows SharePoint Services document libraries that support versioning, simple routing and approval functionality. Users can check in and check out documents, as well as revert to previous document versions, all from their familiar productivity applications.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 also offers rich lists for calendar items, announcements, links and tasks, and custom lists that provide flexibility for a wide range of uses. In addition, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables users to create Windows SharePoint Services Meeting and Document Workspaces directly from within Office 2003 applications. These sites, created using tested templates, facilitate document discussion and meetings, enabling users to work together better in teams and organisations.