A Brief Overview of Sharepoint Portal Server 2003

Introduction

MicroSoft Share Point Portal Server 2003 provides centralized access to all the crucial business information and applications. We can share information across File Servers, Public Folders, Data Bases, and the websites that are based on Windows server 2003.Its tightly integrated with MSAccess and Windows servers, hence offers a Wide range of document management functionality. We can automatically create a full featured portal with readymade navigation and structure. We can even create Enterprise class portals, Department level portals, Team sites and personal portals.

It enables organizations to develop intelligent portals that connects users ,teams and knowledge .So that people can take appropriate information  across business organizations in order to work efficiently and effectively.

Users can extract and reuse timely and relevant information from systems and reports. They can Quickly locate and access documents, projects  across the company. It facilitates Document versioning, approval workflow, check in and check out, document profiling facilitates easy collaboration on documents, projects and tasks

History of Share Point

Microsoft's first portal application was called Digital Dashboard. This product introduced the concept of Web parts (portlets). By assembling multiple parts on a page, each user could customize his view of the portal to contain the information that pertained to them. In theory, every visitor of the site could have different content at the same URL. However, the technology behind the Digital Dashboard was not up to the task, and it never made it out of the beta stage.
At the same time, Microsoft's Office group was working toward a collaboration solution .The result was SharePoint Team Services (STS), a Web-based solution that allowed shared access to information and documents. STS also allowed end-users to make changes to the site via a Web browser instead of requiring a development-oriented application.
The merging of the collaboration and aggregation functions lead to SharePoint Portal Server 2001. Portal Server has been upgraded to run on the .Net framework and is now referred to as SharePoint Products and Technologies. The "Product" is SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS) and the "Technologies" are Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). A significant point about these two is that WSS is included with the Windows Server 2003 license. Any organization that is licensed for Windows Server 2003 can also host Websites that are based on WSS.

Web Parts

•  Provide building blocks to modular web pages
•  Component software applied to UI
•  Reusable across many sites and portals
•  Users add WebParts to  Pages at Runtime
•  So users can customize the site.

Authorized users can add Web Parts to organizational or divisional portals from Web Part galleries, without the need for any web development experience. These web Parts can be developed in Asp.Net . IT departments and Users can personalize and customize the portal experience by modifying shared web part and we can lock any web part or zone.

Advantages

1. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 also enables users to quickly find relevant information through customization and personalization of portal content and layout.i.e.Customized information is delivered based on Microsoft Windows Share Point Services
2. Personal alerts can be created to track changes with in portal and organization.
3. We can quickly connect to documents, people and websites.
4. We can even synchronize public profile data from directory   resources such as active directory.
5. We can keep personal content as private and can push public information to other users.
6. Full Text Key Word Search examines with document content and properties, returns variety of targeted results. Enhanced search may result in other types of resources including people.
7. With single sign in we can integrate with multiple systems such as MSOffice, Project management system, existing business application with business intelligence.
8. Secured access can be provided base on user identity (Windows Authentication).
9. Information can be transferred to individuals or groups based on the criteria that we define .i.e. Audience targeting aims information and updates to individuals based on their organizational role, team membership, interest, security group, or any other membership criteria that can be defined using notifications or Web Parts.
10. The browser-based customization feature, combined with the ability to create ad-hoc lists allows an layman to create a site for almost any purpose
    

Summary

Brief overview about Share Point Portal is Explained.