nVisionIT puts SharePoint Portal Server through its paces

The recently launched SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is proving itself a technology to take enterprises to the next level of information sharing and management, according to Willem Viljoen, Strategic Services at nVisionIT, the Microsoft Gold Partner that has spent the last six months Beta testing Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server at South African companies as well as in its own labs.

"It`s one of the most easily implemented, functional and affordable tools we have worked with for developing intelligent portals that seamlessly connect users, teams and knowledge, and lets people leverage relevant information across business processes," he says.

Functionality such as single sign-on and built-in Microsoft BizTalk Server and application connector integration allow existing core business applications to be easily integrated into the portal so that timely and relevant information from different systems and reports can be quickly found and accessed.

"You gain a complete view of the business by putting together complementary information from multiple sources, such as CRM systems and Office Outlook, at the same time," he adds.

In addition, SharePoint Portal Server 2003`s personalisation facilities allow users to organise all the information, documents and applications they access regularly into a single view on My Site, while audience targeting allows customisation based on an individual`s role, hierarchy or interest with direct feeds of news, links, documents, applications and Web services.

Built-in search technology within SharePoint enables documents, project plans and best practices to be located in file shares, Web sites, Microsoft Exchange Server Public Folders, Lotus Notes, Windows SharePoint Services sites, and databases.

"It means you can find more than just documents and Web sites. Users have access to the people and teams that contribute knowledge to an organisation. Information, documents and sites can also be organised into topics, enabling a wealth of relevant information to be found by browsing," he says.

In working with the Beta version of SharePoint over the last year and latterly with the final new release, nVisionIT found that while it can be deployed right out of the box without any additional development work, most users will find that to leverage all the system`s functionality will require additional customisation.

"Setup is really simple compared with that of traditional portal products. One of the strongest aspects of SharePoint is its wizards for creating new sites and shared content automatically. Uploading content of all kinds is also said to be easy. Portal services, such as search, site management, topics and personalisation are available immediately and the use of familiar tools and graphical user interfaces found in Microsoft Office applications mean that user training and acceptance is minimal.

"However, I see most companies needing some outside development help and expertise to derive real value-add. Designing for and meeting individual needs at the end of the day are what deliver differentiation and competitive advantage and you need to know how to leverage SharePoint`s total functionality to realise this," he adds.

Liberty Group was one of the companies nVisionIT worked with to evaluate the new SharePoint portal technology and collaboration tools. The company`s Group Architecture and Research department, as part of its function of identifying and rating the suitability and effectiveness of new technologies for possible implementation within Liberty Group, spent three months testing a portal-based proof of concept document and knowledge management system developed by nVisionIT.

"While this is only a pilot limited to a few departments, it proved how powerful and easy to implement Microsoft`s new SharePoint portal technology is and how easily it integrates with Microsoft Office 2003 to deliver effective collaboration and a streamlined work and document flows," says Viljoen.

Technology used in the pilot included Windows 2003, SharePoint Portal Server, Exchange 2003, SQL Server and Microsoft Office 2003. Document management included authoring, adding metadata, versioning, retrieval and rights protection, document search subscriptions and access allocation.

Document management functionality provided the capability for end-users to define, manage and maintain documents stored in the Document Management Server (DMS). Collaboration was based on new MS Outlook 2003 and MS Exchange Server 2003 functionalities. A key requirement was that the portal had to integrate with Liberty Group`s in-house developed intranet.

"The need for robust, structured document systems is going to become a requirement in document intensive departments, such as Liberty Group Legal, Finance and various project teams and it is therefore beneficial to the company that first hand knowledge on these products is available in-house," says Neil Adamson, a consultant in Group Architecture and Research.

"While we have not stress tested the system, we have found that it does document management very effectively. It works very well and implementation is not a complex task. The pricing is a plus compared with other competitive solutions."