Collaboration tools: Microsoft SharePoint & Enterprise Project management
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Groups of people are often asked to work together to accomplish a task or goal. This type of work is a collaborative effort by one or more departments, a project team, or a committee for example. The "old" system for sharing information probably happened at meetings, by fax, by e-mail, etc. This takes lots of time (meetings), lots of paper (fax), and lots of electronic redundancy (e-mail). The new system of collaboration points the entire group to one Web site where they can store all documents, schedule meeting dates, plan agendas, assign tasks, and comment on their work. This shared web site provides the functionality for the entire team to easily collaborate together. Microsoft SharePointMicrosoft Windows SharePoint Services provides a group or department with a collaborative website. This website is used to share common work, knowledge, and documentation. SharePoint websites use "webparts" (sometimes called "channels" or "portlets") that allow users to add, remove, comment on, and share information. Typical web parts include document libraries, meeting or event calendars, project tasks, website links, surveys and polls, discussion forums, and much more. The types of web parts selected for a SharePoint web site are determined by the Web site content and the web site administrator. SharePoint web sites are easy to modify and are typically administered by the client requesting the site. These websites are secure - administrators control user access to the website. Further, user access can be acutely refined for each web part. Classes*v2 as a collaboration toolITS also offers Classes*v2 as a collaboration tool. Classes*v2 may be a better collaboration choice for academic groups with members already familiar with Classes*v2 for classroom support or discussions. Classes*v2 offers discussion support, document sharing, and other tools to support group work. However, Classes*v2 does not offer some of the advanced collaboration features of SharePoint, and does not offer the tight integration with Microsoft Project and the coming collaboration features of the new Microsoft Office 2007, due to be released in the first quarter of 2007. Please contact the Classes*v2 support team for more information and account access policies for Classes*v2. Project ServerMicrosoft Enterprise Project Management extends the functionality of Microsoft Project 2003. Project Managers typically create project plans using Microsoft Project. These plans are static - they sit on the Project Manager's computer waiting for that one person to update the entire plan. Enterprise Project Management extends the project plan to the web making the content dynamic. Project resources (people) can log in to the plans they are assigned to, see their tasks, report work completed and time unavailable. This reduces the time a single project manager has to spend on the local plan on their one computer. A further benefit is the shared resource reporting which allows project managers to quickly assess which resources are available across large shared resource pools. Collaboration features of SharePoint
Contact us to set up a SharePoint site * SharePoint's features are optimized for a combination of Microsoft Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. However, Apple Macintosh users and users of other browsers like Firefox (Windows or Mac) that do not support Microsoft's ActiveX scripting can also use most features of SharePoint collaboration, except the integration with Microsoft Project Enterprise. Microsoft Project integration is a Windows-only feature in SharePoint. In non-ActiveX environments like the Macinosh or in Firefox SharePoint's features work slightly differently and are less automated, but Mac and Firefox users should be able to take advantage of all the basic collaboration and networking features of SharePoint. ** If your collaboration group requires detailed email archives you may be better served by using Classes*v2 for group collaboration. |
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