Yale University

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432-9000
785-3200

ITS Office
Yale University
175 Whitney Avenue
P.O. Box 208276
New Haven, CT
06520-8276
USA

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Collaboration tools: Microsoft SharePoint & Enterprise Project management

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 SharePoint

Microsoft 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 tool

ITS 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 Server

Microsoft 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

Announcements

Yes.

Document storage for file sharing

Yes.

Version control for shared documents

Yes.

Agenda sharing and publishing

Yes.

Calendaring (group scheduling)

Yes.

Announcements

Yes.

Discussion boards

Yes.

Assignments (tasks for group members)

Yes.

Web page publishing

Yes.

BROWSER SUPPORT


Internet Explorer 5,6,7

Yes.

Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape [1]

Yes.

Apple Safari [1]

Yes.

Apple Macintosh support [1]

Yes, with notes below.

Chat room (via IM)

Yes.

Email archives [2]

Yes.

Contact lists and group member info

Yes.

Integration with Microsoft Project Server

Yes.

Integration with Microsoft Office 2003

Yes.

Integration with Microsoft Outlook

Yes.

Integration with Microsoft Live Communicator

Yes.

Integration with PDA Windows Mobile

Yes.

Integration with Active Directory

Yes.

Extensible feature set (many 3rd party add-ons, or custom programming that ITS Web Services can provide)

Yes.

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.

 

Contact us to set up a SharePoint site for your group

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