Share point
1.Introduction
Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), is Microsoft's first integrated server platform that aims to provide web content management, enterprise content services, and enterprise search, as well as shared business processes and business intelligence to the small/medium enterprises. SharePoint is built on ASP.NET and SQL Server, which requires a Windows server. The base platform is called Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). MOSS is a commercial product which includes additional features like personal web sites, templates and web parts, business documents workflow, browser-based content authoring, and enterprise search.
Logical Architecture
I. Application and Services
Collaboration:
This component lets one part of the organization to interact easily with other parts of the organization in a secured way. It provides a mechanism for sharing documents, information, and knowledge across the organization. Following are the features of Collaboration component:
- Document , tasks and calendars
- Blogs and Wikis
- E-Mail Integration
- Project Management
- Outlook Integration
- Offline documents and lists
The portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include features that are especially useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet web sites, and divisional portal sites. The portal components make it easier to connect to people within the organization who have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience. Following are the features of Portal component in SharePoint Server 2007:
- Enterprise Portal Template
- Site Directory
- My Site
- Social Networking
- Privacy Control
This facilitates the implementation of forms-based business processes, from design to publication and user access; all this by mode of web browser or Microsoft Office InfoPath as client application. Following are the features of Business Forms component in SharePoint Server 2007:
- Web forms based front ends
- Line-of-business actions
- Pluggable Single Sign-On(SSO)
This component allows organizations to provide Business Intelligence to all its employees, allowing them to share, reuse and manage business data to derive maximum benefit out of it. SharePoint Server 2007 provides web based access to Excel spreadsheets, programmatic reuse of critical line-of-business data, and easy development of web-based BI dashboards through this component.
- Server-Based Excel spreadsheets and data visualization
- Report Center
- BI WebParts
- Key Performance Indicators(KPI's) and dashboards
As the name says, this component is about managing the content. One of the big issues or reason of time overhead in organizations of all domains is managing documents in a better and easier way. Content management component targets this issue and provides a better way of managing content that includes documents, email messages, videos, instant messages, web pages etc. Following are the features of Content Management component:
- Integrated document Management
- Records management
- Web Content management with policies and workflow
The search solution is for organizations that want to increase productivity and reduce information overload by providing their employees, partners, and customers, the ability to find relevant content from a wide range of repositories and formats. With actionable search results that respect security permissions, Office SharePoint Server 2007 lets users go beyond documents and across repositories to unlock information, find people, and locate expertise in the enterprise. In Office SharePoint Server 2007, search results are delivered quickly and relevance is tuned for enterprise and line-of-business data. Following are the features of Search component:
- Enterprise Scalability
- Contextual relevance
- People and business data search
Storage:
Storage services offer Metadata and context to raw data which is stored in the database. Storage services comprise following services:
- Metadata
- Versioning
- Backup
- Recycle Bin
Security services in SharePoint 2007 can be grouped as following:
- Pluggable Authentication
- Rights and Roles
- Folder/Item Level Security
As the name suggests, these services provide a model with a consistent layout and template to SharePoint sites that too without changing the code. Management Services of SharePoint comprise:
- Templates
- Rendering
- Navigation
These are the services which provide consistent management experience either at the administration level or at the user level. This helps users/administrator to manage SharePoint Server 2007 easily. Management Services of SharePoint comprise:
- Admin UX
- Delegation
- Provisioning
- Monitoring
Deploy the customized sites into the portal to meet the final requirement.
III. Operating System Services
These are the lowest levels of architecture. These services manage the devices (both logical and physical) which comprise of physical architecture of the environment. These include the drivers and Administrator Tools that can be used to manage the network and peripheral and platform hardware. To sum up, the services on Operating System Level are included in this part of the architecture. Services included under this are:
Masterpages :Provides consistent layouts throughout the site.
Webparts : This is a custom controlled assembly that uses xml data containing description file which describes an instance of webpart.
ASP.NET 2.0 : This is a development platform.
Personalization : : With proper access and permission, a user can drag and drop webparts on to the pages and have them targeted to particular audience. audience.
Provider Framework: SharePoint is based on .net framework 3.0
2.Client
Frontier Technologies, Inc. pioneers in providing varied solutions like IT Solutions, Business Solutions and Resources. Their business verticals include:
- Broad Band Services
- Customer Relationship Management Solutions
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning
- Email Solutions
- EMR Solutions
- IT Assessment and Planning Services
- Mobility Solutions – Blackberry
- Phone System Solutions
- Print Management Solutions
- Staffing and Outsourcing Services
- Video Conferencing Solutions
- We, Application and Database Development
Intrusion, hacking and electronic theft attempts against businesses of all types and sizes are increasing exponentially, and Frontier Technologies' network security services cost-effectively protect and maintain the security of your network, assets and data against external attack, providing you the peace of mind.
Frontier Technologies is proud to be your trusted BlackBerry provider. Stay connected with the latest BlackBerry smartphones, headsets, chargers, and more. Frontier Technologies also provides you with account activations, client access licenses, and support services for all your communication needs.
3.Problem
Beginning in the 1980s, a number of vendors began developing systems to manage paper-based documents. These systems managed paper documents, which included not only printed and published documents, but also photos, prints, etc.
Later, a second style of system was developed, to manage electronic documents, i.e., all those documents, or files, created on computers, and often stored on local user file systems. The earliest Electronic Document Management (EDM) systems were either developed to manage proprietary file types, or a limited number of file formats. Many of these systems were later referred to as document imaging systems, because the main capabilities were capture, storage, indexing and retrieval of image file formats. These systems enabled an organization to capture faxes and forms, save copies of the documents as images, and store image files in the repository for security and quick retrieval (retrieval was possible because the system handled extraction of text from the document as it was captured, and the text indexer provided text retrieval capabilities).
Later, EDM systems evolved to where the system was able to manage any type of file format that could be stored on the network. The applications grew to encompass electronic documents, collaboration tools, security, and auditing capabilities.
1. To provide an integrated environment for managing and controlling access to all shared documents of an enterprise online and facilitate /make the authorized users work collaboratively.
2. Also to safe guard all documents from unauthorized users. Document libraries can be created from the client-side SharePoint application, by navigating to your organization's SharePoint page.
4.Solution
Document Management System is a complete solution that provides a common platform to exhibit and manage organizational documents and serves as a common network of controlled users.
Document libraries are collections of files that you can share with team members. To create a library of common documents for a project, team members can use their web browsers to locate/find files, view /read them, update/ modify files, publish and re-publish the updated / edited files and delete files. Approved users can check-out and edit the files and check-in after completion of changes/updation.
Using SharePoint Server we built a Shared Documents Library with following features.
- Create a Client Wise document library
- Create Project Wise folders and navigate between them
- Add files to a document library
- Check out, edit, and check in files.
- Delete documents and Project Wise folders
- Maintain Version History of the Files
- Delete old versions of files (if needed); only the site Administrator can avail this option
- Set Approvals
- Publish Documents to view
- Download Files Option
- Site Content Search Option
Client Wise Document Library:
We can create a client wise document library / folder, which can be at the top of the hierarchy in document library. Within this, we can create project wise folders for unique identification of client wise projects.
Adding Files to the Document Library:
We can provide an option to upload an existing file, or create a new file of defined template type. We can even provide an option to upload multiple files / group of files to a specific folder. We can restrict the type of documents that can be added to the specified document library /folder, so that we can differentiate between Shared Reports and Shared Documents files.
Document Check-in and Check-out
Most traditional document sharing methods use e-mail or file shares for documents that have multiple authors or editors. The problem with these methods is that they can quickly become confusing. Identifying the latest version of a document is difficult, and multiple users may edit a document at the same time, resulting in conflicting versions. Trying to track changes can lead to confusion and lost productivity, especially if a document must be rolled back to an earlier version. To prevent these problems, we provide a method for tracking the version history of a document. For this, following steps need to be followed:
- First, check-out the document to be worked upon that is stored in the document library. When we do this, other users cannot make changes to the document. This helps prevent the confusion that can occur when multiple users make simultaneous changes to the same document.
- After having finished working on the document, we can check-in the document so that other users can work on it.
Delete Documents / Folders and Files:
All authorized users and user groups are provided with an option of disabling or enabling a file or folder and also completely deleting a file or folder.
Version Tracking
We can handle version tracking of documents stored on a SharePoint site. We can maintain copies of previous versions of each document so that we can go back and view the changes that were made to a document at any time. This is particularly useful if for any reason we want to roll back a document to a previous version or if we want to retrieve data that was deleted from an earlier version of a document. This version tracking helps us in team track and manage the document creation and editing process quickly and efficiently.
Note: - Only authorized users can exercise this option.
Set Approvals or Maintain Security:
Document security is vital in many document management applications. Compliance requirements for certain documents can be quite complex, depending on the type of documents.
To maintain user governance and security within the site, as an initial measure of site security, we provide a LOGIN Page to prevent unintended users from opening/ viewing the site content. In addition, we can also assign users to a group and grant them specific access rights. The users can be differentiated as
1.Visitors :- Those who can login to the site and can view just the files in the folders, for which they are authorized / have the access rights
2.Members :- All those who are basic contributors, who can view, add and update files with check-out and check-in options, in a specified shared document library
3.Administrators :- Those who have full control of the site to manage site like
- Add/create, provide access rights / permissions, client wise deletion of document library / folders and files etc.,
- Manage Site Content
- Manage site User accounts
- Manage Look and feel
- Maintain User Details in a centralized Data Base
- Maintain Site content (Documents / files and reports ) in Server Location
- Maintain Versioning
Publish Documents to view:
Publishing a document is sometimes tedious and involves processes such as proof reading, peer reading, public reviewing, authorizing, printing, approving, etc. These steps ensure prudence and logical thinking. Any careless handling may result in inaccuracy of the document and therefore mislead or upset its users and readers. In law regulated industries, some of the procedures have to be completed as evidenced by their corresponding signatures and the date(s) on which the document was signed. We monitor and control the process of publishing a document by providing access rights to specified users which allows them to publish and view new documents.
Download Files Option:
We can provide an option to download specific files which are approved by the owner of the files, i.e. those who published these files (if required) or can be controlled by the site Administrator.
Site Search Options:
We included 'Advanced Site Content Search' by using the recognized key words. Documents and folders can be located using template attributes or full text search. Documents can be searched using various attributes and document content as well.
Workflows:
Workflow is a complex problem and some document management systems have a built-in workflow module. There are different types of workflows. Usage depends on the environment the Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) is applied to. Manual workflow requires a user to view the document and decide whom to send it to. Rules-based workflow allows an administrator to create a rule that dictates the flow of the document through an organization. For instance, an invoice passes through an approval process and then is routed to the accounts payable department. Dynamic rules allow for branches to be created in a workflow process. A simple example would be to enter an invoice amount and if the amount is lower than a certain set amount, it follows different routes through the organization. Advanced workflow mechanisms can manipulate content or signal external processes while these rules are in effect.
Customized Web Parts:
We included web parts for displaying statistical reports, and its graphical views are customized in such a way to view an updated linked data all the time.
- 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