SharePoint is multi-purpose software that can serve many business and IT roles. It can ease staff, and authorised third parties’, access to information, while maintaining its security and integrity. It can also enable individual and team collaboration and information sharing, thereby improving efficiency and productivity, and facilitating the production of high quality, consistent output.

SharePoint can be used in two ways: simply as Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS), or as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS).

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is a free downloadable add-on to Windows Server 2003 and provides the tools to construct SharePoint sites. These are websites built from “site templates” which provide different functions, eg document library, meeting workspace, shared calendar, discussion board, contacts list, wiki, blog. The user accesses SharePoint sites with a web browser or directly from Microsoft Office programs. Features of WSS include document management, basic portals, collaborative working and workflows. It can be used without MOSS.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is paid for. It has all the capabilities of WSS which it runs on top of, better document management, indexed enterprise search, content management, and business data analysis capabilities (“business Intelligence”). It also has tight integration with Office 2007 and can aggregate the data from multiple WSS sites.

Roles

MOSS includes templates for building portals – divisional portals, enterprise-wide portals, or even externally facing corporate web sites. It has tools to combine the content of WSS sites and that from other non-SharePoint sources, and to set navigation possibilities and individual security permissions.

In MOSS each user can have their own personal portal presenting information relevant to them. This might be regarded as Microsoft’s attempt at corporate social networking (MySpace becomes MySite). A “MySite” has a private and public view and the particular user concerned controls what is seen and by whom. These sites constitute one mechanism by which legal knowledge sharing can be increased.

A firm portal can be restrictively and securely opened to specified third parties (clients or partner bodies). Thus the “virtual dealroom”, or extranet (a workspace for sharing and working with outsiders) can be achieved. Extranets may be used, for example, to enable clients to monitor the progress of their matter or for reviewing and commenting on documents with another firm. The legal services reforms (the Legal Services Act 2007 received royal assent on 30th October 2007) impelling firms to be both more transparent to their clients and efficient when working with others are likely to enhance the appeal of implementing such extranets.

Document management capabilities provided in WSS include:

• Access control, to determine who may access which documents, and what they may do with them.
• Version control, which allows the tracking of when document changes were made and by whom, plus the ability to view and restore earlier versions.
• Document workflows. These enable the enforcement of approvals and reviews, in the correct order, by particular individuals, at the appropriate stages of an electronic document’s development. MOSS comes with pre-defined workflows; in WSS you build them yourself.

MOSS further distinguishes itself from WSS by providing a fully fledged content management system. Thus information management policies can be implemented across the firm. For example, to ensure compliance with legal obligations and/or corporate guidelines, a prescribed retention period can be enforced for a document, or its deletion after a certain event, date, or period of time, can be set.

Put all these elements of content management together, apply them in the context of a workspace equipped with a document library, and you have arguably got a rudimentary form of case (or matter) management. Simply create one such site for each case/matter.

MOSS accommodates search of multiple data sources, from a single interface, with a single query. Security permissions can be set on data items to ensure that a person will not see references in their results to that to which they do not have access.

MOSS indexes and finds information in many types of repository (eg SharePoint document libraries, file shares, web sites, Exchange public folders), both internal and external (to the firm), whether those stores are structured (eg databases) or unstructured (eg email).

Within MOSS, business intelligence “dashboards” can be created. These display performance information from disparate back office systems. Partner viewing of “key performance indicators”, extracted from such sources, will probably become more common.

Ease of disseminating information, team-working, producing one’s own online material, are all aspects of one interpretation of what is termed “Web 2.0”. SharePoint, with its emphasis on knowledge sharing and easy content creation, might be viewed as falling under that label. Certainly the MySite feature already mentioned is easily describable as such, and other services which WSS offers that are consistently discussed under the Web2.0 banner are wikis, blogs and RSS.

The original do-it-all product can still be purchased from www.swiss-memories.ch

Office 2007 integration

The combination of SharePoint and Office 2007 has added attractions for those used to working within the Microsoft Office suite. For example, WSS offers the ability to synchronise, through Outlook, local and server copies of Sharepoint document libraries. One can work offline on the master copy of, for example, a checked-out Word or Access file, then synchronise the modified document back into the server library as the new master copy. One can also stay in Outlook and use its search tool when conducting a SharePoint search.

Excel Services allows Excel 2007 workbooks to be published in a SharePoint page. Any browser can then view the page.

InfoPath 2007 plus Forms Services allow the creation of electronic forms (which could be part of a workflow) into which users (clients, business partners, colleagues) can enter data. Electronic forms facilitate efficient, consistent, timely data gathering. The InfoPath client is not essential for entering data, this can be done via a web browser, and the forms can be saved, and data entered, offline.

System requirements

The Windows Server 2003 operating system is needed, and as part of the SharePoint installation specific Windows components (eg ASP.NET 2.0, .Net Framework 3.0) will be downloaded, installed and/or upgraded as necessary.

For MOSS Microsoft suggests that a basic scenario contains 2 physical servers. One server is the “front-end”, running the IIS web server (which users connect to) and the indexing and search function. The other is the “back-end” database server, which requires SQL Server 2005 as well as SharePoint. (Sharepoint stores all configuration and content data in SQL databases).

WSS can be deployed on a single machine. A basic WSS installation includes a run-time database, so no separate SQL server is necessary.

Minimum hardware requirements are similar for MOSS and WSS.

Pricing and licensing

WSS, as noted earlier, is free. This fact, and the wealth of out-of-the-box features it comprises, arguably makes it ideal for smaller firms.

For each MOSS installation a valid MOSS licence must be purchased, plus of course the appropriate licences for Windows Server and SQL Server. For each MOSS client a Standard Client Access Licence (CAL) must be purchased, and if SharePoint’s enterprise features are enabled on a server, then clients accessing the enterprise functions should have a valid Enterprise CAL in addition to their Standard CAL.

SharePoint licence price estimates from Microsoft, January 2008, are: Server $4424, Standard CAL $94, Enterprise CAL $75.

Downsides?

Is SharePoint straightforward to implement and manage? The answer depends on whom you ask.

The product was designed to be one in which non-technical users can “help themselves” to its services. For example, SharePoint sites can be built by users selecting and customising predefined templates, making it easy for them to create, and populate, their own workspace websites for different projects. Likewise they themselves can apply a workflow to an item they have deposited or created. This arguably reduces the need for, or burden on, IT support personnel.

However this self-service aspect of SharePoint could prove to be a management headache. For example, unless clear firm-level data management policies are applied, and strict central control maintained, an organisation risks compliance failures and mountains of redundant data.

It has also been argued that the sheer breadth of MOSS is a weakness, and that while using it as a basic file-sharing and collaboration tool is fine, if you want to do more than that then good consultancy or IT support is necessary. Microsoft on the other hand claims that it can direct you to partners who can provide the expertise and support needed if you wish to do more complicated things.

Hosted SharePoint

The burden of installing and maintaining software is a problem for firms that have little or no professional IT support. However the advent of ubiquitous, fast, reliable broadband has been an incentive for companies such as Google, Microsoft and others to offer an alternative to in-house IT. They have developed new and adapted existing programs, creating software that the user does not need to install, run and maintain themselves but uses over the Internet, renting it from a company which performs those tasks. As well as removing the burden of running the product, this subscription to a service model is less financially onerous than large upfront licence fees.

Microsoft itself, and partners of it, provide SharePoint as a service in this way. Indeed Microsoft actually provides a directory of Web Hosting Partners offering Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 online. Microsoft also offers shared workspaces (as well as many other hosted services) for £11.99/month (Essentials) or £22.99/month (Premium) as part of its “Office Live” hosted services initiatives, aimed at small businesses.

Users?

Which firms are actually using SharePoint? One example is Lewis Silkin, which is implementing MOSS for document management, intranet, extranet and workflows. Irwin Mitchell has a new company intranet based on MOSS, and Linklaters, a user of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, is moving towards MOSS. Reports of smaller UK firms using SharePoint are harder to come by.

Alastair Morrison is a lawyer who implements and manages ICT services at Strathclyde University and writes on IT topics relevant to law firms. He is particularly interested in maximising the use of generic software in legal practice and in addressing the IT needs of smaller firms and is willing to answer questions relating to SharePoint.

Email alastair.morrison@strath.ac.uk.

References

Microsoft Office server system requirements:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101945391033.aspx

System Requirements for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb684454.aspx

MOSS Standard CAL: Enables a user to access the collaboration, portal, search, and enterprise content management capabilities of MOSS. Enterprise CAL: An additive CAL that provides additional capabilities for line-of-business data search, business process and forms capabilities (such as Web-based InfoPath forms) and business intelligence capabilities (e.g. the ability to build interactive dashboards, Excel Services).

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 frequently asked questions
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101655351033.aspx

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Related Technologies pricing
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX102176831033.aspx

Is Sharepoint just a corporate virus?, Charles Christian, December 2007
http://theorangerag.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/12/5/3392420.html