Confluence means "a coming together" and has been helping workers do just that since 2004. Starting out as an enterprise wiki, it has evolved through the years into an all-round collaboration tool. Confluence is available as a SaaS or hosted product, powered by Java. It is the Atlassian product and it is designed to work with other Atlassian products.

Confluence has the widest spread application of Atlassian's products, it could be applied in almost any environment. It is free to open source institutions and non-profits. Pricing starts at just a charity donation of US$ 10 for hosted smaller installations for less than 10 users.

Price breaks go neatly up through the ranks until you are only paying US$ 1 per user, if you have 2,000 of them for the Hosted version.

Features

Confluence offers the ability to create one or many sites, for the whole company, different teams, groups or classes of worker. Managing them is done through an elegant set of administration tools and dashboards.

Setting permissions is very easy.

Sites can be styled and formatted as needed. With styles for the most typical areas such as human resources, design projects, along with templates for common tasks like meetings, project plans, intranet or team project page can be created very quickly.

Communities are presented through bios, pictures, home pages. Users can find each other by holding the cursor over someone's name. To see a brief bio, they need to click on that name and they visit the main page.

Users can chart work progress through blogs, their status updates can be seen by other users in the group and home pages. There are also YouTube videos and Twitter-style updates.

Users will also get notifications (or can create an RSS feed) when someone edits an entry or changes a file.

All documents can be kept in one place accessible to all relevant users.

When combined with Atlassian's JIRA, users can create step-by-step workflows that will see tasks completed in a by-the-numbers fashion and everyone's contributions and input can be tracked.

The site has search function. Searches, updates and other entries can also be filtered to limit the search. There is autocomplete feature for the search.

Confluence has the ability to connect to applications like SharePoint. Confluence has a SharePoint connector. It also has full MS Office compatibility and smartphone access.

Confluence has Sandbox where you can try its features.

For records managers and others responsible for building and enforcing classification policies, retention schedules, and other aspects of records management plan, the problem with traditional, manual classification methods can be overwhelming.

Content needs to be classified or understood in order to determine why it must be retained, how long it must be retained, and when it can be dispositioned. Managing the retention and disposition of information reduces litigation risk, reduces discovery and storage costs, and ensures that organizations maintain regulatory compliance.

Classification is the last thing end-users want (or are able) to do. Users see the process of sorting records from transient content as intrusive, complex, and counterproductive. On top of this, the popularity of mobile devices and social media applications has effectively fragmented the content authoring market and has eliminated any chance of building consistent classification tools into end-user applications.

However, if classification is not being carried out there are serious implications when asked by regulators or auditors to provide reports to defend the organization’s records and retention management program.

User concerns aside, records managers also struggle with enforcing policies that rely on manual, human-based approaches. Accuracy and consistency in applying classification is often inadequate when left up to users, the costs in terms of productivity loss are high, and these issues, in turn, result in increased business and legal risk as well as the potential for the entire records management program to quickly become unsustainable in terms of its ability to scale.

So what is the answer? How can organizations overcome the challenges posed by classification?

The answer is a solution that provides automatic identification, classification, retrieval, archival, and disposal capabilities for electronic records as required by the records management policy.

OpenText Auto-Classification is the solution that combines records management with cutting edge semantic capabilities for classification of content. It eliminates the need for users to manually identify records and apply requisite classification. By taking the burden of classification off users, records managers can improve consistency of classification and better enforce rules and policies.

OpenText Auto-Classification makes it possible for records managers to easily demonstrate a defensible approach to classification based on statistically relevant sampling and quality control. Consequently, this minimizes the risk of regulatory fines and eDiscovery sanctions.

It provides a solution that eliminates the need for users to sort and classify a growing volume of content while offering records managers and the organization as a whole the ability to establish completely transparent records management program as part of their broader information governance strategy.

Auto-Classification uses OpenText analytics engine to go through documents and codifies language-specific nuances identified by linguistic experts.

Features

Automated Classification: Automate the classification of content in OpenText Content Server inline with existing records management classifications.

Advanced Techniques: Classification process based on a hybrid approach that combines machine learning, rules, and content analytics.

Flexible Classification: Ability to define classification rules using keywords or metadata.

Policy-Driven Configuration: Ability to configure and optimize the classification process with an easy step-by-step tuning guide.

Advanced Optimization Tools: Reports make it easy to examine classification results, identify potential accuracy issues, and then fix those issues by leveraging the provided optimization hints.

Sophisticated Relevancy and Accuracy Assurance: Automatic sampling and benchmarking with a complete set of metrics to assess the quality of the classification process.

Quality Assurance Workbench: Advanced reports on a statistically relevant sample to review and code documents that have been automatically classified to manually assess the quality of the classification results when desired.

Auto-Classification works with OpenText Records Management so existing classifications and documents can be used during the tuning process. 

OpenText Auto-Classification was developed in close partnership with customers using the OpenText ECM Suite, and works in conjunction with OpenText Records Management so that existing classifications and classified documents can be used in the tuning process.

You may have just finished with upgrading your SharePoint to 2010 version and now we are hearing about SharePoint 2013. What is this all about? And are you going to adopt it or not?

Microsoft releases a major version of SharePoint every three years. SharePoint 2013 is a significant release with many new great features. However, you may find it hard to justify moving on to 2013 release in the near future, unless you can find a business justification for spending the time and money it will take to make the transition.

I am going to highlight new features of SharePoint 2013 to help you with this decision.

Reuse Content Across Multiple Sites

One of the pain points experienced in previous versions of SharePoint was around the fact that content that was created within one site collection could not easily be reused in a separate site collection. Since many organizations required multiple site collections, this limitation created a few cases where duplicate content was required.

With 2013, the concept of Cross-Site publishing has been introduced. When using this feature you can store and manage content in one location and then display the content in other site collections. Using this approach you can display the data in as many places that are needed, while still only managing and maintaining one single point of truth.

Navigation and User Friendly Links

There are new navigation features and the ability to base a navigation structure of an existing term set. This allows organizations to centrally manage their content and to provide meaningful navigation structures within the multiple site collections. You can also create friendlier names when linking to pages and content within SharePoint. 

In previous versions of SharePoint you were required to have longer URLs that contained references to the specific location you were trying to access. Within SharePoint 2013 you can now configure the URL so that it can be more easily referenced.

An example of this would be the following two URLs:

Previous SharePoint versions:
http://www.contoso.com/Pages/Computers.aspx#/ID=453&Source=http%3A%2F1010101

SharePoint 2013 Friendly URL: http://www.contoso.com/Computers/model101

You can see that by removing the required URL parameters for ID and Source you are able to create friendly, memorable URLs for your sites and pages.

Changing Web Parts

There is a need to be able to "gather" and "present" data to users. In previous versions of SharePoint this was done through either the Content Query Web Part or a custom Roll Up solution.

Because of limitations in performance, the Content Query Web Part was restricted in how it could be utilized across organizations. If you had many users who needed to roll up a large amount of content it is likely that you could experience performance issues in using the web part.

SharePoint 2013 adds a new web part that will allow you to provide the same functionality as the Content Query Web Part, but is instead based on the search functionality available within SharePoint. Because this web part is based on search, many of the existing limitations have been reduced.

Design Changes

In SharePoint 2013 there are many new techniques that can be used to aide in the branding and customization of your sites. One of the biggest impacts is the ability to create a SharePoint custom design in any design tool of choice. This means your designers are not limited to only working within SharePoint Designer to build their custom design.

Social Features

The list of new features in Social Enterprise include: micro blogs, activity feeds, community sites, Following, Likes and Reputations.

Community templates have been designed in a way that allows anyone within the organization to join a community and to begin discussions on things relevant to the community. These communities are a great way to share information in a collaborative way, at the same time making intellectual property with the organization available to a larger audience.

In addition to making it easier for people to come together, SharePoint community templates also provide some features that allow for them to be easily managed, including built-in moderation features. This means that you can still maintain a level of control within the discussions that are had over certain sensitive topics.

With the newest microblogging features, users will be able to start threads that include tags of other people and links to relevant content. 

Following adds the ability to "follow" people, sites, documents and topics, with subsequent actions of the followed entity appearing in the user's activity stream. 
By following other users within the organization users will be able to see items within their feeds and follow things that are relevant to them.

My Site

In SharePoint 2013 saving documents into My Sites is going to get a lot easier. There is a single document library, not two as in SharePoint 2010, and the permissions have been simplified, making it easier to share documents with colleagues. My Site document library can be synced with a local drive to enable offline access so you can access your documents even when the server is unavailable.

Mobility

It is easier to access SharePoint content from a mobile device in the 2013 version. Adding to the existing classic view, SharePoint 2013 offers two new views for mobile devices, including a contemporary view for optimized mobile browser experience and a full-screen view which enables the user to have a full desktop view of a SharePoint site on a smartphone device. 

Site Permissions

SharePoint 2013 includes new, simplified sharing based model for site permissions management. 

Themes

SharePoint 2013 will bring richer themes and even the ability to add a background image to the page.

Metro

Microsoft is using the new term "Metro" to describe its new, radical UI design of SharePoint. It is supposed to be easier to use. Microsoft is planning to use Metro as the default UI for SharePoint as well as user tools like Office, Windows, Xbox and mobile devices.

A blog is a Web site that enables you or your organization to quickly share ideas and information. Blogs contain posts that are dated and listed in reverse chronological order. People can comment on your posts, as well as provide links to interesting sites, photos, and related blogs.

Blogs posts can be created quickly, and they often have an informal tone or provide a unique perspective. Although blogs are frequently used for commentary on the Internet, they can be used in several ways in a corporate environment. For example, one of my clients used SharePoint blog for facility maintenance notes.

SharePoint Services provides a blog template that makes creating a blog easy. A blog is a site that contains lists and libraries, such as a list of blog posts, a list of other blogs, and a library for photos. Once you create a blog, you can set up categories, and then customize the blog settings.

When you create a blog, you need to decide whether you want the blog to inherit permissions from the parent site or set up unique permissions manually. In most cases, you should set up unique permissions for the blog to ensure that you can manage its site settings, lists, and libraries independently of its parent site. For example, you might want to grant less restrictive permissions on your blog than on the parent site, such as enabling all authenticated users on your intranet to read and comment on the blog.

Before you start adding content to your blog, you will want to make sure that your site, lists, and libraries are set up the way that you want. For example, you may want to edit the description of a list to help your readers understand its purpose, change permissions for the blog or the Other Blogs list, or track versions of your blog posts so that you can restore a previous version of a post if necessary.

Once you've customized the settings for your blog, then you can set up categories to help you organize your posts. Categories are especially helpful if you create blog posts about different subjects or for different purposes, such as current events, brainstorming for a special project, or a technology or hobby. When posts are organized by categories, people can more easily find the posts that fit their interests by clicking the appropriate category in the Categories list.

To create a blog, you must have permission to create sites. Click "View All Site Content", and then click "Create" on the "All Site Content" page. You can use the "Site Actions" menu to complete this step.

Next set up categories. You can add more categories or edit the category names later. If you don't want to use categories, you can choose "None" for the category when you create a post.

Under "Admin Links", click "All content". Under "Lists", click "Categories". The Categories list appears. If you have not set up categories on the blog before, the list contains category placeholders, such as Category 1 and Category 2. In the "Categories" list, click the "Edit" button to the right of the category placeholder that you want to change. Select the placeholder text, type the new text that you want, and then click OK. Repeat steps 3 through 5 to replace the existing placeholder categories with your own categories. To add additional categories, click "New on the list toolbar, and then type a name for the category in the "Title" box. To delete a category, point to its name, click the arrow that appears, and then click "Delete Item".

Once created, you may want to customize settings for your blog, or for its lists and libraries. In your blog, under "Admin Links", do one of the following:

• to customize the Posts list, click Manage posts;
• to customize the Comments list, click Manage comments;
• to customize the Other Blogs list, click All content. Under Lists, click Other Blogs;
• to customize any other lists or libraries in the blog — such as the Links list or Photos picture library — click All content, and then click the list that you want to change.

On the Settings menu, click "List Settings" or click the settings for the type of library that you are opening, such as "Picture Library Settings". Click the type of setting that you want to change, such as "Versioning" settings or "Permissions" for this list, and then make the appropriate changes. Repeat this procedure for any other settings, lists, or libraries that you want to change.

Controlled content often exists as combination of paper documents, collected in binders and distributed manually and electronic files routed for editing and approval using email. Paper documents are a burden to store, even more difficult to share widely, and they can quickly can become obsolete. Electronic content reduces the storage and distribution problem but as emails circulate their attachments may be revised resulting in different versions in use across an organization.

EMC Documentum Compliance Manager offers an automated, integrated online environment for creating, reviewing, revising, approving, distributing, and auditing controlled content.

Compliance Manager helps companies to achieve compliance with external regulations such as FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and internal policies while maintaining high product and service quality standards. It replaces unreliable and inefficient processes with streamlined processes for review, approval, and distribution, and thus reducing the time and effort employees managing controlled content.

By helping organizations meet quality objectives and comply with internal and external regulations and standards, Compliance Manager can help you to reduce operating costs, minimize waste, errors, and production delays and deliver products to market faster with greater confidence.

Compliance Manager can audit all controlled content activities enabling users, managers, and external agencies to know when and why changes were made to content. You can quickly determine who has interacted with content, as well as when and why, and detect attempts to alter or remove documents.

You also can enforce signatures and proper approvals, ensure content authenticity and immutability, and ensure documents retention for required periods.

Compliance Manager is built on the EMC Documentum platform and content repository which includes Documentum-based lifecycles and workflows, EMC Documentum Trusted Content Services for audit trails and digital signatures, and the Documentum client development environment (Web Development Kit).

As an extension of Documentum Webtop, Compliance Manager takes advantage of advanced user interface and platform services such as model dialogues to navigation, extended search capabilities, and configurable pre-sets for convenient user interface configuration.

Compliance Manager is also integrated with EMC Documentum Collaborative Services, Retention Policy Services, Branch Office Caching Services. So, users can collaborate while authoring content, manage review and approval cycles, and control retention and disposition. Once a document is approved, it can be distributed to remove sites for high-performance access.

Compliance Manager is highly configurable minimizing the need for customization. It is easy to upgrade, implement, and validate. It is designed to integrate with any J2EE-based web development and deployment strategy.

The business rules that enforce compliance are exposed as a set of services and components through the EMC Documentum Business Objects Framework. This makes it easy to create applications that work with the Compliance Manager by simply implementing and validating user interface controls. No changes to underlying business logic are required. And because there already exists a large network of experienced service providers for Compliance Manager, you can quickly find the right implementation partner.

Key Features

Secure, globally accessible repository - manage documents from one secure location for review, approval, and reuse.

Intuitive web interface - content is easily accessible.

Automated change management - ensure access to approved versions.

Document signoff with enforced justifications - electronic signature for approved versions.

Proactive notification and tracking - satisfy user acknowledgement requirements of auditors and regulations and ensure approved content is in use.

Full document and user audit trail - store signoffs in the audit trail to ensure validity and prove to regulators or auditors who has seen and approved a document.

Print control with banner and watermark - audit printing, restrict printing to authorized users, and manage hard copy distribution.

Configurable document lifecycle - for review, approval, and distribution.

Rapid search capability - quickly locate the most current content relevant to a given subject.

SharePoint has project management features to manage projects and keep track of project information on a site. You can track team events with a calendar, manage a list of tasks, and log and respond to issues.

A team can use a calendar to track team events, vacations, and conferences, and other events. Team members can connect this calendar to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, where they can overlay it with their personal calendars to avoid scheduling conflicts. They can copy events back and forth between the calendars.

The team can use tasks lists to manage the work for large projects, such as planning a convention and managing a marketing campaign. Tasks can be set up with a standard list view or as a project tasks list. A project tasks list provides a visual overview, known as a Gantt view, of the tasks and their progress. Templates are available for creating lists in either format — a standard list view or a project tasks list.

The team can use an issue tracking list to track logistical problems that are related to the conference planning, such as registration database issues. A team member logs the issue, and then people record any updates and fixes until the issue is resolved.

Working with lists

When you create a team site, several lists are created for you. These default lists range from a discussion board to a calendar list. You can customize and add items to these lists, create additional lists from templates, and create custom lists with just the settings and columns that you choose.

Lists can include many types of information, ranging from text to dates to pictures. Lists can also include calculations, such as totals or a calculated date, such as a week from today's date.

By using lists, you can do the following:

Track versions - You can track versions of list items, so that you can see which list items have changed, as well as who changed them. If mistakes are made in a newer version, you can restore a previous version of an item.

Require approval - Your organization can specify that approval for a list item is required before it can be viewed by everyone.

Integrate e-mail with a list - If incoming or outgoing e-mail is enabled on your site, some lists can take advantage of e-mail features. Some types of lists, such as calendars and discussions, can be set up so that people can add content to them by sending e-mail. Additionally, Office Outlook 2007 integrates with calendar, tasks, and contacts lists.

Customize permissions - Your organization can specify custom permissions for a list or even a single list item. This feature can be useful, for example, if a specific item contains confidential information.

Create and manage views - Your group can create different views of the same list. The contents of the actual list don't change, but the items are organized or filtered so that people can find the most important or interesting information.

Keep informed about changes - You can subscribe to RSS Feeds of lists and views to see updates to lists in your RSS viewer, such as Outlook 2007. If your organization has set up incoming e-mail, you can receive e-mail alerts when items change.

Manage lists and work offline with lists in Microsoft Office Access 2007 - You can manage lists with database tools and take lists offline with Office Access 2007.

View lists on mobile devices - You can view many lists, such as tasks lists and calendars, and document libraries on mobile devices. To view a mobile list, type /m after the Web address of the site. Mobile views are not available for some list types, such as discussions, and may not display all column types.

Common types of lists for collaboration

The following are some of the more common types of lists your organization can use:

Calendar - Use a calendar for all of your team's events or for specific situations, such as a project calendar or company holidays.

Tasks and project tasks - Use a tasks list to track information about projects and other events for your group. You can assign tasks to people, as well as track the status and percentage complete as the task moves toward completion. A project tasks list displays the tasks with progress bars, known as a Gantt view.

Issue tracking - Use an issue-tracking list to store issues, their status, and resolution. This is a common type of list for tracking support issues or incidents, such as customer service, quality assurance, or technical support.

Discussion boards - Use a discussion board to provide a central place to record and store team discussions that is similar to the format of newsgroups.

Announcements - Use an announcements list to share news and status and to provide reminders.

Contacts - Use a contacts list to store information about people or groups that you work with.

Links - Use a links list as a central location for links to the Web, your company's intranet, and other resources.

Surveys - Use a survey to collect and compile feedback, such as an employee satisfaction survey or a quiz.

Custom - Although you can customize any built-in list, you can start with a custom list and then add just the settings that you want. You can also create a list that is based on a spreadsheet, such as a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbook for managing contracts. 

In my last post, I mentioned that Documentum has two tools for automatic classification: Content Intelligence Services (CIS) and EMC Captiva Dispatcher. I also described Content Intelligence Services (CIS) tool. In this my post, I am going to describe EMC Captiva Dispatcher.

EMC Captiva Dispatcher delivers high speed automatic content classification, data extraction, and routing documents. With Dispatcher, companies are able to scan multiple batches of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured content within a single flow, without a need for separator sheets, barcodes, or patch codes. By combining EMC Captiva Dispatcher with the Captiva InputAsset Intelligent enterprise capture platform, you can scan, classify, extract, and deliver data from almost any kind of electronic or paper document, often without a need for manual sorting or data entry.

The result is cost reduction and business process optimization which are measures that can help save time and money while increasing an ability to manage the flow of incoming documents.

One of the greatest strength of Dispatcher lies in its ability to identify similar document types. It uses both text and image based analysis to determine document types, automatically capture business data for search and archiving or to drive transactional processes and route documents to the appropriate department for processing. The technology works by automatically learning the attributes of existing documents and using them as a basis for classifying new incoming documents.

By analyzing document's layout design such as logos or other graphical elements, Dispatcher is completely language and format independent. In the case of unstructured and semi-structured documents, they system uses full-text engine results, looking for keywords and text phrases contained in a document to determine the document type. By learning documents based on a visual layout, new document types can be automatically added.

Dispatcher performs automated data extraction and validation, reducing the need for manual data entry and ensuring that accurate information is passed to back-office systems. Dispatcher includes several recognition engines that allow you to extract machine printed and handwritten text, check marks, and barcode information.

For structured forms, Dispatcher extracts data using fast and accurate pre-defined zones. For less structured documents, like invoices or contracts, Dispatcher extracts data using more flexible, free form recognition, enabling data to be extracted regardless of where it exists on a page.

This broad set of recognition technologies and methods ensure that data is extracted with the highest performance from structured forms, while also providing maximum flexibility to extract data from all document types.

As part of EMC Captiva intelligent enterprise capture solution, Dispatcher integrates seamlessly with InputAccel, providing a capture platform that supports both centralized and distributed environments. InputAccel custom capture process flows manage the end-to-end process, ensuring that documents are classified, data is extracted and validated, and information is delivered to all relevant content repositories and business systems. Leveraging InputAccel together provides organizations with a complete solution that is capable of processing volumes ranging from few thousand documents a day to several million. 

Documentum has two tools for automatic classification: Content Intelligence Services (CIS) and EMC Captiva Dispatcher. The subject of my today’s post is Content Intelligence Services (CIS. In my next post, I will describe EMC Captiva Dispatcher.

Content Intelligence Services (CIS) is an extension to the EMC Documentum content management platform that enables automatic classification and categorization of content in the Documentum repository. Its benefit is well organized, classified, and categorized content. With CIS, content is parsed and analyzed and classification rules are applied. The results of the classification can then be used for categorization as keywords to populate content metadata.

The capability of automatically creating keywords to populate content metadata can remove the burden from end users who otherwise have to do it manually. Many users struggle to consistently populate metadata as content is being created which significantly limits its future use since metadata is what enables processing of the content. 

CIS eliminates this dependency on users. CIS can propose metadata to users who can accept or modify them as needed. CIS can provide support for a combination or automatic and manual classification with a special user interface to category owners. Category owners can make a classification decisions manually in cases where the automatic rules cannot classify content with a preset certainty level. The user interface is built into every Documentum client such as Webtop and becomes active upon detection of CIS in the system.

With CIS, the results of the classification can be used for content categorization which assigns content to appropriate categories. Typically, categories are represented by a folder structure to which content is linked. A category hierarchy – or taxonomy – is usually common to a department or an organization and allows all users to share the same navigation view for content in active project or content that has been archived.

CIS comes with prepackaged taxonomies for various industries. These taxonomies can be customized and used either out of box or as a starting point for a customization. Users can add categories and sub-categories to these taxonomies.

CIS supports major European languages. This enables the classification of local content in its native language against an enterprise-wide or local taxonomy. Using this multilingual capabilities, companies can deploy CIS globally, enhancing globalization capabilities of Documentum that include pervasive Unicode compatibility and localized user interfaces.

Next time: EMC Captiva Dispatcher. 

A library is a place on a site where team members can work together to create, update, and manage files. Each library displays a list of files and key information about the files.

Why work with libraries?

Storing your documents in a central location can help your team work on files together, especially if your files tend to be scattered among people's computers or in multiple shared folders on your network.

For example, the Marketing team uses a document library named Marketing Documents for managing its press releases, budget files, contracts, and other types of files. The library stores information that is relevant to the type of file, such as the name of the project that the file is associated with. The Marketing team also uses a slide library to share and reuse slides for presentations.

The Shared Documents library is created automatically when your team creates a new site. You can start using this library right away, customize it, or create other libraries. Your team can also create more specialized libraries, such as slide libraries, picture libraries, and form libraries.

The Marketing team tracks versions in its libraries, so the team has a history of how files have evolved and can restore a previous version if someone makes a mistake. Team members check out documents when they work on them, so that no one else can overwrite their changes.

If you want a workspace where you can coordinate work on a document or a small number of related documents, you can create a Document Workspace site. A Document Workspace site includes a document library in addition to a tasks list, schedules, and a list of workspace members. For storing your team's primary set of documents, which your team uses on a routine basis, use your team's Shared Documents library.

By default, people in the Members group can add files to and edit files in a library. If you don't have permission, contact the person who owns your site or library. If you are a site owner or designer, you can customize the library by changing how the files are displayed and managed.

Some key advantages of working with libraries

The following are some key features of libraries that enable your team to manage its files and work more efficiently. Advanced features for managing content, such as policies on how documents are used and shared, are explained in other topics.

Central location - a library is a central location where your team can update and manage documents. If your team members struggle to keep up with files stored on individual shares or sent in separate e-mail messages, a library can help reduce the chaos.

Checkout - you can check out a file to reserve it for your use so that others cannot change it while you are working on it. If you are using the 2007 Microsoft Office system, you can work with files on your computer, and even take them offline, when you check them out.

Versions - a library can track versions, which provides a version history and enables previous versions to be restored.

Alerts and RSS - you can set up e-mail alerts or subscribe to RSS Feeds so that you are updated on changes to files.

Views - your team can create views that show content in multiple ways that may be especially relevant or meaningful. For example, the Marketing team has views of files grouped by department and contracts that expire this month.

Search - libraries are searchable. For example, you can search on a title or property of a document, such as the document author.

Client integration - If you are running some 2007 Office release programs, such as Microsoft Office Word 2007, you can work with server features directly from the client, such as checking out files, updating server properties, or viewing a version history.

Approval - your library can be set up to require someone to approve files before they are displayed to others. This feature can be helpful if your library contains important guidelines or procedures that need to be final before others see them.

Content types - your team can set up content types for the types of documents it uses most often, such as marketing presentations, budget worksheets, and contracts. The content types include templates as a starting point, for formatting and any boilerplate text and for properties that apply to the documents of that type, such as department name or contract number.

Workflow - your group can apply business processes to its documents, known as workflows, which specify actions that need to be taken in a sequence, such as approving or translating documents. 

Most people spend the greater part of their work day involved in collaborative tasks. They share information, they work together in teams, and they manage projects. It can be a challenge to collaborate effectively if you do not have tools to easily communicate, share information, and coordinate projects details and deadlines among a large group of people.

SharePoint can help you get your work done more efficiently because it provides organizations with a platform for sharing information and working together in teams. A SharePoint site offers specific kinds of tools and workspaces that you can use to communicate with team members, track projects, coordinate deadlines, and collaboratively create and edit documents.

Manage Projects More Efficiently

Users can create a site from the Team Site template to manage a range of team projects and document related tasks. They would use their team site every day to create and manage documents, track issues and tasks, and share links and contacts. Because they have one location for these activities, members of a team can save time and enjoy increased productivity.

The site template for a team site includes:

• Shared documents library;
• Announcements list;
• Calendar;
• Team discussion list;
• Tasks list;
• Links list.

The site can store long term routine information for a single department or short term information for a special project that spans several departments. By creating a team site to use as a collaborative workspace, your team can become both more efficient and more productive and ultimately achieve better business results. You can also customize your site to meet the needs of your team or project by adding lists, libraries, or other features to the site. Calendar can be used for tracking events, meetings, etc. Users can link the calendar to their personal calendars in Microsoft Office Outlook so that they can view this information along with their personal calendar information. Users can create a Project Tasks list to visualize and track the key phases of projects.

There are several different ways you can use a team site to manage projects more efficiently: 

• use built-in features such as the Project Tasks list template, which enables you to visualize task relationships and project status with automated Gantt charts;
• coordinate the team's work with shared calendars, alerts, and notifications. You can connect a calendar on your SharePoint site to your calendar in Office Outlook 2007, where you can view and update it just as you do your personal calendar;
• create Meeting Workspace sites to gather materials and documents related to a meeting.

Create, Review, and Share Documents

Groups of people can create and edit documents collaboratively. For example, team members save general documents to a shared Documents library, where other team members can easily read them or check them out and edit them or team can use slide or picture libraries to save and reuse slides and pictures for various presentations, etc. For special projects that involve only a few people, team members can create Document Workspace subsites on their team site. Document Workspace sites help users to coordinate work on a single document or a group of documents.

There are several different ways to save and work on documents and other files on a team site: 

• use document libraries to store and manage important documents. Features such as versioning and check-out help you keep track of revisions to a document and to prevent multiple people from making changes at the same time;
• create Document Workspace sites to coordinate the development of specific documents;
• use Slide Libraries to share and reuse slides in a central location;
• take document libraries offline to enable people to view and edit documents while they are not connected to the network;
• use workflows to manage collaborative tasks such as document review or approval.

Capture and Share Team Knowledge

SharePoint provides organizations with a central location to capture best practices, share information, and promote standardized business processes. Teams can use both a wiki site and a blog site to capture and communicate information of interest to the team. A team can use a wiki to compile general information about company and team processes that will be helpful to new team members. Any member of the team can add information to the wiki or update the wiki posts. A team can also routinely post industry-related or marketing-related information to a blog site, where other team members can read the posts and comment on them. The blog provides team members with a forum to share new ideas, opinions, or inspiration.

Here are some ways you can use SharePoint to capture and share collective team knowledge or important information: 

• track updates and information with alerts or Really Simple Syndication (RSS);
• use blogs to share or promote information;
• Capture community knowledge or document internal processes by using a wiki;
• use surveys or discussions to gather information or encourage dialogue.