This is another in a series of articles dedicated to helping you prepare for the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics SL 7.0. In this article, we discuss the value of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, commonly referred to as MOSS, and Windows SharePoint Services, commonly called WSS. Support for both is standard in Business Portal for Microsoft Dynamics SL 7.0. Business Portal’s navigation and framework is built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It also supports MOSS, although none of the additional functionality provided by MOSS is built into the product.

Let’s discuss how these tools can be used to solve customer needs AND generate revenue opportunities for you. We will give you a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing, and we encourage you to discuss additional opportunities with your customers.

1. Document management and versioning – Almost every industry, from professional services organizations to healthcare providers to mail order catalog businesses, is finding a need to store documents in a centralized location where they can be retrieved quickly and easily. If the business activity is focused on providing excellent customer service, this is probably a high priority request. Or if the business experiences high volume transactions or high turnover, this is likely to be a high priority. Staying competitive in today’s market requires employees to have an up to date view into transaction history as well as current transactions. Likewise, many businesses need to retain documents so that various versions can be referred to as the document progresses. Implementing WSS or MOSS provides this capability AND allows you to perform text searches on a site when you know what you’re looking for and you’re not sure where it is located.

2. Content management – Some businesses want to keep company policies and procedures in a central location and give employees read-only access to them. Such documents might include team guides, payroll forms, leave of absence forms, procurement policies, and many, many more. Because they are corporate documents, only a limited number of employees (usually executives or human resource staff) are permitted to update them. WSS and MOSS allow rules and permissions to be defined to protect the content from being accidentally revised. At the same time, WSS and MOSS grant access rights to the individuals responsible for maintaining the content.
Another example of content management is when companies want to share their performance results with employees. With WSS and MOSS, these organizations can set up a site where spreadsheets and reports are available for viewing. Again, the ability to assign rules and permissions lets your customer grant access to those who are responsible for maintaining the content.

3. Project workspace – In today’s fast-paced environment, employees often find the need for a common workspace where they can collaborate with others. Sometimes this collaboration is with co-workers. These co-workers might all work in the same building or some might work from remote offices. WSS and MOSS allow workspaces to be defined regardless of workers’ locations. Your customer can grant privileges to whoever needs access, and they can store project meeting minutes, decisions, metrics, progress reporting, results, and deliverables in one place. If your customers are complaining about the amount of time it takes to complete a project because they have to send documents back and forth or wait on each other to get a request, update notes, and forward them to the next person in the chain, WSS and MOSS can solve this problem.

These are just a few examples of where WSS and MOSS can be leveraged to solve customer needs. There are many more possibilities and we could fill pages with examples. Instead of reading about them, contact us today at sales@plumblinesolutions.com to take the next step toward creating the solution. Together, we can solve your customers’ needs more quickly, provide the necessary training you may want to optimize your solution development efforts with these tools, and grow your business.