The number one question in any discussion of SharePoint technology seems to be the uses of Portal areas and WSS sites.
Heather Solomon has some excellent information from a technical and design perspective in her blog: http://heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/446.aspx.
However, frequently I need to explain the benefits of both to non-technical decision makers (read: suits). For these presentations, I compare SharePoint technologies to "The Enterprise Book of Knowledge."
Like any physical book, this virtual book has three major components:
- Table of Contents (TOC)
- Contents
- Index
In our virtual book, the TOC, preface, cover, flyleaf and perhaps even the slipcase are portal areas. None of these parts of a book normally contain real content. Perhaps summaries, quotes, acknowledgements and references but not content.
The chapters that constitute the contents of a physical book normally immediately follow the TOC in a fixed, organized structure. The contents of our virtual "Enterprise Book of Knowledge" can be anywhere-- in WSS sites and workspaces, in file systems, in databases, in public folders, etc. This content neither has, nor needs, any organized structure for our virtual presentation.
When one cannot determine the location of content in the TOC of a physical book, one has two choices... read the entire book or look up the subject in the index. Our index is the portal search.
So what benefits does SharePoint bring to our collection of enterprise knowledge?
- Flexible presentation. We can have multiple TOCs that allow the various logics of users to be accommodated in overlapping areas.
- Dynamic content. Unlike the book on our shelf, we never complete OUR virtual book but, while we are busy in the workspaces, there is always an approved, published version available. Plus the organization of our content never drives our TOC(s). While Office 2003 products are tightly integrated into our production environment, web parts and other tools expand our content possibilities endlessly beyond Office documents.
- User defined index. With attention to content sources, source groups and search scopes, our index (search) can produce a very concise, refined results set as defined by the user's choices in both simple and advanced search. Unlike the index of a physical book, the user of a well-defined search can locate information based on his or her terminology, and is not confined to the author's list.
- Security molding. All components of our virtual book-- TOC, Contents and Index-- adjust to the user's assigned "need to know." It's like, "You can get what you see, but what you see is all you get!"
I hope these notes help you explain SharePoint, but if you need me to do the presentation, let me know.