17.1. What Are Windows SharePoint Services?
Quickly becoming a popular solution for creating collaborative Web sites, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) enable companies to generate such sites rapidly and with a great deal of customization. At last count, Microsoft itself had over 80,000 internal SharePoint sites used for by various product teams. This is a great example of what is referred to as "eating your own dog food.
A collaborative Web site is a site that enables groups of people such as teams or departments in a company to collaborate among themselves in a number of different ways. SharePoint facilitates this by providing templates for various features that are necessary for collaboration.
17.1.1. Windows SharePoint Services Site Features
With WSS sites you can:
Store working documents in centralized locations called document libraries, including using various Office solutions.
Assign various users different roles, from a casual browser to an advanced author or administrator.
Create and maintain various lists including but not limited to contacts, announcements, pictures, tasks, and meetings.
Make discussion areas that can include general discussions, notifications, and surveys.
Use Search capabilities within the site, subsites, and documents within the site.
Use a programmable object model to create your own custom solutions.
WSS is very scalable, whether you are creating a site for a single group or multiple sites combined using a SharePoint portal. The sites also are highly ...
