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PREMIER KNOW-HOW
New York, NY February 13, 2006
Beyond Email: Organization, Collaboration, & Security
contributed by Ron Sharpe
Email, for all its usefulness, too often devolves into a poorly organized, ineffectively shared mass of information and documents. To help address this issue and to enable secure, well-structured collaboration internally and with clients, law firms are implementing Microsoft SharePoint software.
Microsoft SharePoint software provides a powerful, cost-effective way of retrieving, organizing, consolidating, presenting and distributing large quantities of information from diverse sources. SharePoint enables the rapid design and deployment of Internet portals that improve communication, foster collaboration both internally and with clients, and help to address the challenges of information overload.
Web Site Creation
A SharePoint environment consists of any number of web sites which organize and present information and documents about clients, matters, practice groups, meetings and events, human resources topics, IT projects, or any other appropriate topic. SharePoint ships out-of-the-box with several different templates for managing different types of content such as documents, events and meetings. Custom templates can also be created. New web sites can be easily created with a few mouse clicks or web site creation can be automated based on a data feed of new client/matter data from an accounting system.
Content Creation and Management
A web site without content is an empty shell. SharePoint simplifies content creation using prepackaged components called web parts. A web part is a self-contained module that performs a particular function such as retrieving items from a user’s email inbox or retrieving a list of the latest decisions from a particular court or providing a list of contacts working on a particular matter. A web part is simply dragged onto a SharePoint web page and the web part’s functionality is displayed on the page. For example, a page for a matter being handled by a law firm may use web parts to include a list of documents related to the matter with links to the underlying documents, a list of contacts with links to detailed information about each contact, a list of invoices for the matter with links, a list of links to pertinent research sources that may reside inside the firm or on the Internet, and a list a key dates and deadlines for the matter.
Full-Text Searching
SharePoint supports full-text indexing and searches of a variety of data sources including file shares, Lotus Notes databases, Exchange public folders, and external web sites. This enables a Google type search of a variety of documents and data located inside and outside of a firm. Other data sources can also be included in the SharePoint search.
Integration of Disparate Systems
The use of mix and match SharePoint web parts enables and simplifies the integration of documents and data from disparate sources which often reside in different systems on different platforms in different internal and external locations. For example, a single SharePoint web page can contain: messages from a user’s inbox; links to documents contained in a document management system; accounting data extracted from and linked back to an accounting system; and names and addresses extracted from and linked back to a contact management system.
Microsoft Office Integration
SharePoint includes extensive out-of-the-box integration with the Microsoft Office family of products. This integration includes saving of Word, Excel, and other Office application documents from an Office application directly into SharePoint; synchronization with Outlook calendar and contacts; synchronization of SharePoint lists with Excel and Access; ability to automatically display Exchange public folder contents in SharePoint; version tracking for Office documents; and check-in/check-out capabilities.
Security
SharePoint provides a powerful and flexible security framework that can be used to restrict access only to authorized users and then to limit what these authorized users can view and do. Security is based on Microsoft’s industry standard Active Directory technology.
Most firms store electronic data in a variety of software systems and databases including document management, accounting, HR, client contact information, marketing, etc. A comprehensive, unified review of information from these different systems can be quite cumbersome and time-consuming. As a portal platform, SharePoint enables related information from all of these systems to be automatically retrieved and presented in a coherent manner on a single web page or on a set of linked pages.
Cost
SharePoint, in its basic flavor, is bundled with Windows Server 2003 at no additional charge. The full-featured version of SharePoint is inexpensive.
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