Functional Elements
SharePoint Community Wiki
SharePoint delivers a vast number of functional elements for the enterprise, and these elements work in tandem to provide content and record management solutions and integration with external systems. SharePoint also delivers a sophisticated set of development tool integrations, process engine, and connectors.
Content Management
- Document creation - the creation of new content and files within the document management system
- Version control - the tracking of changes a document goes through when it is edited and updated within the document management system
- Review and approval - the business processes around reviewing and approving content for accuracy and distribution readiness
- Distribution and consumption - publication and delivery mechanisms of content that has been approved for consumption
- Searching - the ability to easily find and retrieve relevant content
Beyond Content ManagementSharePoint provide solutions beyond just content management.
- Managing web content
- Report management
Web content management’s primary focus is on creating, editing and managing content to be viewed in a browser generally on the Internet. SharePoint 2010 provides enhanced and new features for managing web content. SharePoint Central Administration, SharePoint Site Interface, and SharePoint Designer are used to manage and configure the web content management functional features. SharePoint’s Content Deployment feature enables enterprises to configure deployment locations and jobs that are used to publish content when it is ready for consumption.
An additional topic includes content generation using SharePoint reporting services. SharePoint reporting services complement the content management and application development platform already discussed. Reports can be created with one of three tools: Report Designer, Report Builder, or Model Designer. Reports definitions and models that are published to a SharePoint site can be viewed using either the Report Viewer or the Report Explorer web parts.
Business Process AutomationBusiness process management focuses on the union of technology and human driven processes in an automated fashion. To effectively manage business processes and automate their execution, an enterprise needs an infrastructure platform that supports it. Such an infrastructure consists of a process engine, a set of reporting tools, a content management environment and a set of collaborative tools.
- Workflows and tasks
- InfoPath forms
SharePoint allows definition of workflows that can be saved as workflow templates. A workflow template defines a process that is a set of tasks and rules to which an item in a list or a library must adhere. Workflows are defined using a suite of external tools like Visio, SharePoint Designer, or Visual Studio. The integration with InfoPath enables interaction required in decision-making activities by presenting forms to display and capture information.
Record ManagementRecord management defines records and their importance.
- Record management
- Email management
With SharePoint 2010, there are two ways to declare records; one is the in-place method, and the other is the relocation of the document into a records archive.
Additionally, the emergence of email extends record management practices for capturing and managing this content. A typical enterprise Exchange server can be configured to leverage managed folders and journaling to move emails to new target locations. Emails placed in the managed folders use information management policies to define how emails are classified and indexed.
