Introducing CIT’s Updated Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) Service

If you haven’t considered using CIT’s SharePoint Service offering yet, you might want to take another look. We are pleased to announce a modification to our existing SharePoint service.

When we launched CIT’s collaborative service, we used Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) to give customers flexible team sites for easier information exchange and shared productivity.

Starting in the 2nd Quarter FY2009, we are enhancing the existing service with additional features not available in the initial offering. The most notable additions include content management services, access to premium MOSS features, and an infrastructure upgrade to include an SQL clustered database solution.

What is MOSS?

MOSS is a web service that provides an organized hierarchy for information sharing, document collaboration, and content management, allowing for easy and efficient cooperation on common projects. Teams can edit documents, assign tasks, publish content, plan events, and attend meetings regardless of the geographical location of individual team members.

With the release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), Microsoft integrated and consolidated SharePoint and Content Management Service (CMS) into a single service. CMS is a publishing function that allows content creators, or “subject matter experts” (SME), to publish their own web page content without the intervention of the web administrators.

As a result of consolidating SharePoint and CMS, the MOSS service now provides customers with both the collaboration component from SharePoint and the content management component from CMS. If you are a current SharePoint customer, you will also have access to the CMS features.

Please note: With the release of MOSS, CMS 2002 will be phased out. CIT will be working with our current CMS customers on their migration to MOSS.

Collaboration with MOSS

MOSS sites’ collaboration spaces make sharing ideas and contributing content easier for teams. The meeting workspace offers more than a place to meet online; your team can also save and share agendas and minutes, goals and objectives, attendees’ contact information, and other meeting-related documents in the workspace. If you often collaborate on documents, consider the benefits MOSS sites provide for shared document management:

• Check-in and check-out: Provides users with exclusive rights to a document. When a document is checked out, only the user can make changes and save the document. This gives multiple users a way to collaborate on the document without overlap in work.


• Version control: Helps users track changes, merge versions, and rollback versions if necessary.


• Content Approval: Allows authors to configure content approval so that users are required to obtain approval on content before posting documents.

Features that make MOSS services easy to use

Compatibility: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is integrated and compatible with Microsoft Office 2003 and Office 2007 for Windows. It is also compatible with Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh and multiple browsers.

Convenience: If you use Microsoft Office programs, then you are already familiar with the basic tools for accessing SharePoint features. The integration of SharePoint with Microsoft Office for Windows (see “Compatibility”) means that you can use programs like Outlook and Word to take advantage of MOSS collaborative functions:

• Meeting Workspaces: Create meeting workspaces directly from Microsoft Outlook. Set alerts to notify users, by email, when information on SharePoint changes.


• Document Workspaces: Create document workspaces directly from Microsoft Word to write, edit, and share documents.


• Task Panes: Access Task, Link, and Contact Lists through Office 2003 and Office 2007 task panes.


• InfoPath Workflow: SharePoint Services are integrated with Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007, so you can use InfoPath 2007 capabilities to design and publish interactive, user-friendly form templates.

Custom NIH templates: In order to make setting up your SharePoint site easier, CIT has created custom NIH templates with a standard NIH header and footer. This way, you can choose which template best fits your needs. The template options are tailored for team sites, document sites, meeting sites, content sites, and discussion sites.

Security

To customize and increase security, Site Administrators can assign levels of permissions to users that define their degree of access to a SharePoint site. Administrators can assign user groups to the following pre-defined roles:

• Reader: A Reader has read-only access to the site.


• Contributor: A Contributor can add content to the existing document libraries and lists.


• Web Designer: A Web Designer can create the libraries and lists, as well as customize pages in the site.


• Administrator: The Site Administrator has full control over the SharePoint site.

If these established roles are not sufficient, users can create custom roles as needed.

SharePoint security is hierarchical, distributed, and granular:

• Hierarchical: Permissions can be granted at a root site and inherited several levels down if desired.


• Distributed: Site Administrators can create cross-site groups so users can have access to multiple sites.


• Granular: Users can be given permission to specific documents, or entire site collections.

And don’t worry about remembering yet another loginID and password. Because SharePoint is integrated with Active Directory and NIH Login, the same account that you use to access other NIH resources works for your SharePoint sites too. Finally, if you want to cooperate with non-NIH partners, the Site Administrator can grant external collaborators access to SharePoint sites as needed.

Publishing with MOSS

SharePoint Publishing automates the online publication process, making it easy to use your browser to create new pages, edit existing content, and submit content for review. SharePoint also ensures that all content creation adheres to the established workflow before publishing approved content.

SharePoint Publishing gives you the tools to easily and quickly publish content to your sites. As an author, you will be able to publish content from your development sites to your production site(s) without requiring help from the Site Administrators or IT department. This will help to decrease the amount of support required and make it easier and faster for you to deploy content out to the NIH community.

CIT’s Windows MOSS standard offering

CIT will offer its MOSS Service for shared and dedicated server environments in the 2nd quarter of calendar year 2009. If you already have a previous SharePoint site collection, it will be migrated to the new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment.

CIT has built a fully redundant, resilient, and well-designed environment for this production offering. This includes F5 Load balancing and automatic failover, 24x7 site monitoring, and an SQL clustered database solution, as well as document-level backup and restore, and options for managing site growth. SharePoint basic client access licenses (CALs) are included for customers who participate in the HHS Enterprise Agreement (e.g. iSDP).

Each customer must designate a Site Administrator who will be given administrative access to their project’s site. As part of the offering, we provide the Site Administrator with information and training on how to oversee the SharePoint site. CIT conducts training sessions at least once a quarter to ensure Site Administrators have a solid background in both the SharePoint product and their site responsibilities.

MOSS premium features

With the new Moss offering, customers who have purchased premium Client Access Licenses (CALs) can use the Excel Services, Business Intelligence, and Business Process Forms features in MOSS. Each customer is responsible for purchasing their own required CALs from the HHS iSDP support or Microsoft.

Some examples of the benefits these features offer include:

• Excel: Business data search and Excel spreadsheet developer reuse and extensibility;


• Business Intelligence: Web-based business intelligence using Excel, Integrated Dashboards, and Key Performance Indicators;


• Business Process Forms: Browser-based forms, centralized forms management, and control and "Design Once" development model.

For an additional fee, support for Rights Management Services (RMS) will be available to customers. Organizations can use RMS to help prevent sensitive information from intentionally or accidentally getting into the wrong hands, since RMS protects information through usage policies no matter where it goes. Each customer is responsible for purchasing their own required RMS client access licenses (CALs) from the HHS iSDP support or Microsoft.

Support for custom code will also be available to customers, for an additional fee. CIT staff will provide individualized, hands-on administrative assistance required at the global level in moving custom code to the production environment.

How to get more information

If you are interested in MOSS services or would like to migrate your existing SharePoint or CMS site to the MOSS platform, please contact the NIH Help Desk by phone at 301-496-HELP (301-496-4357), 866-319-4357 (toll free), or 301-496-8294 (TTY).

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