SharePoint.Revisited

Been asked to look into Office SharePoint 2007 recently (Actually, I kinda smelled that coming). Spending most of my time installing stuff on my Virtual Server now. I think I need another external HDD. I never did like SharePoint (2001 and 2003), never found a use for it (Hey! I'm a codemonkey ok?) and it was one of those products which I will stay away (who asked the fella not to install nicely on my machine?).

Now looking at Office SharePoint 2007, I can only describe it with one word - FuLaMak!!!

It looks like the SharePoint team has really made a lot of progress in this release by realigning a lot of things with Windows SharePoint Services and ASP.NET 2.0. The UI has also made significant progress and is very easy to use. Content Management is also combined into SharePoint 2007. Not only that, it also comes with Office Forms Server that converts InfoPath forms into ASP.NET pages for users who don't have InfoPath installed and Excel Services that serves Excel spreadsheets to users from a central server.

Can integrate to back-end line-of-business data with Business Data Catalog (BDC) and can use customized workflow with Windows Workflow Foundation. The SharePoint web-sites can be easily modified using Office SharePoint Designer (previously known as FrontPage) and jazzed up with WebParts developed in ASP.NET 2.0. There is also a Knowledge Network add-on that allows users to configure how they want their contact list to be shared (good for sales guys). Now, that's what I call stunning!

Ok, will need sometime to play with it.

Hmm... I think I can smell another product coming my way soon...