Introduction

Lately I have been really impressed at some of the software Microsoft has been putting out for the web.  SharePoint Team Services is a new technology that came out with FrontPage 2002 (XP).   Don’t confuse this with SharePoint Portal Server which provides some of the same functionality but I will cover that in a future review.

What is SharePoint Team Services?  Team Services is a team website that makes it incredibly easy to communicate with your team.   The best part about SharePoint is that you can do most if not all of your tasks from any standard web browser.  Users don’t need to know anything about HTML or programming.  They can upload documents create links; participate in discussion groups just to name a few things that Team Services does.
 

New Features

• Seamless Integration with Office XP – All of the Office XP programs have the functionality built in to save to your Team Services website.
• Shared Documents – In my opinion the best feature by far which allows you to upload documents using any standard web browser.
• Discussion Boards – Newsgroup style web forum
• Calendaring – Web based Calendaring
• Contacts – Shared contacts
• Tasks – Assign task to different members of your team
• Links – Add links from any web browser.
   

Installation

I will assume you already have IIS installed and running.  The SharePoint Team Services installer is located on the FrontPage CD under SHAREPT.  Execute setupse.exe to start the installation.

Image Install4.gif describes what is actually getting installed.  SharePoint Team Services runs on top of the FrontPage Server Extensions 2002.  MSDE will also be installed as the database for Team Services.  You can also backend Team Services to SQL Server if you like.

And you are done.  This has got to be the easiest installation ever for a Server Product from Microsoft.  Basically three clicks and you are finished.  I give major kudos to Microsoft for making this so painless.