Mr Chuckles dot net

I’ve spent the last few days playing with Windows Sharepoint Services v2, a free add-on for Windows Server 2003 that replaced Sharepoint Team Services, the diet version of Sharepoint Portal Server. I find the product to be full of potential, but its lack of clear documentation or supporting third-party reference books is a huge failing. The product, while incredibly powerful, is also incredibly complex to customize and use in any medium to large size environment. Its integration with Office 2003, through document workspaces, is not clearly advertised within either product. Attempting to use the product to drive an entire website seems possible at first, but becomes hopelessly confusing as you get deeper into the Administrator’s Guide.

In spite of all that, I still find WSS extremely compelling. The ability to create collaborative websites with the click of a button, and then access those sites directly from Office 2003 applications is a much needed tool at my workplace. Perhaps with a little more time, someone will release a good text on the product that I can use to school myself on the product. Until that time, however, I think I’ll back away from the product for now.