Integration with Office Enhanced

Although a Web browser suffices for many activities on WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 sites, other features require Office 2007, the latest release of Microsoft’s desktop application suite. For example, an InfoPath-based mechanism in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word 2007 encourages workers to properly tag documents before saving them in SharePoint document libraries, and Outlook 2007 provides support for users working with documents while offline.

Furthermore, Outlook 2007 allows users read-write access to group calendars, task lists, contacts, and other information stored on Windows SharePoint Server (WSS) 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 sites. This improved integration does not provide a complete substitute for similar functions in Exchange, but will help small teams coordinate information stored in SharePoint with parallel organization-wide information stored in Exchange Server. The move could foretell a long-term transition in which some collaboration and data-sharing features in Exchange, particularly Public Folders, will be eliminated, with SharePoint products emerging as their replacement.