SharePoint 2007 Expands Business Intelligence

New business intelligence (BI) features could increase the appeal of SharePoint Server 2007, the latest version of Microsoft’s portal and collaboration product. SharePoint Server 2007 allows nontechnical workers to define key performance indicators (KPIs), manage reports, and create dashboards—Web pages that display KPIs and related information, which could strengthen the company’s hand in the BI market by helping organizations track and report performance with limited ongoing involvement of developers and IT. However, developers and IT workers will need to set up SharePoint Server 2007 carefully for its BI features to be very useful.

Web-Based Performance Tracking, Reports

SharePoint Server 2007, released to manufacturing in Nov. 2006, is the latest version of Microsoft’s server application for hosting intranet Web portals. Along with refined features for collaboration and document management, SharePoint Server 2007 adds new reporting capabilities to Microsoft’s growing list of BI tools and applications for business users and other nontechnical workers. BI is a catchall term for the collection, processing, and analysis of data from a range of business applications (such as transaction, customer relationship management, and inventory systems) to aid business-related decisions.