Enterprise Content Management and Business Intelligence

Enterprise Content Management

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a broad term that refers to managing the entire document life cycle from ideation through archival. This includes not only the same workflow capabilities I described earlier for WSS sites, but also the ability to archive these records and apply retention policies to them. Additionally, ECM encompasses web content management (WCM) to support the creation, approval, and deployment of web sites.

MOSS supports several different templates that allow organizations to create both public and private sites. One of those templates allows you to create a records repository that you can use to archive documents according to a document retention policy. Documents may be added to the records repository either manually from within a SharePoint document library, or automatically by associating a workflow with a retention policy. In the latter case, a document could, for example, be routed through a review process and then sent to the repository after it has reached a certain age. It might also be good to mention at this point that both WSS and MOSS have a recycle bin that works similarly to the Windows Recycle Bin and allows a single document to be recovered if it is inadvertently deleted.

Along with documents, MOSS also manages web content. Prior to the release of MOSS, the Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) was the primary way that organizations created, approved, and published web content. With the release of MOSS, MCMS is being retired. The major capabilities formerly in MCMS have been moved to MOSS. This includes creating page templates with content placeholders, implementing approval processes, and deploying pages in bulk from separate development environments to production environments.


Business Intelligence

Business intelligence represents a key area where MOSS brings many new capabilities that were unknown in previous versions of SharePoint. One of the MOSS templates available out of the box is a Report Center template designed to act as a hub for business intelligence data. While business intelligence capabilities can be utilized anywhere within MOSS, the Report Center template is specially designed to support report distribution and the creation of key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards. Reports can be delivered either by creating Excel spreadsheets or by designing reports in Microsoft Reporting Services. KPI dashboards can be created either by hand or by connecting them to a spreadsheet or an analysis cube built in SQL Server 2005.

Along with these features, MOSS also supports two new server-based versions of Office products: Excel Services and Office Forms Server. With these servers, you can distribute Excel spreadsheets and InfoPath forms to end users even when they do not have Excel or InfoPath installed. This means that spreadsheet-based reports and dashboards can be delivered over the web without exposing critical data or calculation formulas to users. It’s also now possible to expose InfoPath forms over the web to traveling personnel, customers, and partners who might need to fill out a formbut do not have the InfoPath client available.

Rounding out the business intelligence feature set is the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The BDC is a new no-code mechanism for exposing line-of-business data within MOSS. Using the BDC, you can define the data structure in back-end systems such as your customer relationship management (CRM) system or human resources database. This data may then be mapped into web parts for easy searching, displaying, and filtering.