hostedexchange_header

Application hosting allows you to be productive
from anywhere, with any device.

Comparison of WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 Enterprise Features

Portal Plan

Manage a SharePoint site’s navigation, security access, and general look and feel using this easy drag-and-drop tool. Site Manager unifies site management tasks for portals and Web sites, including management of areas, pages, listings, SharePoint site lists, and associated component parts.

Features Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

My Site personal site

The My Site personal site gives users an opportunity to aggregate information “for me”, “by me”, “and”, “about me”. Significant enhancements include social networking, privacy controls, SharePoint Sites and Documents Aggregation Web Parts, and Colleagues and Memberships Web Parts.

No Yes

Content syndication

Use RSS feeds to syndicate content managed in a portal site.

No Yes

Privacy and security

Use authorizations to control visibility of information in a My Site public view.

No Yes

Site Directory

The Site Directory automatically creates a site map and presents it in an easy-to-use format. The enhanced directory now includes the option to scan for changed or deleted links to external content.

No Yes

User Profiles and the Profile Store

User Profiles store personal information for system users. Improvements include multi-valued properties bound to taxonomy from Office SharePoint Server 2007, property-level security controls by person or group, open and closed vocabularies, and per-site property extensions. Profile synchronization and directory import support the extended capabilities of the User Profile Store with enhanced scalability and performance..

No Yes

Audience targeting

Enables use of Web Part pages, Web Parts, and content to target distribution lists and groups in addition to SharePoint audiences.

No Yes

Site Manager

Manage a SharePoint site’s navigation, security access, and general look and feel using this easy drag-and-drop tool. Site Manager unifies site management tasks for portals and Web sites, including management of areas, pages, listings, SharePoint site lists, and associated component parts.

No Yes

Mobile device support

All SharePoint portal, team site, and list pages now render on international and North American mobile devices (including Web-enabled mobile phones) using a simplified text-only format.

Yes Yes

Portal site templates

Preconfigured templates streamline creating, customization, and deployment of divisional portals, organization-wide intranet portal sites, and corporate Web sites.

No Yes

SharePoint Sites and Documents Aggregation Web Parts

List all the SharePoint sites that a user is part of and documents the user has authored. The Documents Aggregation Web Part also supports more general capabilities for querying and filtering the documents stored in a collection of SharePoint sites.

No Yes

Colleagues and Memberships Web Parts

List people the user knows and people who belong to common distribution groups.

No Yes

Integration with Microsoft Office Access 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and Word 2007

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 easily integrates with smart client tools through a set of Web services and documented application interfaces. Users can readily adopt these new tools because of their similarity to other familiar environments, such as the Microsoft Office system. For example, users of 2007 Microsoft Office system programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, InfoPath, Project, and OneNote can directly interact with information stored in SharePoint sites without having to manually download the content. Users can create workspaces, post and edit documents, and assign tasks, all while working on documents stored in SharePoint sites.

Yes Yes

Integration with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

With Office Outlook 2007, users can view calendars and contact lists stored on SharePoint sites, and create and manage sites for editing documents and organizing meetings. Office Outlook 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 support a new set of significantly enhanced functionality including:

Read/write access to SharePoint items: calendars, tasks, contacts, discussions, and documents
Synchronization of offline support of document library and lists
Ability to check out and edit documents when offline
Roll-up views of calendars and tasks across multiple lists and sites
Unified view of personal and SharePoint tasks in Office Outlook 2007

Yes Yes

Integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007

Office SharePoint Designer 2007, based in part on Microsoft FrontPage technology, will provide tools for rich customization of sites, and creating reporting tools and application templates, without any coding.

Yes Yes

Collaboration Plan

Features Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

Real-time presence and communication

The enhanced real-time presence smart tag icon, displayed virtually everywhere a person’s name appears in the system, tells users whether a person is online and available for a telephone or audio conference call, instant messaging, or two-way video conversation.

Yes Yes

Social Networking Web Part

Include Social Networking Web Parts that use information about your organization, communities, and electronic communications in Public My Site pages to help establish connections between colleagues with common interests.

No Yes

Standard site templates

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 includes the following standard collaboration site templates:

Team site
Document workspace
Blank site
Blog
Wiki
Meeting workspaces (five workspace types)

Yes Yes

Wikis

A wiki is a new site template in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that makes it easy to create, edit, link, and restore an individual Web page. Wikis can be used as creative forums to brainstorm ideas, manage knowledge bases, create designs as well as instruction guides or simply gather information in an easy-to-edit format. Wikis are easy to create, modify, and annotate in addition to tracking contributions and changes. Key features include:

Fast and easy page creation
Easy and automatic linking
Version differences
What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) Web page editing

Wikis leverage existing SharePoint functionality including search, navigation, alerts, and custom fields.

Yes Yes

Blogs

Blogs provide a publishing-oriented experience for a single user or a team. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 includes a site template that supports:

Article posting
Reader comments
Archive views
RSS feed generation

Yes Yes

People and Groups lists

People and Groups offer a unified place to find, communicate with, and manage people and their permissions, including support for custom fields such as Department, Office and Area of Focus; in addition to the new Person field type. The Person field type creates rich displays of lists of people including support for a People Picker for browsing a list of users. Member Group provides:

Re-use of groups across sites
Distribution list for the members of the site

Yes Yes

Calendars

Calendars have been enhanced with richer calendar views, expanded support for recurring events, and all-day events.

Yes Yes

E-mail integration

Document libraries, discussion boards, calendars, and announcements can be enabled to receive new postings via e-mail. In addition, extensible support is provided for custom e-mail handlers in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Similar to the functionality provided by public folders in Microsoft Exchange Server, e-mail enabled discussion boards support:

A highly scalable, topic-based architecture
New super rich-text field type
Unified experience for both e-mail and Web-based discussions
One-step creation of Active Directory directory service distribution lists as part of the site creation process
Unified SharePoint group and Active Directory management functions

Yes Yes

Task coordination

The new Project Tasks list template provides lightweight task management functionality including Gantt charts for visualization of task relationships and status.

No Yes

Surveys

Surveys now include conditional branching as well as support for inserting page breaks in long surveys such as annual employee satisfaction or and customer surveys.

Yes Yes

Document collaboration

Improvements to SharePoint document libraries include: Similar to the functionality provided by public folders in Microsoft Exchange Server, e-mail enabled discussion boards support:

Checking out documents locally
Offline document library support in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Major and minor version numbering and tracking
Support for multiple content types
Policy, auditing, and workflow
Tree view support

Yes Yes

Issue Tracking

The Issue Tracking list template has been updated to use the enhanced versioning and version-history storage features of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Yes Yes

Search

Features Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

Advanced Content Processing

Extract and create metadata from documents to improve search results, sorting capabilities, and refinement.

No No

User interface

Simple, clean yet powerful user interface with industry-standard query syntax. Scopes are decoupled from content sources so users can easily broaden or narrow the scope of a content search. Search can be based on arbitrary content properties such as URL, type, and author. Actionable search results can be easily filtered and sorted; used and shared. Alerts and RSS feeds easily provide updated results for common and frequent queries.

Yes Yes

Search results

Search results are rendered more clearly. Results are security trimmed so users only see what they can access. Results include user-friendly features such as hit highlighting, duplicate collapsing, and synonym suggestion. Optional integration with real-time communications tools allow users to easily contact content authors and experts.

Yes Yes

Enterprise content sources

Searches over 200 file types in many enterprise content sources, including files shares, Web sites, SharePoint sites, Exchange Public Folders, and Lotus Notes databases out-of-the-box with the ability to extend to additional third party repositories and file types through the use of Protocol Handlers and iFilters.

No Yes

Relevance

New and improved search algorithms tuned for enterprise content along with the use of relevance and ranking factors such as click distance, hyperlink anchor text, URL depth, and metadata extraction yield the best results for enterprise content.

No Yes

Administration and management

Improved administration user interfaces and admin application programming interface (API) provides broad support for various search and indexing scenarios, central controls for resource-intensive operations, as well as tools for management and reporting.

No Yes

Indexing controls

Granular indexing controls for easy inclusion and exclusion of searched content as well as immediate result removal of any site or item. Continuous index propagation to keep information fresh. Improved crawl rules and crawl log; multiple start addresses per content source; and a new browse able, filterable index log provide necessary information to optimize search.

No Yes

Security

Administrator permissions no longer required by crawler. Access control list (ACL) and ACL-only crawls index content permissions for compliance, privacy, and protection of intellectual property (IP). Security-trimmed search results only allow users to see content they are allowed to access.

No Yes

People search

People search capabilities allow users to find people not only by department or job title but also by expertise, social distance, and common interests.

No Yes

Business data search

Search data residing in your line-of-business applications using the Business Data Catalog. Structured content sources and line-of-business application data and reports accessible through Web services or ADO.NET can be indexed and retrieved through the Business Data Catalog as search results or into a SharePoint list.

No Yes

Content Management

Features Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

Business document workflow support

Automate document review, approval, signature collection, and issue tracking using workflow applications.

Approval
Collect Feedback
Collect Signatures
Disposition Approval

No Yes

Document management site templates

The Managed Document Library site template defines large-scale document management sites.
The Divisional Library site template includes managed document libraries, dashboards, KPIs, and other reporting tools.
The Translation Library site template helps organizations manage multiple translations of a document.

No Yes

Integration with Microsoft Information Rights Management (IRM)

Helps ensure that access rights applied to Microsoft Office documents in a central library travel with the documents, even when they are downloaded from the library.

No Yes

Document Information Panel

Makes editing document properties an integral part of the Microsoft Office system document-authoring experience.

Yes Yes

Document Action Bar

Describes to users what business policy or workflow governs the current document and what action they are expected to take.

No Yes

Retention and auditing policies

Define customized information management policies to control retention period, expiration actions, and document-auditing settings.

No Yes

Records repository

Helps ensure the integrity of the files stored in the repository, and supports information management policies that consistently and uniformly enforce auditing, and expiration of records.

No Yes

E-mail content as records

Provides consistent, policy-based solutions for managing e-mail content across Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007.

No Yes

Legal holds

Makes it possible for records to be searched and placed on hold during litigation discovery to override the retention schedule of the records.

No Yes

High fidelity Web sites with consistent branding

Provides the concept of Master Pages and Page layouts to enforce the branding and navigation of Web sites. CSS supports gives pixel level control on the look and feel of these sites.

Yes Yes

Navigation controls

Out-of-the box navigation controls that can be easily customized by end users.

No Yes

Content authoring

Provides the ability for information workers to create content rich Web pages using a Web browser.

No Yes

Content publishing and deployment

Built in approval workflow allows Web content to be sent for approval prior to publishing. Content deployment to production sites can be scheduled by setting up jobs and a “live” time period for each page can be specified within which that page is viewable.

No Yes

Site templates

Includes support for several new enterprise site templates:

The Enterprise Portal template provides a means for a business unit to create and share content that is relevant to the ongoing operation of an enterprise, division, or business unit.
The Corporate Internet Presence Site template includes tools and workflows to create and manage Web content for products and service descriptions, company news, and public filings, among other things.
The Application Portal template brings together all of the tools and information related to a particular line-of-business application.
The Roll-up Portal template consolidates data and content from several applications or locations and presents it in an integrated format.

No Yes

Site variations

A new feature of Office SharePoint Server 2007, sites can be linked together in a parent-child type of relationship providing a one-way orchestration framework for Web content. This feature allow organizations to deploy multi-lingual publishing sites in a much more structured and manageable environment.

No Yes

WYSIWYG Web content editor

Extends the SharePoint user interface with additional commands and status indicators for in-context Web page authoring.

No Yes

Slide libraries

The repository features in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provide the platform support for slide libraries, a feature of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Slide libraries enable the storage of individual slides in a SharePoint site. Office PowerPoint 2007 slide decks can be automatically created from a selection of slides in a slide library.

No Yes

Policies, auditing, and compliance

Repositories in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 support the following policy, auditing, and compliance features. However, the features denoted with an asterisk are activated only upon the installation of Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Document retention and expiration policies.
Highly customizable policies.
Workflow process to define expiration.
Access control and security.
IRM policies applied on download to secure the functional access to documents.
Tracking and auditing.
Logging of all actions on sites, content, and workflows.
Official document-of-record repositories.
Site for storing or archiving enterprise approved content types.

No Yes

Forms-driven business processes Plan

Features Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

Browser-based forms

Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Services available in Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 makes it possible to design Web-capable forms in Office InfoPath 2007 and distribute them on corporate intranets, extranets, or the Internet. Users can fill out forms in a browser or HTML-enabled mobile device with no download or client components needed.

No Yes

Centralized forms management and control

Office InfoPath Forms Services provide a administrator controlled centralized form solution catalog that makes it easy for users to find a form and minimize form solution downtime when upgrades are necessary. It also provides administrators with the tools to manage form solution security and accessibility.

No Yes

“Design once” development model

Helps ensure that access rights applied to Microsoft Office documents in a central library travel with the documents, even when they are downloaded from the library.

No Yes

Form Import Wizard

The designer in Office InfoPath 2007 provides an easy way to convert forms designed in Office Excel and Office Word into rich Office InfoPath 2007 forms. The Form Import Wizard handles the conversion of form fields, repeating tables, rich text boxes, and other elements, dynamically generating the underlying XML structure for the new form.

No Yes

Integrated deployment model for “e;no-code”e; forms

The Publish Wizard in Office InfoPath 2007 makes it easy to publish forms that do not have any managed code components to a Windows SharePoint Services library, while making the form available as a browser-based form at the same time.

No Yes

Compatibility Checker

The Compatibility Checker helps forms designers validate those features that need to work across the broadest range of Web browsers.

No Yes

Intelligence Plan

Features Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

Integrated, flexible spreadsheet publishing

Office Excel 2007 provides an integrated publishing experience that lets information workers easily choose what they want to share with others and determine how others can interact with published spreadsheets.

No Yes

Share, manage, and control spreadsheets

Share business data broadly while maintaining control and helping to protect sensitive information. Provides access to spreadsheet data and analysis through server-calculated, interactive Office Excel spreadsheets from a Web browser. Use these spreadsheets to maintain and efficiently share one centralized version of the truth while helping to protect any sensitive or proprietary information embedded in documents, such as financial models, by limiting access to portions of the spreadsheet and auditing their usage.

No Yes

Web-based business intelligence using Excel Services

Excel Services empowers spreadsheet authors to easily and broadly share spreadsheets that use the new business intelligence (BI) functionality through the browser. Fully interactive, data-bound spreadsheets including charts, tables, and PivotTable views can be created as part of a portal, dashboard, or business scorecard, without requiring any development. .

No Yes

Data Connection Libraries

Data Connection Libraries are centralized SharePoint document libraries that store Office Data Connections (ODC); ODCs describe connections to external data. Centralizing Office Data Connections makes it easier to share, manage, and discover data connections that can be used by any Microsoft Office program.

No Yes

Business Data Catalog

The Business Data Catalog (BDC) tightly integrates external data into the Office SharePoint Server 2007 user experience, providing access to external data residing within backed line-of-business applications, and enabling the display of and interaction with external data through a set of Business Data Web Parts.

No Yes

Business Data Web Parts

Use SharePoint Business Data Web Parts for viewing lists, entities, and related information retrieved through the Business Data Catalog.

No Yes

Business Data actions

With no custom coding, easily create actions that open Web pages, display the user interfaces of line-of-business applications, launch InfoPath forms, and perform other common tasks. Use the convenient links that appear beside business objects returned from the Business Data Catalog.

No Yes

Integrated business intelligence dashboards

Create rich, interactive BI dashboards that assemble and display business information from disparate sources by using built-in Web parts such as dynamic KPIs, Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services reports, or a collection of business data connectivity Web Parts that can visualize information residing in back end line-of-business applications.

No Yes

Report Center

An out-of-the-box site optimized for report access and management, including a report library, data connection library, and a dashboard template. These sites, hosted by the new Report Center, provide consistent management of reports, spreadsheets, and data connections.

No Yes

Key performance indicators

KPIs communicate goals and status to drive results. Using the KPI Web Part, a user can create a KPI list within a Web Part page, without writing code. The KPI Web Part can display KPIs from Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Excel spreadsheets, SharePoint lists, or manually entered data.

No Yes

Filter Web Parts

Filters enable dashboards to be personalized by communicating shared parameters among Web Parts on a dashboard. The parameters passed can be automatically applied based on user profiles, SharePoint lists, the BDC, manually entered information, and so forth.

No Yes

Management Plan

Features Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

Configuration management

Built on the infrastructure and services provided by ASP.NET version 2.0, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 supports a centralized Web configuration management object model.

Yes Yes

Administration user interface

The administration Web pages have been reorganized and redesigned based on feedback from the many customers who deployed Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Service Pack 2 (2.0 SP2) in their organizations.

Yes Yes

Delegation

In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, delegation gives SharePoint site owners a secure, scalable, and centrally managed set of administration rights.

Yes Yes

Re-parenting

Re-parenting is the ability to dynamically re-arrange a hierarchy of SharePoint sites. Previously, in Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 SP2, a site needed to be backed up and deleted from its current location and then restored under a new parent site in the SharePoint site hierarchy.

Yes Yes

Provisioning

Provisioning is a core component of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that:

Lets users choose their own template.
Defines a shared Web application.

SharePoint sites can be provisioned in two ways:

Site templates (*.STP files) that are typically user-created.
Site definitions that are developer-created and stored on Web server file system.

Yes Yes

Usage analytics

Use SharePoint Business Data Web Parts for viewing lists, entities, and related information retrieved through the Business Data Catalog.

Yes Yes

Monitoring

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides a Microsoft Operations Management (MOM) package to support centralized monitoring and management of configurations ranging from single servers and small server farm to very large server farms.

Yes Yes

Platform Plan

Features Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise

Alert filtering

Filters are supported to highlight the more relevant alerts.

Yes Yes

Richer alert information

More information about the item that has changed is included in the alert.

Yes Yes

Alert customization

Additional platform features are provided for custom formatting, events, and alerts.

Yes Yes

Task notifications

Task notifications are now sent automatically when a user is assigned a task. There is no need for the user to subscribe to the notification in advance.

Yes Yes

Notification service

Extensible platform sends customizable e-mail alerts to users. Users participating in a workflow automatically receive e-mail alerts without subscribing in advance. Improved filtering conditions now trigger more relevant alerts to all users.

No Yes

RSS feeds

By integrating RSS feeds for each SharePoint list, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides an efficient mechanism for end users to retrieve the information using RSS-enabled programs such as Windows Internet Explorer 7 and Office Outlook 2007.

Yes Yes

Consistent user experience

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 implements many new and enhanced features that make the Windows SharePoint Services user interface more uniform � providing a consistent user experience.

Yes Yes

Rights trimmed user interface

Users are only allowed to see the features that they have the rights to use. Previously, Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Service Pack 2 did not inform a user they were not allowed to perform a function until they clicked its link.

Yes Yes

Automatic breadcrumb bar

Provides immediate navigational context for the user creating a greater sense of place within a SharePoint site.

Yes Yes

Quick launch bar

Available on all view pages and is more easily customizable.

Yes Yes

Top navigation bar

Available on all view pages and is more easily customizable.

Yes Yes

View improvements

Ability to page forward and backward in addition to improved user interface for sorting and filtering.

Yes Yes

Descriptive menu actions

The Actions drop-down menu provides task-based descriptions of the actions that can be performed on a particular SharePoint list or document library.

Yes Yes

Simplified Web Part user interface

Simplified user interface for browsing, selecting, and adding Web Parts to a Web Part page. The Web Part catalog is presented as a scrollable list; no more paging forward and backward through the Web Part catalog.

Yes Yes

Accessibility

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is Section 508 and W3C compliant.

Yes Yes

Recycle bin

Enables a user to easily restore an item that was deleted accidentally. Administration tools are also available to manage the lifecycle of deleted items in the recycle bin.

Yes Yes

Backup/restore support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)

Windows SharePoint Services backup and restore functionality is enhanced with the support for VSS a feature of Windows Server 2003.

Yes Yes

Document libraries

Improvement to SharePoint document libraries include:

Checking out documents locally
Offline document library support in Office Outlook 2007
Major and minor version numbering and tracking
Support for multiple content type
Policy, auditing, and workflow
Tree view support

Yes Yes

Large-list and cross-list indexing

The performance of large-lists and cross-lists can be improved through the use of indexes on specific list column properties. This significantly increases the capacity and performance of a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 list compared to 2.0.

Yes Yes

Metadata

Improvement to SharePoint document libraries include:
Users can extend document libraries and lists with custom column properties. The practical number of column properties that a list or document library may have has been significantly increased due to performance and scalability improvements in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Lists.

Yes Yes

Content types

Content types are reusable definitions of document types across your organization. A single document library can store content with multiple document types. A content type is used to define a group of documents that share a common set of attributes; including:

Document templates.
What’s on the “e;New”e; button.
Metadata specific to the content type.
Shared column property templates.
Custom InfoPath forms in 2007 Microsoft Office system applications.
Enterprise defined policies.
Common workflows.

Content types are different from traditional file types (which map to physical file formats like Word documents or Excel spreadsheets). Content types are used to define and implement business documents such as functional specifications, budget planning spreadsheets, or new product concept presentation.

Yes Yes

Application templates

While standard workspaces in Windows SharePoint Services are easy to implement, organizations seeking a more customized deployment can get started quickly with application templates for addressing specific business processes or sets of tasks. A new set of application templates will be available for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. They will highlight aspects of task coordination and will offer some pre-configured workflows. The application templates provide customers with a baseline for deploying Windows SharePoint Services in context of business processes and set of tasks. A rich ecosystem of solution providers use the application templates as the basis for deeper horizontal and vertical solutions.

Yes Yes

Workflow

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hosts Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to enable customized creation of workflow solutions and use of structured workflows on document library and list items. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 can be used to design and configure custom workflow solutions with the support for WF in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Ready-to-use workflow templates are available with Office SharePoint Server 2007 as well as a new set of application solutions for Windows SharePoint Services downloadable from the Microsoft TechNet Web site.

Yes Yes

Tree view

Tree view controls are now supported for navigating document libraries in a manner similar to the file system.

Yes Yes

Append-only and multi-value lookup fields

Append-only fields enable a user to append text to a field without being able to modify the existing content of the field. This is useful for logging and tracking applications. Multi-valued lookup fields enable multiple values to be selected from another list field.

Yes Yes

Extensible site and list templates

In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, site and list templates can be edited in Office SharePoint Designer 2007.

Yes Yes

Sub-site promotion

An existing sub-site can be promoted (repositioned) within the logical hierarchy of SharePoint sites (SharePoint site collection) to which it belongs.

Yes Yes

Support for ASP.NET 2.0

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 leverages the reliability, scalability, and functionality of ASP.NET version 2.0. This includes support for the ASP.NET version 2.0 Web Part Model (with added backward compatibility support for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 SP2 Web Parts). Building on ASP.NET not only provides a deep technical foundation for Windows SharePoint Services, but also allows Windows SharePoint Services to leverage the Visual Studio development environment for application development.

Yes Yes

ASP.NET master pages

Each Web page in a SharePoint site references an ASP.NET version 2.0 master page. Master pages provide centralized control of the layout and style of all the pages in a SharePoint site. Each site has a master page gallery that the site owner can use to customize the look of all of the pages on the site.

Yes Yes

Performance caching

Yes Yes

Object model

All object model changes in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are highly backward-compatible with Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 SP2. However, you should be aware that your old code, although it will compile, may not behave as expected in the new object-model hierarchy. The Administration object model (Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration) has been completely re-factored to allow for greater extensibility. There is now a hierarchical object store.

Yes Yes

Field types

Extensible field types allow you to use enterprise data structures within Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 by creating your own controls, which are exposed as simple fields within a list or document library by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Yes Yes

Site columns

Site columns provide a central, reusable model for column definition. When you create a site column, each list that uses this column has the same definition, and you do not have to do the tedious work of reproducing the column in each list.

Yes Yes

Content type settings

Content types are a core concept used throughout Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Content types are designed to help users organize their SharePoint content in a more meaningful way. A content type is a reusable collection of settings you want to apply to a certain category of content. Content types enable you to centrally manage and reuse the metadata and behaviors of a document or item type.

Yes Yes

Folders in lists

Folders, a popular feature in Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 SP2 document libraries, are now also available in lists. Folders allow further segregation of content within a single list, adding another level of versatility.

Yes Yes

Folder metadata

Users and developers can now assign metadata to a folder. This creates a rich content holder that contains child content, while appearing as more than a container. Essentially, this allows the folder to function as a separate, but fully functional, item type.

Yes Yes

List indexing

By allowing a column to be indexed, and stored as a simple name/value pair in a separate database, access to specific items in large lists is significantly improved. These kinds of performance improvements allow SharePoint lists to become true data stores, capable of supporting external applications as well as simple team sites.

Yes Yes

Cross-list queries

Cross-list queries allow you to use the SPQuery object to query all the lists within a Web or site collection. Previously, you had to enumerate through the parent objects to obtain a collection of SPLists, query the list to return the items, and then build your own collection of list items from the multiple lists.

Yes Yes

List items

Several new enhancements related to list items have been introduced in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:

Per-item and per-folder security.
Versioning.
Required checkout.

Yes Yes

Property Bags

Property Bags are now supported on several major objects: SPWeb, SPFile, SPFolder, and SPListItem.

Yes Yes

Web services

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 expands several existing Web services, increasing the number of methods provided through the Lists, SiteData, UserGroup, WebPartPagesWebService, and Webs services.

Yes Yes

Change logs

The change log is a repository storage feature in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that provides item change tracking services that are useful, for example, for data synchronization between Windows SharePoint Services and external applications. Office Outlook 2007 is an example of an external application that uses the change log to synchronize documents and list items for offline access.

Yes Yes

Event receivers

Events fall into two major categories:

List events. Core events, including changes, additions, and removals of list items and list columns (schema changes)
Simple site events. Deletion of sites and site collections Events are either synchronous “before” events, denoted by the “XYZing” name format, or asynchronous “after” events, denoted by the “ABCed” name format.

Yes Yes

Job service

The Job service in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides facilities for setting up a timed job that executes:

After a definable time interval.
During a certain time period in the hour, day, week, month, or year.

The Job service also provides a facility for distributing work amongst servers in a farm; for example, based on a request to create a site (which originates on a Web front end), a one-time job may run as soon as is reasonable on an indexing server.

Yes Yes

Feature framework

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 contains a new structure called a feature. A feature is an end-user-oriented container of one or more elements. An element is an atomic Windows SharePoint Services concept. The feature is defined in an XML format, similar to other existing SharePoint structures. Each feature definition is a set of XML files. Many items that were previously contained within a site definition in Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 SP2 are now able to fit as an element. In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, a SharePoint site definition is transformed into a list of features plus a layout page and a master page. This enables any template site to be transformed using any other site template.

Yes Yes

Solution Deployment Model

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 also introduces a new deployment mechanism called a solution. A solution is similar to Web Part packages from Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 in that it is an aggregated CAB file containing XML instructions and files that need to be deployed on each front-end Web server. But solutions go beyond Web part packages to support the deployment of features, site definitions, and related assemblies used for event handlers and workflows. Solutions also assist in pushing deployment files to each Web server in a farm. An administrator adds a solution to a Windows SharePoint Services farm, which then copies the solution CAB file into the configuration database. When the administrator runs the command to deploy the solution, Windows SharePoint Services starts a timer job to push the solution CAB file to each front end web server to install it.

Yes Yes

Version history

Changes to the item are shown in the version history. In addition, support is provided for “append-only” comment fields.

Yes Yes

Major and minor version tracking

Tracking of both major version numbers and minor version numbers are supported in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Yes Yes

Folder-level and item-level access controls

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 extends group or role-based access controls from sites, document libraries, and lists to individual folders, documents, and list items.

Yes Yes

Virtual server security policies

An authentication zone is identified with a SharePoint (IIS) virtual server. The same content (document libraries and lists) can be made available to multiple zones (for example, intranet and extranet). Access control lists (ACLs) can have a mixture of users from different authentication providers.

Yes Yes

Pluggable authentication

Each authentication zone can have a pluggable, custom authentication provider in addition to the default support for Windows Basic, Digest, NTLM, Forms, and Kerberos authentication methods.

Yes Yes

VLDAP pluggable authentication provider

No Yes

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Permits a person to enter one name and password to use a variety of back-end applications.SSO is used for integrating back-office systems and line-of-business applications that require separate credentials databases. Take advantage of single sign on to authenticate users and leverage this to pre-populate InfoPath forms. .

No Yes

Interoperability and integration

XML support
SOAP support
Web services
Open API and Object Model

Yes Yes

Inteoperability and integration

WSRP

No Yes

Extensibility and programmability of search

Includes three categories of APIs for comprehensive access to Microsoft Search features:

Data access: protocol handlers and IFilters
Query object model, APIs, Web services, and reusable Search Center Web Parts
Administration object model and APIs

Yes Yes

Excel spreadsheet developer reuse and extensibility

Spreadsheets published to SharePoint sites are accessible more securely using Web services. This means that application developers can take advantage of the logic embedded in a spreadsheet by remotely accessing spreadsheets from any platform. Business analysts can modify or update the model without affecting the business application or having to involve an application developer in the process.

No Yes