Web portals are a popular way to aggregate information from several different sources into one convenient place. SharePoint Portal Server provides an easy way to create Web portals with integrated document management services and search capabilities. A customer can establish a central point of access to all its existing key business information and applications. Sharing information across file servers, databases, public folders, Internet sites, disparate document management systems and SharePoint-based Web sites is another feature.

The portal site also provides access to information stored inside and outside an organization, allowing users to share documents regardless of their location or format. The customizable home page of the portal site can display organizational news or other important information.

The client components of SharePoint Portal Server consist of functional extensions to Office and Windows Explorer, enabling document management functions within those applications. For example, after modifying a Microsoft Word document checked out from a SharePoint Portal Server workspace, in Word, one can go to the File menu and click the Check In command. Alternatively, Windows Explorer can be used to view and perform document management operations on files from a SharePoint Portal Server workspace. The rich search capabilities of SharePoint Portal Server are also available from Office XP when browsing the workspace searching Web folders. These Office and Windows Explorer client components communicate with the server components using standard Internet Protocols.

It may be difficult to share documents with others, control access to those documents, and publish documents in their organization. Important documents can also be lost, overwritten, or hard to find.

SharePoint Portal Server offers a number of features to help streamline your document management needs:

Version Control
SharePoint Portal Server records a document's history to help track changes and eliminate the possibility of someone overwriting another user's modifications. To edit a document, it first must be checked out, preventing others from changing it until it is checked in. Every time you check in a document, SharePoint Portal Server assigns a new version number to the document and the previous version is archived. When checking out a document, most recent version is retrieved, unless a specific version was selected earlier.

Document Profiles
Provide a way to add searchable information pertaining to a document. This information, known as metadata, helps describe or identify the document. By default, a document profile includes basic properties such as Author and Title. This can be customized to capture additional information making it easier to organize and find documents.

Document Publishing
SharePoint Portal Server can store both "private" and "public" versions of a document. A document can be automatically published each time it is checked in or it can be checked in as a private draft and published when completed. Only published documents are available for users to search or view on the dashboard site.

Approval Routes
An easy way to ensure a document is adequately reviewed before it is published. When an author chooses to publish a document, it can be sent automatically to one or more people for review before publishing. Each of these people, called approvers, has the option of approving or rejecting the document. Approvers receive e-mail notification when a document requires review. SharePoint Portal Server supports two approval routes: serial and parallel.

Discussions
Web discussions allow an organization to conduct online discussions about a document without modifying the document. Instead of using e-mail to discuss a document or trying to capture conversations about a document, authors and reviewers communicate with each other through Web discussions. Simultaneous document discussions can occur even if one person has the document checked out. Comments are stored as threaded conversations, grouping comments and replies together. With all comments grouped into a single place, document authors no longer need to compile hand-written comments from reviewers or comments sent through individual e mail messages.

Role-based Security
SharePoint Portal Server uses roles to control access to content. Coordinator, author, and reader roles can be assigned to users based on the tasks they perform. Each role identifies a specific set of permissions: coordinators handle management tasks, authors add and update files, and readers have read-only access to published documents. SharePoint Portal Server also offers the option of denying a user access to specific documents.