Lately, I've been playing around quite a bit with the next version of SharePoint coming out with Office 2007 so I thought I'd share some thoughts/comments on my experience.

First of all, note the name change yet again:

  • Version 1: SharePoint Team Services
  • Version 2: Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) Version 2 and SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003
  • Version 3: Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) Version 3 and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) 2007

While I understand the reasoning behind the name change, cmon guys.. stick with a name already!

There has been a ton of architectural changes between 2003 and 2007. Here are some highlights:

  • Now built on top of ASP.NET 2.0 and leveraging many of the new features such as Web Parts and Master Pages.
  • Sharepoint truly acts as an ASP.NET web application, no more ISAPI handlers. Instead Sharepoint uses ASP.NET HttpHandlers.
  • Flexible authentication! Building on top of the provider model of ASP.NET 2.0, Sharepoint now supports pluggable authentication providers!

Some more exciting changes from the admin perspective:

  • Everything is now a site. No more weird distinction between sites and portals.
  • Built in recycle bin. Now the user can undelete their own files without having to call you up to restore from backup!
  • 3-tier administrative interface. At first this was confusing to me, but after reading about it some more... now it makes sense.

 And finally some changes from the user's perspective:

  • Much better My Site with support for blogs!
  • Nearly everything supports RSS feeds.
  • Any list can be opened up in Outlook, which creates a locally cached copy of the list.
  • Tabbed interface, drop down menus, Ajax data retrieval.

I really can't emphasize how many new features they've packed into the new Sharepoint. My list of features here are just some of the more interesting changes I've learned these past few days. I can easily see tons of books written for this release filling up an entire bookshelf at the bookstore.

I love most of the changes Microsoft made to Sharepoint, but unfortunately tons of new features come at a price: confusing UI. Version 2 was really confusing. In version 3, things are a bit easier with some of the UI improvements, but I still find myself hunting down the location for a setting or trying to remember where I configured an option. I hope the road to RTM includes some more time to review the user experience and to improve on some of the more confusing aspects (just looking at the Admin screen and all those links gives me a headache!). Otherwise, I am really excited about the new SharepPoint and can't wait to see it released!