What are the differences or usages in the office products/servers?

[ckellyusa]

The basic question I have is what are the differences? i.e. between
Sharepoint Server, Forms Server, Project Server, etc. Between Groove and
Communicator, etc.

To be more specific, here's what I'm trying to do, what will I need?

One of the first things I want to do is create a location (to start with) to
store all files for anyone on the project to access, possibly with
restrictions. A main asset on the server will be Forms which I would only
want individuals to fill out, web based is fine for that. After those forms
are filled out, I want the data they contain to be stored in a database or at
the least an excel spreadsheet that I can query/sort/filter whenever I need.
Also of course, these forms need to be able to get information from databases
to auto fill some of the fields.

A few of the other files will need to be interactive flow charts and what
not, centrally located on that server preferably.

For communication between employees, I'm guessing Groove would be the answer
to that, but what is Communicator?

I guess that sums it up alright for now. Does this mean I need a SharePoint
Server (with search?), Forms Server, Groove Server, Office Communications
Server?, Project Server, and then all the included client programs as well?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Susan Ramlet]

Hi, ckellyusa,

Your requirements can likely be met by a variety of solutions, so it might
be best to talk with someone from Microsoft, or a third-party consultant, or
do some reading on your own to understand the solutions available.

We use Windows Sharepoint Services in our organization and are able to do
many of the things--at least at a high level--that you say you want to do
here. Forms can be created fairly easily in InfoPath or in Sharepoint,
depending on how they are used, and sites can be set up to manage and share
project information. Not sure what you mean by "interactive flow
charts"...but we use Visio or HTML to create flow and site diagrams that
allow people to click in them.

Our solution is perhaps simpler than yours, but it's hard to make a clear
recommendation without understanding more details of your business
processes, and this is territory probably best handled outside of a peer
support group.

You might want to post over to the Sharepoint groups to get some specific
input from those folks, as well. It seems like a lot of Microsoft's focus
latesly is on Sharepoint, and the thing we like about it is that you don't
need a special desktop client to use this to create collaboration
workspaces.

--
--
Susan Ramlet
MVP - Office

Please reply to the newsgroup. I cannot respond to private requests for
help. Besides, then the community doesn't benefit from your question!