Functional Overview for Business Decision Makers s2

Application Template: Knowledge Base

Description of Template

The Knowledge Base application template for Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 helps team members upload and tag documents so that others can more easily find and learn from these documents. The template can be utilized in a ‘top-down’ approach, where a centralized knowledge department ‘pushes down’ relevant content to the rest of the business. Or, the template can be used in a ‘bottom-up’ approach, where knowledge is captured by all users as a normal part of doing business which can then be disseminated to others within the organization. All documents and articles in the Knowledge Base can have keywords associated with them and can also link to related documents, standardizing and simplifying the process of locating relevant information.

Sample Activities Performed in this Application Template

The following examples show the various ways Microsoft anticipates this template will be utilized in a typical organization. If you wish to add additional features, please ask your IT provider to research Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007.

Jeff Low is Lucerne Publishing’s knowledge base manager, responsible for ensuring knowledge is shared among users in his company. Among other things, Jeff uses the Knowledge Base template to help users find information that is relevant to their daily jobs. When Jeff first created the Knowledge Base site, he made a list of keywords that he could assign to documents to help users find documents and articles more easily. Since this site is used by the financial teams as well as the product development and technology publishing teams at Lucerne, Jeff created three keywords: Annual Reports, Product Development and LOB Applications.

Last night, Jeff found a new article, Small IT: Small Business Services. Since this article will be mostly of interest to the technology publishing team, he adds the keyword “LOB Applications” to the document. This will allow team members to list only documents that have to do with LOB Applications during their document search.

Earlier, Jeff had uploaded documents on Small IT that might also be interesting to users reading the Small Business Services document. He makes it easier for users to find these articles by linking ‘related’ articles together. When a user finds the Small Business Services article, they will also find other articles on Small IT. Users can go to the Knowledge Base site and search for documents related to LOB Applications and Small IT. The results will show all relevant items plus articles that are marked as related to those returned in the search.

Though in this example, all new documents are uploaded by a central manager, this template can also be setup to enable uploading of new documents by all users, making it a bottom-up system.

About Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is technology in Windows Server® that offers an integrated portfolio of collaboration and communication services designed to connect people, information, processes and systems both within and beyond the organizational firewall. Now available at no additional charge, the technology provides a platform for developing Web-based business applications. Application Templates provide out-of-the-box scenarios to address the needs of specific business processes.

More Information

For more information on the technologies described in this article, please visit:

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:

http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services:

http://www.microsoft.com/sharepointapps

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, places, or events is intended or should be inferred.

This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.