Functional Overview for Business Decision Makers s2

Application Template: IT Team Workspace

Description of Template

The IT Team Workspace application template for Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 helps IT teams manage the development, deployment and support of software projects, tracking of bugs and provides functionality to help simplify the management of IT help desks. To help manage projects, the application template allows users to update information on projects, tasks, issues and milestones. Bugs are more easily managed by providing the capability for end users to enter bug report information. These reported bugs can then be assigned by the IT team to the correct developer. The template also includes help desk functionality, making it easy for team members to guide service requests from initiation to resolution. Role-based dashboards provide relevant information to team members, such as unassigned tasks and performance history.

This application template is a combination of three separately available templates: Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects, Bug Database and Help Desk. Each of these three templates is available separately as a download from Microsoft.

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.

Jim Daly is a project manager in Lucerne Publishing’s technology team and is also the main help desk service representative. In addition to his help desk responsibilities, Jim has been tasked with creating an application that lists the access rights to the various company databases. Since the project has input from multiple people, Jim uses the company’s IT Team Workspace site to manage the budget and outstanding tasks.

The first thing Jim does is create a project named “Sarbanes-Oxley Database Consolidation Tool”, including start and end dates and budget information. Jim then adds tasks that are required to complete this project and the related budget amounts. These budget items and tasks can be viewed in list or Gantt chart form and can be tagged to have related tasks and milestones.

Since Jim is also the help desk representative, he glances at his RSS feeds in Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 to see if there are any new service requests made by his end users through the template’s help desk request form. He sees that the CEO has requested information on how to use email when she’s on the road. Jim sends the CEO a link to a knowledge base article he wrote last week giving details on how to use email while out of the office, and changes the status of the request to ‘resolved’.

While on the IT Team Workspace site, Jim quickly looks at the bug reporting tool to see if users have reported any bugs on the website he launched last week. A user has used the site to report that pull down lists are not in the correct order. Jim takes ownership of the bug and clears time on his calendar to research and fix the issue.

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.