English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

My main focus for our white paper project will be focusing on the needs of our audiences. I will be looking for any and all information that each audience needs to know. I will be researching what all the audience will be using in the platform/software and present the relevant data in the document. But before I begin researching for our audiences, I must research SharePoint and the other platforms for myself first.

I will be looking at four different Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platforms: Microsoft’s SharePoint Server 2007, OpenText’s Livelink, EMC2’s Documentum and IBM’s Filenet. To attempt to familiarize myself with the platforms, I read through all of the big features and core supports provided by each company. First up is Microsoft.

From Microsoft's website, SharePoint “provides a single, integrated location where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, search for experts and corporate information, manage content and workflow, and leverage business insight to make better-informed decisions.” Microsoft created the SharePoint Server 2007 edition to work in union with the rest of the 2007 Office suite. This allows a person to create a document using Word or Excel on a SharePoint server that can be viewed, edited or updated by anyone (who has authority) from anywhere. SharePoint’s Enterprise Content software allows its users to build and organize the company’s repositories, and also to search and “unlock information, find people, and locate expertise in the enterprise” from these repositories. Microsoft also provides its end users with the ability to develop web pages, applications and extra management content.

For nearly everyone in our audience, Microsoft’s ability to use its own Office Suite to share files anywhere will be very appealing. The main audience will also greatly appreciate Microsoft’s ECM software that allows for complete organization and full search capability of the companies documents, employee information and enterprise information. The secondary audience will be happy to see the platform is open to extra development and management.

http://www.microsoft.com/Sharepoint/default.mspx