MOSS vs. WSS

WSS comes with Windows Server. So why would you want to pay extra for MOSS?

For me these are three good reasons:

• Enterprise Content Management Capabilities (previously available only in Microsoft Content Management Server) Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on these capabilities to deliver enhanced authoring, business document processing, Web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing. This is for Enterprise Content Management as well as Web content management.
• Enterprise Search of both structured (ERP) and unstructured (Office produces) data, utilizing a very powerful Business Data Catalog feature. The search component has been significantly enhanced in this release. The new features provide a consistent and familiar search experience, increased relevance of search results, and new functionalities along with improved scalability, manageability, and extensibility. The Business Data Catalog is now available for GP and CRM
• Excel Services in MOSS go beyond simply displaying Excel spreadsheets, you can actually stream parts of a spreadsheet, showing or hiding various parts. This is an easy way to create and deliver reports. Can be linked to Analysis Cubes in GP.

Additionally these are other reasons our clients have chosen MOSS:

• Slide libraries – a much needed and unique way to share and reuse slides
• Single Sign On (SSO) is only available in MOSS.
• Records Management which enables organizations to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 1992 and HIPPA requirements.

Additional information at Microsoft.

Simple Dashboard in Business Portal

Below is a simple dashboard I created as a sample for a client of ours. This is deployed on a MOSS site, so I got to use Excel Services as well as standard Business Portal functionality.

I used Excel Services to show a simple MTD and YTD summary sales analysis. This spreadsheet is pulling data from the standard analysis cubes in GP, so the data will be refreshed on a scheduled basis.

Right below it is a Business Portal query that shows current open orders in GP. This data will be refreshed as order status changes in GP.

This is simple stuff, but gives users the information they're looking for, in one place. It would be easy to add additional webparts to this page; whether they would be standard Business Portal pieces or Excel Services, etc.


Here is an example of an Excel Services webpart on our internal MOSS site. I'll be capturing data from Google Analytics and manually entering it to the Excel spreadsheet, as well as providing a link to the Google Analytics report itself. This is a more manual data capture example, but it easily and effectively reports out.