Exchange of documents is fully integrated in to the File menu in most Office 2007 applications. You can use the File menu to open or save documents in a document library on a SharePoint site. When you save a document in a document library, Office 2007 also stores the metadata for the document in the library. When you close the document you may be asked to add or update metadata, or you can use the Document Information tab on the back panel of the Shared Workspace task in the Office application to view & edit document metadata. You can customize the metadata schema of the documents, which means you can generate libraries that are customized for different types of documents. This makes it much less hard for users to classify documents properly & to find documents at a later time.
Document Check-in and Check-out
Most traditional document sharing methods use e-mail or file shares for documents that have multiple authors or editors. The problem with these methods is that they can quickly become confusing. Identifying the latest version of a document is difficult, and multiple users may edit a document simultaneously, resulting in conflicting versions. Trying to track changes can lead to confusion and lost productivity, if a document must be rolled back to an earlier version. To prevent these problems, Windows SharePoint Services provides an intuitive, easy-to-use method for tracking the version history of a document. First, if you require to work on a document that is stored in a document library, you can check out the document. When you do this, other users cannot make changes to the document. This helps prevent the confusion that can occur when multiple users make simultaneous changes to the same document. When you finish working on the document, you can check in the document so other users can work on it. To check out a document, you must be a member of a site group with the Edit Items right for that SharePoint site.
Version Tracking
Windows SharePoint Services also handles version tracking for documents stored on a SharePoint site. Windows SharePoint Services keeps copies of previous versions of each document so you can return and see the changes made to a document at any time. This is particularly useful if you have to undo a document to a previous version or if you must recover data that was deleted from an earlier version of a document. Tracking versions of Windows SharePoint Services can help your team track and manage document creation and editing process quickly and efficiently. To turn version tracking on or off, you must be a member of a site group with the Manage Lists right for that SharePoint site.
Integrated Web Discussions
Teams often need to discuss and review the content of the document. This can be difficult, even when all team members work in the same physical location. If you have a virtual team whose members are scattered in several places, the difficulty of the discussion of contents and increase the review stage. If members of your team correspond via email, publishers must change continuously between your email program and document-editing program. Try to identify several comments on a single piece of text is difficult, and information can be lost or misinterpreted. Windows SharePoint Services enhances the current edition of Office 2007 features shared by providing online discussion tools and by storing online discussion comments on the SharePoint site. This means that reviewers can add their comments directly to the document and that reviewer comments are stored and managed centrally, so they are available whenever an editor or reviewer opens a document from the SharePoint site. To make changes to a document in a SharePoint library, you must be a member of a group site with editorial articles for that SharePoint site.
