Portal Components

Portal components in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 assist you in designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portal sites, corporate Internet presence Web sites, and divisional portal sites.

The portal components also make it easy to connect to people that have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience within the organization. Office SharePoint Server 2007 simplifies the way in which people work together.

The following table describes the benefits of the portal components.

Component	Description
Portal Site Templates and Site Definitions (new) On MSDN	These define how to instantiate a Web site when an end user selects a template to create a site through the user interface. For example, use a a site definition or site template to determine the lists, files, Web Parts, features, or settings with which to provision a new SharePoint Web site.
My Site Personal Sites (enhanced) On TechNet	Expanded functionality includes the following: Social networking Privacy controls SharePoint Sites and Documents roll-up Web Parts Colleagues and Memberships Web Parts
Social Networking (new) On MSDN On TechNet	Easier discovery of social networking connections among employees through the following: Public My Site pages with Social Networking Web Parts. Use information about your organization, communities, and electronic communications to help identify colleagues with common interests and produce more relevant search results. Personal connections. Social Networking helps establish connections by finding people you work or communicate with, as well as people who have something in common with you, such as common distribution lists, group and SharePoint site memberships, or responsibilities and skills. Use of user profile information from Microsoft Active Directory directory service, line-of-business (LOB) applications, or e-mail and other forms of electronic communication.
Privacy Controls (enhanced) On MSDN	Control visibility of information in a My Site public view through view authorizations such as "My Manager," "My Workgroup," "My Colleagues," and "Everyone."
SharePoint Sites and Documents Roll-up Web Parts (new) On TechNet	SharePoint Sites roll-up Web Part lists all SharePoint sites that you are a member of. Documents roll-up Web Part lists documents you have published across a collection of SharePoint sites. Also supports more general capabilities for querying and filtering documents stored in a collection of SharePoint sites.
Colleagues and Memberships Web Parts (new) On TechNet	Lists people you know, or who have interests in common with you, and people who belong to common distribution lists and groups.
Site Directory (enhanced)	Includes the Scan for Broken Links button that locates changed or deleted links to external content.
LDAP Pluggable Authentication Provider (new) On TechNet	Authenticates users of Office SharePoint Server 2007. This provider is included in addition to the Active Directory provider included with Windows SharePoint Services.
User Profiles (enhanced) On MSDN On TechNet	Updated features for the following: Profile Store Profile Synchronization Profile Directory Import Audience definition not only using Active Directory–based properties, but using properties imported from line-of-business (LOB) applications such as human resources (HR) or professional services automation (PSA) solutions. Use of profile information by Notification Service to target alerts, by Social Networking to deduce common interests and other properties, and by the Memberships Web Part to display distribution list and group membership information.
Profile Store (enhanced) On MSDN On TechNet	Enhancements include: Multivalued properties bound to a taxonomy or to a list of values from Office SharePoint Server 2007 Property-level security controls by person or group Open and closed vocabularies Per-site property extensions (federated property store)
Profile Directory Import (enhanced) On MSDN On TechNet	Supports extended capabilities of Profile Store with enhanced scalability and performance.
Audience Targeting (enhanced) On MSDN On TechNet	Target Web Part Pages, Web Parts, and content to distribution lists and groups, in addition to SharePoint audiences.
Mobile Device Support (new) On MSDN	Default rendering of all Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal site, team site, and list pages on both International and North American mobile devices (including Web-enabled mobile phones) using a simplified text-only format.
Single Sign-On (SSO) (enhanced) On MSDN On TechNet	Permits a person to enter one name and password to use a variety of back-end applications. Used for integrating back-office systems and LOB applications that require separate credentials database. Office SharePoint Server 2007 single sign-on services support the use of custom as well as third-party, pluggable credential providers. Note Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers an additional pluggable authentication provider model for authenticating user access to Office SharePoint Server 2007 features.

See Also

Concepts

Guide to SharePoint Server Features