External Collaboration Toolkit for Sharepoint now released

The External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint provides authoritative guidance and tools to deploy a customisable solution built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that teams can use to collaborate with partners outside the firewall.  Once it is deployed, the toolkit’s familiar desktop interface makes the solution easy for project teams to understand and use.

Using this free toolkit, users can be up and running with a SharePoint-based collaboration site very quickly.  They can easily create new sites, and invite external users to share documents that are centrally located on a SharePoint site—inside the firewall.  Site owners can easily customize the site, and provide access rights for team members.

IT Pros can stay in control by requiring administrative approval for these activities.  Or they can allow end users to set up and manage collaboration sites on their own—freeing up skilled IT people for higher-value activities.

The External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint also helps boost security by creating each collaboration site as a SharePoint site collection. This ensures that teams using one collaboration site will not be able to view documents on another collaboration site, unless they are explicitly given access. 

In addition, the toolkit puts all external users in Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)—the Microsoft lightweight directory service—rather than in the organisation’s primary internal directory—further reducing your customers’ security risks.

To sum up, the toolkit:

Boosts security.   Provides an additional layer of security on top of the security features that are built into SharePoint.

Is Easy to deploy.   Customers can install and configure the toolkit in just a couple of hours. Automated tools included with the toolkit help speed deployment.

Is Easy to use. The toolkit uses a familiar desktop interface that makes it simple for team members to collaborate with each other. 

Helps Reduce IT costs.   Team members can manage most functions on their own, freeing up IT people to focus on higher-return activities.

Is Thoroughly tested.   The toolkit is extensively tested in our labs, and verified by customers and partners under real-world conditions.

Is Free.   The toolkit is freely available from TechNet. You can download it from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc268155.aspx.

Finally, below is a summary of some other key Sharepoint toolkits that you can download and use:

SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool - gives customers a head start on planning new SharePoint installations by helping them answer questions about necessary hardware and user capacity.

SharePoint Monitoring Toolkit - enables customers to quickly and easily take advantage of powerful new management and monitoring features in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.   

Upgrade Toolkit for Windows SharePoint Services Sites and Templates - customers who have created sites based on the Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 application templates can use this toolkit to upgrade them to work on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

SharePoint Cross-site Configurator - helps customers centralize and automate the deployment of configuration settings in SharePoint across multiple Web Farms.