What does Create Document Workspace mean in Office?

Jo Carpenter — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:44:00 GMT

If you are unfamiliar with a Microsoft product called SharePoint Services then it is unlikely that you will know about the functionality that is available with the ‘Create Document Workspace’ feature included in Office.

The Create Document Workspace description included on the button informs that it can be used to ‘Create a new site for the document and get the local copy synchronised.’ In my opinion this is probably not the best description to entice you to click on it, especially when nothing is going to happen if you don’t have the associated product necessary to use the feature.

The purpose of this blog is to provide a brief description about what the integration of Office and SharePoint Services can offer. It’s also worth mentioning that SharePoint Services is already integrated in both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Small Business Server 2003 . So if you already use these products and don’t utilise SharePoint then you can do so for free.

SharePoint Services offers a solution for collaboration within the workplace. It enables teams to work more effectively through increased use of electronic communications.

Businesses increasingly ask teams to work together across geographical boundaries. This task has proven difficult using traditional methods to manage communication, schedules, and file sharing. Office 2007 products are designed to integrate collaboration techniques into the main interface to enable ease of use.

Collaboration facilitates effective teaming to make the most of corporate knowledge. Information that is locked away in one part of a company might be of great benefit to another area. Traditional file share systems inhibit sharing this knowledge, but the Office System has the tools to unlock it.

Instead of placing files into directories, Windows SharePoint Services supplies Web sites with document storage and retrieval options. It enables users to check-in and check-out documents which means that only one document needs to exist instead of many documents and people can make alterations without the risk of work being over-written. Other functions include version history, and flexible, customisable views.

The purpose of the ‘Create Document Workspace’ button is to reduce the steps that are taken when saving a document and then putting it on a file share and having the difficulty of announcing the location of the share. Instead you can simply publish the document to a SharePoint web site and employees within the organisation can search and access the document depending on the permissions given to the site.

Listed below are some of the measured benefits of a collaboration solution taken from a number of case studies. This has been referenced using the following article - Business Value Document

Benefits measured in the area of Collaboration and Portals included:

§ Shorter Project Cycle Times – Cycle times reductions averaging 34% were projected for document creation processes.

§ Reduction of Meetings – Meeting time was reduced by an estimated average of 35% due to enhanced visibility into project status.

§ Reduced Travel Expenses – Travel expenses are expected to be cut an average of 37% due to improved access to information.

§ Increased Productivity – Productivity increases of 0.2% to 4% are expected from reduced rework, improved access to information, better knowledge capture, and automation of status reporting.

I’ll aim to provide further details of the integration of Office and SharePoint in a later blog.

Links

Windows SharePoint Web Site

Windows SharePoint Feature Guide

Windows SharePoint Partners

Top Ten Reasons To Deploy Windows SharePoint

Free Windows SharePoint Templates

Office Pioneer : SharePoint Services

What does Create Document Workspace mean in Office?