Collaboration features
SharePoint
Microsoft Office 2007 includes features geared towards collaboration and data
sharing. As such, Microsoft Office 2007 features server components for
applications such as Excel, which work in conjunction with SharePoint
Services, to provide a collaboration platform. SharePoint works with
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, which is used to host a
SharePoint site, and uses IIS and ASP.NET 2.0. Excel server exposes
Excel Services, which allows any worksheet to be created, edited and
maintained via web browsers. It features Excel Web Access, the
client-side component which is used to render the worksheet on a
browser, Excel Calculation Service which is the server side component
which populates the worksheet with data and perform calculations, and
Excel Web Services that extends Excel functionalities into individual
web services. SharePoint can also be used to host Word documents for
collaborative editing, by sharing a document. SharePoint can also be
used to hold PowerPoint slides in a Slide Library, from which the slides
can be used as a formatting template. It also notifies users of a slide
automatically in case the source slide is modified. Also by using
SharePoint, PowerPoint can manage shared review of presentations. Any
SharePoint hosted document can be accessed from the application which
created the document or from other applications such as a browser or
Microsoft Office Outlook.
Groove
Microsoft Office 2007 also includes Groove, which brings collaborative
features to a peer-to-peer paradigm. Groove can host documents,
including presentations, workbooks and others, created in Microsoft
Office 2007 application in a shared workspace, which can then be used in
collaborative editing of documents. Groove can also be used in managing
workspace sessions, including access control of the workspace. To
collaborate on one or more documents, a Workspace must be created, and
then those who are to work on it must be invited. Any file shared on the
workspace are automatically shared among all participants. The
application also provides real-time messaging, including one-to-one as
well as group messaging, and presence features, as well as monitoring
workspace activities with alerts, which are raised when pre-defined set
of activities are detected. Groove also provides features for conflict
resolution for conflicting edits. Schedules for a collaboration can also
be decided by using a built-in shared calendar, which can also be used
to keep track of the progress of a project. However, the calendar is not
compatible with Microsoft Outlook.
Themes and Quick Styles
Microsoft Office 2007 places more emphasis on Document Themes and Quick
Styles. The Document Theme defines the colors, fonts and graphic effects
for a document. Almost everything that can be inserted into a document
is automatically styled to match the overall document theme creating a
consistent document design. The new Office Theme file format (.THMX) is
shared between Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook email messages.
Similar themes are also available for data reports in Access and Project
or shapes in Visio.
Quick Styles are galleries with a range of styles based on the current
theme. There are quick styles galleries for text, tables, charts,
SmartArt, WordArt and more. The style range goes from simple/light to
more graphical/darker.


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