We all know that expense claims can be a hassle – for those claiming the expense, for those approving the expense and even for finance staff processing the claim.

By using a combinations of tools that you may already own a manual process can be quite easily be replaced by a more automated routine. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Office Infopath 2007 (or Word / Excel if you prefer) to achieve this.

SharePoint calendars can be set-up to link into Outlook calendars, allowing team members to keep in touch with project based or departmental appointments. Having all calendars visible from a single location like Outlook can makes keeping in touch easier.

SharePoint Server backup and restore plans are a complicated business. But often people don't realise just how easy it can be to avoid having to worry about a fiddly restore when something goes missing.

Decision making can become an easier, quicker and more informed process when your data can readily be analysed in a variety of different ways. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a technology that is used to organise large business databases and support business intelligence. The data is typically housed in an OLAP enabled data warehouse which allows for pivot table reports to be created in Microsoft Excel. The data is ‘cubed’ which means that the various data ‘dimensions’ and ‘values’ can be easily altered and re-sorted to provide a different slant on the same data. This is often referred to as ‘slicing and dicing.’

In general terms dashboards pages are a useful way to present key headline data to the right people (managers for example) without the need for them to have access to underlying systems such as accounting packages. This principle, in addition to saving on license costs, promotes a self-service culture and also allows managers to basically only see the key data that is relevant to them. Our example will take an Excel spreadsheet and explain how this can be ‘published’ to a SharePoint page for easy access via a web browser.

Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system probably contains sales leads for your company. The 'out of the box' system assigns the ownership of these leads to the creator of the record. As a result you may find that the Sales Administrator who has logged the sales lead from perhaps a phone call initially 'owns' the lead in the system and has to then manually assign it to the correct salesperson based on certain criteria, perhaps by geographical territory,  industry expertise or even some kind of 'next available' scenario. With the creation of a simple workflow in Microsoft Dynamics CRM this lead assignment process can be automated. This is both a time saver and also a more accurate way of working.

Your Windows Sharepoint Services system may be the core of your companies data, but your customer and contact information along with sales opportunities, products and service management may be in MS Dynamics CRM. The sales team will make heavy use of both these applications. In the case of a sales team this site would likely contain details such as price lists, targets, supporting sales documentation etc. Connecting the two applications by displaying MS Dynamics CRM data in Windows Sharepoint Services, will enable users to work from one page in Windows Sharepoint Services and improve their efficiency.

Your MSCRM system no doubt holds a wealth of key data such as sales opportunities, accounts and key contacts. In the majority of cases your sales team will make heavy use of this application and certainly use it to track their sales opportunities.  They may also make use of an intranet site for either the department or company as a whole. In the case of a sales team this site would likely contain details such as price lists, targets, supporting sales documentation etc. A direct connection from the sales opportunity screen in MSCRM to this webpage could make your sales team more efficient by providing them with access to all their key data from a single location.

Access 2007 allows you to link to Outlook 2007 and use simple e-mail functionality to automatically update your Access database. There are numerous uses for this feature, but one immediate benefit that springs to mind is staff surveys. These can be tedious at times and this can be especially the case for the HR or Admin person who may have to manually collate the replies.

SharePoint document libraries are clearly useful for maintaining the integrity and versioning of documents while at the same time making them available to a team of people in a central location. It is also possible however to make your document libraries available in Microsoft Outlook. The SharePoint content is synchronised and therefore available to users while they are offline.