A construction company used SharePoint as an intranet portal but wanted to improve collaboration and processes. They upgraded their internal SharePoint to MOSS 2007 and moved customer sites to a new extranet for improved security and performance. The solution provided separate environments for internal and customer information, a larger extranet system, and an upgraded intranet ready to use new MOSS features. This enabled customers to easily share information while the company gained improved workflows and analytics capabilities.

1. Customer Extranet and Upgrade
Construction Company
Case Study
Solution Overview implement new MOSS features, such as Excel
A major construction company has been using
Services and Forms processing.
Microsoft’s Windows SharePoint Services
platform as an intranet portal for sharing company
Industry
information and collaborating on customer
Construction
Benefits
construction projects. They had several objectives
The new system benefited the company with:
Architecture to improve their SharePoint environment:
SharePoint
• Customer/project information in secure
1. Reduce internal paperwork and streamline
SQL
business processes environment separate from internal information
• New server farm improved performance and
2. Centralize file management
Products Used
Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 availability
3. Improve end-user communication
Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• SharePoint upgrade added features and
4. Create a single point of entry for the customer
functionality to expand the capabilities of the
5. Enable customers to upload and share large
Development Resources
quantities of information site
Encore Consulting Services, Inc.
• The client was now ready to add Excel Services
6. Move customer accounts to a new environment
Development Time and Cost that is separate from the internal directory functionality and implement business process
3 months with 2 person team
workflow via Forms.
Solution Challenge
Benefits
Customer/project information in
There were two goals for this project:
secure environment separate from
internal information
1. Upgrade the internal portal to the Microsoft
New server farm improved
Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) 2007
performance and availability
product to leverage the enterprise features of
SharePoint upgrade added features
MOSS, especially forms processing and Excel
and functionality to expand the
capabilities of the site Services.
2. Move the internal customer web sites to a new,
separate MOSS extranet platform to improve
security and performance.
The Solution
Encore helped the client build a new extranet
environment consisting of an Active Directory
server, a SQL Server 2005 server and a Microsoft
Office SharePoint 2007 serve – All running
Windows Server 2003. Customer accounts and
project information would now reside on the new
extranet and be shared between the client, their
customers and other vendors working on projects.
Encore also helped the client upgrade the existing
intranet environment to MOSS so they could
leverage all the features found in MOSS. Encore
also developed and delivered a “What’s New with
MOSS” and “Introduction to MySite” training
class for all users. Features of the system included:
1. Completely separate environments for customer
information and internal information.
2. A new, larger capacity extranet system running
MOSS that could handle more content files and
users
3. An upgraded intranet MOSS system ready to