As many organisations go deeper into Enterprise Content Management, their ECM systems become more and more business critical. This means that they start hitting the common boundaries and problems when it comes to all commonly known collaborative business systems, such as their availability anywhere and everywhere.
For example when it comes to having to work on your documentation, files and other critical project data, stored in SharePoint 2007, away from your work place (at home or on a business trip) you would conventionally utilize Outlook with extended SharePoint folders which would allow you to checkout change and save selected documents that would be synchronised/checked in back when you’re once again within reach of your MOSS 2007 server (back on your intranet).
If you find your Outlook to be somewhat limiting when it comes to offline collaborative work, you would probably require secure offline capabilities of Groove 2007. Groove extends SharePoint’s functionality by providing the user with absolute offline control over whole case files, adding and editing items which would then be synchronised with SharePoint 2007 directly over the internet.
What if all that is not enough, what if you require all of the SharePoint functionality and you also need to extend it to others outside your organisation?
Well many times I’ve thanked the higher power and Microsoft for allowing custom authentication providers in MOSS 2007.
Many times have I been asked about what to do when it comes to using to different authentication modes at the same time, immediately afterwards many times questions have been raised as to why didn’t Microsoft include some more out of the box way to answer this requirement?
What do you do when you need to make the same content data and SharePoint functionality available to the users that authenticate against one authentication provider (typically intranet users within the organisation, that utilise organisation’s infrastructure and security policy) and also to the users that belong to a different authentication provider (people outside).
Well enter: Extranet Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint
How the Solution Works
The ECTS allows users inside and outside the firewall to share documents, lists, calendars, and so on, using the features and functionality provided by Windows SharePoint Services. Internal users access the collaboration site through an internal URL and are authenticated against the organization’s Active Directory® domain as usual. External collaborators use a typical Internet address to access the site (for example, https://collab.treyresearch.net). They log on using a form, and are authenticated against a separate Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) directory that contains only external users.
Logical diagram of the ECTS solution
This diagram shows how external and internal users navigate to a common SharePoint installation, which is connected to two different identity stores for authentication. Internal users access the collaboration site through an internal URL and use their Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) account to access shared content whereas external users use a typical Internet address to access the site, are provisioned in a stand-alone Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) instance, and log on using a form. Placing external users in a distinct directory effectively segregates them from the internal network infrastructure. The solution provides custom components that integrate seamlessly with Windows SharePoint Services and allows for management of external users in a manner that is very similar to the process used for internal users.
When internal and external users are logged on, they can store documents on the site and otherwise interact with the site as they would with a typical SharePoint site.
Hurry and download it here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb936676.aspx), before the BETA period ends.
By the way, it took me some time to put all of this together in my virtual environment but it was well worth the effort. Although it is still in Beta, this seems to be a pretty solid solution so far. Instructions are good and if you had any experience with all the required components required by the toolkit for this solution you shouldn’t have any problems.