External Collaboration Toolkit Release
[Update 03/24/2008: The source code has been released as part of the Community Kit for SharePoint project on CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/CKS/SourceControl/DirectoryView.aspx?SourcePath=%24%2fCKS%2fECTS&changeSetId=10429.]
I'm happy to announce that the External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint has been released and is now available at http://www.microsoft.com/collabkit. This toolkit helps you easily deploy a SharePoint-based external collaboration environment for your organization. Once the toolkit is in place, end users can quickly create a new collaboration sites (using a SharePoint site collection) and add internal and external users to that site. Both these process can be workflow enabled so that an administrator must approve both site and user creation.
The toolkit works with both MOSS 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It also leverages SQL Server 2005 and ADAM. All external users are created in the ADAM directory so they are segregated from your primary user store.
The main new features this toolkit provides are
- Integrated workflow and approval for site collection provisioning
- External user provisioning and management interface in ADAM
I'd love to get your feedback on this tool, demonstrated at the keynote of the SharePoint conference. We are making the source code available on CodePlex very shortly and will provide a link here when it's available.
Bill Canning
Sr. Program Manager
Solution Accelerator Team
