Remember the last time you had to construct a document that depended on content from multiple contributors? You sent out a draft as an attachment in an e-mail message and later received several different copies that you had to track. Contributor X didn't know what contributor Y had written, so they provided conflicting (or duplicate) information that you had to sort out. You eventually produced a collaborative document, but it was a chaotic process. Now, there's a solution for that chaos: Document Workspaces.

Document Workspace sites revolve around one or more documents. You can easily work together with coworkers on a document by either:

• Working directly on the copy located on the Document Workspace site, or
• Working on your own local copy—which you can update regularly to reflect changes in the copy located on the Document Workspace site.

Your Document Workspace can also provide announcements, assigned tasks, relevant links, and alerts to changes.

If a Windows SharePoint server is available on your network, you can create a Document Workspace site from any word processing program compatible with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2.0. For example, you can create a Document Workspace from Microsoft Office Word 2003, Office Excel 2003, Office PowerPoint 2003, as a shared attachment in Office Outlook 2003, or by using the browser from a document library.

Create a Document Workspace

Suppose you have a new task that requires you and three other people to input or revise information in a report. You have already found a helpful Microsoft Office Word template to use from a practice site for your occupation. Here's how you can use the template to simplify a collaboration task.

Note  The Document Workspace is created as a subsite of the Windows SharePoint Services site, so you need the appropriate permissions to create Document Workspaces on your team Web site.

1. Download the template.
2. Open the template and save it as a document, rather than a template.
3. In Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, create a new e-mail message.
4. On the To line, type the e-mail addresses of the other people who need to work on the document. Recipients on its To and Cc lines are automatically given permission to contribute to the site.
5. Enter a subject for your e-mail on the Subject line. For example, “Please complete your pages in the report."
6. On the Insert menu, click File.
7. Browse to the new file that you saved from the template, and then click Insert.
8. If the Attachment Options task pane is not visible, click Attachment Options, which is located to the right of the Attach line.
9. In the Attachment Options task pane, click Shared attachments. In the Create Document Workspace at list, click your team’s site or type the URL for your team’s SharePoint site.
10. Some text is automatically added to your e-mail:

    

11. Type any additional message text, and then click Send. This e-mail notifies document contributors that the workspace has been created and that they have permissions to edit the document in that workspace.
12. A document workspace is created for you under your team site, and your document is posted as a shared document in this workspace. You will receive an e-mail confirming that the site was created.

Add new tasks

1. Click the link to the site, and then click Add New Task.
2. On the Tasks: New Item page, enter a title, priority, and due date. Assign the task to one of the report contributors.
3. Click Save and Close to return to the home page of the Document Workspace. You have successfully assigned a task for Kim to complete page 2 of the report. When Kim opens the workspace, she will see the task and can edit the report just like any shared document on a SharePoint site.
4. Add tasks for the other contributors as needed.
5. Now you need to track when the tasks are completed. You can set up e-mail alerts to be sent whenever the status of a task changes.

Set e-mail alerts

1. On the home page, click Tasks.
2. On the Tasks page, click Alert me.
3. On the New Alert: Tasks: All items page, click the type of change that should trigger an alert and how frequently you want to be notified, and then click OK.
4. . If you accept the default options on this page, you will receive an e-mail whenever any change is made to a task.

Update a workspace document

The following steps describe how one contributor might complete the task.

1. Kim receives the e-mail, and clicks on the link to the workspace. On the home page, under Tasks, she discovers that she’s supposed to complete a page of the report.
2. She knows that she can edit the file directly from the workspace but is more comfortable with editing the local copy of the document on her computer. She returns to the e-mail message; on the File menu, she clicks Save Attachments. She then saves the report file to a folder on her computer.
3. Kim opens the saved report file. A dialog box informs her that a copy of this file is stored in a Document Workspace. She clicks the Get Updates button in this dialog box to make sure that her local copy includes any updates that were made to the workspace copy.
4. The Shared Workspace pane is now displayed to the right of the document. She clicks the Tasks tab to confirm that she needs to complete page 2 of the report.
5. She opens page 2, adds her data, and on the Tasks tab of the Shared Workspace pane, checks off her task as completed.
6. She clicks the Save button on the Standard toolbar. The Shared Workspace pane displays the Status tab. She clicks the Update Workspace Copy link on this tab to save changes she made to her local copy of the document over to the copy stored in the Document Workspace.

You will receive e-mail when each of the tasks is completed. When you receive the last e-mail:

1. Click the link in the e-mail to go to the Document Workspace Web site.
2. Look at the summary of Tasks on the home page and confirm that the status of each task is Completed.
3. Click Shared Documents, open the updated report and review each contribution. No collation of data is required.

Now that your Tasks are completed, you might want to be notified whenever your contributors make future edits.

1. On the Shared Documents page, click Alert me.
2. Decide what type of change should trigger an alert and how frequently you want to be notified, and then click OK.

When you want to freeze the report, you can copy it to a new location and delete this Document Workspace.

Reap the benefits

Using Document Workspaces in Windows SharePoint Services is an efficient way to allow one or more individuals in your company to work on one or more documents. Adding a Document Workspace is as simple as sending an e-mail. You can create and replace them for short-term projects, or keep them permanently.

Imagine all of the projects and related documents that you and your coworkers need to contribute to and complete as a team, including sales presentations, project schedules, consolidated financial statements, and office-space planning materials. Now you can imagine collaborating successfully to complete your teamwork with ease.