(11)SharePoint Meeting Technology Explained

Posted by on February 14, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized

SharePoint is all about having good collaboration right?  As much as we enjoy sending emails, there are limitations and shortcomings around collaboration when relying on good old trusty port number 25.  Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft Outlook and Exchange are great communications tools but fail miserably when it comes to sharing information and working together in achieving a common particular goal.  Have you ever tried to organize and plan a meeting by sending emails to attendees with multiple attachments and re-sending those when modifications are actually made.  As a recipient this can become quite overwhelming and at times confusing, especially when you end up with 3 different versions of the same attachments.  Welcome SharePoint Meeting Workspace Sites!  

Meeting workspaces sites are out of the box templates within SharePoint  and are great for structured meetings.  These include but are not restricted to your standard regularly scheduled Team or Departmental meetings, or it maybe for a specific project group meeting.  You can create a Meeting Workspace from any site within SharePoint but as best practice and to keep matters simple let’s begin by creating a separate blank site to store these meetings within our existing Team Site.

 

 

 

A Meeting Workspace site provides a place where your meeting attendees can go for the most up-to-date information about the meeting, whether you are managing a year-long project with recurring meetings or planning a small event.

 

Common elements of a meeting workspace is as follows:

 Page tabs

 Menu for customizing the Meeting Workspace site

 Attendees list

 Document Library

 

 

Here are some ways you can use a Meeting Workspace site:

 

Before the meeting, publish the agenda, attendee list, and documents that you plan to discuss.

 

During the meeting, add the tasks, record the decisions, and review the related documents.

 

After the meeting, publish the minutes, add other follow-up information, and track the status of the tasks.

 

 Note    In a Meeting Workspace site, your participants cannot add items like announcements, document libraries, and discussions to the lists by sending them in e-mail. The participants need to add the items directly to the list in the Meeting Workspace site.

 

Where can I create a Meeting Workspace site?_________

 

You can create a Meeting Workspace site when you add an event to your calendar in SharePoint, or you can create a new Meeting Workspace site without creating an event.

 

Depending on the program, you may be able to create a new Meeting Workspace site from an e-mail and calendar application that is compatible with SharePoint, such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007/2010.