Microsoft has announced a new version of its services add-on for the SharePoint collaborative working platform.
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, is an add-on product for existing SharePoint-based applications that adds a basic web development environment for developing intranet and workgroup or departmental portal sites, and expands the collaboration and content-sharing capabilities of the SharePoint platform. SharePoint Services 3.0 is also one of the underlying technologies behind Microsoft's Office Live small business online services which launch in the UK in January.
New features in SharePoint Services 3.0 include support for RSS feeds, blogs and wikis; integration with forthcoming Office 2007 applications, which are due to be launched for business users on November 30th; improved content sharing and access function for mobile devices and support for ASP.NET and extensible services-based architectures.
In addition to the launch of the services product, Microsoft announced it will also release a set of 40 templates for SharePoint Services early in the new year.
SharePoint Services 3.0 is available as a free download from the Microsoft web site.
