Hey all,
I am pondering a move towards SharePoint services for a number of reasons (outlined below) and I would very much appreciate some advice on this move.
Currently, we make use of one central Windows 2003 SBS with mapped folders holding the majority of documents. It is also running Exchange, and people make heavy use of their Inboxes, Calanders and tasklists (but not public folders, oddly enough).
Also on the server is a large database, with apache serving out a custom php system that we use a lot. I would like to avoid messing with this as much as possible.
I would hope to unite Inboxes, shared folders, and wrap the custom php system somewhat into SharePoint. This seems a positive direction to work in.
But, I am not sure how to best deploy SharePoint services itself. I can set up another windows 2003 machine with IIS6.0 and a database and try access the information stored on the main server. This’ll reduce the chances I break the server somewhat, and give me room to experiment, right? How difficult do you think it is to access and involve the files and custom php stuff from the main server into a dedicated sharepoint system?
Am I going to want to migrate content back to the main server sometime? How nasty can that get? Perhaps I’d be better off attempting it all directly on the main server?
Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated, thanks a lot!!