Manage SSPs and shared services

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Topic Last Modified: 2015-03-09

This section contains topics that describe how to create and manage Shared Services Providers (SSPs) in a farm, and how to manage shared services of an SSP in a farm and between farms.

After you have installed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you must create and configure one or more SSPs in the farm to take advantage of the features that Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides. An SSP consists of a set of shared services. You configure and centrally manage the shared services to ensure that relevant components of a service are provided across the farm. All SharePoint sites rely on an SSP to provide these shared services, both across the farm and between different farms.

The following table describes the shared services and the benefits that each shared service provides.

Shared service Description Benefit

Personalization services

Personalization services consist of the following:

  • Detailed information about people in an organization based on data imported from directory services.

  • My Sites with personal information that can be shared by all users in the SSP and managed by privacy policies.

  • Published links to Office client applications.

  • Personalization site links.

Users can share information and build social networks which are built on common attributes.

Search

Provides a single integrated location for users to find content, processes, people, and business data relevant to their specific needs.

Users and organizations can more quickly make decisions based on the latest information and facts.

Excel Services

Enables users to access real-time interactive Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets from a Web browser.

Users can use spreadsheets to maintain and efficiently share one central and up-to-date version while they help protect any proprietary information embedded in the documents (such as financial models).

Audiences

Enables users to target content to other users based on the department, region, or function to which they belong.

Important information is shared to relevant departments or regions.

Portal usage reporting

Helps shared services administrators and site owners to understand how users use sites.

Shared services administrators and site owners can more easily improve the effectiveness of their sites.

Business Data Catalog

Enables structured data from line-of-business applications, such as SAP and Siebel systems, to be integrated into Office SharePoint Server 2007.

With no custom coding, users can easily create actions that open Web pages, display the user interfaces of line-of-business applications, start InfoPath form templates, and perform other common tasks, easily making business data part of the portal site.

You manage shared services from the Shared Services Administration Web site. The Shared Services Administration Web site is the site collection that contains the administration pages for the shared services settings for an SSP.

For more information about shared services, see White paper: Evaluation guide for Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The Shared Services Administration Web site differs from the Central Administration Web site. On the Central Administration Web site, you perform tasks such as managing servers and services, creating and managing Web applications, SSPs, and site collections, and configure related settings. You can access the Shared Services Administration Web site from the Central Administration home page by clicking the name of the SSP on the Quick Launch.

For more information, see Using Central Administration (Office SharePoint Server).

Ensure that you understand the different accounts and permission levels that are used for the Central Administration Web site and the Shared Services Administration Web site.

For more information, see Manage permissions to the Shared Services Administration site.

The following tasks are part of administering SSPs and shared services:

See Also

Concepts

Plan Shared Services Providers
Plan SSP architecture