Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS or OSS) comes in two versions: Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Standard Edition is a Microsoft product built upon WSS. MOSS extends Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) with functionality for web content management (WCM), records management (RM), integrated digital rights management (DRM), workflows, Single Sign-On (SSO), document retention and auditing policies, expanded search including People Search, and site variations to ease the maintenance of multilingual sites.

MOSS also provides a My Site for each user, with both a private view for storing personal information and a public view to share photos, personal information, and more.

MOSS includes additional templates and services, enables portal-wide searching, and provides document control workflow templates. This product is sold through Microsoft Volume Licensing. MOSS is the server product.

There are Standard and Enterprise editions of MOSS. The Enterprise edition includes these additional services: InfoPath Forms Services, Excel Services, and Business Data Catalog. If you choose MOSS, you’ll be talking to a salesperson anyway, so he or she should be able to help you choose based on your needs and budget. All of the MOSS editions include WSS 3.0.

Purchase MOSS if you are building an enterprise portal. In addition to search, full MOSS includes workflow templates for document control, action menus, records repository, personalized sites (My Sites), audiences (targeted content), listings (content expiration), and compliance policies. If you need those things, MOSS is well worth the cost.