These templates are were developed to address the needs and requirements for specific business processes or sets of tasks for organisations of any size.

Absence Request and Vacation Schedule
Board of Directors
Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects
Bug Database
Call Centre
Change Request Management
Compliance Process Support Suite
Contacts Managements
Document Library and Review
Event Planning
Expense Reimbursement and Approval Site
Help Desk
Inventory Tracking
IT Team Workspace
Knowledge Base
Lending Library
Physical Asset Tracking and Management
Project Tracking Workspace
Room and Equipment Reservations
Sales Lead Pipeline

Please find out more about the business benefits of a hosted SharePoint solution, free templates for common applications - such as a staff absence and vacation calendar - that you will be able to download as well as the different package and pricing options available.

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Absence Request and Vacation Schedule
This template helps employees manage requests for out of office days.  Team members post days they will be unavailable and can use the template to assign their responsibilities to others during those days.  The application template helps team leaders manage requests for vacation and provides dashboards showing which users are signed up for the absent team member’s responsibilities during an absence. Top

Board of Directors
The site provides a centralized location where board members can find information on upcoming meetings, notes and documents from past meetings and tasks that need to be completed. In addition to enabling the scheduling of board meetings, the site automates the process of creating a meeting specific sub-site, which is linked from the main page of the board of directors web site.  The subsite enables meeting specific collaboration on meeting objectives, attendees, agenda and related documents.   In addition, the site provides a single location for board members to enter and track contact information, which can be synchronized with Office Outlook 2007.  It also includes a location to enter links to useful sites such as competitors, product or industry publications. Top

Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects
This site is used by project teams needing to track projects and their related budgets, tasks, issues and milestones.  The template allows users to enter project information, including estimated start and end days, project health, project owner, percent complete and budget information in both currency and days.  Each project team member can enter project tasks, issues and milestones and associate those to a specific project, indicating the start and end dates, which is shown on a Gantt Chart or in list format. Also included in the template are dashboards showing the overall status of all projects, including percent complete, indicators of whether the project is on budget and a listing of task and issue status. Other dashboards include user filtered tasks and issues, overdue items and a list of unassigned items. Top

Bug Database
With this template software development teams can collect, track and manage bugs.  The template allows bugs to be logged by both end users and members of the development team and enables collection of supporting data, including Reproduction Steps, Related Bugs and Categories, and uploading of supporting screenshots, documents or other files.  Team members can either assign a bug owner when logging a bug, or can leave the bug to be assigned at a later time.  Unassigned bugs are viewable in a single list and are also listed on the template’s home screen. Top

Call Centre
Use this template to manage service requests originating outside the company from inception through to cause identification, initial solution, escalation and resolution.  The template helps track the progress of servicing requests, with task oriented pages to display relevant information for each service request and an integrated knowledge base system.  Dashboards help management track customer satisfaction with metrics such as issue resolution time, survey results, customer specific dashboards and customer service representative performance. Built in knowledge base and support FAQ pages can simplify the process of researching solutions to service requests.  A service representative can be assigned to the request, ensuring that it shows up on that user’s dashboard of active and open requests which must be attended to. Top

Change Request Management
Project teams who need to manage multiple projects, their related budgets, tasks, issues and milestones as well as manage change requests will find this template helpful. Using this template, users enter project information, including estimated start and end days, project health, project owner, percent complete and budget information in both currency and days.  Each project team member can enter project tasks, issues and milestones and associate those to a specific project, indicating the start and end dates, which is shown on a Gantt Chart or in list format. Top

Compliance Process Support Suite
This template helps both teams and executive sponsors manage compliance implementation endeavors.  The site allows users to specify compliance regulations that must be met as well as projects that are required to meet those regulations.  To enable simplified management of projects, tasks and issues are used to help ensure projects required to meet regulatory requirements are met by the compliance events documented on the site’s calendar.  The application template also contains document libraries used by team members to store regulatory documents and related files needed to provide the necessary background. Top

Contacts Management
Using this template teams are able to maintain a common set of contact names, phone numbers and email addresses.  The template allows central retention of contact information as well as a record of who last updated the contact’s information.  Also included in the template is the abiliy to search the entire database of contacts by simply typing in the search criteria in a search box on the main page.
Team members who also use Office Outlook 2007 can choose to synchronize the Contacts Management list with their Office Outlook 2007 contact lists, making the information available offline.  A change made in either Office Outlook 2007 or the Contacts Management site is automatically synchronized whenever the user is reconnected to the corporate network. Top

Document Library and Review
Manage the review and feedback on documents.  The template begins by providing IT incorporates document workspace functionality, such as allowing team members to upload documents, automatically retain old versions and check the document out for editing offline.  Additional functionality is built in to enable the users to designate which versions are ‘Published as a Major Version’, allowing team members to track which versions are critical to the review process.
The Document Library and Review template also adds the unique feature of allowing threaded discussions on each document directly within the SharePoint site.  This enables users to manage and retain threads regarding a document in the same place where the document resides. Top

Event Planning
This template allows event attendees to register for sessions offered during a particular event.  Visitors to the site sign in and self-select whether they are an Attendee, Guest, Event Planner, Speaker, Staff or Vendor.  Once they have completed their profile, they proceed to the Event Schedule, which lists the sessions that are available to their attendees’ role type. To register for a session, attendees click on the button to ‘add’ the event to their personal schedule. They can also visit role-specific site pages which list sessions and announcements that are relevant to their specific attendee role. Top

Expense Reimbursement and Approval Site
Using Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007 in connection with this template, employees create an expense report listing trip information and expenses.  The Office InfoPath 2007 document, which can be created either offline or online, is then saved to a folder on the Expense Reimbursement and Approval site, which automatically populates fields that are viewable from within the site.  Site owners can then choose to approve, reject or hold the expense report for original receipts.  This status appears on each user’s unique home page, which shows their userID’s submitted expense reports and the status for each one.  In addition to helping teams simplify the process of submitting and approving expense reports, the site also allows Human Resources managers to upload expense related documents, such as travel policies or approved hotel chains.  Also included are announcements and tasks, which can be used to track items pertaining to the expense approval process. Top

Help Desk
Using this template teams can manage the process of service requests from inception through to resolution.  The template tracks much of the process, with task oriented pages to display relevant information for each service request and an integrated knowledge base system.  Dashboards help management track customer satisfaction with metrics such as issues resolution time, survey results, customer specific dashboards and customer service representative performance. Top

Inventory Tracking
By capturing manual input of sales and new inventory purchases from suppliers this template helps organisations to track inventory levels.  The template enables users to track the cost and sales value of each inventory item separately as well as categorizes each item into user specified groupings.  Through a main dashboard, users are provided easy to use transaction forms such as ‘Log a Sale’ and ‘Create an Order’.  The dashboard also lists low inventory and which items need to be reordered through a supplier as well as the day’s sales so far. Top

IT Team Workspace
This template helps IT teams manage the development, deployment and support of software projects, tracking of bugs and provides functionality to help simplify the management of IT help desks.  To help manage projects, the application template allows users to update information on projects, tasks, issues and milestones.  Bugs are more easily managed by providing the capability for end users to enter bug report information.  These reported bugs can then be assigned by the IT team to the correct developer.  The template also includes help desk functionality, making it easy for team members to guide service requests from initiation to resolution.  Role-based dashboards provide relevant information to team members, such as unassigned tasks and performance history. Top

Knowledge Base
Using this template team members can upload and tag documents so that others can more easily find and learn from these documents.  The template can be utilized in a ‘top-down’ approach, where a centralized knowledge department ‘pushes down’ relevant content to the rest of the business. Or, the template can be used in a ‘bottom-up’ approach, where knowledge is captured by all users as a normal part of doing business which can then be disseminated to others within the organization. All documents and articles in the Knowledge Base can have keywords associated with them and can also link to related documents, standardizing and simplifying the process of locating relevant information. Top

Lending Library
The application template tracks general properties about the physical assets as well as which user has currently checked out the asset.  Users can see the due dates of items that have been checked out and request to be notified when an item is checked back in to the Lending Library.
The application template also provides a librarian dashboard which helps teams identify overdue items and manage automated email notifications to borrowers of the overdue item.  The dashboard lists assets due today, assets that have been checked out the longest and a complete list of assets checked out and to which borrower.  It also helps teams simplify the management of requesting and approving new Lending Library assets. Top

Physical Asset Tracking and Management
The template helps teams manage new asset requisitions and track existing assets.  Using the built in workflow, an asset manager can approve or deny requests for new assets made by others within the organization.  Once purchased, properties for the asset can be entered including purchase price and date, location, condition, manufacturer, model, current owner, current estimated value and retirement date.
Asset managers can return periodically to update the location, condition and estimated value of each asset. The template also includes a location where the retirement date can be entered and comments can be entered regarding the reason for retirement, asset condition or other relevant information. Assets can also be tracked by user defined categories, such as Capital Equipment, Office Equipment and Service Fleet Equipment. Top

Project Tracking Workspace
This template is a central location to manage a single project’s issues, tasks and status. The template helps drive project status reporting by including a dashboard showing the overall status of all project tasks and issues. Tasks can be assigned to users within the team, creating team member specific dashboards which can be used to track responsibilities.
Using a Gantt chart, the project manager can view a single graphical representation of the tasks that need to be completed as well as the completion status of the task.  The template also allows team members to upload and share project related documents with a Shared Documents folder. Top

Room and Equipment Reservations
Using this template teams can organize the use of their shared resources effectively.  The template tracks room and equipment reservations, helping team members find times when specific types of equipment are available.  It streamlines the process of requesting a reservation on a resource and organizes each team member’s reservations through a central dashboard.
The Room and Equipment Reservations template operates independently from Microsoft Exchange Server and is best utilized within workgroups that have frequently updated lists of equipment and need to manage the availability of that equipment across a set group. Top

Sales Lead Pipeline
This template helps sales teams track the status of sales leads, opportunities and closed or lost deals. The site enables sales representatives to enter information about a lead, including source, deal size and probability to close. If the lead proceeds to be worthwhile, the sales representative can convert it to an opportunity, which enables them to enter additional information about the potential customer such as next steps, competitors, key product enhancements desires and close date. Top

Source: Microsoft Website (2007)