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If you've been following the news about Microsoft's upcoming new release of its ubiquitous Office suite, you've already heard about some of the big additions — like OneNote, a new note taking application that should be a favorite of tablet PC users, or the suite's superior integration of XML.

But there's an even bigger improvement for intranet professionals, namely SharePoint services, which will greatly ease online collaboration and information sharing. The last release, Office XP, put an emphasis on sharing tools, but with Office 2003's tools, uniting a globally dispersed group of workers and letting them share input on a project will finally be simple.

The Shared Workspace Task Pane
When a worker opens a document from a SharePoint site, a new task pane will open alongside it offering useful collaboration information. The worker will be able to see hyperlinks connected to the document; a list of tasks associated with it; other users in the group and whether or not they're online; related shared documents; and more. When workers have finished tasks, they can be checked off. They can also send instant messages to other team workers and upload new documents into the shared space.

Document Workspaces
With Office 2003, creating shared documents becomes incredibly easy (and that's good, because there's always one person on a team who can't use a check-in/check-out system without overriding someone else's changes). When a worker attaches a document to an e-mail message, they'll see a new option allowing them to make it a "shared attachment." Checking that places a copy of the document on the SharePoint server. The server will take care of gathering all the changes to the document. Of course, workers won't need to e-mail a document to create a shared space. In any Office app, they can select Tools/Shared Workspace, then select the option for sharing a document.

Meeting Workspace Sites
Sharing documents is one thing, but gathering all of your far-flung team members together for an online meeting is another. In the past, you likely needed to pay a online events company in order to get a virtual meeting room, but with Office 2003's SharePoint technology that becomes unnecessary. Start a meeting by inviting all your participants in Outlook and creating a New Meeting request. Office does the rest of the work for you, keeping track of attendees and creating your virtual space. You can disseminate meeting information to your guests and keep track of what's being said with OneNote, then distribute the minutes afterwards.

Other Collaboration Tools
Office 2003 allows you to share calendar and contact information among you team. Call up other calendars by checking the name of the owner, and that information will appear side-by-side with to your own, but color-coded so that you can easily distinguish whose is whose.

You can also call up a team schedule and view it alongside your own. Workers can use new "Alert Me" links to stay on top of changing information in shared documents. Simply set the document to send you notification when key information changes. And when sending out documents, you can specify who can see them and who has permission to make changes.

More Microsoft Office 11 Coverage from InternetNews.com
April 18, 2003	Office 2003: To Each According to His Need
April 2, 2003	Microsoft Divvies Up Office 2003 Editions
March 13, 2003	Will Office 2003 Lead to Lock-in?
December 9, 2002	Microsoft Office 11, An App Platform
October 22, 2002	Microsoft Airs Office 11, XP Embedded OS