One of the open ended questions we asked in our survey was how respondents were using our offline SharePoint tools today. Below is a summary of some of the most common answers:

Who uses offline SharePoint tools?

Department and division managers: traveling to remote locations.

Sales people: when on the road or at a customer location.

All staff: to provide access to SharePoint when they are offline.

IT project managers: to take offline copies of IT project related sites for use when on client premises.

Engineering project managers: to be able to view content when working off site.

Consultants: to enable them to work in the field.

Analysts: to access the latest commodity information when they travel.

Frequent travelers to, and staff in, foreign countries.

Why do they need them?

Customers or partners often do not allow visitors to connect through their firewall to access SharePoint content.

Obtaining a reliable connection to SharePoint can be difficult when users are in transit, such as on a plane or train.

In foreign countries, particularly in the developing world, Internet connections are often unreliable or unavailable.

How do they Use them?

To sync to the latest versions of sales tools, such as presentations, specifications, and media content for availability while traveling or at a customer site.

To have the latest copies of reference documents, such as practice manuals when out of the office.

To edit documents or list items without connecting to the internet.

As a personal backup of SharePoint site content.

For team members working offsite to have access to the teams documents wherever they are.

Next, I’ll discuss our respondents’ plans for deployment of SharePoint 2007.