SharePoint Working Group Minutes
May 5, 2008
*Attending*
Mike Grady, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (chair)
Rick Downs, University of Virginia
Saira Hasnain, University of Buffalo
Chris Bates, University of Buffalo
Etan Weintraub, Johns Hopkins University
Debbi Bucci, National Institutes of Health
Matt Kolb, Michigan State University
Scott Cantor, Ohio State University
Chris Pruess, University of Iowa
Nick Roy, University of Iowa
Gary Rogers, University of Iowa
Dan Metzler, University of Iowa
Greg Nims, University of Iowa
Galen Rafferty, Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)
Tim Newcomb, Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)
Michael Trullinger, California State University
Vinay Kumar, 9Star Research
David Jimenez, 9Star Research
Ann West, Internet2
Renee Frost, Internet2
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2
Email list: InC-SharePoint@incommonfederation.org
Wiki: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/InCCollaborate/InC-SharePoint
*SharePoint at NIH*
Debbi Bucci from NIH discussed her agency's efforts to federate SharePoint using Shibboleth and InCommon. She has been working with CA and Microsoft for several months to make this work. The first application will involve a public information officer (PIO) network that includes NIH personnel and public relations people from all of the universities and research institutes doing business with NIH. The application will allow for collaboration and provision PIOs into various groups. NIH hopes to roll this out by June 1.
*Unique Identifiers*
This led to a discussion about the attribute(s) to use as unique identifiers. EduPerson Principal Name is an option, but some institutions may reassign the EPPN a relatively short time after a person graduates or leaves. EduPerson Targeted ID may be a better attribute, since it is a SAML2 persistent ID.
One suggested approach to this issue is to determine requirements needed for federating with SharePoint. When requirements are known, along with any limitations in the software, appropriate attribute(s) can be specified
*CIC/9Star*
The Committee for Institutional Cooperation (CIC) has been exploring the use of 9Star's ActiveShareFS to provide federated access to the CIC SharePoint server. CIC will have a few hundred groups serving 1,500-2,000 users. They are using Windows SharePoint Services to try to make this happen. To date, it is not fully working.
*Potential Use-Cases*
The University of Buffalo is interested in participating with NIH and providing a federated SharePoint service for its research community, but have not moved forward.
Johns Hopkins has a single SharePoint implementation and is still rolling SharePoint out and educating users.
California State University is in the process of rolling out SharePoint 2007 internally to the chancellor's office and would like to eventually implement the software as a tool available to all 450,000 CSU students, faculty and staff.
*Next Call*
Mike Grady will add the issue of licensing (MOSS vs. WSS) on the next call.
The consensus was to meet every other week at this same time. The next call will be May 19, at 2 p.m. EDT.