STS: SharePoint Team Services and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server Compared

This article compares some basic features of SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

SharePoint Team Services features interactive collaboration space where people create content and track work. The scope is about workgroups or departments communicating internally and for other people to see. It is about teams collaborating to produce information, hence the name Team Services.

SharePoint Portal Server features search and dashboards where people find information they need in their work. The scope is searching across many groups and departments for information. Hence the name, Portal Server. SharePoint Portal Server can search across and return results from many SharePoint Team Services document libraries. You cannot search list data.

SharePoint Team Services

• Team collaborative Web sites
• Easy document sharing and team organization
• Available for intranets and for extranets via ISPs
• Customize sites by using Microsoft FrontPage

SharePoint Portal Server

1. Departmental/enterprise information portals
2. Enterprise search
3. Rich document management functionality
4. Customized with Web Parts using Microsoft Digital Dashboard technology
5. Based on Web Storage System for custom collaboration solutions
6. Extensible with Microsoft Visual Studio and common programming interfaces such as OLEDB, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and Collaboration Data Objects (CDO)