Building on the successful concept of Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services, we are announcing a set of Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites. The first two templates, planned to be available in the end of this month (January), will showcase dashboard examples for Sales Account Managers and Controllers / Financial Analysts. The result of extensive research about these roles' functions and information needs, the sample templates for My Sites utilize existing out-of-the-box web parts in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to display relevant information from data sources such as LOB systems, desktop tools, and other portals. While the templates contain only sample data, they have been designed to be extensible for actual implementations through the configuration of audience targeting, KPIs, workflows, Excel Services, Business Data Catalog, and other capabilities in SharePoint Server.

“It’s quite common to hear about portals dedicated to serve departments, teams, process workgroups and even organizations,” said Venky Veeraraghavan, Sr. Program Manager for SharePoint My Sites. “My Sites and these Role-Based Templates provide the unique pivot on displaying the information that is important for the individual -- for people in their respective job functions."

Subsequent templates for My Sites are planned to address Administrative Assistant functions and manager roles in HR, IT, Marketing, and Customer Service, which brings the total of seven Roles-Based Templates. Inside Microsoft, the templates are already gaining fame as the "Splendid 7". Also coming soon is a whitepaper describing the design patterns and how to extend these templates.

We expect customer interest to growth very quickly for these role-based and other composite solutions built on the SharePoint application platform, and we also expect a multitude of Microsoft partners to offer implementation services for deploying and extending these templates as well as creating additional templates for industry and customer specific scenarios.

Channel 9 recently interviewed the team leading the design and distribution for both sets of templates for SharePoint: the "Spendid 7" Role-Based Templates for My Sites and the “Fantastic 40” Application Templates for WSS 3.0. You can get a sneak peak at demos and hear the inside stories about the projects in this video interview.

Here's an overview of the two Role-Based Templates that will be released at the end of this month.

• Sales Account Manager
  The Sales Account Manager template helps managers streamline the process of analyzing sales and opportunity information for their overall decision making. The template assists in customer account tracking against a set of performance metrics, such as quarterly revenue, growth and opportunity. It also provides a graphical view of the geographical distribution of product sales and opportunities. The overall design of this Role-Based My Site template is to help sales account managers attain their goals of customer satisfaction and revenue augmentation.
  

• Controller / Financial Analyst
  The Controller / Financial Analyst template helps controllers and financial analysts automate the process of analyzing financial data and information, helping them in their overall decision making process. The template assists in tracking top performing products and opportunities at different geography levels. It also provides a graphical view of product sales and revenue. The overall design of this Role-Based My Site template is to help controller and financial analysts achieve their goals of communicating overall corporate performance, budget and future growth projection to the management, investors and other stakeholders.
  

For more information on the Role-Based Templates, go to the product page.

Bob Sutton, Senior Product Manager
SharePoint Products and Technologies