The new version of SharePoint has generated some possibly useful third party tools and one or two new websites. James Edelen was at the SharePoint 2003 launch on the 21st of October and was able to review products that work with SharePoint that do Workflow, Collaboration and Visualisation, Archiving, and Anti-virus. Now I know it is a good thing to have these add-ons, but would it not be better if SharePoint provided them in the first place? Add-ons, unless they are very well designed and exactly fit your requirements, require more administration, configuration and sometimes custom development, not to mention additional cost. It's OK for Microsoft to say "oh, we don't provide Workflow, but you can add something that does" but that is still extra hassle for the company who have chosen SharePoint only to find it only does some of the things they need it to do.

There are three new sites to do with SharePoint. SharePoint training, skills and information are offered by SharePoint Solutions and Got SharePoint offer . They're both very nicely designed too, make my site look a bit bland! I've mentioned SharePoint Experts and SharePoint University before. It is getting to be a busy community out there.

Microsoft also run www.sharepointcustomization.com which has resources for designing SharePoint sites with FrontPage 2003.