A Sustainable Spreadsheet Compliance Framework with Excel 2007, Office 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007

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Spreadsheets are ubiquitous.  For many organizations they are a critical resource and essential to business processes.  With Office 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 it will be much easier to maintain a sustainable spreadsheet compliance framework.

 

Office 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007  will provide some key capabilities that will assist greatly in the compliance effort:

 

  • Preventing unauthorized access to spreadsheets, with such things as Office SharePoint Server 2007 permissions, Excel Services (Excel on the server), Information Rights Management and Workbook Encryption.
  • Managing and monitoring spreadsheet changes with Enterprise Content Management.
  • Retaining and archiving spreadsheets with Office SharePoint Server 2007 Record Repository.
  • Developing robust spreadsheet models with cell styles, cell locks, Excel tables to reduce errors, defined names made easier with Name Manager and formula auditing tools (e.g., great graphical representations of relationships between cells and formulas).

 

Especially helpful are the workflow and auditing capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007.  Spreadsheets can be set up for review and approval before being available for broader use.

 

Just another example of Microsoft technologies helping users to become compliant. Check out the Spreadsheet Compliance in 2007 Microsoft Office System White Paper: https://www.financialdevelopers.com/assets/ExcelRegulatoryWhitePaper.doc

Joe Scalone