PartnerNet, Habitat for Humanity International’s extranet, is the primary mechanism Habitat uses to communicate with their 2500 affiliates in the US and about 90 countries. Its success is critical to the organization and the previous version of PartnerNet was not up to the challenge. Habitat wanted to overhaul PartnerNet to create a portal that would allow each of their 25 programs and departments to provide service, education and support to their network of global affiliates. Recognizing that many great ideas come from the folks in the field, the portal also needed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing across the entire community.

Using Microsoft SharePoint 2007 as a development platform and leveraging its many features, AW Systems redesigned PartnerNet into a feature-rich, cohesively organized collection of global and regional program/department websites. Each program/department is now able to build out its own site and, by empowering a small team of "site editors", to manage their own news blog, wiki, frequently asked questions, events calendar, document library, and discussion forum.

Some sites publish content world-wide while others are regionally focused. To make this massive amount of global and local content easily digestible, AW Systems was able to extend the solution using ASP.NET and build a subscription system allowing users to specify their regional and subject matter interest and customize their user experience. The user's home page, for example, as well as an optional weekly newsletter, contains the latest news, discussions and upcoming events for all sites the user has subscribed to.

Based in Sydney and expanding across Australia in the next year, the Midnight Basketball association offers at-risk youths the chance to play in a tournament that takes place at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. To participate the youths are required to take life skills workshops…the program motto is “No workshop, no jump shot.”

The association requires a tremendous amount of coordination to manage and as they expand to cities across Australia they see a need for a collaborative solution to organize tournaments, volunteers, youths, expenses and to collaborate with program administrators and volunteers all over the country. Much of the work they do is done with paper or Excel spreadsheets sent back and forth. The solution they propose leverages Exchange, SharePoint (Excel Svcs, Web Parts, Forms, and workflow), SharePoint designer, and even includes virtual earth (for transport officers to help get kids to and fro games). The solution will allow the association to bring this very successful program to twenty locations across Australia and will reduce the burden on the very busy volunteers staff.

FUNDAMED is a non-profit foundation founded in 1997 and established in the state of Maranhão, Northeastern Brazil. This region shows staggering levels of poverty, in which poor life conditions cause constant suffering and humilliation. Besides coordinating various campaigns aimed at fighting poverty and social injustices, FUNDAMED is constantly providing health assistance to the population, either by donating equipment, medicines or promoting volunteer medical services. Nowadays, their main activity is the recruitment of qualified international volunteer medical professionals to assist needy patients in Northeast Brazil, through our Medical Mission program.

Fundamed proposes building a portal as a gathering point for doctor volunteers to submit their availability, speciality, etc and allow area hospitals to tap into the volunteer resources when they are available.

In the aftermath of violent conflicts and natural disasters, International Medical Corps (IMC) provides emergency interventions for vulnerable populations and makes lasting improvements to devastated health care systems.

IMC communicates internally and with the field through email. This has resulted in some issues: email storage requirements have grown exponentially, & team members are not sure where to find the most recent copy of a document. SharePoint and Office 2007 will enable richer communication and efficient information sharing to keep team members in sync.

IMC would benefit greatly from process improvement regarding resource management (specifically volunteers and staff) and team collaboration for their field teams. InfoPath would be used to collect detailed information (specialty, languages spoke, global experiences, etc.) about potential volunteers, information would be uploaded to MOSS 2007 and workflow would be used to route the information and schedule interviews, status would be updated and when approved information would be available and searchable on MOSS 2007.