Configuration deployment test -> staging -> prod ? How to automati

[Phil]

Configuration deployment test -> staging -> prod ? How to automatically

I would like to know if there are any software that can help us propagating
SharePoint configurations changes from one environment to another?

More precisely, when we start working on new functionalities, we do
everything on the development server, then once everything is ok, we deploy
to test, staging and so on.

The problem we are facing is that most of the new functionalities only
require the configuration of OOTB features. Since those operations takes a
lot time and are error prone when reproducing them manually, we would like to
know if there are tools available that can push those changes for us without
affecting production data such as the document already inserted in document
libraries, document metadata, workflows and content types ?

Type of changes we are doing:

Create and remove document library view
Modification of existing document library view

Create and remove site, list, list items and document library permissions
Modification of existing site, list, list items and document library
permissions
Modification to list general setting, content types
Etc…

I know they are tool that can highlight the differences between two
environments (global compare) but we need something that can speed up this
lengthy portion of our work and also help us improving our software quality.

Thanks in advance

FYI: We are using MOSS 2007 SP2,WSS SP2, NLB environment 2 Front end, SQL
2005, Window Server 2003 R2

[Yury James Stevenson]

Phil,

For SharePoint 2007 you can use the OOB web content management features
to publish from dev to staging, and then from staging to prod.

We did a similar implementation a few months back, works fine.

For WSS you'll have to fall back to scripting or write your own tool to
export / import the solutions.

If the OOB features don't offer enough functionality you might want to
check AvePoint's DocAve suite, they have a number of tools that can help
you with release management and great support.

http://www.docave.com

There are other tools available as well, but none that I have any
experience with.

--
regards,

Yury

http://www.xylos.com
http://ystex.net

[Helicher@discussions.microsoft.com Brad Helicher]

Hi Phil,

Per your question re: software options for propagating updates across
SharePoint environments, you may choose to also consider ROSS from RepliWeb
(3rd party solution: www.repliweb.com/ross). ROSS is built to manage
replication/deployment across stages (ex: dev to test to prod) and
multi-site. ... with a management layer to govern the process of change
control.

Good luck w/ your project.

Brad