Microsoft has been working on a free add-on for Office SharePoint Server 2007 called Knowledge Network (KM). It looks very cool.

Knowledge Network is a new add-on for Office SharePoint Server 2007 that many people don’t know about yet. It automates the discovery and sharing of undocumented knowledge and relationships, enabling you to quickly locate who knows whom and who knows what within your constantly changing organization.

A video describing and showing some of the KN features and how it works is available on Channel 9. The team blog is here. It’s in beta right now (not publicly available just yet), and will be released as a free download when Office SharePoint Server 2007 is released (later this year).

You create a profile, which is uploaded to a SharePoint server. This solution takes advantage of SharePoint as a platform to be extended (My Sites, search, etc.). When your coworkers so the same, you all gain the ability to search and organize based on relationships and expertise. Think of it as a formal social network at work - find experts and people to help you collaboratively solve problems, etc.

There’s such a huge number of massive changes and improvements in SharePoint 2007, it’s to the point where it’s almost impossible to get your brain around them all. I’m off to find a place that’s keeping track of all the details in a way one can readily digest - anyone know of such a place? So far I see Office Online, TechNet and the SharePoint team blog are pretty good resources, but seems like someone should, oh I dunno, set up a SharePoint 2007 portal with all the information presented in true dogfood style? That would enable, say, one RSS feed?

At any rate, if you are a SharePoint person (and there are millions of you out there), the 2007 version is huge and it’s certainly time to get on board if you’re not already. KN is one example of using SharePoint as a powerful platform to build business processes and capabilities. There are many, many others as well.