SharePoint recommendations for a non-techie

I run an animal rescue that spans six states and has nearly 80 volunteers with various responsibiities. We have determine that SharePoint Services has what we need in terms of having a shared calendar, BB/announcements, document space (that allows collaboration), easy-to-use data sheets, and is an all-around good tool for our virtual organization. It seems that we can also set permissions for folks based on the type of information they need to access (this is critical).

We also, at some point, want to be able to have our SP site accept data from a web form (i.e. folks can apply to adopt our animals online and have their data automatically fed into a datasheet in our SP site). Right now, our web form sends each applicaton as a separate text email and the filing and tracking of so many is cumbersome, plus they are not sortable or filterable). Obviously b/c people are submitting personal info on their app. (name, address), we need it to be somewhat secure. Since I am not technical, I am kind of lost as to next steps.

A friend helped me establish a SP site that lives on his server (temporarily)and I have started setting some things up but I need advice on some basic things:
1)what do I need to figure out in terms of getting my web form (adoption application) to dump into into a datasheet in my SP site and can this be accomplished through SP services
2)can anyone recommend an hosting service for us (we want daily off-site backups, toll-free 24/7 tech support by phone, at least 1,000 MG of disk space, the ability to create subsites, secure server, uptimes of 97% or more, power backup) anything else important I ahven't thought about?

I'm afraid I can't be of help on the sharepoint (looking for something similar myself), but my organization uses perseus survey solutions for online forums, which operate in the same way as text emails, but also offer the ability to automatically process them into a (sortable, or copyable into excell) form through the program out of your inbox. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing.

My organization is also interested in SP. Would it be appro to use as a company intranet? We have identified file sharing as a primary use for an intranet but would like other features such as:

- booking common resources (ie. laptop, broadroom)
- posting messages
- staff listing with photos

Any intranet solution suggestions?

You may want to go to this thread on Intranet solutions for nonprofits. Also, check out TechSoup's article Ask TechSoup: How Can I Build a Cheap, Flexible Intranet?

There is an organization called TechBridge that provides services for non-profits. One of their web services is a portal that can be used for file sharing and collaboration. See techbridge.org.

Regarding question 1) for getting your adoption application data into SP. I use SharePoint Services for tracking Technical Help Desk tasks and submissions. Local users can use the SP site to submit entries as well as Web users.

I set up a List in the Documents and Lists area. I customized the fields to my liking. I selected from the toolbar "Edit in Datasheet". Once in Datasheet view, there is a Task Pane button. I viewed the Task Pane. In the Task Pane there is a link to "Create Linked Table in Access". I did just that. I then copied the table structure (no data) to another table in the same database for receiving data, an import table.

On a non SP website I have a form with the same data fields that submits form entries to an Access database. Inside that database I have a table that links to the Import table from the other database. I simply cut and paste the data from the web generated table to the linked import table. (Copy, paste, then delete).

I then return to the original database, cut and paste the data from the import table into the linked SharePoint data table.

Now I have my web generated data in my SharePoint site. I can create forms, queries, and reports in Access from the linked SharePoint table. I can even add new entries from Access if needed.

It took some time document the field names and process, but it was worth the effort. If you can't connect the two databases directly, you could always export the data from the web database and then import it from the SP database. This process may not be your exact solution, but I hope it helped.

For off site storage try...

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
* Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee, and no start-up cost.
* $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used.
* $0.20 per GB of data transferred.

Check it out! It seem good to me
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

And i would also like to hear more about sharepoint server

I think all of you will fall in love with MS Office 2007. It does almost everything you want with Microsoft software that we use every day.

I know this is a old post, but I'm wondering if you're still out there aglane & if you had any collecting data from a web form through Sharepoint?