Seers - SharePoint consulting specialists

What new features can we expect in SharePoint 2013 – Part 1

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 04:25:00 GMT

This is the first part of many articles to come about the new features and capabilities we can expect to find in the anticipated release of SharePoint 2013, or should I say Office 15...

This information is my research which has come from various sources over the internet and also my time spent in Redmond recently attending a SharePoint conference. Whilst I am not a close partner with Microsoft and so I haven’t been invited to preview the new beta however I did speak to a number of sources at Redmond who did confirm some questions I asked them regarding SharePoint 2013. However since they were not allowed to disclose any information since they have signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so I was very careful with the wording of my questions to them ;-)

The first fact about SharePoint 2013 which I wish to share is about the upgrade to its workflows. As it currently stand the typical Out of the Box (OOTB) workflows created in SharePoint 2010 are simple sequential through each process from start to finish there is no loops and only this capability is provided if you purchase a third party workflow software like K2 for SharePoint 2010. In SharePoint 2013 we can expect to see that we will be able to create workflows with “Loops” and this can be performed OOTB using SharePoint Designer. This does extend the ability to reuse steps in a workflow process but it also does bring other issues such as endless loops! I can assume that the worker thread to handle this will ensure that this would be segregated away from affected the performance or impact to SharePoint users.

Second fact which I was interested to note is about the SharePoint 2013 Application Store. You see so many CMS, or Shopping Cart applications which have a support from a development community who produce a number of additional applications and then sell this in a promoted online application store. Well this will now be included by Microsoft to complement its new software SharePoint 2013. It would be a shame to see Codeplex become commercial since there have been so many great contributions to extend SharePoint’s capabilities most which I have located from Codeplex, just to name a few SPServices, or SharePoint Manager. Also interesting to note that the Application Marketplace will be included as a site template so this will mean that for a number of public facing sites will have access to this functionality as used by Microsoft to host its app store, and given the number of fortune 500 companies starting to use SharePoint 2010 to host their website this makes a lot of sense.

Thank you for reading my blog post it was a pleasure to share some inside information about the up and coming release of SharePoint 2013, and within the next few days I will publish part 2 of my article which will have more new features in SharePoint 2013 or Microsoft Office 15…Which I will discuss about in the next article.

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Tags: SharePoint 2013

Category: SharePoint

Category: SharePoint 2010

The art of Team Collaboration

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:57:00 GMT

To further add to Team Collaboration. There is an old saying “To be in business is like being in a war”,” to partner with someone is like having an allied” I believe this is true depending on one’s perception. An army or the team is subjected to morale, spirit, and strength. To truly harness the full extent of your team, in terms of these attribute such as team morale, team spirit, and team strength. We need great communicator, great visionary with soul, and the need of team communication and expression with in certain code and rules. These great aspect points to communication of team collaboration with a system or medium to expresses team mission statements, goals, ideas, insights, and moment of geniuses. I’m a firm believer that everybody has great ideas, no matter who they are, where they come from and what they do, how they may appear, how long they have been doing it newbies or old school. You will be amazed with what they come up with if you truly listen. And if we could really mix these selves expression, ideas, and moment of geniuses from top-down and bottom-up people, we can really cook up some seriously astounding, mind blowing concoction. This could and will be trend bending and trend setting for the company industry. Like how the Japanese had been industry leaders in their some of their field for many years, because they know the value of team work, collaboration, honour. They had an interesting encouragement system of giving their employees money for any ideas that they come up with, and much more if it get used. This is just an example of just within a company; imagine the extent scenario of True team collaboration with trust, integrity and openness of partnerships (Supply Chain and Strategic Alliances)? A close scratching surface example would be Rosetta.Net
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Tags: Collaboration

Category: Information Management

Category: Knowledge Management

Viewing reports and scorecards on Apple iPad devices using BI features with SharePoint Server 2010

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:26:00 GMT

Here is some great news to all those avid Mac people especially using portable devices such as iPad, there is a new Cumulative Update which enables all out of the box enterprise dashboard, reporting and BI to work on non-windows devices.

This includes: -

Business Intelligence Center

Dashboards with filters and links

Excel Services Reports

Scorecards

KPIs

Analytic Charts (my favorite, if you've seen my presentations!)

Web Page Reports

For more information this is the official release from Microsoft....

"Cumulative Update 2011-12 (CU 2011-12) for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 enables organizations to view certain kinds of reports and scorecards on Apple iPad devices that use the iOS 5 Safari browser. This article describes what business intelligence content users can view on iPad, how to configure reports and scorecards to be displayed correctly, and how to navigate business intelligence content on iPad." Read more on TechNet…

Here are quick list of what's now supported in SharePoint 2010 SP1 with the December CU.

I was so excited to hear this news from Microsoft so over christmas holidays between catching up with friends and family I was sure to install this update. And to my amazement the overall experience with using SharePoint and navigating on my iPad significantly improved. My strong recommendation for business stakeholders and decision makers whole value the BI reporting and scorecard capabilities with SharePoint and use an iPad....Get This!

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Tags: BI Reporting,Dashboards,Scorecards,Excel Services Reports

Category: SharePoint

Category: SharePoint 2010

Team Collaboration

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 22:56:00 GMT

Continuing from the topic of Sharing information with Partners, Vendors, and Clients. Let’s talk
about Team Collaboration Solutions. Recently I have come across 2 companies; one being the
suppliers of plumbing goods, the other is a construction company. The 2 have work with each
other’s for years, and have had transactions of up to millions of dollars. One would assume they
would have a very well set up streamline collaborative system considering the amount of transaction
they have with each other and the benefits that they could gain setting up one. But they didn’t.
So the ongoing reoccurring mistakes and errors happen. Without knowing why there are so many
things going wrong, people in the hierarchy and partnership blaming each other to save faces,
position, jobs, and cost, then the politics, resentment, and so on with a never ending cycle of
unnecessary drama... Believe me it was a mess… up on a mess.

Their problems and possible solutions:

Communications—they need to interact with other team members or clients more for instances
such as when information has changed, when time sensitive issues and document need to be raised
using the general or document discussion components with the use of alert

Project Management—Construction Company has many projects, with task with predecessors
and critical components tasks. With centralizing and sharing documents of what the other team
members task are help another team member to clarify what he needs to prepare for the next task. .
In short transparency help your team confirm what is needed to be done without having to have a
formal meeting but just a friendly team confirmation with team imitative mentality, with that you
create a win—win attitude team environment. This would help them could avoid a lot of mess and
problems and furthermore will help them winning bigger, better, major contracts.

Document Management— they are not sharing documents, or not sharing enough documents. If
they use a common place for storing documents by using sharing document libraries with managing
document revisions usage of the check-in/check-out and version retention feathers, controlling
documentation publication using content approval. And with the enhancing ability to search and
feature specific documents by assigning them to topics and best-bets classifying documents for
retrieval using metadata attached to the document.

In summary if people we were to act and conduct in a more caring, sharing, honest team attitude
whether in our own company or with a partnership company. We will most likely able to identify the
cause and a lot of unnecessary damage could be saved. My answers for these 2 companies or any
similar companies out there with similar problems are to look at their(s) systems, do some research
into system theory, and don’t blame the people using the system. But change the system for better,
build up an awareness system yourself, analyse your processes As-Is and To-Be before implementing
the necessary technology.

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Budget verses Scope? A question which is regularly asked

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:40:00 GMT

In fact it is good question and a vital question. This question is vital in that, "the most important part of any project is the initial stage ". A saying which is a constant regardless of any projects you may come across. Whether a small paint job of a room where you have to do the prep work for a good lasting finished, to the delivery of a search capability project in SharePoint where the needs and experiences and to be experienced of the end user must be catered for.

How do we assess this? Well it really depends on what the outcomes we wish to achieve. The chosen methodologies, the time constraint, theresources constraint and most important of all is the needs basis. Is it abusiness need? Will covering this scope help with generating more market shares?Will this scope help generate higher customer satisfaction level? Will thisscope make us better rival or surpass our competitors and at which stage? Will covering this scope helps and keep us consistent with our business strategies. Will covering this scope keep us consistent with how we see ourselves and how the customers see us?

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Category: SharePoint

QUESTION OF THE WEEK " CAN SHAREPOINT HELP WITH SHARING INFORMATION WITH PARTNERS, VENDORS, AND CLIENTS??

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:25:00 GMT

Yes, absolutely. Our solution, team Site with extranet access. The Team Site template helps the needs of groups of people working collaboratively on projects, campaigns, and alliance programs. Team site over an email-base communication provides all sorts of benefits, ability to review what they only want to review, set up a process rule for approving final documents or presentations, set up alerts to be notified when specific, crucial, and prerequisite information changes and or available, participate in online real-time discussions with each-others. Plus other specific needs, wants, and benefits which can be sought through third party software.
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SharePoint what is required to become a true specialist?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:02:00 GMT

As a consultant the exposure you get on different projects working with other consultants from various technology backgrounds which provides some interesting insight into their views. Of course being a Microsoft technology specialists means that you are exposed and get a number of critiques.

So today I wanted to share something quite interesting which came from a consultant with Unix background and his comment that Microsoft solutions are great because the learning curve and uptake around the technology is simple to learn.

After this comment was made it got me thinking actually is SharePoint that easy to up-skill because I think that this is a common misconception since it is depth vs breadth.

I will give you an example you will work with a number of content administrators who have great exposure to the breadth. Then you will notice that a technology specialist will have a great degree of experience around infrastructure, administration and development. And this can comprise of the following sets of technology including: -

· Windows Operating Systems
· SQL Server
· Active Directory
· Virtual Machine
· ASP.Net framework
· PowerShell
· Silverlight

This list of technologies just confirms the overall complexity for SharePoint to become a true specialist does require quiet a number of years’ experience and exposure and in addition to the technology there is experience with addressing the business around delivery of Portals and EDRMS platforms, governance and exposure to Enterprise platforms and architecture.

So to sum this up there is quite a lot of experience and exposure to the technology, business before you can become a true specialist so this puts it into perspective about SharePoint being as really easy as most people like to suggest? Would like to hear more of your opinions!

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Tags: SharePoint Specialist

Category: SharePoint

Category: Information Management

Category: Knowledge Management

Category: SharePoint 2010

Is cloud computing what outsourcing was to the IT industry in the past decade?

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 06:19:00 GMT

It is no doubt that if you are working in Infrastructure sector within the IT profession you can’t help to feel threatened by Cloud Computing and how this might affect your employment opportunities when the major players such as Microsoft or Google market these cloud products to reduce operating costs, staffing by working on a subscription pricing model.

However you need to step back a decade or more and realise how history is repeating as it there has been increasing pressure on a lot of development and support professional have been downsized to accommodate a more cost-effective off-shoring model to countries including India or Philippines which has became a trend amongst large to medium sized organisations.

As I can remember around the 2000 period was the boom period for a number of IT professionals earning big dollars and driving exotic cars, however the next few years to follow would mean the crash of the dot coms and the end to the lucrative IT salaries and employment opportunities which would result in a number of professionals moving back into other sectors such as Accounting and Legal or even becoming a taxi driver.

Although the industry has matured and a lot of attention has been drawn back into mining and resources but you cannot help to think what affect might be felt on a number of professionals working in the industry?

Whilst these services from Microsoft and Google must sound tempting to the CIO and other decision makers however a lot of ASX stock listed companies or legal firms might have a compliance issue with moving across their entire operations to these data centres. Then there questions raised about who has ownership of this information and finally ESCROW disaster recovery and other external factors.

The first major issue being that Office 365 is hosted in a data centre located in Singapore, and whilst Microsoft have had discussions around bringing this data centre into Australia it has been determine that the break-even point to make this economically viable can’t be reached. So this does mean that for the next few years I think these on-premise hosted solutions are to stay? Perhaps maybe.

However for the number of mid-size professional companies presented with a business case to upgrade their aging servers to host on-premise or in the cloud the cloud obviously seems a viable alternative since it will overall reduce the costs.

My assumption is that a number of new cloud hosting will emerge which will open up new opportunities to infrastructure professionals looking for exciting endeavours. There will become smaller IT vendors around which will provide these Office 365 hosting services in Australia.

And also as being a software professional we can look back and see that whilst a lot of application development and support services have gone offshore however there is still the need for highly proficient software specialists to consult their specialities amongst the number of high risk projects for leading corporate and government projects.

So to really answer this question about how will the infrastructure professionals jobs lost in the revolution to the cloud you can only answer this question with a ‘BUT’.

It is fair to say that there is always going to be a need for high quality trained IT professionals will always be required for the high-risk and highly visible projects which are required for the success of large enterprise and government.

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Tags: Cloud Services

Cloud Services and which one to choose Microsoft or Google?

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 06:04:00 GMT

As you will notice nowadays that there the humble desktop has been reduced to a laptop and nowadays the laptop is becoming the desktop as there is every increasing up-take into the number of Smart-Phone and Tablet based iPads and Android devices currently on the market.

So it appears that the increasing trend of professionals based on the road and remotely away from the offices gives increasing uptake into these devices which enable people to work away.

It appears that a suite of productivity tools have also identified the trend of using these portal devices and as such makes sense to deliver these requirements.

As you are aware the two major tools on the market are Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365.

Both these tools are targeted toward small to midsize organisations looking to transform away from traditional on-premise hosting which carries infrastructures, IT professionals and expensive licensing costs into a cloud based model which is based on a subscription which grows with your business.

Also both of these tools boast around a 99.9% up time for service and reliability and also features such as Email Hosting, Instant Messaging and Storing Documents in the cloud.

However as you start to go into more detail and use these tools then do you realise that Microsoft’s Office 365 is seriously more engaging as an Enterprise Product which the features that you are familiar with Exchange which is important for your managing Security and Corporate Governance whereas Google has a number of limitations in this area. Let me provide you with an example…..

Then it gets worse for Google Apps if we require using Blackberrys, integration with Active Directory, Corporate Directory and Instant Messaging all of a sudden there grows this enormouse task of configuration and managing the on-going complexity.

Which is what you we expect from enterprise set of applications as we have become so familiar with this in Exchange.

So really to sum it up if you are running a small business and don’t have any set of enterprise requirements around security, governance and compliance then Google Apps if the tool you need. Since it has very basic learning curve and is fast to use and FREE (Using basic edition).

However if you organisation is midsize and does require the enterprise features then Microsoft Office 365 is the clear winner which its familiar and rich interface and the capability to serve the needs of your enterprise with the agility of getting it ready within minutes.

Whilst cloud services are still maturing in a market with competition and no clear dominator time will tell whether Microsoft can still maintain its competitive edge of the domination like it has in the past with its set of productivity tools including Windows Operating System and Office Application and Exchange Mail which it has lead in the past 15 years.

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Tags: Cloud Services

Why does User Experience matter so much now?

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:54:00 GMT

Having noticed these days the importance that design is playing in the role of consumers choosing products. Lets take a look at mobile phones an industry dominated by Nokia for more than a decade but why in the last few years has Nokia lost the ability to reach its market-share and consumers have been swept away by Apple style products? Lets see the answer is quiet obvious simplicity, intuitive designs and user-ability and then Apple decided to set the standard for the tablet. Again another product which had been around for a long time but various manufactures of the laptop or pc had failed to make a penetrate this market.

In saying that the vast number of electronic manufactures are highly educated and technical people however there has always felt a gap when designing a product for the common consumers to actually engage and connect with. Which is why Apple has seen this niche and penetrated the market for the masses which would have to be the only technology company around capable of selling a tablet pc to my grandmother....what can I say Steve Jobs was a legend.

What does User Experience Solve?

Before we ramble on too much about Steve Jobs accomplishments I want to make it clear that in the consulting field when delivering enterprise collaboration the same rules should apply however unfortunately this is often not the case within many systems I have used. Which seems to be more important nowadays to consider UX people to solve not just the design of making the pages look pretty it is to solve problems and focus around Information Architecture (IA).

How?

We tend to experience many companies frustrated with many emails which we solve through an enterprise social strategy implemented in SharePoint. Our talented consultants work with the business and deliver requirements through to our technical resources to deliver solutions instrumental to the overall business.

Find out more?

Contact Seers who can provide you with a show case of one of many solutions we have delivered in SharePoint on-premise and cloud to see how we can make a difference.

Seers - SharePoint Consultancy

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Tags: Enterprise Collaboration

Category: SharePoint 2010