Andy Dale SharePoint Blog

SharePoint - How To Use It

2011-07-29T12:44:00.000+01:00

This week I am going to sound like a grumpy old man (yes again!) and have a moan about the new £22m pound revamped Wolverhampton Bus Station. No, don't worry this is a SharePoint Blog, but I want to show how important it is to let your End Users know how to use your SharePoint Portal after you have given it a revamp (maybe upgraded to SharePoint 2010). But first back to Wolverhampton Bus Station....

During the last twelve months I have watched the impressive new Bus Station take shape. Admittedly normally getting annoyed because my usual route to Wolverhampton train station, to catch an early train to visit Office Talk's SharePoint customers in London has been blocked by building work. Then last week the impressive looking new Bus Station was opened.

It really is an impressive site, but I suppose when it costs £22m it should be (I mean Villa paid that much for Darren Bent). So why am I like so many people in the Wolverhampton area complaining? The reason is lack of communication. National Express who run the West Midland Bus service have decided, in their wisdom, to change the numbers of many of the buses and change some of the routes. I am sure they have good reasons for this and it will save both money and improve the overall service, but they just haven't communicated the information with the people who actually use the buses. They haven't as yet changed the signs on the bus stops to show the new bus numbers. They haven't even put an entry on their Website listing the new bus numbers. It really is just lack of information that is causing so many angry customers.

Many companies have now had their SharePoint Portals for several years and have decided they need a revamp. They need to meet the needs of the changing business. They need to be more interactive. At Office Talk we have been involved in several projects recently where companies have moved from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. To allow sites to use some of the new features like, linking to external data sources, inserting live external Websites with SharePoint, Social Networking, improved video handling, on-screen editing many more. All packed with new features, but these features are only any good if the End User knows how to use them.

So if you are upgrading your SharePoint or just having a revamp please don't make the same mistakes that were made at the Bus Station. Make sure the End User knows what is changing before it changes and receives either a short training course or a handout (or both) showing them what the changes are.

If you are migrating to 2010 Office Talk provide an onsite 90 minutes training session for End Users (usually in groups up to a dozen) to show users some of the extra features they will have available, like 'Uniqueness' Field and the famous 'Ribbon'. We also create a customised two sided (3 fold) Quick Guide that the End Users can take away after the training session. Please email frank.faulds@office-talk.com to find out more about how Office Talk can help with your End User training. But please never forget that your SharePoint Portal is only as good as the understanding your End Users have on how to use it. SharePoint like Wolverhampton Bus Station must be designed to improve the lives of the people who are going to use it. Not just to look pretty.

With the new Premier football season just two weeks away I have been busy creating the 'Our Team Performance 2011/12' SharePoint Template. You can see one for both newly promoted Norwich City (perhaps Delia would like a copy) and my own mighty Aston Villa at http://office-talk-dev.co.uk . Don't forget to claim your own generic Team Performance Template by dropping me an email at andy.dale@office-talk.com .

Good luck to the Villa boys in tomorrow's 'Barclays Premier League Asia Trophy Final' against Chelsea at Hong Kong. Hopefully Darren Bent will show why he cost as much as the new Wolverhampton Bus Station.

SharePoint Premier League Template 2011/12

2011-07-12T16:49:00.001+01:00

Many organisations have invested in the mighty SharePoint, but still struggle to get their staff to use it. As a SharePoint Consultant at Office Talk I always try and offer our customers interesting ways to promote their SharePoint environment. We often encourage SharePoint Project teams to include a social area in their designs. These can be named things like 'Coffee Break' or 'Get Together'. A great place to share photographs of that 'Team Building' Event or to hold your 'Grand National Sweepstake'.

Over the last two years several hundred companies have used the 'free' Office Talk 'My Team’s Premier League' to encourage employees to start to use SharePoint and see it's true full potential. This week Office Talk are releasing the latest version of their Football Template for the new 2011/12 season. With this unique SharePoint Template employees can monitor their favourite Premier League team’s performance during the next nine month's. You'll have to wait until the end of this blog to see how you can get a copy (or one for every team) of this template that combines my two passions SharePoint and football.

So how else can you make your SharePoint just that much more appealing to your staff?

Here are my top 20 suggestions (they are not in any order);

1. A monthly photograph caption competition

2. List all your company holidays and key dates

3. Include Minutes of Meetings

4. Add video

5. Add your company templates to Document Libraries (ie Faxes, presentation layouts)

6. Include an Expense Form system

7. Have a Social Area that includes a 'congratulations' section

8. Have Personnel Manual easily accessible

9. Include an IT Helpdesk system

10. Useful Links (ie Weather, local restaurants, hotels etc)

11. Add Training Course Feedback forms using surveys

12. Add more photographs of members of staff

13. Let staff read about current performance of the business and don't just keep these figures secret

14. Highlight any special achievements of members of staff

15. Add a Discussion Area to let members of staff make suggestions about the SharePoint Portal.

16. Give your SharePoint Portal a friendly name

17. Use My Sites or create a Personal Site for each user

18. Allow users access externally to the system with an easy to remember URL

19. Add a Car Share section to keep the company 'green'

20. Continually review the Usage Reports for each site on your SharePoint Portal

These are just a few suggestions. We at Office Talk are always happy to offer our 'Drop-In' service and come and give you advice on the best way to develop your SharePoint. Check this service out at http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=172.

To receive the free ‘My Team’s Premier League’ SharePoint Template please visit the Office Talk website at http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=160
As part of the ‘My Team’s Premier League’ site you can predict the final places of all the Premier League Teams so here are my predictions for the new season (although I am assuming Villa will not sell Mr. Downing);

1. Manchester United
2. Manchester City
3. Arsenal

4. Liverpool

5. Chelsea
6. Aston Villa
7. Tottenham
8. Sunderland
9. Everton
10. Blackburn
11. Bolton Wanderers
12. Stoke City

13. West Bromwich
14. Fulham
15. Newcastle
16. Norwich
17. Wolverhampton Wanderers
18. Wigan
19. QPR
20. Swansea

Please feel free to comment on how you think the 2011/12 league table will end up.

So don’t forget to claim your free Football Template and use it as many times as you want in your organisation.

SharePoint Visitors, Tubes passengers and Angry Villa Fans

2011-06-16T22:19:00.000+01:00

How To Calculate How Many?

As promised in last week’s SharePoint Blog this week I am going to talk about Capacity Planning and how to calculate the approximate number of Requests Per Second your SharePoint Server will get.

I am going to explain the formula for calculating the Requests Per Seconds which is recommended for SharePoint.

But what does it really mean! To help explain the different parts of the complex looking calculation I am going to use two real-life examples that have got me thinking during the last few days.

The first real-life example hit me on Tuesday evening when I was wedged between a smelly armpit of a long-haired youth and a business man with a rather large brief case on the Northern Line travelling back to Euston Station. With my SharePoint hat on I considered if Transport London had used a similar calculation, to the one above, to see if the number of trains could cope with the number of commuters especially at peak times.

Secondly, you might have noticed in the news that many Villa fans are not happy that former Blues manager Alex McLeish (the legend who got the Blues Noses relegated twice) looks set to be named the new manager of the mighty Aston Villa. While many fans protested yesterday I queued up the purchase my season ticket in the Trinity Road for the 31^st consecutive year. So as I waited behind the only other person waiting at the Villa Ticket Office I was thinking how the appointment of Mr. McLeish would affect the number of tickets the Villa Ticket Office would have to sell in the new season.

1. Number of Users x % Users Active Per Day

So how does the calculation work? The first part is the number of users multiplied by the % Users Active per day.

Often when trying to calculate worse case scenarios for SharePoint it is best to use 100% for this figure. Also it makes it easier for the less gifted mathematicians.

With the underground the number of users would probably be how many people are usually in London (residents, tourists and workers) times by the percentage Active Users. The Active Users being those able to use the Underground. It is not really the place for very young children and I expect quite scary if you are blind and have a Guide Dog. Apparently around 11 million people are in London on a normal week day. So if 80% of them are capable of using the underground that would be 11000000 x 80 which is 880000000.

Back at Villa Park the calculation would be the number of Villa fans Worldwide times the percentage of active ones. The active ones are those that do attend Villa games. If we say there are one million worldwide Villa fans and maybe 20% of these attend matches then the first part of the calculation would be 1000000 x 20 which is 20000000.

2. Number of Active Requests per Active User per Day

The next part of the calculation is the number of active requests per active user per day. To help us Microsoft produced a common set of figures for users of SharePoint 2010. It describes frequency of use and a requests/second (RPS) to users ratio for each. These user figures are;

· Light user, access every 180 seconds (20/hr)

· Typical user, access every 100 seconds (36/hr)

· Heavy user, access every 60 seconds (60/hr)

· Extreme user, access every 30 seconds (120/hr)

So if you have 100 SharePoint Users and let’s say that 80 of them are ‘Light Users’ and 20 are ‘Extreme Users’ then all we need to know is numbers of hours they work in a day to find the ‘number of active requests per active user per day’.

If the usual working day is 10 hours (well we need to make them work) then the calculation is as follows;

i) Light Users : 80 x 20 x 10 = 16000 (Requests per Day)

[20 is from Microsoft’s set of figures for number of requests per hour for a Light User]

ii) Extreme Users : 20 x 120 x 10 = 24000 (Requests per Day)

We then add the Light Users and Extreme Users together to get the overall total Requests per Day;

iii) 16000 + 24000 = 40000 (Requests per Day)

As we have overall 100 users (simple for Maths again) we divide the total Requests per Day by 100 to get the ‘number of active requests per active user per day’.

iv) 40000 / 100 = 400 (Active Requests per Active User per Day)

Back in the Underground maybe the Tube Bigwigs have their own definitions to help calculate number of travellers a day. Maybe it is similar to the following;

Light User – Use Tube once every 10 days (0.1/days)

Typical User – Use Tube to go to and from work every day (2/days)

Heavy User – Use Tube for several journeys every day (5/days)

Extreme User – Always on the Tube (20/days)

So assuming that the 11000000 people in London are broken down as follows;

6000000 Light Users, 3000000 Typical Users, 1000000 Heavy Users and 1000000 Extreme Users.

Then the number of users per day is;

i) (6000000 x 0.1)+(3000000 x 2)+(100000 x 5) + (1000000 x 20) = 27600000 Journeys Per Day

We can then divide it by the total number of people in London to give the ‘Active Requests per Active User per Day’;

In the claret and blue world it might work as follows;

Light User – A fan who goes a couple of times a season for special occasions (0.01/days)

Typical User – A fair weather fan who goes to the big games (0.05/days)

Heavy User – A real fan who goes to virtually every home game even the one against Wigan (0.8/days)

Extreme User – Goes to every single game even the reserves (0.1/days)

So assuming that the 1000000 Villa fans are broken down as follows;

950000 Light Users, 25000 Typical Users, 15000 Heavy Users and 10000 Extreme Users.

Then the number of users per day is;

i) (950000 x 0.01)+(25000 x 0.05)+(15000 x 0.8) + (1000 x 0.1) = 21725 Tickets Per Day

We can then divide it by the total number of Villa fans to give the ‘Active Requests per Active User per Day’;

ii) 21725 / 1000000 = 0.021725 (Active Requests per Active User per Day). Meaning that the average number of tickets per Villa fan buys per day is about a fiftieth of a ticket. Maybe this example is not going to quite work out.

3. Peak Factor

Peak Factor isn’t an old daytime soap opera but a value between 1 and 4 that indicates how long Peak Times lasts. If it was always Peak Time then the value would be 4, but for SharePoint Capacity Planning I usually use a value of 2.

With the London Underground probably Peak Hours are 8am to 10am and 4pm to 6pm. So as this is only 4 hours of the day we could use a Peak Factor of 2 as well.

Back in Aston the Peak Factor might be influenced by league position or manager. Maybe after the poor season last year and the possible negative feeling towards a new manager we might settle for a Peak Factor of 1.

4. 360,000 x Working Hours Per Day

Nearly there, hope you are following this. We are trying to calculate the Requests per Second (RPS) so we take number of seconds in an hour. From a good clock not the one in my car which keeps gaining one minute every couple of days. There are 3600 seconds in an hour and as we used a percentage in stage 1 we times it by 100 to give 360000 (I sound like Johnny Ball with all this Maths).

Now we just multiply the 360000 by the number of hours in working day. So if SharePoint users work 10 hours then that is 3600000 for the number at the bottom of our big calculation.

It doesn’t matter if it is SharePoint Users, Tube Passengers or Disgruntled Villa Fans we still divide by 3600000.

5. The Final Calculation

Let’s remind ourselves of the calculation we now have all the parts to complete

So for SharePoint we used the following information;

a) 100 Users

b) 100% Active

c) 80 Light Users + 20 Extreme Users

d) 10 Hours a day are worked

e) Peak Factor of 2

This gives us :

(10000 x 400 x 2) / (360000 x 10) = 2.22 Requests Per Second

Just for fun let’s look at the Tube and Villa tickets. Don’t forget these are my figures and are totally fictional.

Starting with the Tube we used the following;

a) 11000000 people in London

b) 80% Active Users

c) 6000000 Light Users

d) 3000000 Typical Users

e) 1000000 Heavy Users

f) 1000000 Extreme Users

g) Trains run for 20 hours a day

h) Peak Factor 2

Which gives;

(88000000 x 2.51 x 2) / (360000 x 20) = 61.36 Travels Per Second

No wonder I didn’t get a seat and ended up re-enacting a Right Guard advert.

So to the mighty Aston Villa FC then where we used the following;

a) 1000000 supporters

b) 20% Active

c) 950000 Light Users

d) 25000 Typical Users

e) 15000 Heavy Users

f) 10000 Extreme Users.

g) Ticket Office open 8 hours a day

h) Peak Factor 1

Which gives;

(20000000 x 0.021725 x 1) / (360000 x 8) = 0.15 Tickets sold Per Second

As the Villa start to win next season maybe the Peak Factor will improve and that will dramatically increase the number of tickets sold a second.

Whoever is manager of Aston Villa next season they will be certain of one thing and that is the full support of this SharePoint Blogger.

The SharePoint Consultants at Office Talk are happy to provide Capacity Planning and Load Testing for any SharePoint environment be it 2007 or 2010. Just drop an email to marketing@office-talk.com

SharePoint Remote Locations - Don't Lose Your Sausage

2011-05-29T23:44:00.002+01:00

Over the last few weeks I have been working closely with a multi-national company to Load Test their new SharePoint 2010 environment. To test that having the SharePoint Server Farm in one physical location can provide a fast and reliable worldwide solution.

Even though I have been testing connectivity from exotic locations such as Sidney, Dubai and Bangkok I have spent all my time during the testing period in the UK. This has meant staying a number of nights at a popular brand of hotels where Lenny Henry probably gets a discount.

One of my favourite parts of hotel stays is always the breakfast. At home I never feel like breakfast before leaving for work but when working away suddenly my morning appetite becomes huge. Now we have the popular buffet style breakfast I seem to eat even more. It is great because within seconds of sitting down you can be eating. A choice of cereals, cooked English breakfast, pancakes, toast, fruit even cakes are on offer. It really is a case of how much you can eat in ten minutes before you have to leave for work. Oh, and avoiding anything that might possibly stain your white shirt.

It is important where your table is in relation to the food and this made me think about where you position your SharePoint Servers. I started to think more about the comparison when on my return to my table after my second visit to the buffet table (well, I was planning to work through lunch) that I tripped on a step and sadly my crispy sausage rolled off my plate and onto the carpet. It continued to roll until it came to rest under a table where another suited business man was seated. Luckily nobody had noticed so I continued my walk to my table leaving my sausage behind. I felt that returning for another sausage would delay my progress so just ate my bacon, scrambled egg (less messy than fried), fried bread and mushroom disappointed that my sausage had not made it. In much the same way during my testing some page requests in SharePoint had not made it in there journey across the Atlantic.

When planning a breakfast buffet you need to think carefully where you position the different parts of the buffet. You need to think first of all about filling the buffet tables. It would be silly to put it miles from the kitchen as it has to be managed and maintained. With the SharePoint servers (Web Front Ends, Application Servers, SQL Servers) these need to ideally be in a location where you have IT staff who can work on them and a location where they can be backed-up. Also with the breakfast buffet it makes sense to put them quite near to the largest amount of diners. The further you have to walk with your hot food the higher the chance of it going cold or you losing your sausage. Also the more people have to walk with the food the more traffic there will be especially at peak times (for breakfast probably 7-30am to 8-15am). The more people moving around the more chance of collisions and dropped packages of cereals. With SharePoint again the servers should whenever possible be located where the highest amount of users are so that requests don't have so far to travel and bottlenecks are not created causing bandwidth issues. Calls to the SQL servers from the Web Front End servers are high with SharePoint so always have these in the same LAN.

It is difficult to know what kind of food a guest will want from the breakfast buffet, but if we did we could possibly position them better. For example, if we had a group of vegetarians you could seat them furthest from the sausages, bacon and black pudding. Maybe put them nearer the muesli. The waiter seating breakfast diners might perhaps look at the size of the guests and then put the slightly fatter ones (like me) nearer the breakfast buffet because they might be more likely to eat more. Also it is better to have skinny people walking around a lot than fatter ones as they take up less room. Again with SharePoint the smaller the size of requests the better. So if you have a large image file you really want to make sure it is cached somewhere and not being retrieved every time. With SharePoint there are different options to cache data. One of these is the Blob Cache which is not turned on by default. When enabled Blob Cache lets you store cached copies of certain file types.

With transporting breakfast items wouldn't it be great if you could make the food items 90% smaller to help you transport them. It sounds like something out of 'Dr Who' but there are hardware solutions available that can do exactly this with SharePoint and other network traffic. Products like Steelhead from Riverbed can dramatically decrease SharePoint traffic with files compressed by a staggering 95%.

Talking of things shrinking by 90% that does seem to have happened to Aston Villa's local rivals Birmingham City hopes this week. From the high of winning their first cup and thinking they are about to become the Kings of Birmingham to a championship side in less than three months. Good luck Blues in your games against the NPower League next season. I am sure you'll get to play the Villa again one day.

In next week's Blog I will talk about Load Testing and how to calculate the number of Requests Per Second your SharePoint system will experience in Peak Hours.

If you require any help Load Testing or Capacity Planning for SharePoint then just ask for an Office Talk consultant by emailing Frank at frank.faulds@office-talk.com.

Documenting SharePoint

2011-04-25T17:45:00.000+01:00

It is four years today since I gave up my job of an IT Manager to become a full time SharePoint Consultant and the SharePoint light continues to shine brighter.

The reason I made the switch wasn't only due to the frustrations of the fire-fighting role of the hands-on IT Manager (a role that meant frequently working through the night to try to get Exchange Servers back online) it was also because I had such fond memories of my days with SharePoint 2003 Server.

With SharePoint 2010 now firmly established and trusted Office Talk are seeing more and more organisations (both in the Private and Public Sector) wanting to move to SharePoint. With the exciting new Hosted SharePoint 2010 solutions and many companies looking for a common business platform to reduce their overheads the future for SharePoint looks very bright.

This week we revealed the winners of the coveted Andy Dale SharePoint Awards for 2011 after a record number of votes were cast. To find out who the winners and runners up were please Click Here but why not make the excitement last a little longer by reading the rest of this blog first. You don't want to miss out on reading about how my Hall window is now probably visible to the Starship Enterprise as it flies around the Earth.

One of the keenest fought sections of the SharePoint Awards 2011 contest was the brand new 'Best Hosted SharePoint Provider'. I can reveal that NetConnect just pipped FPWeb.net to claim the Gold Seal in the first ever Best SharePoint Hosted Awards. The record number of votes this section received highlights the growing interest in Hosted SharePoint. Perhaps companies want a SharePoint system they can use anywhere and at any time. In fact a SharePoint that never goes out which brings us to the light in my hall. A light that for the past four months has been shining anything but bright.

The problem with light in my hallway was that the large circular bulb only dully lit a third of the ring. This meant that doing simple tasks in the hall like applying makeup (the ladies in the house not me), reading the numerous pizza leaflets that are delivered each day or finding lost items in the hall cupboard became very difficult. I tried to replace the circular bulb but still only a third of the ring gave any light so it was time for drastic surgery. The light-fitting had to be removed and replaced with a new shiny silver fitting. Well, I now know the mistake I made. Something that all IT Managers should do at all times. I failed to fully document my original set-up. A key part of any SharePoint implementation is 'Documentation'. To be able to see exactly how the sites are structured and to be able to use the documentation to recreate the SharePoint environment. The same it seems is true with light fittings. Maybe, looking back, I was a little quick to cut so many wires of differing colours, but without these snips the old light fitting would still be dangling from the ceiling now. I was left with three red wires, one blue, one yellow, two black, a yellow/green and two brown. It felt more like a snooker break than simply removing a light fitting.

Now the new light fitting had only a blue wire and a brown wire and I even read the manual (twice) to try to find out where to connect each of the ten leads. Eventually with only three wires left unconnected I decided that my work was done. On the fusebox I turned on the switch for the lower level lights and to my delight the new triple bulb light lit up. Feeling quite pleased with my DIY skills I left the house to watch the FA Cup Semi Final at my dad's. It was only on my return that a slight problem was revealed. The 'slight' mproblem was that the new light would not turn off. It was also a very bright light that could be seen through the Hall window for several miles. I was worried that Druids might decide to come from miles to worship it.

So my lack of documentation meant that I had no idea where all these extra wires went but it seemed that some of them had been linked to the light-switch. At least I now have a light that never goes out. Like Hosted SharePoint my Hall light is now always on and working. Showing me and any passing air crafts the way.

The moral of this story is to always document your system, especially if you are thinking of making any changes. So if you have n't already recorded the layout of your SharePoint environment. Know all the Web Parts that are used, know which SharePoint Features you have enabled, know which 'Views' you have created.

So congratulations to Netconnect on their SharePoint Award for 2011 and to the other 9 winners. A full list of winners and runners-up can be found at Winners. The winning companies will all be awarded their Gold Seals shortly and we hope they treat them more carefully than Real Madrid treated the cup they won last week.

Hosted SharePoint 2011 (Census Edition)

2011-04-06T14:38:00.001+01:00

The closing date for voting in my SharePoint 2011 Awards is Friday 15th April so if you haven't voted yet then please visit SharePoint Village now, well after reading this week's blog.

After several reminders I have finally filled in my 'Household Questionnaire' for the 2011 Census. Just my luck that my partner's teenage daughter chose the night of 27th March for a sleepover. If I had known I would have to list all these visitors on the Census I would have made it another night for all these teenagers to sleep on my floor. It will though confuse my future relations if they are researching our family tree and see from the 2011 Census that I had three thirteen year old girls in the house that night. My parents spent hours checking the 1861 and 1871 Census to try and work out who lived with who and who was the father of which child. I suppose in future people will just watch re-runs of Jeremy Kyle to see who the real father was.

The last Census was of course back in 2001 and certainly in my life a lot has changed since then. This house wasn't even built back then, I hadn't got married or separated, my mother was still alive and healthy and the Villa weren't in a relegation fight. The world has also under gone many dramatic events since 2001; Twin Towers bombing, first black president, fall of Tony Blair's 'New Labour', England winning 'The Ashes' down under, the creation of 'X-Factor' and the death of Michael Jackson. Who knows what historical events will happen before the next Census in 2021. Will we see the end to the Census because it costs too much money? How many affairs will Ken Barlow have? Will we have a King of England?

Since 2001 SharePoint has also changed beyond recognition. It was first launched in 2001 about the same time as the last Census.

First SharePoint Server Box

The first major version (and first I worked with) was SharePoint Portal Server 2003 in the year when England majestically won the Rugby World Cup and Concorde made it's last commercial flight. The biggest SharePoint advances though came with the 2007 version and WSS 3. This linked SharePoint firmly into the Office family and was used as a Content Editor for Websites for the very first time. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 became Microsoft's fastest selling Server application of all time. This in a year when Rihanna asked us to stand under her umbrella and the last Harry Potter book was released (please don't tell me the ending as I am waiting to see last film in July).

Then last year in 2010 came the latest exciting SharePoint Edition, imaginatively called SharePoint 2010. Dipping it's feet into Social Networking, adding Business Connectivity Services and a fancy ribbon Microsoft have taken SharePoint to a new level. So in the year that we said a last goodbye to Big Brother, Alastair Darling as Chancellor (always reminds me of Blackadder) and the hope of ever seeing England stage the FIFA World Cup, Microsoft gave us a SharePoint we can edit on-screen.

Microsoft are pushing us all now towards the 'Cloud' and believe that having our software hosted elsewhere and paying only for what we use is the great future. We at Office Talk are heavily committed to offering hosted SharePoint 2010 as a pay as you monthly service and are delighted at the success that our joint venture with NetConnect has had since it's launch early this year.

We have taken our popular Department site templates (first designed to be used with SharePoint 2007) and offered them on our hosted SharePoint 2010 packaged called 'Office Manager'. Named that because it lets you manage all your everyday Office tasks from Visitor Logging, to Accident Book via IT Helpdesk with more of hint of Purchase Ordering. If you haven't yet tried Office Manager or SharePoint 2010 then why not start a free month's trial now simply by clicking the link below. We won't ask for your credit card number, inside leg measurement or who slept at your house on 27th March 2011;

Free Trial - https://officetalk.teamportal.com/default.aspx

Hopefully 2011 won't be remembered as the year the great Aston Villa were relegated from the Premier League. A point last Saturday at Everton is hopefully a move in the right direction and on Sunday we can get three points against Newcastle to steer ourselves further clear of danger. You can follow the exciting relegation fight involving all the bottom ten teams at our SharePoint demonstration Site by following the link below;

URL ; www.office-talk.net

User Logon : demo@officetalk-navigator.com
Password : officetalk

Great to see the Villa fans all getting behind the club this week and especially good to see them recording the 'Bells and Ringing' video.

Come on you Villa boys !!!

SharePoint Relegation Fight

2011-03-21T17:48:00.000Z

As teams like Chelsea, Man United and Man City fight for the trophies at the business end of the season this week I use SharePoint 2010 to help you follow one of the most exciting relegation battles ever.

Yes, my worse fears came true and Villa lost for first team in 30 years to local rivals Wolves. It means that Villa along with 11 other Premiership clubs are left fighting for survival in the next two months. This really is 'squeaky bum' time. After deciding on Sunday that relegation for the Villa wouldn't be a disaster and at least I would get four extra home games for my season ticket I tried to work out the best way to record the relegation battle. At first I tried a complex spreadsheet listing all the fixtures each of the twelve struggling teams had to play but this was far too restrictive. Then it struck me that SharePoint was the ideal tool to produce numerous reports and lists based on the information I had available. So by importing my spreadsheet (it took only seconds as the 'Create List' contains an 'Import Spreadsheet') and creating lots of different views I soon had a Site created that I will be using for the remainder of the season. Hopefully there will be a happy ending with the Villa remaining were they belong in the Premiership. It might go to the very last day though but it is sure to be exciting.

As I am quite pleased with the SharePoint Site I have created called 'Relegation Fight' I would like to open it up to the many other slightly worried football fans (it is designed for all the bottom 12 teams from Newcastle to West Ham via Blackpool with a long stay in the West Midlands).

Screen Shot from SharePoint Site 'Relegation Fight'

To view and follow the 'Relegation Fight' SharePoint Site please visit the Office Talk Hosted SharePoint 2010 site at http://office-talk.net the logon you need to use is demo@officetalk-navigator.com with the password of officetalk. Then click on the final tab on the top menu labelled 'Relegation Fight'

Hopefully the Great Escape for all our midland clubs except Birmingham City (well they have won a cup) starts here.

But while the famous Aston Villa try to stop their losing run 60 SharePoint companies are still trying to win the Gold Seals in the Andy Dale SharePoint Awards 2011. So if you haven't voted yet make sure you visit SharePoint Village now at http://sharepointvillage.com/?page_id=6579 to cast your vote in each of the ten categories.

For further information on all the finalists please visit last week's SharePoint Blog at http://andydalesharepoint.blogspot.com/2011/03/andy-dale-sharepoint-awards-2011.html .

Good luck to all finalists in the SharePoint Awards and good luck to all the relegation fighters unless they are playing the Villa.

On the 'Relegation Fight' SharePoint Site I have predicted all the remaining games for each of the twelve teams. If my predictions were to come true then Wigan, Birmingham and Blackburn will be appearing in the npower Championship next season. But football is rarely predictable and as Jimmy Greaves was fond of saying 'it's a funny old game'.

So don't forget to keep checking the 'Relegation Fight' SharePoint site;

URL : http://office-talk.net
Logon : demo@officetalk-navigator.com
Password : officetalk

Whatever your team try to follow the words of Corporal Jones in Dad's Army and 'DON'T PANIC!'.

Andy Dale SharePoint Awards 2011

2011-03-15T11:04:00.008Z

So it is the time of year when I announce the finalists in my ‘unofficial’ SharePoint Awards. The Villa might be the only team in Birmingham ending cup-less this season, but as for any nominated SharePoint Providers who haven’t made the final 6 in their category there is always next year.

Though it pains me to say I have to congratulate Birmingham city on winning the Carling Cup against Arsenal. Hopefully though as they look to buy a second-hand trophy cabinet it will be the Blues not the mighty Aston Villa who will be fighting for their Premiership survival come May.

Gold Seals for winners

So now to excitedly announce the finalists in the Andy Dale Awards 2011 which are this year being hosted at the brand new SharePoint Village. You can vote for your favourite two finalists in each category now by visiting the Voting Section at SharePoint Village.

A drum roll please (really fancy a bacon roll just now) as I announce the 60 finalists in this year’s awards.

1. BEST SHAREPOINT INFORMATION SITE

Six Finalists
Dip Into SharePoint
Nothing But SharePoint (End User SharePoint)
SharePoint Daily
SharePointEduTech
SharePoint Magazine
SharePoint News Site

(Winner 2010 End User SharePoint)

2. BEST SHAREPOINT WEBPART PROVIDER

Six Finalists
Amrein Engineering
Content and Code
KwizCom
Pentalogic
SharePoint Boost
Virto Software

(Winner 2010 – Amrein Engineering)

3. BEST SHAREPOINT MANAGEMENT TOOL

Six Finalists
ControlPoint
DocAve BackUp & Restore
Match PointNever Fail
Quest Migration Manager
StoragePoint

(Winner 2010 – Control Point)

4. BEST WEBSITE BUILT ON SHAREPOINT

Six Finalists

Auckland Council
Care Source
Denon
East Midlands Trains
Heritage Lottery Fund
Volvo

(Winner 2010 Chilis)

5. BEST SHAREPOINT TRAINING PACKAGES

Six Finalists
CBT Clips
Combined Knowledge CBT
Let’s Collaborate
Firebrand
SharePoint Solutions
Virtual Training Centre

(Winner 2010 – Combined Knowledge)

6. BEST SHAREPOINT MOBILE OR OFFLINE SOLUTION

Six Finalists
Colligo Contributor Pro
Digi Link Revelation
Formotus Browserless SharePoint
Infonic SharePoint Replication
Mobile Entree
Mobolize for SharePoint

(Winner 2010 – Colligo Contributor)

7. MOST USEFUL SHAREPOINT WEBPART

Six Finalists
Colour Mini Calendar - Amrein
Data Parts – Software FX
List Print – Bamboo Solutions
News Carousel – Content and Code
Reminder - Pentalogic
SharePoint Choice Indicator – SharePoint Boost

(Winner 2010 – Column View Permissions)

8. FAVOURITE FREE SHAREPOINT WEBPART/ADD-ONS

Six Finalists
Access Checker - Codeplex
Facebook Kit for SharePoint – Phil Wicklund
Fusion Charts - Codeplex
Google Chart Web Part
Project Progress Monitor – SharePoint Boost
SharePoint Search & Replace - KwizCom

(Winner 2010 – Google Charts)

9. BEST HOSTED SHAREPOINT PROVIDER

Six Finalists

724 Internet Solutions
Alentus
Apps4Rent
FPWeb Net
NetConnect
SharePoint Cloud Hosting

(Winner 2010 New Award)

10. BEST SHAREPOINT APPLICATION

Six Finalists
Aspose Total for SharePoint
BPA Project Application for SharePoint
MediaRich Digital Asset Management
PDF Converter for SharePoint
ShareKnowledge – E-Learning Solution
Social Squared Forum

(winner 2010 ShareKnowledge)

So that is the list of finalists in each category so now is your chance to visit http://sharepointvillage.com and start voting.

As with ‘Dancing on Ice’ the scoring system will be in two halves. First half will be a rating between 1 and 5 based on how many online votes each finalist gets. The second half will be a score between 1 and 5 from our panel, of Worldwide SharePoint Experts, for each of the finalist. This will give each one a score out of 10. In the event of a tie as they are my Awards then I will have the casting vote. Hope that all makes sense.

Good luck to all the finalists and the winners will be announced on Monday 18^th April. Oh I forgot to say that the closing date for voting is 15^th April 2011.

Now come on you Villa boys you really have to beat the Wolves on Saturday.

SharePoint in the Cloud

2011-02-18T15:59:00.001Z

Andy Gray with 'girly' hair.

It’s been an interesting seven days for me that have included a lovely valentine’s night, a dose of Man-flu and the release of Office Talk’s exciting new Hosted SharePoint 2010 product ‘Office Manager’.

A romantic valentine night was spent in a four-poster room overlooking the Wye Valley. This is of course a room containing a four-poster bed and not a room with four posters on the walls like I had when I was young; two Villa players (including the now disgraced Andy Gray), an Abba one and another of Lesley Judd from Blue Peter.

But enough about my childhood bedroom and let’s talk about ever growing trend these days of ‘Hosted SharePoint’. You will see I used the trendy word ‘cloud’ in my title but really it is just somebody else giving you room on their impressive array of servers to run your applications, so I like to use the word ‘Hosted’ Also to me clouds are fluffy that blow around the sky and nobody owns them. While the term ‘Hosted’ suggests that it stays in a fixed location and has a cost.

So why are more companies starting to look for Hosted SharePoint instead of adding a new server to their air-conditioned Server Room?

View of Wye Valley

The best example is to think about the hotel in the Wye Valley where I was able to spoil my special lady. Now I could have entertained my number one lady in my own home and been just as romantic, but this would have meant; buying food, cooking, cleaning the house, being disturbed by visitors or phone calls and generally working quite hard. Instead I chose a hotel where the cleaning was all done for me there was even a box of chocolates and a bottle of champagne waiting for us in the room. We had views overlooking terrific grounds that I knew I wouldn’t have to start mowing in two months time. Instead of spending time peeling vegetables and pretending to be a Master Chef contestant getting dinner ready I could just lie back on the four-poster bed and watch the football on the telly as Claire was making herself look even more stunning in the large bathroom.

Then at 7-30pm we just stroll down and are served an excellent three course meal. We can then get on with eating the lovely food and just spending quality time together. Safe in the knowledge that we are not going to be disturbed by a passing Jehovah witness or interrupted by a telephone call trying to convince us to change our energy provider.

Hosted SharePoint is like a hotel because it gives you SharePoint and yet leaves many of the day-to-day running jobs to somebody else. It takes the worry about backups, Windows updates, viruses, servers breaking and availability away from you. It also frees up your IT Department to spend time on projects to benefit your business instead of ‘fire-fighting’.

Of course, using a ‘Hosted’ SharePoint does have some limitations and adding third party products is often restricted. But as with your hotel room you can do lots of things inside it without making major structural changes.

Our new Hosted SharePoint (version 2010) product is called ‘Office Manager’ and I am quite pleased with it. We have taken our popular ten Department Templates (HR, Health & Safety, IT, Purchasing, Projects, Marketing, Reception, Training, Finance and Environmental) and offered them as part of SharePoint 2010.

Office Manager means companies of any size can start using the latest SharePoint in just hours and pay for it monthly. The Consultants at Office Talk are already using ‘Office Manager’ to demonstrate SharePoint 2010 when they go to visit potential customers. It really is the anywhere solution and as it is hosted by Rack Space, who were recently voted “Customer Service Team of the Year”, it is secure and always available.

Why not try it out for a month now free of charge. We don’t even ask for your credit card details. Just go to

https://officetalk.teamportal.com/Default.aspx .

Now to get rid of my Man Flu (slight cold), at least Villa aren’t playing this weekend. Of course, if they where I would soon make a dramatic recovery, but as they are not I think a Hot Lemsip and a blanket by the fire are in order. At least with the ‘Hosted SharePoint’ I can work from home today.

SharePoint Templates for 2010

2011-01-27T22:04:00.000Z

It has been seven days since my last SharePoint blog and as football has proved this week seven days is a very long time. If we go back to twenty to five on Saturday afternoon when West Ham had just taken the lead at Everton putting the mighty Aston Villa in the relegation zone and Andy Gray was probably having a nice cup of tea without a care in the world. Now just five days on Villa are six points clear of the drop, Andy Gray is a bad boy looking for a new job and West Ham are now bottom of the league (again!). So things can change very quickly in only a few days and this is also true with SharePoint projects.

If you are a SharePoint Administrator you will know that SharePoint is fairly easy to install and configure. For only a single server installation (suitable for up to 100 users) it is very feasible to have SharePoint up and running within half a day. But you are then left with a very empty shell that is not easy to really sell to the various departments in your organisation. A number of companies install SharePoint (either the free SharePoint Foundation or a trial version of SharePoint) but then remains dormant in the depths of the IT department. Problem is it just doesn’t really do anything. Yes you can add documents but with no metadata and no views created it is very difficult to demonstrate to the various departments that might find it useful. You have probably read about how SharePoint can be used by HR Departments, Marketing Departments and Safety Departments but how can you show the Department Managers what it can do for you when all you have is a SharePoint skeleton?

What would be great is to give the organisation a system that is already working that already has a Risk Assessment system, a Car Park Permit Management system, an IT Helpdesk system, an Expense system and many other useful systems. The chance for each department to get quickly started and see the real potential SharePoint has for them.

Many companies worldwide are now taking advantage of the selection of 11 SharePoint Department templates offered by us at Office Talk to put real meat on their initial SharePoint skeleton.

With this bundle of useable SharePoint Templates all the major departments can have a launching pad for their own SharePoint sites. We are not saying that that the various lists and libraries will not need to be customised to meet your own specific needs but they will give you a very good starting point in a very short time.

To find out more about, or order, the SharePoint Templates just visit http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=151. The Templates are available for both SharePoint 2010 and 2007.

So in seven days your SharePoint can be up and running and ready for your users to really get their teeth into it. We still recommend you put together a SharePoint Project Team with key users from each department.

So what next for Andy Gray? Maybe he is just finally getting his comeuppance for deserting the Villa for my brother’s Wolves team back in 1979. Perhaps he could become a commentator for women’s football on some far off satellite TV channel.

As for the Villa hopefully we can now go from strength to strength and I can start dreaming of FA Cup glory again.

SharePoint LMS

2011-01-18T16:46:00.000Z

In my blog this week I am going to talk about how your existing SharePoint can be used to successfully manage all your learning needs, but first a bit about my week.

It’s been a strange week; becoming a ‘sort of’ Grandad, burying my cat, seeing the Villa in the relegation zone and putting my house up for sale. My step-daughter gave birth to a smashing baby named Edward at the weekend so a tiny Villa romper suit has been ordered. The Villa at least managed a draw against their local rivals so they are out of the drop zone for at least one week. Now after several days of tidying and rearranging furniture there is a sign outside my house saying ‘For Sale’. I expect the neighbours are now worrying who will be moving in next-door to them.

Getting the house ready for the taking of 'suitable pictures' for the property brochure was a challenge and made me realise the importance of a good management system. How it is important to be able to hide ornaments and paperwork etc but still be able to find them when needed. How the use of strategically arranged flowers can hide chips in walls and how borrowed mirrors can make a room look bigger. Good management is vital and it helps when the woman in your life has a flair for interior design. It is not just selling houses or getting a team out of the relegation zone that requires good management it is also important to manage your company’s (or organisation’s) learning and development correctly. You have probably heard of the term LMS (Learning Management System) this is a way of keeping track of your internal training courses and any other form of learning that your employees (or maybe students) take part in. It allows management to have reports on all areas of training and even catalogue the courses available.

So where does SharePoint fit into LMS?

There is a fairly basic SharePoint Learning Kit available known as the SLK. This SharePoint Learning Kit is a SCORM 2004 certified e-learning delivery and tracking application built as a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 solution. It works with either Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (There is currently a beta version out that works with SharePoint 2010). There are a couple of third party products that take the SLK and make it into a very functional full Learning Management System. Allowing you to create and incorporate E-Learning courses, mark and grade these courses, links information with other systems like SAP or PeopleSoft, assign courses and learning material via job title, set conditional prerequisites and many advanced features.

Although there are other SharePoint Learning Management Systems we at Office Talk recommend, resell and support the award winning Share Knowledge. To find out more about ShareKnowledge and more importantly get to play with it visit our website now. http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=170.

ShareKnowledge extends the capabilities of the SharePoint Learning Kit to provide the ultimate Learning / Training Management System. It is proving popular worldwide in both the corporate and academic sectors. It is just one way in which SharePoint can be adapted to replace other expensive business systems and help companies through these difficult financial times.

So that is one way of managing learning and now hopefully Gerard Houiller will manage to get Villa out of this fine mess.

Whilst I have been writing this post Villa have bid a staggering £18 million for top goal-scoring striker Darren Bent. Hope it goes through and he’s plays against money-bags Man City on Saturday tea-time.

If Villa can pay £18,000,000 for a footballer then surely I can find somebody to pay £140,000 for my house?

So I dedicate this week’s SharePoint blog to baby Edward and hope he has a great and healthy life (with a tint of claret and blue, of course!).

SharePoint Refresher

2011-01-07T13:29:00.000Z

Well, the last Christmas decoration are now back in the lofts and a post Christmas gloom has descended upon us. In the UK VAT (Value Added Tax) has gone up, petrol has gone up, the house market has tumbled and worse of all Aston Villa are in the relegation zone. But there is always someone worse off than you. I mean I could be an Australian cricketer !! Ricky Ponting, Dennis Lillee, Paul Hogan, Rolf Harris, Dame Edna Everage, Kylie Minogue, Germaine Greer and Bouncer from Neighbours are you reading? Your boys took one hell of a beating.

Yes, after years of 'Pommie' bashing the Australia cricket team have finally been walloped in their own back yard. The Australians perhaps need to go back to basics and have a refresher course on how to play cricket. It is maybe a reminder of how easy we forget what we have learnt.

For all kinds of skills it is important to keep reminding yourselves of what you learnt when you were been trained. Australian cricketers forgot some of the basics and ended up failing to take wickets because they bowled a 'no ball' or giving away their own wickets with stupid run outs. Refresher courses are useful in business as well and especially in SharePoint. Many SharePoint projects get off to a flying start with each End User attending a training session that can last a couple of hours or more. End Users often find the course enjoyable, informative and have great idea for how they will use SharePoint. Unfortunately a familiar tale is that they are too busy over the next few months to really put into practice the knowledge they gained from the training session. All too quickly they forget the more advanced SharePoint techniques and when they come to finally use them the training seems so long a go. How many of you can remember doing quadratic equations at school yet would now have no idea how to solve them?

With the current economic difficulties many companies and organisations are seeing how they can use their existing SharePoint platform to help make savings. SharePoint can be used to automate and speed up many business processes with a little thought. We at Office Talk encourage all our customers to offer yearly SharePoint refresher courses to all their End Users. This helps to keep them thinking about how SharePoint can be used to reduce basic costs and man hours. It also reminds them of some of the features of SharePoint that they heard about at their first training course.

So when better to start about offering a SharePoint Refresher course than at the start of a new year? Many SharePoint Training companies around the globe offer SharePoint End User Training or you could create a short course internally yourself. At this point I am, of course, going to mention the fully customisable on-site End User training courses offered by Office Talk throughout the UK. If you are interested we are currently charging £900 + VAT (yes the new 20% one, sorry) for one day of training. This day can include up to three two hour sessions with a maximum of 12 people on each session. So you could train 36 people for £900. Just drop an email to frank.faulds@office-talk.com to find out more and if you are an Australian please let us know and we promise not to mention cricket.

Now to arrange a refresher course for the whole Villa team in the basics of defending. As we look forward to an exciting relegation battle over the coming months.

About SharePoint Has Moved

2010-10-21T16:19:00.002+01:00

WE HAVE MOVED !!

Thank you for following my SharePoint Blog, with a hint of Aston Villa, on blogger.com. The blog has now moved to be hosted on WordPress to allow for more videos, pictures and audios of my 'Brummie' voice.

Please visit http://aboutsharepoint.com to find the latest postings including SharePoint TARDIS with a hint of Doctor Who and a real wedding celebration.

Happy SharePointing.

SharePoint - Review It !

2010-10-14T22:57:00.000+01:00

As you may have noticed from my photograph on the right I am a touch follically challenged but still last weekend I visited the hairdressers. It was slightly later on Saturday morning than usual because I had been watching Soccer AM which meant that for once there was a queue waiting, so I had to take a seat. However, I was delighted to see a copy of the football magazine Four Four Two even if everyone thinks this formation has had its day. I was soon engrossed in reading the magazine and about how England were going to win the World Cup in 2010 and that Ivory Coast could reach the semi finals. Soon I realised how out of date this May edition was in October. It made me think about how important it is to keep your SharePoint sites up to date.

SharePoint has the advantage over the printed word of being dynamic and hopefully up to date. It is important that individual departments do have Super Users who are responsible for continually checking the information is relevant and frequently changing. It is no good having a photograph of Rosie from Reception marrying her childhood sweetheart when she is now divorced shacked up with Tom from Packing. Also having a list of qualified First Aiders that include Ken and Harry who were made redundant in 2008 is also not acceptable. Your SharePoint needs to be monitored and frequently updated. It needs to reflect your company today. It is easy to create all your new documents in SharePoint but equally important to remove the ones that are no longer relevant.

Office Talk the SharePoint Specialists (ok company I work for) offer a one day workshop with the Super Users every six months to review the SharePoint Sites and see how they could be improved. If you would like us to hold a Workshop for you please drop an email to frank.faulds@office-talk.com. If you are using WSS 3.0 you might want to ask about upgrading to SharePoint 2010 Foundation but remember you will need 64-bit servers. There are lots of ways you can enhance your SharePoint 2007 sites though and easily add video, audio and lots of new Web Parts. Have a look at the Web Part section at the new SharePoint Village to see some of the great new Web Parts including a ‘Holiday Request System’ from Pentalogic.

It isn’t just your SharePoint that might need revamping. After two terrific years and nearly 100 posts on Blogger I have decided that it is time for a change and from next week ‘About SharePoint’ will be moving to WordPress. Now, first thing I know people will say is why not SharePoint? A fair question and really it comes down to three factors; Cost, Ease of use and SEO tools. I could easily write a whole blog on comparing WordPress with SharePoint but this has already been done by Bill Senser in his superb article “WordPress versus SharePoint, another big smackdown”.

So why am I changing from Blogger to WordPress? I suppose I want to try and keep up with other SharePoint Bloggers like Veronique Palmer who have videos, podcasts and pictures in their blogs. The chance to have some of my favourite funny videos (like this ‘Silly Walks’ one) embedded in the text is part of the appeal. So next week all being well this blog will contain more pictures, videos and hopefully get more readers. Don’t worry the address http://aboutsharepoint.com will still be the same and there will still be lots of mentions of the great Aston Villa FC.

SharePoint Themes - Kitchen Full of Foam

2010-10-06T11:51:00.000+01:00

I start this week’s SharePoint blog with a warning to you all; If you run out of dish washer tablets only put washing-up liquid in dishwasher if you have lots of towels at hand.
SharePoint 2010 is certainly proving a popular version of Microsoft fastest ever selling Server Product but it isn’t without its frustrations. One of these frustrations (ok annoyances) that regularly get debated at the Office Talk premises (near Birmingham) is the theme choices. Now Microsoft will argue that you now have unlimited choices of themes you can use as you have the option to change the colour of every individual section of the page. They even fanfare that you can do this with PowerPoint yet I would love to know how many people have actually used PowerPoint to create a theme. It might have helped it Microsoft had actually made the great themes that come with PowerPoint compatible with SharePoint 2010, but they didn’t. So why am I moaning like Victor Meldrew? Is it because I have a kitchen full of thick white soapy foam after my dishwasher mishap or is it because I miss the old-fashioned SharePoint themes of 2007?

In SharePoint 2007 you had ten distinctive themes. Ok they weren’t the best and probably only five were actually useable unless you were colour blind or high on drugs, but they were different. When I created the ten department site templates for SharePoint 2007 (WSS and Server) I was able to Showcase them each in their own individual style. Ranging from the trendy black one ‘Reflector’ which I used for the Project Manager one to the bright green one which I used for Purchasing, everyone was different. Keeping SharePoint simple was always fairly easy because as a SharePoint Consultant it was usually easy to find a theme that closely matched the company’s corporate colour scheme. Then everything changed in 2010. Ok maybe for CSS whizz kids it is possible to quite easily create new and imaginative colour schemes but for most they are just left with fairly drab looking SharePoint sites. As you will see in the other blogs I have written on SharePoint 2010 there are many great enhancements to SharePoint 2010 compared to its older sibling but, why didn’t they either create ten new colourful distinctive themes or just leave us with the old ones?

As I said you can still create great themes if you have the talent and time in SharePoint 2010 but it might be worth looking for companies that specialise in creating SharePoint themes especially if you are using SharePoint for your web site. One that I would recommend having seen many examples of their work is the interestingly named Pink Petrol. Often wonder why owner Sam Dolan chose the name Pink Petrol maybe it was to show that things can be any colour you want them to be. You can find out about Pink Petrol and see some of the examples of the themes Sam has created at SharePoint Village ‘the One-Stop-Shop for SharePoint’. But come on Microsoft please give us back our colourful if old-fashioned themes from2007.

Regular readers might be surprised at the lack of mentions of Aston Villa in this week’s blog well this is because it is an international break this weekend. Now, to tackle the kitchen floor before risking opening the dishwasher door, or should I just moan about Kevin Davies being named in the England squad?

SharePoint - Made for Sharing

2010-09-27T16:16:00.000+01:00

The excellent security settings of SharePoint is one of its strengths, but some people take it too far. I have been struck twice lately by companies tying their SharePoint down so much the information is only accessible to a handful of people. This week I want to concentrate on explaining the advantages of using SharePoint to share information.

First though, an example of making things too secure from my weekend visit to a quaint country pub just outside of Wolverhampton. It was this Saturday afternoon and with the mighty Villa not playing until Sunday (when they were to beat neighbours Wolves 2-1 to keep their 30 year unbeaten run against the Wanderers going) it was the chance for me and my lady friend to grab a meal in the country. We found a nice looking pub with wooden beams in the ceiling and perused the menu full of delightful sounding dishes. It was nearly quarter to five and I had avoided the latest football scores on the radio with the idea to watch Match of the Day that night not knowing the scores especially the Arsenal verses Albion one. This hope was dashed when a rather loud local walked in singing at the top of his voice “three one to the Albion Boys, three one to the Albion”. At least I had the surprise that night of seeing that Arsenal actually pulled a late goal back.

Looking for a little romance after ordering two Hot Pots we found a quiet table away from the bar. We were then both quite excited to see a dart-board quite near us and I suggested a game of darts before our food arrived. My companion agreed and seemed quite excited by the prospect. So I asked the barman for the darts only to be told that they didn’t have any. So a dart-board and no darts, what is the point? Should we have bought our own darts or is this a new EU health and safety rule? This is when I thought about companies having a lovely SharePoint site but then restricting who can access it. At least we could see the dart-board many people cannot even see the information on their companies SharePoint because they have not even got ‘read-only’ access.

SharePoint is called SharePoint for a reason because it is aimed at ‘Sharing’ information. Yes, some information is confidential and needs to be hidden but I strongly believe that much of the information a company stores should be available to people who work there and who have accounts on the domain. Information that is held by the Marketing Department might be useful to the Sales or the Research Department staff. Also the more people know what is held by another department the less chance of duplication you have. Whenever I am working on SharePoint projects as a SharePoint Consultant for Office Talk and a customer starts restricting access to sites the question I always ask is “Why do you need to restrict it?” If they don’t have a reason I always advise that they let domain users have ‘read-only’ access. Communication is important to the success of every business and organisation and SharePoint giving them the chance to share information.

So always make your SharePoint available to people in your organisation that might benefit from the information.

Now, let me just end by moaning at the BBC. Why does the news just before Match of the Day always tell you the scores? In the old days they used to just put it on the screen and say look away now. These days they shout out the scores as well as having them on the screen. Please bring back Barry Took so I can write to ‘Points of View’.

Well done the Villa.

New SharePoint - New School

2010-09-20T13:14:00.000+01:00

In the UK September is traditionally the back to school month. The time of year when the journey to work takes two times longer and the Internet suddenly becomes useable again. For some children and young adults it can be a scary starting a new school or going away to university for the first time. The transition is never easy and this is also true of moving from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. You have to cope with new things like having a Homework Diary or wearing tie when you go to secondary school. Starting university means getting use to attending lectures instead of lessons and acquiring a tolerance for cheap alcohol. I myself was quite tempted by cheap alcohol after spending nearly a week trying to convert the Office Talk 2007 SharePoint Templates into a format that can be used in SharePoint 2010. I must admit to underestimating the job of redoing the HR, Safety, Training, IT, Purchasing, Finance, Projects, Reception and Media templates.

So why was the Template upgrade such a challenge? I tried first exporting to a spreadsheet in SharePoint 2007 and then creating a new list in 2010 using the spreadsheet, but with all the drop-downs and lookup fields this just added to my frustrations. Maybe I should have a considered just upgrading my whole SharePoint but as I had a number of additional third-party applications on my 2007 version this one was always going to be a step too far. So it became a very manual process and meant a few late nights. When finally all eleven templates (which for some reason Microsoft now call ‘Solutions’) it was then time to start selling the templates and to start hitting a recurring issue. Although, I had successfully tested the new Solutions on a number of SharePoint Environments (both Foundation and Server 2010) I received the same email back from a number of disappointed customers.

The error that was causing the customers (and me) frustration always read something like;
“Error creating site: "The site template requires that the Feature {a392da98-270b-4e85-9769-04c0fde26”.

To make it more interesting the code number never seemed to be the same twice. Even when I tried disabling all the Features in my original version before I saved the Template I still had users with the same issue. It was then that I found great article on the MS Adviser about how to find which ‘Feature’ was missing.

The address of this excellent article is http://msadvisor.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!B4931A324B42E0BC!609.entry and basically it just tells you how in Central Administration if you right click on the ‘Site Collection Features’ there is an option to ‘View Source’. Now it might look confusing all the code but all you need to do is find the long code that the error gave you in the Source using Find command. Then scroll up a couple of lines and you will find the name of the Feature. Knowing the name is a real help because now you can simply activate the feature in both the ‘Site Collection Features’ and the ‘Site Features’. Now I have happy customers.

So the Office Talk customers are now happily able to install the eleven brand new Department Templates and if you would like to know more about these templates just visit http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=151.

Today Gérard Houllier begins life as the new Aston Villa manager today. Like moving from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 some of the players will find it challenging having a new man in charge; especially Friedel, Warnock and Carew all players who Houllier sold when he last worked with them. Good luck Mr. Houllier I think we are in for some interesting times. Let’s start with beating Blackburn in the Cup on Wednesday. Let’s hope it is as good as last season’s game.

Hope you have all had a good look at the new SharePoint Village. If not please click the link at the top right of this blog.

SharePoint Design – Soap Dispenser Challenge

2010-09-06T13:20:00.000+01:00

For the last two weeks I have faced a challenge that has got me quite frustrated. No, this isn’t a challenge with SharePoint or with the launch of our revolutionary new SharePoint Village but a challenge in my bathroom. It involves a very trendy looking soap dispenser plastic bottle. The kind where you press the top and pleasant smelling soap comes out of the tap like thing. The gold plastic bottle with the sweet sounding name and the fancy bubble writing on the side certainly looks the part. The only thing going against the posh little bottle is that I can’t get any soap out of it. Frustratingly despite many attempts I cannot get the pump part to work. I have read all the instructions in small writing on the back about having to twist and pull but still it doesn’t move. At least it looks good by the side of the basin, oh and don’t worry I have got a got an old-fashioned bar of soap as well.

So how does my soap dispenser dilemma fit in with SharePoint? I suppose the most important part of SharePoint is not how snazzy it looks but how easy it is for End Users to use it. If they can’t even find their department’s site on the Internet how are they going to feel the real benefits of SharePoint? It is always important to include some End user training in all SharePoint Projects. A couple of hours might be enough but don’t forget any New Starters as well. Also keep the navigation it simple and consistent. If a user moves department they shouldn’t be faced with a completely different looking SharePoint environment. Office Talk consultants always advise that the Top Link bar is kept constant to all sites.

The new SharePoint Village that opened last Wednesday breaks it’s shops into section that we believe match your SharePoint needs. Firstly all SharePoint projects need a little help so we have a section of shops called ‘Consultancy’ rented by companies offering SharePoint Consultants. Hopefully one of these could give you the best advice on how SharePoint Sites should be accessed. Just a pity there isn’t a ‘Soap Village’ I could contact.

Another section of shops is ‘Training’ so you can find the best company to train your staff in SharePoint including ‘Train the Trainer’ courses. It also has some very useful SharePoint video clips you can purchase for users to watch when they are back at the office. Maybe I might find a video on ‘YouTube’ about activating a pump operated soap dispenser.

Once you have thought about the structure and how easy it will be for End Users to use then you can try to improve the look of it and make it a bit more ‘groovy’. A set of shops at SharePoint Village includes ‘Design’ which includes the excellent SharePoint Design company ‘Pink Petrol’ who really can give your SharePoint a trendy look (just make sure it doesn’t hamper it’s usability). Pink Petrols’ Sam Dolan is very talented (even if he is a Newcastle fan who has been gloating since they beat the Villa six nil) and his designs are well worth a look.

Out of the box SharePoint has many great Web Parts but there are lots of extra clever ones available to enable you to perform a whole host of routine operations. The ‘Web Parts’ section of shops contains some of the top SharePoint web Part companies in the world.

So now SharePoint is working well, End Users are using it, it looks cool and it contains a few extra Web Parts so it is ready to expand. In the ‘Software’ section of shops you will find add-on applications to make SharePoint perform even better in your business. There are shops selling E-Learning solutions, backup solutions, permission management, enhanced reporting and many more.
We hope SharePoint Village will become a valuable source and a one-stop solution for all things SharePoint. Please if you haven’t already taken time to browse the shops there at http://www.sharepointvillage.com.

So now I am off to try yet again to open my soap dispenser while the Villa prepare to finally announce their new manager.

How to pick a SharePoint Consultant or Villa Manager

2010-08-18T12:43:00.002+01:00

The football season in England is back with a bang. Blackpool are second in the league, Man City are giving players to Cardiff and the Villa are looking for a new manager. So this week I am going to give some advice on how to pick a new football manager or a SharePoint Consultant. Ok I am slightly biased as I am a SharePoint Consultant at SharePoint Specialists Office Talk, but this still doesn’t stop me making myself available to Villa owner, Randy Learner, if he wants to give me a call.

My odds of getting the Villa job are quite low though with names like Ronald Koeman, Martin Jol, Bob Bradley (USA manager), Sven Goran Eriksson and even Diego Maradona putting themselves forward. Perhaps I should stick to being a SharePoint Consultant.

So if you are starting a SharePoint Project what should you look for when you are interviewing possible SharePoint Consultants? I have put together a six point checklist that might help;

1. Do they have Knowledge in your business, or organisation area?
In the same way I believe that Villa should look for a manager who has experience in the Premier League it is important that your SharePoint Consultant has worked on a similar project to yours.

2. Do they speak your language?
If they talk in too ‘techie’ speak will they really be able to communicate successfully with your Project Team. Maradona might have been a brilliant footballer but he doesn’t speak English. That might be ok for the England national team but not the great Aston Villa.

3. Do they have SharePoint Connections?
Are they well known in the SharePoint community and are they able to help expand your SharePoint with knowledge of business enhancing add-ons. In football the new manager needs to be able to attract new signings and it is useful to have contacts.

4. Are they Qualified?
What Microsoft and SharePoint qualifications does the potential SharePoint Consultant hold? Managers in football now need the appropriate coaching badges to be able to manage. Oh dear, that goes against my application for Villa job. Perhaps my MCSE could stand for Managing Coaching Soccer Excellence.

5. Are they Available?
How soon can they start working on your SharePoint. You don’t want to think that nobody else wants them but also you don’t want to have to wait seven months before they are available. With football some top managers who aren’t available can become available if you offer enough money as compensation. At least Sven is available, whatever happened to Nancy Dell' Olio?

6. Are they Affordable?
It is important that the SharePoint Consultant is within your budget. You will be surprised at the differences in rates for Consultants in the UK. There is the argument you get what you pay for so if it seems too cheap ask yourself why. Also are they clearly stating how many days are involved in the SharePoint Project? Football teams (apart from Man City) are also feeling the financial pinch at the moment. Lack of money to spend was believed to be a key factor in Martin O’Neill leaving Villa. Randy Learner will certainly think about money when he makes his appointment. This makes current Caretaker Manager Kevin McDonald quite appealing as he is already on the payroll. Or my all-time favourite player Gordon 'Sidney' Cowans.

If you consider these six questions you should find a SharePoint Consultant you can work successfully with. If you are located in UK and are looking for a SharePoint Consultant why not contact frank.faulds@office-talk.com to see if Office Talk can help.

The future for Aston Villa is very bright if they make the right managerial appointment. If Randy Learner reads this SharePoint blog my advice would be either to employ Martin Jol or stick to the players favourite Kevin McDonald. Kevin has been at the club fourteen years, won the league as a Liverpool player, lead the Reserve Team to the title last three years, he is available and cheap.

Up the Villa !!!

SharePoint 2010 Simply The Best

2010-08-09T17:33:00.000+01:00

The Premier League season might be less than a week away but as I spent a number of weeks this summer talking about the World Cup I think it is time to talk about the other of England’s favourite sports, cricket. This year 2010 might be the year of simply the best SharePoint to date but 2010 could well be the year of England’s greatest ever cricket team. Already in 2010 England have won the Twenty Twenty World cup, beaten Australia in a one day series and now they have bowled Pakistan out twice for under 100 in a week. This winter England head down under for an Ashes series against the old enemy Australia. I expect the Australians are crying into their beer already. Hope that statement doesn’t come back to haunt me.

So why is SharePoint 2010 the greatest ever SharePoint Server? The truth is that SharePoint has developed well over the years since it started in 2001. In the same way that you can chart the start of England’s cricket revival to the Ashes victory in 2006 the launch of SharePoint 2007 really was a breakthrough. It was a package that really took SharePoint to a new level and integrated it more with Microsoft Office applications. So what do I think makes 2010 even better than 2007? Here are my top reasons;

1. Easier to Edit Pages
It is now even easier to change individual sites with less clicks involved than in 2007. New webparts allow you to incorporate video and audio easier. It is also easy to make changes to the site theme. You have access to a never ending array of colours and fonts.

2. Uniqueness Field
The setting to enforce Unique Values is a useful addition in 2010 and is a feature I have used a lot. When configuring a new column, the option ‘Enforce Unique values’ is listed as one of the additional column settings with the options of ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

3. Spell Checker
If Pakistan had been given an extra run for every time I had been asked if there was a spellchecker in SharePoint 2007 they would probably have won the latest Test Match instead of England. At least SharePoint 2010 gives user the option to spellcheck all list items. Now I can finally mask my poor spelling.

4. Two Thousand item limit smashed
The frustrating SharePoint list limit in SharePoint 2007 of 2000 has now well and truly gone. The new limit is 30,000,000 items. As yet I haven’t managed to test this but thirty million sounds plenty. Interesting exactly the same amount as ‘former’ Villa manager, Martin O’Neill, wanted for England star James Milner (O’Neill resigned as I was typing this blog).

5. Digital Asset Library
Office Talk used to create their own Media Library site for users using SharePoint 2007, but still good to see a central Digital Library has been included in the new version. The library can be used to store branded corporate assets such as logos, artwork, and other digital assets, and uses workflows and policies to manage the content.

6. Offline – Workspace 2010
People might never have quite got into Microsoft Groove but the new SharePoint Workspace 2010 finally lets you work fully with SharePoint when you are not even connected to the network. It is worth a play as even allows multiple people to work on same document at the same time. Click Here to see what Paul of Microsoft says about SharePoint Workspace 2010.

7. FAST Search
The search in SharePoint 2007 always offered so much but then failed to really provide the Google-style search engine that users required. Now on SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise edition we have the famous FAST Search. It really is impressive brings Best Bets, relevancy tuning, phonetic searching and even displays thumbnails of documents retrieved.

8. KPI Dashboards
KPI’s are available on all sites and you really can start incorporating Business Intelligence with SharePoint 2010. Click Here to see a great video on adding KPI’s to SharePoint.

9. Content Type Hub
One of features of SharePoint 2010 that I find useful is the new Content Type Hub (which is a part of the Metadata Service Application), this is a hub for all Content Types that you can set your Site Collections to subscribe to. So instead of like in 2007 when you had to change them in lots of different areas you now only have to do it once.

10. Better Office Integration
SharePoint 2010 has a real Office feel to it with a fully customisable ‘Ribbon’ complimenting the traditional dropdown menu. If you are using Office 2010 you can’t fail to miss all the features integrating it with SharePoint to offer you a complete experience.

If you want to find out more about any of the features of SharePoint 2010 please contact the SharePoint consultants at Office Talk and they will be happy to demonstrate them to you.

Explaining the game of Cricket;
You have two sides; a team that's in and a team that's out. Two men in the team that's in go out and when one of the men who's in is out; the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out but one who is not out; the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out.

When a man goes out to go in; the men who are out are trying to get him out; and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out; and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.

Uses of SharePoint

2010-07-30T18:26:00.000+01:00

As a SharePoint Consultant a common problem when trying to sell SharePoint is actually explaining what it can be used for. You see, the fact is that SharePoint has an infinite amount of uses. Nearly every day we at Office Talk hear of somebody using SharePoint in a different and unexpected way. This week Office Talk has designed a Football Template on SharePoint to monitor a Premier League team’s performance during the 2010/11 season, but you will have to wait until the end of this blog to find out how to get it. So what are the basic uses of SharePoint?

I have put together my Top Twenty basic uses of SharePoint and placed them in order;

1. Document Management
SharePoint is one of the best Document Management Solutions. It is ideal for managing manuals, policies and procedure documents.

2. Record Keeping
With easy to create and customise columns SharePoint can be used to keep electronic records of customers, employees or suppliers.

3. Inventory Management
SharePoint can be used to quickly keep track of equipment or supplies.

4. Helpdesk Systems
Easy and cost effective way to manage and monitor Helpdesk Requests. These could be IT Helpdesk or service requests from customers.

5. Websites
More and more companies are using SharePoint to not only manage content of their Websites but also to be their website.

6. Electronic Forms
Forms can be quickly created with SharePoint making it easy to automate systems like Expense Claims, Travel Requests, Holiday Requests or Purchase Orders.

7. Reference Centre (Wiki)
SharePoint can help store and share information. Information that an employee found helpful can quickly be available to other employees.

8. Reporting
SharePoint can take data from many different data sources including SQL and Oracle databases. This means it is easier to compile reports that even Senior Managers can quickly understand.

9. Contact Details
An easy way to store as much information as you need about either internal or external contacts. Saves the issue of the company telephone directory stuck by your desk always being out of date.

10. News Distribution
The Announcements section in SharePoint lets you easily share company or department news. Quickly let everyone know that Jane from Purchasing has given birth to triplets or that the staff car park is closed next Tuesday.

11. Surveys
To get feedback from a training course or the performance of a department SharePoint can create surveys that can be distributed in seconds.

12. Appointment Management
The Calendar feature integrates with Outlook and allows you to have shared calendars. It can be used to display weekly movements of key members of staff.

13. Catalogues
SharePoint allows you to list items and view them in customised ways. As it can also include thumbnail pictures in the list it is ideal for cataloguing.

14. Discussions
Employees can use the discussion boards to chat on various subjects and share ideas.

15. Storage of Digital Media
SharePoint can be used to store many forms of digital media including photographs, videos and podcasts.

16. Information Searching
Every word of every document on SharePoint can be indexed meaning that suddenly it is much easier to search and retrieve company information.

17. Projects Management
SharePoint can be set up to monitor and track multiple projects. Making it easy for managers to see which Projects are falling behind schedule.

18. Time Management
To record time taken on individual projects or to manage contractors SharePoint is ideal.

19. Meeting Management
With its Meeting Templates you can use SharePoint to plan agendas, create minutes and check on follow-up actions.

20. Blogging
Blogging is becoming more and more popular with an increase in internal business blogs. SharePoint allows site members to easily comment on these blogs.

These are just a selection of the business uses of SharePoint, but many companies are also using SharePoint to add some more social and light-hearted aspects to their company. The idea is that a happy staff will be a productive staff. SharePoint installations Office Talk have been involved in recently have included sections like ‘Coffee Break’ where employees can win prizes and see some funny pictures of themselves on company outings. These kind of social pages can not only help morale but also get employees using SharePoint.

Office Talk had great demand over the summer for their free World Cup SharePoint Site Template. Even if England were a letdown the SharePoint Template was very popular. So with the new English Premier League season now only two weeks away Office Talk have been busy again and now we are offering a new exciting SharePoint Football Template. We are giving away a ‘My Team’s Premier League’ Template that allows you to keep track of your favourite team throughout the coming season. You can keep track of your team’s transfers, fixtures, goalscorers and even see why the great Aston Villa are only the second team to have completed hundred seasons in the Top Division.

To receive the free ‘My Team’s Premier League’ SharePoint Template please visit the Office Talk website at http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=160

As part of the ‘My Team’s Premier League’ site you can predict the final places of all the Premier League Teams so here are my predictions;

1. Chelsea
2. Manchester City
3. Manchester United
4. Aston Villa
5. Arsenal
6. Liverpool
7. Tottenham
8. Birmingham City
9. Everton
10. Blackburn
11. Bolton Wanderers
12. Sunderland
13. Wolverhampton Wanderers
14. Fulham
15. West Ham
16. Newcastle
17. Stoke City
18. Wigan
19. West Bromwich
20. Blackpool

So don’t forget to claim your free Football Template and use it as many times as you want in your organisation.

Blog Bonus Video - The best penalty kick ever !!

SharePoint On Trial

2010-07-26T13:20:00.002+01:00

Wherever you look these days people are trying to save money. My own football club, Aston Villa, are no exception with American owner, Randy Learner, tightening the purse strings. The Villa manager has been told he needs to reduce the wage bill before we can buy anymore players. Many companies are putting a block on any new spending. So projects which were in the pipeline are now being shelved. This has meant that a number of companies, both in the ‘Private Sector’ and ‘Public Sector’, have postponed SharePoint Projects. Even though long term SharePoint would offer considerable savings to these organisations it is the initial project costs that are making them think twice.

In English football, unless you are Manchester ‘Moneybags’ City, you have to watch how much you are spending. Sometimes it is better to use the loan system and take a player on loan for a few months to see if he is really going to improve your team. It is even possible to share the cost of the wages with the club he plays for as they are just keen to reduce their wage bill. If only there was a way of loaning SharePoint!

Perhaps Hosted SharePoint could offer a short term answer. Hosted SharePoint can be a way to try SharePoint out in your organisation without having to make any major investment and also without affecting your current computer environment. The advantage is that you can experiment with SharePoint and see how you could use it to streamline some of your business processes. If you only want to try it for a handful of users the monthly prices of Hosted SharePoint can be very cheap. It would probably cost less than replacing the toner in one of your laser printers.

There are so many companies worldwide offering Hosted SharePoint that it can be confusing knowing which one to choose. Although, as long as you are not paying too much each month and there isn’t any long tie-ins it doesn’t really matter which one you chose. Mind you, I would get in trouble at work if I didn’t mention the Office Talk Hosted SharePoint offering ‘Office Manager’. We even offer a one month free trial (pity some teams don’t do this with players Villa are interested in) and include over ten useful pre-configured department sites. Visit http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=159 to try it for free.

So don’t let lack of money stop you trying out SharePoint because you will soon discover the many ways it could start to save your organisation money. Or you might after trying it decide it isn’t for you.

Now, I wonder if Liverpool would loan Villa Steven Gerrard for the next eight months.

Great News : 'My Team’s Performance 2010/11 Season’ SharePoint Template is available FREE OF CHARGE by clicking here.

Where to SharePoint Shop?

2010-07-16T14:19:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was an interesting day, even if I did have no hot water at home, and it actually ended with me appearing on the TV news. The no hot water was caused by a broken boiler. It wasn’t broken until the Gas man came to service it last Wednesday. In this week’s blog I am going to blatantly promote the new Virtual SharePoint Shopping Centre ‘SharePoint Village’ which excitedly launches on 1st September. I want to share with you why I think it is going to become a valuable source to both SharePoint End Users and companies trying to sell their SharePoint solutions. But first back to yesterday and my eventful day;

Maybe I am slightly sad, but I decided to go and see the unveiling of the new Aston Villa shirt in Centenary Square Birmingham. The great thing where I live, near Wolverhampton, is there is a tram (called ‘The Metro’) that takes me straight into the Centre of Birmingham. As I approached Birmingham I noticed the stop for ‘Jewellery Quarter’. This made me think about SharePoint Village. ‘Jewellery Quarter’ is a place where all you will find is lots of jewellery shops. Even though many competitors are almost neighbours it works because people go there just for jewellery and it is locally very well known. If you want a special ring or a gold watch the ‘Jewellery Quarter’ is always a good place to start. Jewellers know that even if a visitor is interested in an item in the jewellers next-door there is still a very good chance they will pop into their shop as they are passing. This is the concept behind ‘SharePoint Village’. The SharePoint users, or potential users, get to know that for anything SharePoint the best place to go is ‘SharePoint Village’. For the shopkeepers (there is a limit on the number of shops in SharePoint Village to give them maximum exposure) they know that when a visitor looks at another one of the seven shops in their section (i.e. Web Parts) that the visitor will also see the entrance to their shop and hopefully, in Mr. Benn style, enter in.

As many of you know there are already a number of excellent SharePoint information sites available. For any SharePoint users looking for SharePoint advice, in basic English, then EndUserSharePoint.com is a great place to start including the popular ‘Stump the Panel’. My favourite part is the area ‘SharePoint for Non-Geeks’. Another favourite site of mine and always worth checking out is SharePoint Reviews. This is a little like a ‘Which?’ guide to SharePoint. It offers unbiased reviews on many SharePoint products and services. So when ‘SharePoint Village’ is launched and you see a SharePoint product that takes your fancy then visit SharePointReviews.com and see if anybody has reviewed it. The third SharePoint information site I always recommend is SharePoint Magazine. This is a superb online magazine dedicated to the ever growing world of SharePoint.

Sorry I got side tracked from the events of yesterday. Well, I arrived at Centenary Square just in time to see the unveiling of the new Villa shirt which was, surprisingly, a claret body with blue sleeves. The new away strip was mainly black which I really liked. After the unveiling was completed and the large crowd started to disperse I took out my blackberry to read my emails. My concentration was interrupted by two gentlemen. One had a large camera pointing at me and the other had a microphone and announced he was from the BBC. So my views on the new strip were later transmitted on the Midlands Today news and I was actually the first person to give my opinion on TV about the strip.

My lunchtime was then completed with a visit to the ‘Handmade Burger Company’ at Brindley Place. With a printed voucher in my hand that gave me a 50% discount I was ready for my dinner. It was only at the till that I realised that my voucher was in fact for the ‘Gourmet Burger Kitchen’.

SharePoint Village has its grand opening on 1st September 2010 to find out more please visit http://www.sharepointvillage.com.

If you didn't click on the shopkeepers link earlier and see the classic comedy clip then why not do it now?

Happy SharePoint shopping !!!

World Cup 5 - SharePoint ROI

2010-07-09T10:56:00.000+01:00

Even though we are still having a World Cup theme ROI here means ‘Return on Investment’ not Republic of Ireland. At least France didn’t prosper too much from the dodgy goal against the Irish. Yes, I am going to try and explain how even in these difficult economic times the different ways that investing in SharePoint can bring a Return On Investment.

So what ‘Return on Investment’ (ROI) should companies expect to see then with SharePoint? A good starting point whenever trying to estimate ROI of any project is to break them down in to three types of ROI’s. The three are Hard ROI, Soft ROI and Risk Mitigation. Let me try and explain what these mean;

To keep my World Cup theme let’s look at the FA’s decision to not sack Fabio Cappello. A ‘Hard ROI’ is a direct saving of a system. So by keeping Mr. Cappello the FA don’t have to pay him a big wad of compensation. Also, they don’t have to have the costs of advertising and interviewing for a new manager. A ‘Soft ROI’ is an indirect benefit. For example, because Sir Trevor Brooking doesn’t have to spend days looking for a replacement manager then he can spend his time doing other things like finally setting up a National Football Academy. Another Soft ROI of keeping Cappello could be they will save on hotel costs for the 2012 European Championships. ‘Risk Mitigation’ is often the hardest to estimate as it is really what might go wrong if you didn’t do something. It is a bit like having car insurance. Although you might not have a crash how much would a crash cost if you didn’t have insurance. So if Cappello wasn’t kept on and the FA had employed somebody else who was a bigger disaster (remember Steve McClaren) and they had to quickly sack them, how much would the FA have to pay him?

So let’s now break down these ROI’s for a SharePoint Project;

Hard ROI
Will it replace any existing systems and associated licences?
Will it reduce any maintenance or support contracts?
Will it reduce cost of development work for third party solutions it replaces?
Will it reduce any training costs?
Will it reduce the amount of stationary to be purchased?
Will it reduce cost of physically transporting information?
Will it reduce cost of development work for third party solutions it replaces?

Soft ROI
Will it save employees time they can spend doing something else. - If there are 200 people in your company and everyone saves just 10 minutes a day, your company would: Recover the equivalent of £100,000 in salaries? Have the equivalent of an extra 5 man years?
Will it improve process speeds of information meaningless delays?
Will it reduce printing costs?
Will it reduce energy costs?
Will it encourage employees to be more productive as they have more information available?
Will it help relationship with customers or suppliers?
Will it help gain certifications or standards that will help generate more sales?
Will the shared information reduce marketing costs (i.e. all corporate images stored in one central location)?
Will having one main system reduce IT Helpdesk calls?

Risk Mitigation
What would be the cost if you lost paper copies or data?
Without it will you lose certifications and if so what would be the possible loss to the business?
How secure is the current data and what would be the cost if it leaked out?
Is the current system still supported and what would the cost be if it breaks down.

If you are starting a SharePoint Project then the Office Talk SharePoint Project Checklist is a great place to start and best of all (unlike sacking Fabio) it is FREE. Just click the link below to request your copy. Free SharePoint Checklist

So on Sunday is the World Cup Final and excitingly there will be a new country as World Champions as neither Spain nor Holland have won the golden trophy before. Good luck to both countries and I am going to predict a score of Holland 2 Spain 1, but then I thought England would be champions. At least the team of referees will be English. The big question though is who Paul ‘the psychic’ Octopus is going to predict the winner to be? If only he had not predicted Germany to beat England.

If you haven’t yet tested this SharePoint I keep going on about then why not try it for free now at https://officetalk.teamportal.com/default.aspx promise we won’t ask for your credit card number or inside leg measurement.

World Cup 4 - Why Can SharePoint Fail?

2010-07-02T14:20:00.000+01:00

Apparently the World Cup 2010 did not end last Sunday at a quarter to five so I writing my 4th SharePoint World Cup blog about ‘Why SharePoint Projects Fail?’

As I walked to Church last Sunday morning every other house seemed to be displaying an England flag and you could feel the belief that this was finally going to be the year of England World cup glory. I genuinely believed that we could beat Germany, Argentina, Spain and then Brazil to bring back those glory days of 1966. Five hours later my dreams like all the England flags had disappeared after we had been humiliated by Germany.

So this week the inquest into why England keeps performing poorly at World Cups has started. Front pages of newspapers, radio shows, Alan Hansen even the House of Commons all want to find somebody to blame. The finger of blame has so far been pointed at the players, the manager, the Football Association, the media, the Uruguayan officials, the Premier League and even James Corden. So who is to blame or are England really just not good enough?

Office Talk is often contacted by companies who are disappointed by the way their SharePoint is going. They sometimes feel it is failing because employees just aren’t using it or it just isn’t doing all the great things they hoped it would. So why do some SharePoint Projects Fail?

It is widely accepted that the English Premier League is one of the best leagues in the world yet the national team continually fails to deliver. Microsoft SharePoint (especially the new 2010 version) is one of the best Information Management Systems in the world yet again it can fail to live up to its hype.

I think enough people are discussing England’s reasons for failure so I am going to list some of the reasons that I think can cause SharePoint Projects to fail;

1. Expectations Not Reached

It is important that you set realistic expectation levels. Yes, SharePoint can do many impressive things but the SharePoint Project Team needs to agree an initial scope for the Project and let the users know exactly what is going to be delivered. SharePoint can integrate with many ERP systems and offer many cost saving benefits, but all these take time and effort so may not be part of the first phase of the project.

2. Not Enough Testing

A Pilot Group is vital in any project. It gives that chance to iron out any little problems and to see where users might struggle. It is interesting that Germany played with the World Cup ball for six months in the Bundisliga but the Premier League didn’t because of a sponsorship deal. Never be tempted to skip the testing phase.

3. Lack of or wrong SharePoint Consultant

It is an interesting fact that no country has ever won the World Cup with a foreign coach. Both Argentina and Brazil are doing well this year being led by managers who have played for them at World Cup Finals. With SharePoint it seems knowledge is so important to helping a project work. A SharePoint Consultant knows from experience how to make SharePoint successful so are vital to the project. Also consider a SharePoint Consultancy company that are fairly local and that you know talk the type of language that your Project Team understands.

4. Wrong Members of Project Team

Did Mr. Capello choose the right players? Putting together the SharePoint Project team is a very important part of the project. It is important to get the balance right and represent all areas of the organisation who will be using SharePoint. It is important to choose people who will give an input without being too dominating. All of Project Team needs to feel they have an equal part to play in helping develop the best SharePoint system for the company.

5. Poor Security

Data and Identity Security is so important these days with so many horror stories in the media. Every week there seems to be stories about how a long list of private information was left on a train or in a pub. SharePoint has many high level security settings included and it is important that all users know that the system is secure.

6. Security Too Tight

Security is vital, but if nobody can get to the data what is the point of it being on SharePoint. The key part of the name SharePoint is ‘Share’. Although, the information is totally secure to people outside the organisation don’t be scared to let other departments share certain parts of it. If you tie it down too much then users won’t get the full benefits.

7. Lack of Quick Wins

One of the best ways to sell SharePoint to employees is with ‘Quick Wins’. If there are things on there that will instantly make a routine task they do faster they will quickly starting using it. Included sections like IT Helpdesk, Holiday Requests, Travel Requests or Visitor Booking can earn a few points and get people to start using the system. Perhaps if England had beaten USA in first game things might have been very different.

8. Too Complex

If the SharePoint system is too difficult to navigate then users won’t use it. Keep it simple and where ever possible standardise so employees can easily know where to find information. Always take a step back and look at a site and see if it is obvious where you want a user to be clicking.

9. Lack of Training

Even though SharePoint should be simple to use all End Users will benefit from receiving a short Training session on how to use the system. Office Talk offer On-Site ninety minute End User training sessions to introduce the users to the new system. The Project Team should also receive SharePoint Administration Training (1 day) so they can understand the kind of things SharePoint can do before they start designing the system.

10. Not Flexible Enough

One of the great features of SharePoint is that it is very customisable. Some companies make the mistake of tying it down too much and leaving it very much under the control of IT. The more departments and individuals are able to customise it to meet their individual needs the more they will use it. Don’t be afraid to let them create sub-sites if they wish to. A lot of former footballers believed that the England formation of 4-4-2 was not flexible enough and restrictive.

11. No Leaders

SharePoint needs developing after it has been rolled out. A successful approach is to use the Project Team as Super Users who can assist members in their department to use SharePoint. Office Talk always advises customers to have review sessions to see exactly how SharePoint is being used and how it could be further enhance the organisation.

12. Information Not Good Enough

Are England players basically good enough? The most important part of SharePoint is the information it stores. If the information isn’t accurate or complete then the system will fail. With any SharePoint project one of the most important steps is uploading the information. Make sure good housekeeping is done first. Don’t just upload all the files you have stored from the last ten years. Remove duplicates or expired data before uploading them. Are Gerrard, Lampard and Terry expired?

13. Poor Performance

SharePoint depends on good connections speeds so it requires a good network infrastructure first. If it takes a user several minutes every time they access a file they will soon get frustrated and start reverting to storing them on local PC instead. The hardware needs to be able to cope with SharePoint and allow for expansion.

14. Reliability

It the system keeps going down users will soon lose faith in it. After three world cup failures I have finally lost faith in the so called ‘Golden Age’ of England players. It is important to continually monitor the SharePoint Servers, to consider virus protection options and to make sure you implement a suitable SharePoint Backup solution.

So back to the World Cup then and despite me predicting with the accuracy of a Uruguayan linesman last week I am going to try to predict the results of the four quarter finals;

Brazil 1 Holland 2
Ghana 1 Uruguay 1
Argentina 3 Germany 1
Spain 1 Paraguay 0

Oh well at least the Premier League starts again in only six weeks. Up the Villa !!!