Things that Should be Easy

What SharePoint cloud hosters don't tell you

2012-05-11T19:56:00.001-04:00

Seeing how much hype there is about cloud computing / hosting / software as a service, I thought it would be good to share some of cloud computing’s dirty little secrets. Few people in the industry talk about these, and customers usually don’t find out until there's no going back.

Cost

Whether hosting SharePoint costs less than hosting it on premises greatly depends on how you measure cost. Hosting companies measure it in terms of setup costs (your initial investment) and the monthly plan cost (your marginal cost). But you need to measure "cost" in terms of cumulative cost from the day SharePoint is made available. Here's why…

Making use of hosted services provides a cost-effective way to deploy SharePoint to your organization. However, it’s like renting an apartment vs. buying a house: you don't need a down payment to rent, but you never stop paying rent. The service fee is a constant monthly expense that never goes away. Need a second service? There’s another monthly fee. The problem of course is that you never actually get ROI with this model. It’s more like a reverse ROI. You start out ahead of the game, because you had few start up costs. But after a few months, you get further and further behind, because at some point you’ve paid as much in service fees as it would have cost to do the implementation in house. And you keep on paying. Indefinitely.

Want to see how the numbers play out? Check out my post on how you can host SharePoint cheaper than the cloud hosting providers and realize that cost savings in between 5 to 11 months.

Add-on Availability and Customizability

SharePoint is not just a product, SharePoint is a platform. That means that in order to maximize the value you get from SharePoint, you will probably want to customize and extend it with one or more add-ons. The problem is that only a fraction of the SharePoint add-ons will work on shared hosting environments like Microsoft's Office 365.

The reason that so few add-ons work with Cloud-based SharePoint offerings is that most of the cloud providers use a multi-tenant SharePoint hosting model to keep costs down and increase profits. To extend the apartment rental analogy, in this model multiple renters are sharing the same building (the SharePoint farm). And just like when you rent an apartment, there are lots of restrictions on how much customizations you can apply to your space. These restrictions limit not only which add-ons you can install into your SharePoint cloud but also on what types of customizations you can implement.

You can get hosting plans that offer more support for 3rd party add-ons and customizations, but you will need to use the more expensive dedicated or virtual private hosting options. You may also have to assume a higher management burden with these hosting options thereby further increasing your costs and negating some of the benefits of cloud-based SharePoint hosting.

WAN vs. LAN bandwidth

How much bandwidth do most organizations have on their LANs? Most have 1,000 Mbps. Some even have 10,000 Mbps. How much bandwidth do these organizations have on their WANs? Usually less than 50 Mbps. That means that most organizations have roughly 20 times (2,000%) and 200 times (20,000%) the bandwidth on the LANs as on their WANs.

Cloud computing uses WAN bandwidth like it’s going out of style. That’s important since your users access your hosted SharePoint through the WAN. Working with SharePoint in the cloud is not like accessing other web-based cloud services. With SharePoint, users are not just browsing pages, they will regularly open and save large documents anywhere from 1 MB to 30 MB in size. Users may perceive a well-implemented SharePoint cloud service as being much slower and unresponsive as compared to even a mediocrely implemented in-house SharePoint simply due to WAN network limitations. SharePoint in the cloud is not slower; the problem lies with the users’ perceptions caused by their limited bandwidth in accessing SharePoint in the cloud.

WAN vs. LAN reliability

How often does your LAN go down? How often does your WAN go down? Imagine losing access to all of your organization’s documents in the event of an Internet connection loss? Even worse, how long does it take for the Internet connection to come back up? An hour? A day? Having a highly available SharePoint environment in the cloud does no good when your Internet connection goes down.

Switching Providers

How easy is it to migrate data from one SharePoint farm to another? Not too bad you say, you just need the right tools. Ok, now what about if you only had a 50 Mbps network connection to the source and target farms? Well, it can still be done, you say. It will just take a lot longer to do the data assessment and to actually move over the data. Verifying will also take a long time, but that's what nights and weekends are for.Ok, now what if you didn't have administrative access to either the source or target SharePoint farms, so you can't install those critical migration tools? That could definitely be a problem. How do you move your SharePoint data if you can't install the migration tools?

And that's just the start. What about migrating over the user accounts? How about the permissions and version information? What about workflows? The reality is that once you pick a SharePoint hosting provider you should be prepared to stick with that provider for at least 3-5 years. That is a really long commitment, especially in the IT industry where things change so quickly.

Single Sign-on

Single sign-on (SSO) is the concept that a user has to enter his or her credentials into one system, and that the credentials would get propagated into all other systems that the user needs to access. For example, a user would login to his or her desktop computer and would be able to access the organization’s email and portal systems without additional logins. For most organizations running Microsoft software in-house, this is a daily reality because all of the organizations systems including SharePoint are running off of the same user directory service, the organization’s Active Directory. But what happens when the organization makes use of SharePoint in the cloud? That service has its own usernames and passwords. Users now have an additional login for the hosted service. Web browsers can help by caching user credentials on their desktops, but there are other desktop applications that don’t do as good a job with that. The issue multiplies as the organization adds additional services, each service requiring its own username and password.

Some SharePoint hosting providers like Microsoft Office 365 are now starting to make desktop tools available to ease users' single sign-on woes. If you are shopping around for SharePoint cloud providers, ask what their single sign-on solution is, how it is deployed and managed, what infrastructure it needs to support it, and what additional fees you will incur to use it.

SharePoint 2010 also supports a more standards-based single sign-on capability called Claims Based Authentication. Claims is designed to allow users to access multiple systems from different organizations with a single username / password, but Claims can be very challenging to set up as it does require you to have some infrastructure and configuration on your end.

Systems Integration

Does this sound familiar:

User: "Will I be able to keep all of my data in SharePoint?"

IT: "Sure….except we have this one system that…."

The fact is that most organizations have at least some data that is not in SharePoint and should not go into SharePoint. That's ok. SharePoint has lots of great tools and APIs that allow users to access data that SharePoint does not manage from external systems.

When SharePoint and the external systems are all on your internal network, and you have the ability to develop or deploy the appropriate connectors, integrating the systems is doable. But when SharePoint is in the cloud (on the Internet) and you your have more restrictions into the types of components you can deploy to SharePoint, things become complex (and potentially expensive) very quickly. Very simple things that used to be easy all of a sudden become hard.

For example, let's say that you have a network file share with 5 TB of files that you would like to be searchable through SharePoint search, but you don't want to upload the files into SharePoint (a very common requirement I might add). This is very easy to do when SharePoint and the network file share are on your internal network but becomes much, much harder when SharePoint is in the cloud.

I don't want to imply that there is no way to deal with systems integration scenarios when one or more systems are hosted in the cloud. There are certainly approaches that can work. But these approaches are very different from what works when all of the systems are inside of your network.

Conclusion

Does this mean that hosting in the cloud is bad? No, not all. There are many potential benefits to subscribing to SharePoint in the cloud. But you do need to keep in mind that when you change your system's topology (on premises vs. in the cloud) you will have trade offs. You need to be aware both of what you are getting and what you are giving up when you extend your systems into the cloud.

Who has the cheapest SharePoint 2010 hosting? Maybe you do.

2012-05-10T13:18:00.001-04:00

I get asked this question a lot, "Who has the cheapest SharePoint 2010 hosting?" Simply put, it depends on how many users you have. The "users" are the people who will access SharePoint. These will include your employees, sub contractors, partners, vendors, and anyone else who needs to view or upload data to your SharePoint system.

So how does the number of users affect who has the cheapest hosting? Let's see…

User Count	Monthly cost assuming basic $4 / user hosting plan	Monthly cost assuming bulk hosting plan (up to 500 users)
5	$20	$250
10	$40	$250
25	$100	$250
50	$200	$250
63	$252	$250
500	$2,000	$250

Clearly we can see from the above example, that when you have fewer than 63 users, you are much better off going with a per-user pricing plan. But if you have more than 63 users, it makes sense to look at a bulk plan.

Now, how can we get our SharePoint even cheaper? It comes down to how we measure "cheap." Hosting companies measure it in terms of setup costs (your initial investment) and the monthly plan cost (your marginal cost). But we are going to measure "cheaper" in terms of cumulative cost from the day SharePoint is made available.

Let's see how long it takes us to rack up $1,100 in total cumulative costs. Why $1,100 you ask? Because I show in this post how you can easily install your own SharePoint system that will support 500 users for $1,100 and no monthly fees.

User Count	Monthly cost assuming lowest cost hosting plan	Number of moths to reach $1,100 in cumulative costs
5	$20	55 months
10	$40	28 months
25	$100	11 months
50	$200	6 months
63	$250	5 months
500	$250	5 months

We can see that from a cost point, if you have under 10 users, you're best option is to use a per-user SharePoint hosting plan. But, if you have 25 users, you are better off installing SharePoint in-house, because that will save you money compared to hosting in 11 months. That's a measurable return on your investment to host SharePoint on premises. If you have at least 50 users, you'll see a return on your investment in less than 6 months by hosting SharePoint internally.

Who has the cheapest SharePoint 2010 hosting? Depending on how many users you have, you may have the cheapest hosting.

Does this mean that an organization of any size is always better off hosting internally? No. There are lots of factors that go into deciding whether to host internally or outsource hosting. But you should also be aware that when you outsource your hosting, you will encounter other issues that you do not currently have with your internally hosted system.

Join me at SharePoint Saturday, NYC for Creating SharePoint Custom Field Types with Visual Studio

2012-05-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

I am excited to be presenting a session on Creating SharePoint Custom Field Types with Visual Studio at SharePoint Saturday New York, July 28, 2012.

SharePoint has many customization options for the user interface and for the data model. SharePoint custom field types are unique in that they provide an integrated mechanism for customizing SharePoint user interface, data storage, data entry, data validation, and rendering. Best of all, these customizations stay with your data anywhere a List View Web Part or List View Form Page is used.

Here are the topics I will cover in the presentation:

Custom Field Types Defined
Learn what custom field types are and how they work.
Business Cases
Implementing custom field types is not trivial. What business reasons justify the effort?
Custom Field Types and Alternate SharePoint Extensibility
How do custom field types compare to other forms of SharePoint extensibility like web parts and event receivers? What are the pros and cons using each extensibility option?
Custom Field Types Implementation
What does it take to create a new custom field type? We will see all the components we need, including the CAML XML, the C# code, and the WSP.DDF file used for packaging and deployment.
Demo: Code walkthrough and demo of a media player custom field type
There’s nothing more exciting to users that seeing video on their portal site. We’ll create a custom field type that will let you turn your SharePoint site into a mini YouTube, well, almost :).

SharePoint Saturday New York is at the Microsoft Manhattan office at

1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY
July 28, 2012

See you there.

Boston Area SharePoint Users Group May 9, 2012 Meeting

2012-05-08T16:56:00.001-04:00

REGISTER
Register for the next meeting. It's FREE, but space is limited.

PRESENTER
The presenter for our next meeting is Donal Conlon, of Jornata. He will be presenting "Implementing Forms Based Authentication."

SESSION ABSTRACT
There are many reasons to not use Forms Based Authentication and many reasons to use it. This session talks about the do’s and don’ts of FBA, planning for authentication, what your options are and goes through a live demo of configuring it successfully.

ABOUT DONAL
Donal Conlon is a principal consultant at Jornata LLC, a Boston-based SharePoint consulting firm. He has over 16 years experience designing and developing solutions using Microsoft technologies. Donal has been working with SharePoint for over 9 years and is a contributing author of Essential SharePoint 2010.

ABOUT BOSTON AREA SHAREPOINT USERS GROUP
The Boston Area SharePoint Users Group (BASPUG) was founded to bring together like minds to network and share their experiences, triumphs, and tribulations around Microsoft SharePoint, to provide a community platform for Boston area SharePoint users, administrators, developers, architects, of all experience levels, even brand new to SharePoint, to share their knowledge with the community.

We meet on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at either the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, MA, or at the Microsoft office in Waltham on Jones Road.

MEETING SPONSOR - K2
Process-driven applications — fast.

K2® offers three software products to help you increase business efficiency and simplify work. K2's visual tools allow people of various technical and non-technical backgrounds to create applications that automate processes and streamline operations. And when something in the business changes, modifying the applications to keep up is easy.

K2 applications can be set up to manage simple business processes — such as document approval or inventory tracking — and they can be set up to pull together processes, people, services, information and systems into a single application that helps drive business. Then, what's been built can be used like building blocks to assemble new applications.

Because K2 tools are built on Microsoft technology and because K2 users actually complete work in the Microsoft programs they already know — like SharePoint and Visual Studio — little training is required and user buy-in is quick. In fact, K2 provides more Microsoft integration points than any other software product in the space.

We have a range of products to meet the needs of organizations with unique business challenges, technical resources and budgets; because, in software, one size does not fit all.

www.k2.com

SUSTENANCE
Food and beverages will be provided at the event.

RAFFLE PRIZES
We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meetings.

Black Blade Associates will be raffling of a license, valued at $2000, for their SharePoint Zip product.
Lightning Tools will be raffling off a license for one of their products - the winner may choose!
CubisOne will be raffling off a license for their SharePoint Power Pack iChat product, valued at $1000.
We will also have books, T-Shirts, and more!

LOCATION
We will be meeting at the Microsoft Waltham office, located at 201 Jones Road 6th Floor, Waltham, MA, US.

LINKEDIN
Join our group on LinkedIn today to connect with the rest of the BASPUG members and spread the word!

FACEBOOK
We are also on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Boston-Area-SharePoint-User-Group/113652405354617

TWITTER
Follow news about the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group on twitter by following us @BASPUG, and by using the hashtag #BASPUG.

WEB
Visit the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group website at http://www.bostonsharepointug.org

ORGANIZERS
Event meetings are organized by Geoff Varosky of Jornata, Eugene Rosenfeld of Black Blade Associates, Talbott Crowell of Third Millennium, and Dan Diachenko of Baufest.

Slides Posted - Advanced SharePoint Document Management with Multi-file Documents, SharePoint Saturday, Boston

2012-04-29T23:13:00.001-04:00

Update: Check out my post on why we would want to consider multi-file document management for SharePoint. The post shows how SharePoint's single-file document management approach greatly limits your its capabilities in terms of version history, workflow, security, and other areas. View the post here:

http://thingsthatshouldbeeasy.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-good-is-sharepoint-as-document.html

It was great speaking at SharePoint Saturday Boston. My presentation on Advanced SharePoint Document Management with Multi-file Documents is now available.

Session abstract:

Do you feel that you're getting the most out of your SharePoint document management investments? Are you using SharePoint as a web-based document store but are struggling to do more and not sure how?
This session focuses on implementing advanced SharePoint document management systems with virtual and compound documents. We will look at why we would want to consider multi-file documents as part of our SharePoint document management system and some characteristics of a good implementation. We will also investigate some usage scenarios that are made possible or practical through multi-file documents. The session is best suited to content managers and information architects.
Attendees will gain concrete insights into why their SharePoint implementations are not fulfilling their document management needs, and what can be done about it. Attendees will see how to transform SharePoint into a modern document management platform, rather than just using it as a web-based network file share.

Save 25% on SharePoint Best Practices Conference Registration

2012-04-18T17:45:00.001-04:00

Get 25% off of the registration fee for the SharePoint Best Practices Conference, in May 2013! How? Just take this survey. You will get instructions on redeeming the offer upon survey completion. The SharePoint Best Practices Conference focuses not just on what you can do with SharePoint, but on what you should do. If you want practical advice on choosing amongst the many approaches to implementing SharePoint, this is the conference for you. Check out past sessions to get a glimpse of what you can expect this year.

How to: Get Started Making Awesome Web Pages

2012-04-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

So you want to try your hand at making web pages that actually look good, feel snazzy, and are a pleasure for people to use, but you’re not a web developer, or even a web designer? How do you get started?

This is meant to be a quick, short post to help someone new to web page creation get started. I would suggest learning some HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript (different from Java) with jQuery. That will allow you to create really nice web pages and sites very quickly. HTML5 is the next step in the evolution of HTML specification, however most people also group together lots of related technologies like CSS3 when they think of HTML5.

Here’s how things fit together:

HTML – Used to create the structure and content of a web page
CSS – Provides style, color, and often some element positioning on web pages
JavaScript – Used to create web pages that respond to events, like button clicks, mouse movement, etc.
JQuery – A library built on top of JavaScript that greatly simplifies the use of JavaScript

Check out a few resources to get started:

http://www.w3schools.com – nice site with lots of reference material on HTML, JavaScript, and CSS
http://jquery.com – jQuery site with documentation, downloads, and most importantly plugins. The availability of very nice and free jQuery plugins is what makes it so valuable to learn.
http://www.csszengarden.com – site that shows examples of just how different a web page can look purely by changing the CSS

The really great thing about learning these basic skills is that you can easily apply them to creating web pages in other, more powerful frameworks like ASP.Net, SharePoint, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and many others.

Ready to try your hand? Start with an existing template rather from a blank slate to make learning easier. Check out the free templates on DreamTemplate. You can start developing your skills with these. Happy webbing :-)

Call to Action - "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" by Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA

2012-04-03T08:30:00.000-04:00

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA (now with Google) did an amazing TED presentation with the theme, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”. For those who don’t know, DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA’s mission is to prevent technological surprise to the US, and also to create technological surprise for its enemies. DARPA pioneered world-changing innovations like the Internet and GPS, and is working one new ones like self-driving vehicles, advanced prosthetic arms to help amputees, and exoskeletons to help the disabled and elderly walk again.

Regina’s main message in her presentation was to urge everyone to discard their fears of failure and attempt the impossible. Failure is part of the road that leads to world-changing innovation.

Unfortunately the comments are inundated with people who are either ignorant of DARPA's immense contributions to the world or down-play those contributions because of DARPA's military associations. Ironically this comment by David E. on the presentation is a perfect example of the ignorance, fear, and complacency that Regina’s presentation urges people to overcome in order for humanity to continue to accomplish the amazing.

The call to action – this is the important part…

In today’s world, ignorance is simply intolerable. Show your support for discussion based on reality and informed opinion rather than fear and ignorance by adding comments to Regina’s TED presentation that set the record straight or by simply "voting up" other comments that do so. And please spread the word.

The debate

Here's an example of the type of comment that needs to be called out for its lack of any supporting evidence and simple contradiction of reality...

Update: It's working! All of David E.'s comments on the discussion have been deleted! Keep up the good work.

David E….
What would I do if I knew I could not fail?
I would shutdown DARPA and redirect their entire budget into public schools and healthcare. While at it make the "nerds" who think it's cool (or a good career move) to create bomb delivery systems, go live on the ground in the places America has subjected to "shock and awe" campaigns.

My rebuttal…
"I would shutdown DARPA and redirect their entire budget into public schools and healthcare." I guess you haven't heard that DARPA has created a prosthetic arm that will help millions of amputees and exoskeleton legs that will help both paralyzed and elderly people walk again. Or you may not know that many children, especially poor children and children in developing nations are now able to use the Internet that DARPA pioneered to gain access to vast amounts of learning material that had been previously unreachable.

David E….
People like Regina Dugan are dangerous because they rationalize what they're doing as "for the greater good" all the while creating weapons that shouldn't exist and that no one should be allowed to deploy on this all-too-small planet. She takes a question that has a potentially a very positive implication, and weaves it into a case for creating mass destruction. People are very good at separating themselves from the consequences of their actions.

And then when challenged retreats behind the lame "we just invent the stuff" excuse. This same rationale was used by the Nazi's who built the death camps. "We were just doing our jobs." These people need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

My rebuttal…
"People are very good at separating themselves from the consequences of their actions," or the implied statement that you should not invent things that will be used to ill. That is the oldest, most tired excuse used to justify inaction and stagnation. How can we know today how the new technology we create will be used in the coming decades? Could the inventors of the Internet have known it would be used as both a major commerce platform as well as a major piracy platform? Did the inventors of GPS know it would be used to as a way to guide missiles as well to guide regular cars or save lives by dispatching the closest ambulance to a medical emergency? What about the autonomous cars DARPA is developing? How many millions of blind, elderly, and disabled people will regain their freedom my taking back control of their own transportation?

David E….
Regina Dugan's words remind me of Donald Rumsfeld when he talked about "surgical bombing" in Iraq. (As if there's anything precise about that kind of payload.) But this is how people think... those who sit safely behind a computer screen while nameless people somewhere else are being killed, incinerated, blown up with high-tech weapons created through the help of same said computer screens. "If we only build bombs to look like hummingbirds then we can get even more surgical." Madness.
When are people going to wake up to the fact that what happens "there" always makes it back to "here?" That what we fail to learn from "then" will come back to "now" and thus shape the future. The same one we all must live in.
True freedom doesn't require weapons of war. We will come to understand this or we will all perish. Do we kill those we disagree with, come to see as a threat, or do we ask them what it is they too want from their precious life?

My rebuttal…
None needed. The last two paragraphs of David’s comment are more of a rant, and are so far outside of the topic of Regina’s presentation that he may as well be debating the benefits of thin vs. thick crust pizza.

My closing remarks…

The type of person I consider to be "dangerous" is the person who will embrace his own fear and ignorance to keep humanity from making the attempt to evolve and improve itself. It is each person's responsibility to choose how he or she will use things, for good or for ill. You can either use water to save a person wandering in the desert or drown him. There is risk in everything we do. The only thing that is absolutely certain is that nothing will improve without action and innovation.

How To: Install DoD Root Certificates on Windows / Cannot Access DCO

2012-04-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

If you try to access DCO and are getting a “...problem with this website” error, it means that the DoD certificates have not been installed correctly.

Internet Explorer will not prompt you to download the certificates. You will need to download them from this site before attempting to access DCO:
http://dodpki.c3pki.chamb.disa.mil/rootca.html

You must browse the site using IE or the site will not let you download the certificate files. The instructions on the site are cumbersome. These are a bit easier to follow:

Navigate to http://dodpki.c3pki.chamb.disa.mil/rootca.html and download the 3 root CA certificate files:
Once you download them, you will have 3 files:
Right click on each file, and select Install Certificate (do not select Open):
This starts the certificate installation wizard:
Make sure to select the option to Place all certificates in the following store, then browse to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities
You’ll see a confirmation, then click Finish:
You will then get prompted for each certificate in each p7b file. The first two just have a few certificates each, but the rel3_dodroot_2048.p7b file has over 40. That means over 40 prompts. Notice that the certificate name is different in the two following screen shots:
Finally, for each p7b file, you will get a confirmation message saying the import was successful:

At this point, you should close all browser windows. Then open a new IE window and attempt to connect to DCO.

Join me at SharePoint Saturday, Boston – April 28, 2012, for “Advanced SharePoint Document Management with Multi-file Documents”

2012-03-26T09:30:00.000-04:00

I am presenting my “Advanced SharePoint Document Management with Multi-file Documents” session on SharePoint Saturday, Boston, April 28, 2012. Registration is FREE, but register early to reserve your spot.

This session focuses on implementing advanced SharePoint document management systems with virtual and compound documents. We will look at why we would want to consider multi-file documents as part of our SharePoint document management system and investigate some usage scenarios that are made possible or practical through multi-file documents. We will round out the session with a deep dive into some characteristics of a good multi-file document management implementation and see how they impacted Black Blade’s own document management implementation. The session is best suited to content managers and information architects.

Tell your friends, and register while there is still space available. Check out a preview of the presentation, with animations.

Compare Office Web Apps to Google Docs, a Criticism

2012-03-19T18:42:00.001-04:00

A few days ago I wrote a post comparing Office Web Apps to Google Docs. I received a some good criticism from an anonymous commentator that I feel merits its own post. In part of the post I compared the rendering of a sample Word document in both Office Web Apps and Google Docs. Here is the criticism:

Come on, Eugene. You cannot say "Office Web Apps are better" if you only compare one product: the word processor and only show us the rendering of two pages.

I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong for the Word comparison, but to say which product is better you will need to dig a bit deeper and compare Excel and PowerPoint as well. Also you only compared the layout of the rendered pages, yet you say "much better viewing and editing experience" whereas you only tell us about the viewing experience. Why don't you compare all features e.g. In Google Docs you can indent text like so... and in Office Web Apps like so.

On the surface the criticism seems to have some merit. But as I have stated previously, I don't believe that a feature-by-feature comparison is a valid way of comparing products like authoring software. The important thing to compare is the quality of the respective products' outputs, which is what I did. I used the output from the Word app as a representative comparison, but you could do the same for Excel and PowerPoint as well. This article did a more exhaustive comparison and determined that if "Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are a regular part of your online life, Office Web Apps has it all over Google." If I create a proposal or resume, the reader is not interested in what features my authoring software has, only in how the final output looks. Don't take my word. The file used for the comparison is available here. Try it yourself.

Aside from the output quality, I wanted to call out the privacy concerns and the cloud service provider’s information handling policies. These criteria are often overlooked when organizations evaluate cloud services providers. Given recent headlines about Google’s privacy policies, it’s a very valid concern. Of course the best way to mitigate the concerns of the provider's data policies is to have the option to keep your data on your network storage with in-house hosted software, something that only Microsoft offers.

But if you really want a feature-by-feature comparison, check out this post that concluded, "with the possible exception of cost, it seems that Microsoft has an edge in almost every category of comparison."

Compare Office Web Apps to Google Docs

2012-03-13T18:45:00.001-04:00

I’ve heard a fair number of people talk about using Google Docs for their ability to provide an easy mechanism to share data and to edit documents through a web interface. What many people don’t know is that Microsoft has some thing called Office Web Apps which does the same thing: provide cloud-based editing, storage, and sharing for common document formats, like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote.

Short summary: Office Web Apps are better

So what’s the point of this post? Simply to convince you that if you feel that Google Docs is right for you, you will be much better off using Office Web Apps. Here’s why:

Office Web Apps offer a much better viewing and editing experience that is closer to the power of desktop applications than Google Docs. See the rest of this post for a side-by-side comparison.
Remember Google’s recent privacy policy issues? If you are going to pick a service to manage your documents, why would you choose Google, already known for collecting excessive data about you?
Google forces you to upload your documents to their site and create and manage Google accounts in order to use their web-editing applications. Microsoft lets you choose: you can install Office Web Apps on SharePoint within the security of your local network, allowing people to use their existing network accounts (such as Active Directory) for controlled access to documents. Or you can use Office Web Apps in the cloud. Your choice.

Google Docs and Office Web Apps side-by-side

Here’s a side-by-side comparison between the same 2-page document on Office Web Apps (left) and Google Docs (right). Again the summary here is that the Office Web Apps version of the document looks much better, closer to the way it would had you created it with a desktop application. The detailed comparison follows…

Page 1 comparison:

Office Web Apps – Google Docs

Missing in Google Docs…

Heading is not right aligned
No chart
Table is not formatted
No “Confidential” page watermark
Title is missing underline formatting
Image next to Overview is missing rounded edges and reflection
Image next to Summary paragraph is missing

Page 2 comparison:

Office Web Apps – Google Docs

Missing in Google Docs…

No 2-column formatting
No foot note

Conclusion

The conclusion is no surprise: if you need web or cloud based document storage, editing, and sharing, Office Web Apps are clearly the better choice over Google Docs.

What is the difference between SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint 2010, or between Standard and Enterprise editions?

2012-03-13T12:29:00.001-04:00

“What is the difference between SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint 2010?” “What is part of Standard and Enterprise editions?” These are two of the most common questions I get asked by both people who are new to the SharePoint platform and by people who have worked with one flavor of SharePoint.

Microsoft has a great resource that lists exactly which features are part of which edition of SharePoint. You can even filter the features list by functional area (sites, communities, content, search, insights, and composites). Not only is each feature listed, but hovering over the feature will display a short description of the features. Some features even link to a video showing the feature.

This is one of the few golden resources that I recommend you print, bookmark, email to colleagues, send to OneNote, tweet, … whatever it takes to make it readily available. Enjoy.

Advanced SharePoint Document Management with Multi-file Documents, SharePoint Saturday, NH

2011-10-19T17:32:00.001-04:00

It was great speaking at SharePoint Saturday NH last month. My presentation on Advanced SharePoint Document Management with Multi-file Documents is now available.

This session focused on implementing advanced SharePoint document management systems with virtual and compound documents. We looked at why we would want to consider multi-file documents as part of our SharePoint document management system and some characteristics of a good implementation. We also investigated some usage scenarios that are made possible or practical through multi-file documents and looked at what it would take to implement a solution for your organization. The session is best suited to content managers and information architects.

Some Internet sites using Plumtree portal / BEA Aqualogic / Oracle Webcenter Interactions

2011-10-11T14:45:00.001-04:00

I was working on a project involving setting up a portal based on Oracle Webcenter Interactions. I wanted to see some examples of sites built using the technology. Oracle purchased Webcenter Interaction from BEA. where the product was called Aqualogic. BEA in turn purchased it from Plumtree. After doing a few searches, I could not find a nice list enumerating some sites based on any of these products.

After a bit of thought, I simply did an Internet search for "server.pt/community". That is a Url fragment common to most implementations of the Plumtree portal and descendant products. Here’s a sample search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22server.pt%2Fcommunity%22

I was pleasantly rewarded with 10+ pages of sites based on Plumtree portal, BEA Aqualogic, or Oracle Webcenter Interactions. Here’s a sample result:

Happy searching.

Installing Windows 8 on VMware

2011-09-16T01:46:00.001-04:00

If you've recently downloaded the Windows 8 Developer Preview and tried to install it on VMware Workstation, VMware player, or VMware Fusion, you may have received the error:

*** VMware Workstation internal monitor error ***
vcpu-0:NOT_IMPLEMENTED vmcore/vmm/intr/apic.c:1903
Please report this problem by selecting menu item Help > VMware on the Web > Request Support, or by going to the Web page …

I can’t confirm this, but some have speculated that the message means that the version of the VMware product you are using (including VMware Workstation 7) does not support ACPI 2.0 which is required for Windows 8.
Regardless, the solution is to upgrade to VMware Workstation 8 or VMware Fusion 4. Alternatively, you can install Windows 8 within Oracle (Sun) VirtualBox 4.1.2. Make sure to use at least version 4.1.2 as older versions of VirtualBox do not work. VirtualBox and VMware Workstation can coexist on the same host.

Watch BUILD Keynote – Amazing Windows 8 Info!

2011-09-14T01:10:00.001-04:00

Watch the BUILD keynote for amazing Windows 8 information. The keynote talks about the user experience including app-to-app communications, software development using Visual Studio and HTML 5, and incredible hardware coming to the Windows platform.

Download Windows 8 Right Now!

2011-09-13T21:16:00.001-04:00

Can’t wait to check out Windows 8? Then download the Windows 8 developer preview right now! Thanks to Engadget for releasing the news. Check out other Windows 8 info.

Use SharePoint for Business Process Management at ABPMP Boston

2011-09-10T15:56:00.001-04:00

I’m very excited to present at the September 14^th meeting of the Boston chapter of the Association of Business Process Management Professionals (ABPMP). This presentation is intended to give non-technical and semi-technical BPM professionals an overview of how SharePoint can be used to facilitate BPM usage scenarios.

Presentation topics will include:

General discussion of core SharePoint capabilities
Three mechanisms for implementing SharePoint solutions
What does process management mean to you?
Discussion of various aspects of process management and their implementations, with demos:
- Data capture and management
- Automation (workflow)
- System integration
- Reporting

When:
Wednesday September 14, 2011 at 5:30 PM EDT

Where:
MICROSOFT
201 Jones Road, 6th floor
Waltham, MA 02451

Register Now!

SharePoint CommandAction {ListId} token doesn’t get replaced in CustomAction ribbon element

2011-07-20T15:55:00.001-04:00

I was working on upgrading a simple SharePoint application from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. One of the components was a CustomAction feature that placed a menu item on a list’s toolbar. So I needed to migrate the CustomAction Xml to place the menu item on the SharePoint 2010 ribbon.

No big deal I thought.After a bit of work, I had the button created and showing up on the correct lists’ ribbons. After a few tests, I discovered that the only issue with the button was that the {ListId} token in the CommandAction element was not getting replaced with the list’s ID as it had in SharePoint 2007 (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007) and as it was supposed to (according to all of the documentation and articles I could find).

After a lot of digging around, I found an updated MSDN document showing new replace tokens for the CommandAction element, one of which was the {SelectedListId} token. I changed the {ListId} token to the {SelectedListId} token, re-deployed my feature Xml, and presto, it worked!

The new tokens for the SharePoint 2010 CommandAction element of the CustomAction element shown in the MSDN article are:

{RecurrenceId} – ID of a recurrent item (RecurrenceID).
{ListUrlDir} – Server-relative URL of the site plus the list's folder.
{Source} – Fully qualified request URL.
{SelectedListId} – ID (GUID) of the list that is currently selected from a list view.
{SelectedItemId} – ID of the item that is currently selected from the list view.

I still don’t know why the {ListId} token did not work as it had with SharePoint 2007, but at least there seems to be a token that gives me the same information.If the {ListId} token is not working for you in SharePoint 2010, try changing it to the {SelectedListId} token.

SharePoint 2010 and Project Server 2010 Service Pack 1 Released!

2011-06-30T01:32:00.001-04:00

Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Server 2010, and Project Server 2010. You can find them on the Microsoft Download Center or through these direct download links:

What fix am I looking forward to most in the service packs you ask? The ability to use browsers other than Internet Explorer with Project Server 2010. Yay.

Error saving SharePoint 2010 site as template or activating a site template

2011-06-27T15:42:00.001-04:00

If you receive the following error when saving a SharePoint 2010 site as a template or activating the site template in the site collection solution gallery:

Feature definition with Id 316e6f10-362c-4a52-943f-182dba32a876 failed validation, file ListInstances\ElementsFields.xml, line 321, character 325: The 'NoCrawl' attribute is not allowed. ...

Read full article

Project Server 2010 Status Report database schema

2011-06-23T13:21:00.001-04:00

Recently I needed to incorporate some status report data from Project Server 2010 into a custom report. No problem, I though, I just need to find the schema for the related tables. After a lot of searching online, I came up empty. So, after a little digging, here’s a picture of the schema I was able to reverse engineer. Note that the tables are in Project Server’s Published database, not in its Reporting database, so use caution when querying the data.

Extranet Topologies for SharePoint 2010

2011-06-15T12:41:00.001-04:00

Microsoft has posted a nice diagram of various extranet server farm topologies available for SharePoint 2010. The diagram includes advantages and disadvantages of each topology as well what the farm layout might look like. The included topologies are:

Edge firewall
Back-to-back perimeter
Back-to-back perimeter with cross-farm services
Back-to-back perimeter with content publishing
Split back-to-back
Split back-to-back optimized for content publishing

Download the document from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=EB4BFF25-BABA-4112-B518-F2FC442D5467&displaylang=en

No cross browser support in Project Server 2010, requires Internet Explorer

2011-06-10T09:47:00.001-04:00

I was really excited about the SharePoint 2010’s cross browser support. I even lauded Microsoft in this video clip. Well imagine my surprise when I tried to access a local Project Server 2010 Project Web Access site in my shiny new Firefox 4 browser, and I got the nasty error:

“Project Server 2010 requires at least Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0.”

I can’t believe this is the way the product was released, and after Microsoft made such a big deal about replacing the ActiveX grid that Project Server 2007 used with SharePoint Foundation’s JavaScript Grid, something else for which I applauded them. Oh well, I guess we’re back to 1990 with Internet Explorer-only web applications.