Sharepoint

I recently advised a global consumer goods firm about how to integrate their various Social Software implementations and where to place SharePoint in that mix. This was that rare company who had not yet implemented SharePoint hardly at all, beyond a few WSS pilots. In other words, that mythical "greenfield" environment that consultants can dream about, but rarely exist in real life. The firm is considering expanding their investment, including licensing MOSS. We discussed how they have a tremendous opportunity to do SharePoint "right" from the beginning, and avoid some common critical mistakes.

With titles such as Madden NFL 10, Rock Band and Sims in its portfolio, video game developer Electronic Arts has to stay on cool's edge -- inside the company as much as out. "When people come in the door here these days, they say, 'Hey, how do I connect with people? Do you have a social network?' " said Bert Sandie, director of technical excellence in the University Group at Electronic Arts (EA) in Vancouver. "The reality is, having a social network , search and a knowledge portal, especially in larger corporations, is essentially becoming the cost of doing business, like email was 20 years ago."

Migrating existing content into a SharePoint system, and specifically into a SharePoint Page Library — the foundation of a SharePoint Publishing website — is neither simple nor straightforward.To migrate content into SharePoint we took a look at a number of tools, both commercial tools and custom-built ones paired with a data aggregation framework. Here is a review of our experience, a summary of our final approach and some postmortem thoughts.

There are few organizations that haven't considered — and implemented — SharePoint  in some manner. But as much as it has been implemented, it's still a confusing and often frustrating platform to work with.Delivering just the kind of help these confused folk need, CMS Watch offers their latest research on SharePoint. The SharePoint Report 2009 helps organizations better understand where and how this platform might best fit in their organization. Here's what you can expect.

When we first looked at the new MetaVis Technologies tools for SharePoint, we knew there would be a lot of interest from enterprise struggling to manage and control their SharePoint implementations.These tools which include taxonomy support and metadata management for SharePoint — both MOSS and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 — are any SharePoint architect's dream, helping with the creation, deployment and management of SharePoint sites.Today they are generally available to the public and CMSWire caught up with Steve Pogrebivsky, MetaVis CEO and Co-Founder, to check on how the products are being received.

Last week I attended a conference keynote session where Microsoft's Tricia Bush (Group Product Manager, SharePoint) asserted that SharePoint was helping to provide Web governance with its workflow services. Now, I've seen a lot of SharePoint implementations and I think and dream about Web Governance constantly, so I found this comment disturbing. Software vendors say interesting things about their products all the time.  But because of the viral-like quality of SharePoint implementations, I thought it was worth stating clearly that SharePoint does not provide Web Governance.

The start of summer seems an odd choice to start doling out awards (isn't that usually January/February?) but it hasn't stopped asp.netPRO from counting the votes in its 2009 Readers' Choice awards. It was the winner of the Best CMS that made us stop and pay attention. And the Winner IsWith voting concluded back in April, the sealed envelopes covering 25 categories have been opened. Awards were handed out for a range of specialties from best Add-in (Developer Express CodeRush for Visual Studio .NET) to Silverlight App (Developer Express AgDataGrid Suite).

Here’s a fun fact: according to Faulker Information Services, over 10% of contracts executed by large organizations are lost after being archived on paper or in electronic systems. That’s a frightening number. In fact, any amount of lost information is enough to cause alarm, especially when it has to do with business transactions. What’s even more alarming? Only a reported 1% of companies have chosen to take preventative measures. Here to encourage action is Dolphin Software and their Contract Manager for SharePoint.

In our February article entitled Under the Covers: Alfresco's SharePoint Services (WSS) Killer we looked at Alfresco's take on providing basic document and collaboration services for free. Alfresco's project is called Alfresco Share. When we posited that Alfresco Share was after SharePoint Services' marketshare, it sparked a bit of chatter — some positive, some not so much.Voices in the SharePoint camp said that the two solutions should not be compared, that SharePoint  was a platform — much more than a simple collaborative document management solution, whereas Alfresco was only providing some services.

It's getting closer. SharePoint 2010 that is. And now that the dates are all out in the open, Microsoft is offering us information to get our infrastructure ready.A new post has just come out on the Microsoft SharePoint Team blog outlining the Preliminary System Requirements for SharePoint 2010. Here's a quick look:It's all 64-bit: SharePoint itself, Windows 2008, SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008Browser Compatibility: Brace yourself — IE6 is out. Supported browsers on Windows systems will include IE7/IE8, Firefox 3.x. Microsoft will also increase compatibility for Firefox 3.x and Safari 3.x on non-Windows OS.

Looks like Alfresco isn't the only vendor offering a SharePoint alternative. Australian vendor Intranet Dashboard says they have the perfect alternative to SharePoint, offering an all in one solution for creating Intranets, Extranets and portals. First time we've heard of them. So let's take a closer look. The Intranet DashboardThe Intranet Dashboard is a set of 40 tools designed to help you build your Intranet. Tools are categorized as Web Content Management/Publishing, Business Tools and Collaboration/Communication. Okay, sounds a little familiar.

Just like they said, Microsoft released the Office Service Pack 2 on April 28. In that service pack are a number of improvements and bug fixes for both SharePoint Server 2007  and WSS. We offered the hightlights earlier, now we look a little deeper. Service Pack 2 contains all the hotfixes, cumulative updates, security updates and public updates put out since the last service pack up until February of this year. In addition to being a rollup of all these updates, there are also a number of new fixes and improvements.WSS3.0 Service Pack 2The improvements included in this service pack are the same as those for SharePoint Server 2007 so we'll cover them together in the next section.

ClearPeople and Microsoft recently published a case study that highlights how the SharePoint platform can be leveraged for vertical document management solutions. In this case, we see how SharePoint has been extended to provide legal document management capabilities, clearly demonstrating that SharePoint can be much more than a simple file share. Going Legal With SharePointClearPeople is an expert hand when it comes to tweaking SharePoint systems for the legal community. The company began as a legal services specialist. However, it also offers tools with a wider appeal, such as the recently launched PeoplePoint and CorpCast.

Microsoft has recently announced that the new SharePoint version will be called "Microsoft SharePoint 2010." The announcement had lots of other goodies in it, but I was particularly interested in the name change. Microsoft will often change product names from version to version; clearly to create distinction in the market, but occasionally as the result of moving products from one Microsoft team to another (as happened with SharePoint).  However, in this case, the announcement suggests that the disappearing "Office" moniker was confusing to customers because they associated it with the client software.  Unfortunately, the resulting name change for SharePoint will be the third brand since its inception: SharePoint Team Services changed to Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server changed to Microsoft Office Server and now to simply Microsoft SharePoint.

SpringCM announced that it has launched the first connectivity solution between its software-as-a-service (SaaS) ECM platform and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). The SpringCM Cloud Connector for SharePoint is said to enable quick, simple integration between the portal and collaborative capabilities of SharePoint and the rich content management capabilities of SpringCM.SpringCM says the Cloud Connectors for SharePoint enhance SharePoint capabilities in two ways:Application developers and companies using SharePoint now can easily extend SharePoint’s native capabilities with a single integrated set of ECM functionality spanning: scanning and image capture; comprehensive business process management (BPM); optical character recognition (OCR); integrated fax, view and markup; and records management and e-signature.

Like the content of your website or intranet, planning and governance is technology agnostic; whether its SharePoint or another portal or content management platform, the necessity for and the approach to governance is the same. Given its technology neutral status in the realm of website and intranet evolution this module on planning and governance is largely applicable to any technology platform and as such is generic to start.

Microsoft recently announced that they are releasing SharePoint Designer (SPD) for free. This announcement has generally be heralded as a positive step for Redmond -- as SharePoint licenses grow, Microsoft can only help themselves and their clients by enabling SharePoint customization and usage. However, I've recently had two conversations with clients who were deeply concerned by the announcement. Taking that a step further, a company called Portalogiks, maker of the Virtual Training Center for SharePoint, released a newsletter with the title "SharePoint Designer Infection."

pringCM announced today that it has released the first connectivity solution between its market leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ECM platform and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS, 2007). The SpringCM Cloud Connector for SharePoint enables easy integration between the portal and collaborative capabilities of SharePoint and the rich content management capabilities of SpringCM. The SpringCM Cloud Connectors for SharePoint enhance SharePoint capabilities in two ways:

Transfield Services, a global services firm headquartered in Australia, is one of the Gold Winners in last year’s Intranet Innovation Awards. Using SharePoint, the innovative Transfield team created a very simple, but creative approach to deploying Team Sites inside the company of 28,000 employees. Labelled “Team Sites in a Box” the approach opened up the SharePoint collaboration features to Transfield employees with the proper governance and rules that ensured Team Sites were embraced by employees, but not abused. The ‘Team Sites in a Box’ framework comprises:

DocPoint Solutions,   a subsidiary of Quality Associates, Inc., focused on providing Microsoft® SharePoint® to organizations that are looking to expand employee collaboration and increase the exchange of information, today announced its status as an authorized provider of Microsoft SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS). Now, Microsoft customers throughout the U.S. can redeem their Microsoft Software Assurance (SA) credits to receive up to 15 days of onsite SharePoint technology planning, support, training, and other services from DocPoint Solutions. Microsoft SharePoint is a server program that is part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. SharePoint software enables collaboration, improves content management, promotes business process implementation, and enables faster and more powerful access to information via a secure intranet.