Office 365 brings it all together, finally

SharePoint Online as part of Office 365 is the Enterprise product I have been waiting for since 1999.  Finally all the benefits of web, single location, access anywhere, shared community standards and online storage along with security and resiliency are in one place.

Make no mistake about it, this is going to be the Microsoft's biggest impact on the economy since Office and Windows 95.  With Office 365 it now possible for any firm, no matter how small, to start, on day one, with Enterprise level content management, VOIP, IM, and collaboration. (I wrote this in 2014 and clearly stand by it now)

The cost of starting a new business has just gotten a great deal smaller, and the ease that existing businesses can reconfigure themselves, collaborate with outside organisations, and to bring in contractors and prosumers is now a fraction of what it was.

Video mashup intro to SharePoint

Here are some videos to give an introduction to SharePoint

A very basic introduction to using SharePoint 2007, the information is also valid at this level in SharePoint 2010 and 2013.

This is a good high level overview of what SharePoint can give to a business.  If your boss asks you 'what is Sharepoint used for?' this is pretty good.  Not very technical though.

A good use case of for SharePoint 2010 from Get Started with SharePoint.  Get Started with SharePoint is probably the best place to get videos on SharePoint for users and power users.

This site gives a good introduction to making a basic 2007 SharePoint site.  This comes from SharePoint training site which has a lot of good information.  

Create and Edit a Wiki in SharePoint Foundation

First start with the Home page of the wiki, or any page in the Wiki where you hope to create a new page. Click the Page tab on the top right hand side of the page.  If you don't have a Page tab you don't have rights to edit the page.

Clicking page brings up SharePoint's Ribbon.  Click View All Pages in the Ribbon to see a List of All Pages in the Wiki

This brings up a list of all the Wiki Pages

To Add a new wiki page click the Add New Page link at the bottom of the list.  Provide a title for the Wiki page.  Be careful to not make any typos in the title, as it is will be used as the Wiki page name even if you change the title in the future. Click create.

This creates a new blank wiki page.  It is critical that if you are going to paste text in to the page you use the Paste, Pates plaintext link in the Ribbon.  If you just use Ctrl -V to paste text you will carry over formatting from the original document, that can make you page look inconsistent, be hard to manage, and maybe not even show up properly on some machines.

SharePoint Foundation provides the Ribbon to Edit Text.  To save changes to the new Wiki click Save & Close.  To edit a Wiki Page click the Page Tab and first Check Out (to Check Out the Document) and Edit.  Both Check Out and Edit are in the right hand of the Ribbon.  Once you are dune editing a page click Check In on the top Ribbon.  Checking in will ask you to provide a comment for the version, and to fill out all necessary Metatadata
 

To add a href link to any web page on the Internet or intranet, you click Insert, highlight the text and click Link.

With version control turned on for Wikis each check-in creates a new version.  You can view version history by going to the Wiki Library, mousing over a item and right mousing clicking.  From the menu that shows up select Version history.

What is Office365?

Office 365 is Microsoft in the Cloud. They are selling IaaS services via Lnyc IM, SharePoint collaboration, and Exchange Server in the Cloud. The solution works both with Office in the Cloud or you can connect and collaborate via Office 2010 on your desktop.

It seems idea for smaller Enterprises that would like to have a full Enterprise information management solution but can't afford a data centre I really don't see existing data centres moving to Office 365 in the near future.

I have signed up for the Beta but Microsoft has not replied yet. A word to the wise, Microsoft has tried and pulled other Cloud solution in the recent past. I had a small business using Windows Live a few years back only to find it became a much more limited SkyDrive. Not cool. I also made dozen of PopFly Microsoft MashUps only to have them vanish one day. You are going to want to give Microsoft a year or so to prove this.

But I am pretty confident that this product will be a major part of Microsoft future.

BBC Says "SharePoint" in top tech story

Microsoft has ramped up its battle with Google in wooing business customers with its next generation cloud-based product.

While the software giant dominates the office space with a 94% market share it has been facing increased competition from Google.

At a San Francisco event, Microsoft unveiled Office 365.

The product brings together Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online.


BBC News - Microsoft bets to win in the cloud and rival Google

With Office 365 SharePoint has finally hit the mass consciousness. You think it has been a bandwagon the last 3 years, just wait now! In 24 hours I read the word SharePoint in both Mashable and BBC Technology. Normally I would have to Google for references to the term. This means SharePoint has gone for a technology platform to a common culture technology platform. Its not yet Windows or Office, but it is on its way.

Complete, WFE, or Stand-alone

Installing a SharePoint server you will be asked if you want a Complete, WFE, or Standalone. This window does not give you much advice in to which you should use.

image.axd (JPEG Image, 350x295 pixels)


Well Stand-alone is only when you are creating a single box with its own SQL Express, that one is pretty clear.

As for WFE and Complete, it would seem that the best practice would be to install your WFE servers as WFE and your Application server as Complete.

But I would not suggest doing that. The thing this window does not tell you is that a Complete installation can easily be reduced to just a WFE, but you may decide that your Web Front Ends should also query the index. There is also a chance that during the development cycle you may need to run everything on one server that will be a WFE ultimately, but needs to stand in for a while as a complete server.

I always install all servers as Complete, then go and turn services on and off in the administration tool later.

FOOTNOTE: This is no longer a confusion with SharePoint 2010 which has more intelligently limited the options to Standalone and Server Farm.

What is SharePoint?

This blog post is intended for someone who knows very little about SharePoint and has to quickly learn what it is.

Said simply SharePoint is Microsoft tool for creating Internet and Intranet sites. It accelerates the process of creating web pages by giving you a set of pre-created tools to make web sites.

Standard web sites include Portals, blogs, wikis, social networks and team sites.

SharePoints primary use is for document management. With sharepoint you can create a web page for sharing and creating word, excel, and power point documents. This gives you a more controlled and user friendly environment to make and share documents than a shared drive. SharePoint is very useful for project teams which need to work together, often over a wide area.

SharePoint also provides MySites, which can be thought of as a kind of Facebook for businesses. Be warned that only the 2010 MySites is really any good.

As for releases. SharePoint was first released in 2001. The first version that was fairly widely used was released in 2003. The product really took off with a 2007 relases (release 3) and we now have a 2010 release that promises further improvement.

SharePoint comes in a limited feature free download from Microsoft called WSS. WSS 2.0 (2003) and WSS 3.0 are free downloads you can search on Microsoft's site. WSS will be called SharePoint Foundations in 2010.

Microsoft also sells a licensed more feature rich version. SharePoint is almost always licensed on a per server basis, so for very large installation it can get very expensive.

Okay the quick and dirty. SharePoint is a very popular tool for groups and teams to share information. Its kind of a shared drive replacement in a browser. You can also use it to create web pages but be warned: it does not make very clean HTML and if you need a accessible site you might want to shy away.

SharePoint can be greatly extended by buying third party products or writing code in ASP.NET. Popular companies for extensions are Quest, AvePoint, K2, and Bamboo. I am sure I missed some but this is just an introduction.

Kirk Evans Blog : Using the Virtual Earth Control in SharePoint

Kirk Evans Blog : Using the Virtual Earth Control in SharePoint


Well with nothing much to do on the holiday I am learning Virtual Earth, and I came across this interesting blog post on getting Virtual Earth connected to SharePoint/

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Using host headers with your head

Okay, I think most of us SharePoint "people" already know that a web application can be given a host header. A host header is a FQDN or Fully qualified domain name. If we are on good talking terms with our DNS experts we can get FQDN URLs like https://portal.company.intranet.com.

Okay, so what can we do with this?

One of the problems with developing Enterprise solutions is that you have clusters of experts who maybe speak to each other for an hour and pass paper work around. For a SharePoint person a FQDN is just something they need to make host headers work.

But to a DNS expert FQDN open the ability to strucutre a intranet space. The FQDN provides an "exact location in the tree hierarchy" of the DNS, which means that a large tree or cluster of names that will help the user understand the Intranet.

Let us say our company intranet has a domain name ourcompany.com. Using DNS FQDN we can define, in DNS, names like portal.ourcompany.com, hr.ourcompany.com, collaboration.ourcompany.com.

By planning this tree out with our DNS team as part of the Information Architecture of SharePoint we can make the structure of the intranet more logical and easier to use.

Interview with Fujitsu on Document Scanning Systems with SharePoint-Episode 36

<a href="http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/shows/sharepointpodshow_episode_36.mp3">Click here to download the show!</a>

In episode 36 Rob, Nick, and Brett catch up with Thomas Postulka of Fujitsu to discuss document scanning systems and how they relate to SharePoint. Thomas was kind enough to sign up for an interview as part of the Road2SPC road show and even came out during a horrific storm to do the interview!

Interview with Fujitsu on Document Scanning Systems with SharePoint-Episode 36

Nicolas Georgeault's Twitt post thank you

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Bob Hooker's Golden Rules of Making SharePoint Community Work

What follows are a set of "rules" I have generated over years of working with SharePoint, more years on the Internet, and research. The goals of these rules are to create sites that provide collaboration while reducing opportunities for conflict, flames, and turf building.

First I present a set of inescapable truths:

The Inescapable Truths

1. People trust people they have worked with before
2. On any network there is a value of being first
3. Discussion forums almost always explode in to flames
4. Wikis, no matter how advanced, always look unfinished
5. When you start setting down rules you have already lost
6. The Internet presents as many risks for bad behavior as opportunities for good
   

Accepting these truths leads to these rules

The Golden Rules

1. Provide collaboration in WSS project teams sites.
2. Provide access only to members with a shared folder or blog to communicate to the greater community.
   
3. Company wide information should almost always be controlled by Web Content Management available in MOSS 2007 and not WSS.
   
4. Open discussions and chatsshould only be allowed on project sites by project members.
5. Establish a shared understanding of proper SharePoint practice. Net guides can only be of so much value. For example it is very bad form on the net to flame someone for spelling mistakes, in a business it is probably necessary to point them out.
6. Do not let managers and the works in the same forums.
7. Make sure you bloggers understand a shared set of rules, to not "hot dog", blogging is a duty and right.
8. Avoid Wikis unless you team is highly experienced and skills, and then try to avoid wikis all the same.
   

Event ID to track for SharePoint

I have come up with this list of key Event IDs to track for SharePoint 2007 in the event logs. They are not all the possible ones, but a list I have taken some effort in making. I would love to hear anyone who has any more Event IDs.

3359
3360
6142
3353
7035
6141
6395
6397
7034
7399
2100
3250
5149
5153
5400
5401
6457
6856
6857
6858
6143
6590
3351
3355
3358
3361
3363
3758
3759
3760
4972
4971
5214
5586
5762
5763
6875
6588
6589
7095
6396
6398
7037
6611
2424
2436
3013
3029
3078
3084
3090
10032
10044

Pretty exciting hum? Well I hope that help someone somewhere who has to hack together a quick project but I would really love some feedback on this one.

flickr.com - Traffic Details from Alexa: The rise of Twitter

flickr.com - Traffic Details from Alexa

As Web 2.0 tools go Flickr and YouTube are the old hands.  Yahoo, I have to say has failed against Google's YouTube.  When you think that everyone in the world has a digital camera and can take digital pictures that can be posted on Flickr in SMS, and that it was one of the earliest flagship Web 2.0 its stagnation against a more restricted YouTube is a bit sad. 

But Fickr has never helped people to achieve anything with its tool.

Facebook is a new comer which has recently become and established player much larger than Flickr.  Not because it offers much of anything, but because its easy to use and offers the community a tool where it can own its contacts and discussions.

Its all about ownership in Web 2.0  and we can see what I think to be the ultimate Web 2.0 tool: twitter.  Twitter I can't praise enough as a concept, and watch as it becomes the latest to break past Flickr in the major Web 2.0 field.

I've used Flickr now for about 5 years I think, and I have to say that in that time it has offered almost no improvement in function.   Actually I like Flickr 2004 much more than Flickr 2008 and I almost never use the product.

The main problem is Yahoo.  Yahoo does not get Web 2.0 and I hope Microsoft does take it over and bring some business sense to the product.  Microsoft does not seem to know it but it always has been doing "Web 2.0", Microsoft provides the standard tools for users to communicate with, and it can extend Office to THE web 2.0 tool.

I was a bit sad to see Azure does not yet have a branded Office section.  Office Live IMHO should not just be a PART of the mostly failed Live.com launch, but should be its own brand on the Internet.

flickr.com - Traffic Details from Alexa

Though Live's web presence is strong I find nobody comes to my blogs via Live.com even though I am blogging about SharePoint and Live.com!!!!  I am using Live.com myself and its kind of a lonely experience.

Live is hotmail, IM and maybe Office and I think rather than pushing some strange Azure concept Microsoft should push extending and integrating Office via the Cloud and SharePoint.

And that's my penny

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So What is SharePoint Anyways?

The most common question I get about SharePoint is what is it. Defining new IT tools is probably impossible, once people use it then they will know what it is. Terms like Databases, Spreadsheets, and Word Processors probably can only be understood through repeated use and exposure.

SharePoint is something very new and for most user it will not replace anything they have used before.

The best way I have found to define it is to talk about what it aims to accomplish. SharePoint aims to give you a place you can go to do you work, regardless of the computer you are on. As long as you have access to a companies network and a valid identity you can work from any machine.

SharePoint also can help teams share information and work together. It supports making intranet sites, document sites, blogs, wikis and other standard Web 2.0 collaborative functions.

SharePoint is not a replacement for email, but it could reduce your companies dependence on email. SharePoint can also help you establish guidance and policy for collaborative working, to insure people groups work more effectively.

Lets Get Serious!!!!! Out of the Box is the true value of SharePoint

Okay lets talk about how IT generally has been run in the past.

IT is often viewed by companies as a kind of immunization. Firms need to put IT in because anyone who does not purchase IT will soon lose their job. Staff people hate new IT systems, IT people hate talking to staff, and year after year the IT and Internet grows without any clear road maps or logical business justifications.

When I got in to IT 20 years ago it was simply taken for granted that most big IT projects would fail. Over the last 10 years there has been a growing demand for ROI, but this has been actualized in my experience via talk rather than reality. SharePoint projects have been finished but generally sit either unused or even used in ways that actually hurt give no benefit over file shares.

There is a joke about why Microsoft offerings can't go after SAP. Any company that uses SAP has someone who purchased SAP, and anyone who purchase SAP can't be very interested in reality, truth or ROI. I know little about SAP but I think the joke admits something wider about the larger marketplace: a failure to see the truth of the sorry state of Enterprise adoption of IT has created a profession that is more of a religion than a science.

As far as I can tell the conditions around serious SharePoint adoption are pretty obvious. You are buying SharePoint not because its cheap or better than any other product. The reason you have SharePoint over another ECM stack is because its Microsoft. Microsoft is more of a government than a company; by using Microsoft you can engage in modern global network economics.

For example I started working in Microsoft in the early 1990s, when the firm made a big successful play for the Information Worker space. Today the reason firms use Office rather than OpenOffice is because they can find staff who know how to use the product and FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH IT.

I think Microsoft has forgotten this basis of their advantage. Office 2007 and Vista both fail to build on the established space of Microsoft as the system everyone knows and DOES NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT. Office 2003 and Windows XP establish a standard set of tools like a standard typewriter or accounting ledger. You know you can get staff globally who know how to use it.

In the 1990s there were 2 ways to do an Office roll-out. One was to give your users Office and spend the money training them. The other was to spend tons of money writing VBA appliations to run in the Office tools to carry out all your special "business logic". Today any Enterprise that went down the VBA is stuck with millions or billions of lines of business logic stuck in silos. The better way to go was to use Office out of the box.

Remember that all generalizations are false, including this one. Still radical standards are good starting points for thinking and here is my radical stand on SharePont out of the box!!!!

Its stupid to NOT deploy as an out of the box. Money spent on styling and custom Web Parts is money almost certainly poorly spent. I would go as far to say that SharePoint should only be customized in cases were you have high accessability requirements (AA or AAA) or massive legacy systems that need integration and portal deployment (in which case you should be looking for a SOA broker). In both cases I doubt MOSS is the best PORTAL tool.

Out of the box SharePoint deployments have the following benefits:

1. You can find staff who have SharePoint experience, gain from collective experience. Just as you don't have to train new staff in Windows or Office you won't have to train staff in 4 years to use OTB MOSS. Think about it!!!!
2. You can connect to other firms who use SharePoint without worrying about customizations. We live in the economy of networks, open standards are good but nothing can beat actually standard tools. The ability to connect to other companies IT systems quickly could give great benefits.
3. SharePoint can be very hard to customize.

I think only very mature SharePoint implementations should be at a point where complex WebParts and Workflows are needed. Deploy SharePoint first as an Out of the Box with solid Information Management rules. BPM and SOA should be long term road maps with SharePoint as a part.

Branding a Blog The Easy Way

The easiest way to brand a blog is to select a theme



Go to site settings and then select Site Theme



This gives you a set of colour schemes you can use to quickly style a site

Creating a Blog in MOSS 2007

For now lets assume you know how to create a Web Application in MOSS, which I will cover again and again later. Web Applications create unique Web Sites in IIS. When first created they are empty. The provide a Web Site, and Application Poll and a Database to store the application poll, but as I said they are empty. To create Site Collection link on the document above should be clicked to put a site collection in the Web Application I have created.


In the web application on port 2009 I select a Blog template and give it the name "Home" You can call it anything.




One of my bones with MOSS is there is just room for 2 primary administrators at start. More can be added later but it would be nice to declare one for business, one for IT and a top level Enterprise account. These administrators can not be group accounts but only unique accounts. I find a best practice is to have a shared account like SharePoint Admin of Administrator used to create all of these. Therefore in the future you will always have administration control.

In this case I select no quota and just press okay.



A blog is created with Out of the Box styling. I do prefer the Blogger set up where you select one of many template styles as part of the blog production, but remember MOSS is more for Enterprise and in the wild and generally you will have a stand look and feel in place on your estate.

The above steps also work with WSS 3.

EcontentMag.com: MarkLogic Announces Connector for SharePoint and a Free Toolkit for Word

John Kreisa, director of industry solutions at MarkLogic, says many customers are looking for a way out from under cumbersome, expensive ECM solutions. His company saw one possible solution to customers’ problems when it realized so many were migrating to Microsoft’s SharePoint. By connecting "out of the box SharePoint applications with the MarkLogic server," the company hopes to provide a nimble alternative to heavier applications, says Kreisa.

EcontentMag.com: MarkLogic Announces Connector for SharePoint and a Free Toolkit for Word

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Why SharePoint?

If I had to sum of the core thing using SharePoint will get your staff I would do so in a true story that happened to me.

About 4 years ago I I had a HP laptop that one day fell out of my locker.

Slowly but surely over the next few days the blue screen of death popped up again and again. I took it to support and a few hours later a very worried looking young man came to my office.

He was clearly scared to tell me that my computer's hard drive was damaged and lost.

I grinned and simply asked when I could get a new hard drive.

He seemed surprised by my lack of concern. Certainly I had lost some things that would need to be re-installed but I was using SharePoint 2003 for team sites and my own MySite. Most of my critical content I needed to work was stored.

That is the core utility of this tool.

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Open Text releases Recruiting Management for Microsoft SharePoint

WATERLOO - Open Text(TM) announced yesterday the release of Open Text Recruiting Management for Microsoft SharePoint, a native Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 application for collaborative hiring case management that helps to simplify the recruiting process within organizations. This release is part of a continuing Open Text strategy to build applications that extend Office SharePoint Server 2007, based on the Open Text ECM Suite.

Daily Exchange

Open Text is really pushing its partnership with SharePoint pretty hard.  The fact that the industry leader ECM product is embracing SharePoint is all the proof you need of the future of SharePoint.

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