SharePoint Center of Excellence - Why You Need One #spc12

For the first time, this year’s Microsoft SharePoint Conference had a dedicated “Business” track for non-technical, business decision makers and judging by the 600 plus people that packed in to this session there was a huge demand.

This session was presented by Andrew Woodward, a longstanding SharePoint MVP, the founder of UK based consultancy 21Apps, and this week named as one of the top 25 social influencers for SharePoint.

In his introduction Andrew explained that his background was in agile software development but that he had come to realize that it doesn’t matter how good the code was if the requirements were wrong, and that this had led him to move to this business orientated side of SharePoint.

His aim in this session, he told us, was to redefine the concept of a Center of Excellence (CoE), and that in his definition the CoE was non-technical. He explained that this was an ongoing process, and that there was room to develop the idea further.

Challenges

Andrew described the challenge facing SharePoint projects, “Experience shows that without the right team in place to support the adoption, exploitation and promotion of new ways of working organizations struggle to achieve the expected return on investment.”

Andrew went on to introduce us to a number of models and approaches that he uses to help define organizational challenges relating to SharePoint. Firstly we were shown the Cynefin framework, which is used to describe problems, situations and systems.

Figure 1: A Cynefin framework diagram

Next Andrew explained the Montgomery Burns test for validating a SharePoint vision statement, and was surprised to find that around 90 percent of the audience didn’t seem to have an explicit vision for SharePoint anyway.

Andrew suggested that we use our stated aim for our SharePoint project to complete the statement, “The Montgomery Burns award for outstanding achievement for …” If your vision fits well into the statement then it probably needs further work. For example, “The Montgomery Burns award for outstanding achievement for improved collaboration,” or, “The Montgomery Burns award for outstanding achievement for excellence in collaboration.”

Finally Andrew showed us the Kapitola Pathway which he uses to align the use of SharePoint with organizational goals. Here’s an example he showed which illustrates why the empire might build the death star.

As the model shows, the basic idea is to map actions and rationale with left and right arrows. Andrew explained that the benefits of this approach are that it provides an end-to-end view of how SharePoint fits into broader organizational strategies, validates broader strategic plans by testing them against projects and initiatives, and that the technique allows the CoE to quickly validate and challenge the business requests.

Figure 2: Example Kapitola Pathway 

SharePoint Center of Excellence

Andrew opened his discussion on the SharePoint CoE by explaining that what they do is be the single point of contact for everything related to SharePoint in the organization. We were advised to brand the SharePoint Center of Excellence and to develop a mission statement.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

How Unisys Used the Power of SharePoint to Socially Enable a Global Workforce #spc12

Fresh from the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, my overview of a great session looking at how one multi-national company created a vibrant knowledge sharing culture using SharePoint.

I think that along with the analyst sessions, the customer showcase sessions at SharePoint conferences are the most valuable. I was particularly looking forward to this session as Unisys has long been at the forefront of collaboration and social computing with SharePoint.

I covered a session on Communities at Unisys at last year's SharePoint conference here on CMSWire. In this session, Gloria Burke, Director of Knowledge and Collaboration Strategy and Governance, took us through the three year journey to develop a global social intranet at Unisys.

To add a little extra spice, Gloria had this week been named as one of the top 7 Social Business Leaders of 2012. The stage was set.

Challenges

Speaking to an audience of over 300 people, Gloria opened the session by setting the scene at Unisys, a worldwide IT Services company with over 22,500 employees in 100 countries, dealing with both commercial and government clients.

The challenges that the business faced in 2010 would probably be very familiar, Gloria told us. They included knowledge silos, employees struggling to locate subject matter experts, an inefficient on-boarding system, a disconnect between ideas and innovation, and an inconsistent approach to the capture and re-use of knowledge. Everyone seemed to agree that this sounded all too familiar.

Vision

Gloria described her approach to dealing with these challenges. She had begun with a series of leadership interviews to assess internal views. For the external view, she had engaged analyst organizations such as Forrester Research and Gartner who provided external benchmarking. She used these inputs to define an end state vision for both tools and culture over a three year period.

The key elements of that vision included the development of a knowledge sharing culture, enabling employees to build a professional online persona, leveraging social tools to streamline access to information, integrating social tools into core business processes and empowering employees.  To realize the vision, the program would have to have five key work streams:

1. connection and collaboration
2. intellectual capital capture, repurpose and reuse
3. knowledge access, management and governance
4. infrastructure and application
5. culture and transformation.

Tools

We were shown a timeline which illustrated the Unisys journey over the past three years. The journey began in June 2010 with the deployment of SharePoint MySites, which included integration to import skills from employees from PeopleSoft into MySite Profiles.

This was followed by the launch of a center for Communities of practice. The center provided information and features to help users find, join and organize communities, and included a community manager tool. Gloria emphasized that there had been a focus on both strategic — or top-down communities, and organic — or bottom-up communities.

Communities at Unisys are categorized as know what, know how, know who, and know more. Variations on classic knowledge management definitions I noted. Employees are hard aligned to communities relating to their business unit, but also have the option to self-subscribe to communities in which they are interested.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Summary of 'Creating Your Brand in SharePoint 2013 On-Premises or In the Cloud' #spc12

Fresh from my first developer session at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, "Creating Your Brand in SharePoint 2013 On-Premises or In the Cloud," I'm here to share a few of presenters Randy Drisgill and John Ross's tips for building a branded website in SharePoint 2013.

I was afraid entering the session that it would be code heavy, but was assured early on that there wasn't much code involved.

Agenda:

• Intro Branding On Premises and Online
• Low Effort branding
• Medium Effort branding
• High Effort branding
• SharePoint Online

Introduction

The talk begins with examples of branding, showing Microsoft logos that have changed over the years. Branding applies to all of your company's marketing and websites and can involve images, logos, CSS, etc.

Microsoft offers two plans, each with separate branding capabilities: small business plan and enterprise plan. It is interesting to see that Microsoft has different abilities on branding in the different plans.

The approach to branding is Low, Medium, High and apparently there is a fair amount of change beginning with the Medium Effort. When you reach the medium effort, it's time to bring in design manager.

Low Effort Branding

Page editor in SharePoint 2013 is pretty much the same as it was in SharePoint 2010: it still has the ribbon where you can add video, images, web parts, etc. I usually think that content publishing is important to get branding to look nice and create a good user experience.

Some of the new capabilities include composed looks — the themes have evolved and enable you to create themes with custom images and colors, master pages, etc.

My observation is that the default themes are pretty ugly. They actually looks a bit like editing a WordPress theme, but with less functionality, you choose your theme location, image url’s, master page url, and more. You can choose which fonts can be available in the editor, not sure that it's useful, but it's an option.

Medium Effort Branding

Medium effort branding brings the design manager into play. The design manager can be found in the site actions, but you need to have publishing activated on the site in order to locate it.

Basically you get your HTML and CSS uploaded to the design manager, then apply SharePoint objects like search. SharePoint designer is optional when using design manager, you are free to use whatever web tool to create your branding: notepad, Coda etc.

Both the master page and the page layouts can be edited with your web tools.

You can use the snippets gallery to get your navigation, breadcrumbs, search boxes, title, logo, etc. into the HTML design by copying the snippet code from the snippet gallery into the HTML code, then adding your own CSS and branding to it.

All of this can be done in a sandbox solution before publishing.

In your master page gallery folder you can create a subfolder to store all of your branding assets. Keep it nice and simple so that it is easy to understand and manage. A good practice is to document what you do as well; you may need it if your servers crash.

Before you start adding snippets, publish a version of the HTML file, this will give you a master page in the theme folder. When you've done this, you can go into the snippets gallery and change the options on the snippets you want, copy the snippets code and add to the HTML file in the place you want it. When you click save the HTML file will update the master file automatically. Pretty sweet!

Important to remember here is that you need to brand all of your site templates that you use, if you don’t you will get an unbranded page when you search or similar.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

What's New in Enterprise Content Management for SharePoint 2013 #spc12

The topic of enterprise content management (ECM) on SharePoint is always a hot one, and the hype is ever-growing with the 2013 release. 

After all Microsoft is a Gartner MQ ECM Leader, so it must continue to innovate in this space to keep up with the other ECM leaders. At #spc12, I attended a session covering Microsoft’s efforts to increase their clout in ECM with SharePoint 2013. The presenters were Tejas Mehta, Microsoft Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Jim Masson, Group Product Manager — Enterprise Content Management.

ECM in SharePoint 2010 vs SharePoint 2013

The session began with a quick recap of what Microsoft’s message was with the 2010 release and how that contrasts to the current message with 2013. In 2010, Microsoft really drove home the concept of combining traditional ECM capabilities with newer social capabilities on one platform. The impact of enterprise social was a major shift for Microsoft, and they drove that notion with much of the features in the 2010 Office/SharePoint products.

But we’re 3 years removed from that change, and most organizations are at the very least aware of enterprise social and looking at ways to invest in it. In 2013, the message with ECM is one of convergence and usability. This is in line with the greater Microsoft message about cleaner interfaces and better usability across all of their flagship products, which recently had brand new releases this year.

ECM in SharePoint: Create, Control, Protect

More specifically, the marketing team is selling the theme by highlighting 3 specific pillars, Create, Control and Protect.

Create: Content Creation & Access

The Create pillar is all about content creation and access. Microsoft is making it easier to find documents and e-mail together in SharePoint with unified views on team sites. For social, the newsfeeds are much more impactful for understanding how your colleagues are working with content that you’re interested in. The enterprise social features are much easier to use and they resemble the big social networks, as you can follow just about anything in SharePoint and even use mentions and hashtags, a la Twitter.

Control: Governance & Search Driven Experiences

The second pillar, Control, has a focus on a mixture of governance along with search driven user experiences. And although the oft-overused term of governance has been fairly played out, there were five specific things in the demo that showed how the product team is increasing value in this pillar.

First we saw a demo of dragging and dropping a document from Windows Explorer right into SharePoint without having to load any windows or apply metadata. This was also shown during the keynote, and for obvious reasons garnered several applauses. Right after that we were shown how you can edit more than one document at the same time from within SharePoint and apply different types of metadata than you could with 2010.

Specifically you can apply managed metadata terms en masse to all the documents in the library without much trouble. Again, applause from the attendees. The next is the ease of dragging and dropping e-mails from your inbox to Exchange site mailboxes, which can be unified with SharePoint documents on a team site. The great thing here is that any relevant retention policies will apply to both the documents in SharePoint and the Exchange site mailbox. The next was a really nice showing of the new metadata-based navigation with the content query web part in SharePoint. The idea is that you use a managed metadata term set to create a visually appealing navigation based on content already stored in SharePoint matching those terms. And last but not least, we were shown the support that SharePoint 2013 has for HTML 5 video content as well as its ability to automatically recognize video-based content when posting a link on the feed.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint 2013 - Planning a Search Strategy

The Olympic Games and US Presidential Elections come around every four years but SharePoint upgrades come on a three year cycle. There are still organizations using SharePoint 2007 and in the process of migrating to SharePoint 2010 and now we have SharePoint 2013 in all its glory.  

Microsoft also seems to be hinting that in future there could be more frequent upgrades. Before long you will probably be able to major in Microsoft Upgrade and Migration Planning at most major universities.

My particular interest is in enterprise search and here I have to congratulate Microsoft on the progress it has made since the fairly terrible search functionality in SharePoint 2007. The company was also smart enough to go out and buy FAST Search and Transfer in 2008, but not quite smart enough about financial due diligence and building a sensible search technology strategy for itself and for SharePoint.

The Technology Story So Far

The immediate result was the arrival of FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010, abbreviated to FS4SP. This took a lot of the components of FAST ESP 5.3, suitably modified to SharePoint 2010, and offered a substantial enhancement to SharePoint Search 2010 which itself was a significant leap forward from the search offering in SharePoint 2007.

Two issues immediately became obvious. First, many companies were convinced that they now had a licence for FAST ESP 5.3 and had no idea of the real state of affairs. Second, no one in the Microsoft partner community had any idea of how to get the best (or indeed anything at all!) out of FS4SP. My experience says that not that much has changed since launch unless the company has brought in external implementation expertise.

In 2010 Wrox published "Professional Microsoft Search" by Mark Bennett and his colleagues that covered all the Microsoft search products (including FAST ESP 5.3) in 450 pages. It is an excellent book because of the substantial amount of guidance it gives on the skills and management attention needed to get the best out of any search application.

It was not until earlier this year that Microsoft itself published "Working with Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint," which runs to 450 pages just on FS4SP. There are so many omissions from this book that it would take me the rest of this column to list them, but the most notable are no references at all to using search logs to manage search performance and a total absence of any indications of the staffing requirements to support the product. It creates the impression that search implementation is a project, when at the minimum it is a program and in reality it is a journey without end. 

The other significant problem is that (unlike the Wrox book) the book does not tell you what FS4SP does not do. A good example is document thumbnails, which out of the box are only supported for Word documents and Powerpoint files. Certainly there are some good third-party solutions (Documill comes to mind) but that misses the point.

Fortunately there are many excellent search implementation companies (Comperio, Findwise, Raytion and Search Technologies for example) that can really make FS4SP sing and dance but that inevitably adds to the implementation cost. Even then, any company running FS4SP probably needs a search support team of at least 3-4 people full time. A look at Sadie van Buren’s invaluable SharePoint benchmarking service shows search way down the list in maturity of implementation.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Harmon.ie Unveils Top 25 Online SharePoint Influencers for 2012

Today, Harmon.ie announced its list of the Top 25 online SharePoint Influencers. This second annual list brings together bloggers, writers and other industry professionals who have made a substantial impact on the SharePoint industry.

Harmon.ie, a company that creates software solutions to improve the social experience for users, commissioned to see who within the SharePoint community was not only the most innovative, but who also were the most informed and influential in terms of building a strong collaborative and social enterprise. They looked at over 700 potential candidates and eventually whittled the list down to 25 people.

The Top 10 SharePoint Influencers, according to the list from Harmon.ie
 

How Does the List Work?

When Harmon.ie was trying to determine who would make their list, there were certain factors that played a key role in who was chosen. These factors which were weighed and then determined the rank of the candidate include:

• How frequently their tweets were re-tweeted
• How much visitors they had to their their blog and how far it reached within the SharePoint Industry.
• How many citations they were given by other bloggers and colleagues.

Two things are coming into play here — SharePoint has become a more strategic platform for businesses, while users are looking for better social solutions, adoption strategies and innovative approaches to business problems,” said Mark Fidelman, CEO of Evolve!, a social business consultancy, and leading social strategist of the Top 25 Influencer Award. “These 25 individuals are passionate advocates, who are re-defining the value of social community and collaboration.”

Who Topped the List?

The individual scores of the top 25 range from 5455 to 3025. While the list is available on the Harmon.ie website, the following are those who ranked in the top five.

• Joel Oleson: Joel, who has 5455 points in the ranking system, is a SharePoint content and collaboration solutions manger for LDS Church, a former Microsoft senior technical product manager and was part of a team who designed Microsoft’s global search, intranet and teams sites. In 2011, he was in second place on Top 25 SharePoint Influencers List.
• Mark Miller: Mark, with a score of 5450, is the founder and editor of EndUserSharePoint.com. He also helps organizations with their social media development and building their online community.
• Andrew Connell: With a score of 4975, Andrew is ranked third. He is a SharePoint developer and instructor who has a also co-founded Critical Path Training, which educates and trains individuals in SharePoint. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Office SharePoint Server.
• Laura Rogers: Laura has a score of 4520. With eight years experience in the industry, she is now a senior SharePoint specialist at Rackspace Hosting and is a Microsoft MVP. She’s also written a variety of books in the subject including: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Step by Step and Beginning SharePoint 2010: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint.
• John Mancini: With a score of 4490, John is ranked in fifth place. He is the president of the Association for Information and Image management (AIIM), which is a document and content management non-profit association.

A Big Year for SharePoint

With its 2013 version scheduled to be released this month and a conference next week, the list comes at an important time for those in the SharePoint industry. More and more products are being announced for the platform or are being updated so they are compatible with this new release. 

Recently, BA Insight announced use its Longitude Connectors to connect the newest version of SharePoint to about 30 different business related enterprise systems. And when Metalogix renamed its Migration Manager tool to Content Matrix they also announced that it could be used to move content from an older version of SharePoint to the 2013 version. But that's only a taste of what's to come.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Six Ways to Improve the Content Contributor Experience in SharePoint

Content drives websites, so making content contributors comfortable in the editing environment is essential to the successful adoption of a SharePoint WCM experience.

Here are just a few ideas for simple improvements that can make a world of difference in adoptability. 

1. Design for Both Contributors and Visitors from the Start

For any Web CMS project, there are two end user audiences to consider: regular site visitors and content contributors. Approach the project with those two audiences in mind — not as an afterthought. While designers typically focus on the visitor experience, designers and developers need to work together closely to construct usable experiences for content contributors.

2. Customize Contribution Experiences

SharePoint allows a lot of flexibility in customizing the editing experience. Not every experience requires extensive customization, but many key experiences do.

Sometimes this means normalizing the experience so that the content contributor doesn’t have to worry about what piece of content goes where or how to format it consistently. Sometimes it means using form-based editing instead of in-context editing. Sometimes it means automating some sequence of native SharePoint capabilities. And sometimes it means creating custom editing controls, custom site actions or specialized web parts. Successful customizations will save time and simplify decisions for content contributors.

3. Remove Extraneous Options Where Possible

When creating a page in SharePoint within a site’s “News” section, it’s unlikely that you’ll need to choose a “Product Description” layout. So why is it even an option?

Removing contextually irrelevant page layouts, ribbon options, site actions and other such options will help contributors to create the right content using the right tools in the right place, not to mention that it’ll help keep the branding police off your back. These simple configuration changes in SharePoint can dramatically simplify and improve the page creation experience.

4. Plan a Clear Content Reuse Strategy

Content can be reused in SharePoint in a variety of ways (CQWP, metadata, custom lists, etc.) and can make small contributions go a long way. Automatically surface teaser content on landing pages, blog entries on your home page and “related” content on any page. 

Content contributors will be grateful if portions of the site effectively maintain themselves. Just remember to be clear about where the content originates (don’t make them hunt for the place to make a change!). With a thoughtful content reuse strategy, content contributors can feel like they’re making a real impact on the overall site.

5. Provide On-Page Guidance

Adding content to a SharePoint page experience should never be a guessing game for content editors. Clearly labeled fields with brief descriptive and/or instructive text can help the editor know what content is expected, how to use metadata tagging or why certain fields are required.

6. Use Homegrown Training Materials

All content editors should receive some basic level of SharePoint training, but generic training materials have real limitations. If you have customized the look and feel of your SharePoint site or have followed any of the above contribution customizations, the editing experience will differ from that reflected in the generic training materials.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

MetaVis Offers SharePoint Governance With Advanced Content Crawling

The 2012 SharePoint conference starts next Monday, and with a week yet to go vendors are already lining up with this year’s announcements. MetaVis, which specializes in SharePoint information management and governance, has announced that it will be previewing Informant for SharePoint.

SharePoint, File Sharing

Informant is a governance and compliance tool for SharePoint that takes into account not just the explosion in data across the enterprise, but all the ways that information is making its way into the enterprise, particularly through file shares.

File shares have multiplied the amount of content coming into the enterprise to levels never seen before, and while that on its own is difficult to manage, the potential for information to move in the opposite direction and out of the enterprise is a security and compliance nightmare.

Here MetaVis cites SkyDrive, Dropbox, Google Docs, Amazon S3, Outlook e-mail and legacy file shares as the main culprits, but there are many more applications, and many more ways that content can leave the enterprise.

The only way to regulate that effectively is by regulating and monitoring the content, which is what Informant is designed to do.

MetaVis Informant architecture

Informant offers an easy way for enterprises to crawl, analyze and report on issues around content to ensure that it is located where it should be, and that it is not leaving the enterprise uncontrolled.

SharePoint Data Governance

According to Peter Senescu, President and Co-founder of MetaVis Technologies:

The increased use of SharePoint, file systems and cloud-based file systems have left many companies asking what information sits across these unstructured data silos “Organizations need tools that will allow them to crawl, analyze and enforce governance policies for their unstructured data – no matter where it resides…”

MetaVis Informant resource selection
 

With MetaVis Informant companies will be able to:

• Identify Sensitive Information: Identify sensitive information across multiple sources using advance crawling and advanced analytics.
• Content reporting: Develop detailed analysis of all enterprise content as well as identifying content that falls outside current policies.
• Automation: Enforce compliance standards in SharePoint, Office 365 and other file systems.
• Advanced Security: Apply desired permissions or lock-down objects like libraries, folders and lists.
• Take Action: Auto tag, archive, backup and set field values based on analysis and compliance policy reports.

The public beta of Informant, which is available for download now, supports not just SharePoint 2013, but also previous versions of SharePoint as well as Office 365, Dropbox and file systems. Support for Google Drive, Amazon S3 and Outlook e-mail is coming soon.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Harmon.ie Connect for SharePoint Aims to Cross Platforms, Devices

Enterprise workflow integration specialist harmon.ie is releasing Connect for SharePoint, a collaboration tool designed to create a single, unified user experience that crosses not only multiple devices but also the Microsoft and Apple platforms.

A Window on the Virtual and Mobile World

Connect for SharePoint allows document and social information from disparate sources and operating systems to appear in one window with a consistent user experience on both mobile and fixed devices. Changes immediately become visible across all connected platforms and devices, without any special setup or configuration.

For mobile users, harmon.ie says Connect for SharePoint makes the iPad “enterprise ready” to enable secure document creation and sharing directly from the iPad platform. The solution also supports mobile device management (MDM) for mobile distribution and provisioning. 

Harmon.ie Follows Gartner’s Advice, Targets BYOD Users

In May 2012, harmon.ie made the list of “Cool Vendors in Social Software and Collaboration” compiled by Gartner. Harmon.ie received kudos for addressing the "hurdle" of collaborating without having to leave email, but Gartner warned that the company must expand beyond the narrow range of email and document collaboration tools it currently integrates.

Right around the time that report was released, harmon.ie was already starting to heed Gartner’s recommendation by debuting a new mobile SharePoint iPad app which provides iPad users with the social interaction and document collaboration power of SharePoint, but also adds the ability to share items via links instead of email attachments.

Harmon.ie is continuing to follow Gartner’s advice with Connect for SharePoint, which greatly increases the ability for employees to collaborate without worrying about device or OS specifications. The solution seems especially aimed at the constantly growing number of BYOD users who leverage an array of disparate personal devices from numerous vendors — running on both Microsoft and Apple operating systems — in their jobs. Allowing BYOD users to easily collaborate and share documents and information solves one key problem of BYOD, though others — such as security — remain. 

‘SharePointWendy’ Gives Thumbs Up

SharePoint blogger Wendy Neal (“SharePointWendy”) gives Connect for SharePoint a positive review. “(W)hen users are out of the office or away from their desks, they can still enjoy the same consistent user experience, and any changes they make to documents or interactions with colleagues are automatically synchronized across all devices and platforms,” states Neal. She also verifies that changes made on one platform or device will immediately be visible on the others and says the “iPad and iPhone versions look very similar to, and provide the same functionality, as the harmon.ie sidebar in Outlook, thus promoting consistency and familiarity across platforms and devices.”

Neal does mention one downside. Users of iOS devices “need to have some kind of app installed that allows you to modify Office documents.” She says harmon.ie expects to natively support Windows and Android platforms in 2013.

Harmon.ie Connect is available from the App Store or as an MDM package download. Stand-alone versions of harmon.ie are available for free via a mobile app available on iTunes and a desktop app from harmon.ie. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

9 Ways to Stay Productive on SharePoint

When I paired up with fellow SharePoint expert Geoff Varosky (@gvaro) last year for a presentation at SPTechCon Boston, we decided to create a fake company as part of our effort to create use cases and working examples without having to rely on the Microsoft-provided generic company Contoso. During our working sessions, somehow the conversation degraded (if you know Geoff and I, this is not surprising) into a wild and silly fake company, where our characters (yes, we created characters) were also in a band together. So we found ourselves in Boston, presenting several beginner scenarios on how someone new to SharePoint could quickly become a "rock star," with all of our examples based around the activities two fake employees in a fake rock band called Horse's End.

Why Horse's End? Our fake company was called Hoffman Ruler Supply of South-East North Dakota, with the acronym of HRSSEND. Hence, Horse's End was born. Check out our fake 'Behind the Music' video. 

All silliness aside, there was actually some good content that came out of that well-attended session, where we provided a quick walk through of some of the basic Information Worker activities in SharePoint that can make you more productive more quickly. However, a couple conversation threads came out of that event around end user adoption, and I thought I'd expand on that topic.

One of the difficulties for any organization in trying to get a solid return on investment in any collaboration platform is getting their employees to use the tools. Many IT organizations treat productivity issues as a technical issue — they think that somehow more tools and more IT spending will solve many of the problems they face, but the problems organizations have are typically cultural issues, not technology issues. And the way to solve those issues is to change the culture around the platform by talking about it, sharing experiences and making change management (issues, feature requests, business alignment efforts) more transparent. 

At the core, however, it takes proactive end users who are seeking ways to improve their skills and overall productivity. In our SPTechCon session, Geoff and I outlined nine ways that end users could stay productive on SharePoint as follows: 

1. Use it

Sounds simple enough, but breaking the bad habits of managing documents through email, or sharing files with team members using web-based free tools, can take time. Make a concerted effort to move your content and activities into SharePoint, and get familiar with all of its capabilities.

2. Keep using it

Consistency is key, as it is very easy to slip back into those bad habits. Make an effort to use the full capability of the platform — don't just use it as a glorified file share, but add your content, tag it with relevant keywords, share it with those within your project team or organization, and slowly expand your knowledge around forms, workflow and social so that you can get the most out of the platform.

3. Solve one problem at a time

One mistake many organizations make is trying to solve all of the business problems at once. Don't try it. Instead, outline the business processes you would like to improve, and then prioritize them, attacking them one by one. This will allow you to learn from your mistakes, and refine your plans as you go. You'll also learn what can be done out of the box, so you won't rely too heavily on customizations.

4. Learn from others, share your experiences

Whether through forums, at conferences or within your company halls, share details on what you are doing with the platform, and look for how other teams have deployed similar solutions so that you can share your best practices, and learn from theirs.

5. Get involved in your company user group

Make SharePoint a social activity. Attend your company's weekly or monthly SharePoint user groups, or start one up. It might be two people getting together over lunch once a month to talk SharePoint best practices, but you'll be amazed at how much you can improve what you are doing — and learn about new functionality — by talking with others who understand your business, your industry and your company culture.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

What SharePoint Means for Business? Pundits Weigh In #SharePointSym

What better way to start the day than by asking some of the best known SharePoint experts about SharePoint? This morning SharePoint Symposium started with a Pundit Debate in which Tony Byrne, Mary-Foley and Martin White shared their thoughts on SharePoint today and its impact on the technology sector. Here's what we learned.

What Does SharePoint Bring to Business?

Many of the questions centered around the idea that SharePoint 2013, while providing much needed features and functionality to existing SharePoint users, doesn’t offer enough incentives for non-users to convert and subscribe. As a result, Office 365 may be the best tool to help show off SharePoint functionality via a lite version, which is much easier to implement and use.

When it comes to the digital workplace, which has ultimately changed the way people work, engage and collaborate with one another from remote locations, what does SharePoint bring to the conversation? While SharePoint itself cannot make you better at embracing a digital workplace culture, Tony Byrne (Real Story Group) suggests that there things developers and managers can do to integrate it better. He says that SharePoint needs to become the object, not the subject of the conversation — that way, it’s not an afterthought, but rather a driver of innovation.

Furthermore, the issue of SharePoint in the digital workplace is affected more by the challenges of enterprise information management than by the actual product itself. In other words, it’s not SharePoint’s fault that you don’t have a better information governance strategy in place.

Editor's Note: Also from the SharePoint Symposium: Knowledge Networks, Content Intelligence and The Zen of SharePoint #SharePointSym

The Culture of SharePoint

However, while SharePoint is not likely to overtly influence your organizational culture, there are things it can do to help. Mary-Jo Foley (ZDNet) suggested that after speaking to some super users, Microsoft may not be as forthcoming with information or employing fewer open communication channels with users. This may or may not be strategic so they can adopt the secretive aura trademarked by Apple and others. However, I have noticed that communication has improved greatly by those companies recently acquired by Microsoft (i.e. Yammer and Skype), which could one day be integrated into SharePoint.

Those in attendance (in person and online) seemed to agree that while secrecy may work for gaming and personal devices, it doesn’t necessarily instill confidence in those having to deploy and install enterprise applications, which often need details to plan accordingly.

SharePoint Now & Later

Effectively preparing your company for SharePoint deployment can be the difference between high and low user adoption. So, what does an ideal SharePoint team and deployment look like? It wasn't easy for the pundits to describe it, because just as SharePoint is never all things to all businesses, it depends on who you are, what your users do and the scale at which you’re deploying.

However, most agreed that having a leader that champions the user experience is critical. Additionally, successfully planning for SharePoint requires not just a focus on the present, but what your users will be doing and how your organization will look three years from now (you know, when the next SharePoint update is released). In fact, if you’re a self-described Intranet Manager, it may be your time to embrace a larger role advocating for the practical things that users need to get done today.

I was surprised to learn about the implications SharePoint has or can have on organizational culture. SharePoint is a platform, not a magic solution that will suddenly transform your company into an enterprise collaboration and information management powerhouse. There is still much work to be done before you deploy, subscribe or update.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Knowledge Networks, Content Intelligence and The Zen of SharePoint #SharePointSym

It’s not everyday that I attend a SharePoint conference and become engaged in academic discussions about the value of knowledge sharing and content intelligence. Such was the case when I attended the opening keynote of the KMWorld 2012 of which the SharePoint Symposium was a part.

A Higher SharePoint

Listening to David Weinberger, one of the authors of Cluetrain Manifesto and Co-Director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab at Harvard University; and Jeremy Bentley, CEO  and founder of Smartlogic speak about how the concept of knowledge is changing and how applying content intelligence to the information collected can improve its value, respectively, you can’t help but understand SharePoint on whole other level.

When you think about it, SharePoint isn’t simply a platform, it’s a knowledge network. The benefits of knowledge networks go way beyond simply sharing information. According to Weinberger, participating in knowledge networks, whether it’s SharePoint or Reddit, makes us better equipped to be better humans. We learn how to appreciate the power of disagreement and difference, while at the same time we embrace humility and display generosity. It takes a lot to ask a question in a public forum, and requires great confidence to supply an answer. Even if we are able to hide behind a clever moniker or avatar, participating in knowledge sharing makes us quite vulnerable.

Is Your SharePoint Portal an Echo Chamber?

As a result, Weinberger cautions, we resort to echo chambers to make us feel safer and secure. We are among our own in forums where we’re most likely to agree with the answers given, whether they be political, personal or professional in nature. Weinberger challenges us to embrace the messiness, the vulnerability and the uncertainty that knowledge sharing brings by learning how to appreciate difference and diversity of the crowd.

When creating our own networks, he urges us to learn how to deal with difference in useful ways, like approaching issues from different perspectives, or asking questions about the things we don’t know and inviting others to ask questions about us.

When you think of SharePoint, the same strategies should apply. Are your users power users, or everyday users? Has your SharePoint portal become an echo chamber for your team, or is a place where diversity thrives? If not, it may be time to take a step back and examine the integrity of your knowledge network.

How Smart is Content Intelligence?

In every knowledge network, there is information. But how is it structured? If you’re still managing your information the same way you did a decade or more ago, Jeremy Bentley suggests that you might want to add some intelligent content layers to it.

For starters, you probably have a lot more information to manage than you did a decade ago. It used to be that you had information overload. Now you have big data. The difference — how you handle it. With content intelligence, you can better identify what is your information. It’s almost impossible not to label it something (even if most of us label it unstructured!).

Once you identify it, you need to extract meaning from it. What's in it? Once you extract, you need to classify it to determine what it's about.

Again, the same process can be applied to how we share and manage information within SharePoint. It sure would make it much easier to use if we knew what information there was, what's in it and what it's about, wouldn't it? The same content intelligence is just as vital when it's self-contained, as when it's being shared. Bentley says that the new world of big data needs a new layer of content intelligence — and I've even argue that it's just as true with each new generation of SharePoint.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

What's New in Project Management with SharePoint and Project Server 2013

The recent beta of SharePoint 2013 brought with it a new version of its sister product: Project Server 2013. Project Server is built on top of SharePoint, and is designed to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Project for large scale enterprise project management.

Project Server 2013 brings with it several new features. Most obvious of all is adoption of the new Windows 8 UI, as seen in SharePoint 2013. One of the biggest functional changes is the integration with Office 365, now that Project Online is part of Microsoft’s cloud offering.

The new Azure Workflow Server, a big part of SharePoint 2013, also makes an appearance here. This does mean any existing workflows will be incompatible and need rebuilding. However it also means users now have the option of creating workflows directly in SharePoint Designer 2013 and deploying them to Project Server.

Reporting has also seen a raft of new features. Chief among them is support for oData feeds, meaning Project Server data can now be accessed via URL. This should provide a lot more flexibility for solutions in the future.

Smaller Scale Project Management

Project Server is a fully featured product, but one that can prove too much for some organizations. SharePoint 2013 features a brand new Project Site template that can be used for smaller scale project management activities. Site information, such as tasks, can be aggregated to a specific user's MySite, and the sites can be used in complete isolation of Project Server if required. If later Project Server integration is required, than tasks from the project sites can be pulled across.

Of course you could just use standard SharePoint features to manage your projects. SharePoint features task lists, Gannt views, site templates and custom lists — all of which can be used to create your own bespoke project management tool.

Third Party Add Ons

As you would expect with the SharePoint community, numerous third party products also exist that attempt to improve on SharePoint’s inherent usefulness as a project management tool.

Bamboo Solutions are well known as one of the biggest suppliers of web parts and add ins for SharePoint. As you would expect they have a number of products aimed at helping project managers. These range from simple web parts to fully featured "solution accelerators."

One of their most popular web parts is the "Task Master" (US$ 1495), a turbo charged replacement for the standard SharePoint task list. Those familiar with Microsoft Project will recognize the Gantt timeline display, task properties (start and end dates, resources, predecessors, etc.) and color coded views.

Task management is obviously a huge part of any project manager's day to day job. Task Master provides all the tools to manage tasks (and resources, and in fact whole project plans) directly with SharePoint. Whilst expensive for a single web part, it is a fully featured configurable component that many will find extremely useful.

Another useful tool, fulfilling a slightly different purpose, is the "RiskMatrix" webpart from TeamImprover (US$ 200). This lightweight tool focuses, as the name suggests, on managing and displaying risks. A risk log or matrix is now a recommended part of many modern project management methodologies, especially when dealing with larger/more expensive projects. The reason given is that highlighting risks as early as possible gives the best possible chance of dealing with them successfully.

RiskMatrix is a simple but effective tool, using standard SharePoint lists to enter risks, and assign them high/med/low Impact and Probability scores. A bright graphical, color-coded matrix is then created, clearly indicating areas for immediate concern — red risks being bad. The component’s simplicity makes it an ideal candidate to work alongside other similar products, or as part of a user's own Project Management dashboard.

Editor's Note: Chris has written before about what to expect with SharePoint 2013:

—  Microsoft Doesn't Advise You Customize SharePoint 2013 

About the Author

Chris Wright is the founder of the Scribble Agency, a technology copywriting agency based in London. He writes extensively on SharePoint, web trends, and general IT topics, both in print and on the web. He is also a feature writer for Web Designer magazine and SmartPhone Essentials, and a regular contributor to nothingbutSharePoint and CMSWire.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint Administration: Understanding PowerShell

On September 8th, I found myself on the road again, far from my home in the Seattle area, participating as a speaker at the annual SharePoint Saturday Cape Town (#SPSCPT) event in South Africa.

This was my second visit to the country this year, joining an all-star cast including well-known regional experts Alistair Pugin and Bradley Geldenhuys, SharePoint MVP Veronique Palmer, and international experts such as Paul Swider, Michael Noel, JB Howard, Mark Miller, and Joel Oleson, among others.

While the topics I present tend to center more around power-user and business analyst topics, I do try to attend a wide variety of sessions to expand my understanding of different aspects of the SharePoint platform. One of the sessions I attended in Cape Town was a presentation by Seb Matthews (@sebmatthews) entitled "PowerShell for the SharePoint IT Pro, Beyond the SnapIn" (slides available here) in which he introduced the history of PowerShell, and the value it provides to the SharePoint audience.

The History of PowerShell

At a high level, PowerShell gives SharePoint administrators more power and control over their environments. While it is often viewed as a way to avoid using Central Admin, it's not so much about avoidance of the user interface as it is a way to streamline and automate otherwise manual and tedious efforts to navigate through the UI.

According to Seb, PowerShell is not outdated, old technology, and it is certainly not just for developers — it is command line scripting, offering a Swiss army knife-like solution to quickly get to the heart of an issue, get data, solve a problem.

Some of the features of PowerShell were modeled after Unix and Linux to help attract people with backgrounds in those environments — in fact, Seb pointed out that in many cases, you can use Unix and Linux syntax inside of PowerShell. It is definitely a tool for the technical members of your team, to give your admins predictability and repeatability, and going far beyond what is available through the UI and Central Admin.

Several times during his presentation, Seb referred to PowerShell users as "reluctant developers," with admins using the scripting tools to give them more control and capability — without the time and effort it takes to become a full blown developer. He also added that it was a "myth" that admins still need to use stsadm command line tool, as much of what you need to do is hidden away inside of PowerShell.

Understanding the Construct

While it takes minutes to learn the basics of PowerShell, Seb admitted that it can take a lifetime to master. The basic constructs of PowerShell include Snapins (combined collections of cmdlets), modules (anyone can build scripts and scriptlets, save off into a bundled file as a module), cmdlets ("this is the thing that I am actually typing," includes Pascal casing — which means every line starts with a capital letter), objects (the lifeblood of developers. Something you can do something with) and pipelines (sequential actions).

PowerShell has a very simple construct: there is the Shell, or the window in which you will work; there are Blocks, a region or section in which you are focusing; there are Scripts, which consists of the things you build and save; and the Functions, which are modular scripts that be reused — compiled script that you can call up or even pre-load.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint: Empowering Your User Base

In previous articles, we have covered the different solutions that can be built using SharePoint. But even the best of features are no good if they aren’t being fully utilized by the organization. 

As I spend time talking to various organizations I continually come back to a few clear points that seem to cause issues with adoption in the organization. Most of these issues are associated with how SharePoint has been implemented and really have very little to do with the actually toolset itself.

In this article we are going to cover one of the key issues that I have seen over and over again and then discuss some various techniques and methods that you can implement to avoid it within your organization. 

Empowering Your User Base

One of the best features of SharePoint is that with the right expectations, training and guidance your internal Information Workers can be empowered to build solutions without having to work with IT or have IT build it for them. There are endless possibilities for the potential solutions that can be implemented.

Using the tools available within SharePoint, within your organization you can build different types of composite solutions, including things like:

• Help Desk Ticket Tracking
• Training Registration
• Blogging
• Project Management

The best part of these solutions is that they access a collection of toolsets that are already familiar to your end users. A great example of this is when you are able to combine content from Visio, Excel and SharePoint and build it together in a single dashboard type solution. Since the users are already working with familiar toolsets they are able to quickly and easily build solutions.

Where Training Comes In

The key to really being able to take advantage of these things, however, is having a good game plan in place. Being able to look at where you are, where you want to go and then building a plan that helps you get there. One of the most important pieces to this plan is the training and guidance that you will provide to your users.

Will you offer a quick training course and send them on their way? Will you teach them how to translate business needs into technical solutions? Will you teach them all about the different options they have or just offer small classes focused on their specific needs?

The best part about all of this, is that any option is a good option. Your training plan should be as unique as your organization! You should be able to build a solution that is perfect for just what you need. The key to really doing that is to first get a high level understanding of all that you can do within SharePoint and then review where you are going as an organization and build a path that will get you there.

Getting up to speed on the product can be quite the task, but here is a resource to help you understand what can be done with SharePoint:

• Thoughts for a Newbie

Once you are up to speed on all the product has to offer, then it’s time for you to start mapping out your own internal training plan. Here are some quick ideas on different things you could try. Remember though, it should be customized based on your organization’s needs:

• Internal User Group: Have a regular meeting where you cover various training topics. The meeting would be open to all Site Admins and you could use it as a time to show off internal wins.
• Required Classroom Training: Require that site admins attend classroom training. This can be training you develop or training that you work with a partner to access.
• Open Office Hours: Develop a collection of open hours that you make experts available to answer questions from your users or site admins.
• Create Solution Design Workshops: Develop a set workshops that can be conducted with users to help them identify ways to accurately gather requirements and how to map them out to functionality within SharePoint.

Remember, no matter how you choose to approach it, the most important thing is that you account for training and plan for it! The only bad plan is no plan!
 

Editor's Note: Jennifer writes frequently about SharePoint. To read more:

— Customizing SharePoint: Start with the Solution or the Business Problem?

About the Author

Jennifer Mason is a SharePoint Server MVP that has spent the last several years providing consulting services around SharePoint Technologies. She is currently working with the team at SharePoint911. Her focus has been on strategy, planning, governance and best practices for implementing business solutions using SharePoint Technologies. She is the author of “Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Creating and Implementing Real World Projects,” a resource for no-code solutions for SharePoint.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

5 Things Not to Do with Your New SharePoint Intranet

As many of those who have used Microsoft SharePoint will know, it is a bit of a "kitchen sink" product. It offers the typical enterprise a bit of everything — a bit of workflow, lots of document management, social features, calendars, basic task management — this list goes on. As a result it can be difficult to know what bits to use and how best to use them. Intranet projects can quickly become bloated and the final product is met with a resounding whimper by end users.

To help with this issue, here is my list of five things you should not be doing with a SharePoint Intranet.

1. Implement Workflows

So many Intranet projects try to make use of SharePoint workflows. Some even plump for an add-on like Nintex, which provides a really powerful platform for building almost any custom workflow you can think off. But you should avoid workflows on your Intranet. Why? Because they are so very hard to get right.

Implementing a badly thought out workflow will kill your Intranet before it even has chance to get going. Workflows are often sold as a way to improve users working lives, to streamline, to save money. Instead users normally end up with a clunky process, that involves more steps or convoluted workarounds and turns users off SharePoint altogether.

Why not try instead …

Keep your Intranet simple to begin with and launch with only a core set of features. Then spend some time and money investigating how people really work, and the processes they carry out. Only once the Intranet has seen some adoption and you truly understand a given workflow, should you try to build it. And again, keep it simple.

2. Build Infopath Forms

Infopath is similar to workflow, in that often people are sold on the idea that every form in the business can be put online, with all the advantages this supposedly brings. Instead they get complex forms that are harder to fill out than the paper versions and never end up being used. Infopath is a complex tool and producing usable forms with it is a real skill. People often see it as a close relation of Word and dive right in to build a "Sickness absence" or "Holiday" form. The results vary wildly.

Launching a new Intranet with substandard functionality will turn users off and they will never adopt the system long enough to see the benefits. Forms are an easy trap to fall into — easy to build and very difficult to get right.

Why not try instead …

Keep all forms as Word documents, but store the masters on the Intranet. That way people have to use the system to get a copy of the form in the first place (use content types if you are really doing it properly). Completed forms, in Word or scanned, can be saved in a document library.

Keep things simple to begin with (see a theme developing?) and once people are used to the system, you can expand with well thought out Infopath forms.

3. Implement a Custom Graphic Design

The issue of graphic design, SharePoint and Intranets, is something of a pet topic of mine. Basically don’t waste time skinning up SharePoint to match your website or corporate brand guidelines.

The time and money spent on this work can be much better spent on functionality, training or adoption activities. These things have a much greater return on investment than making sure your brand themes are interpreted accurately. This issue is even more pertinent for SharePoint 2010. Microsoft’s offical advice is not to touch the user interface — so don’t!

Why not try instead …

Put your logo on your SharePoint master page and create some themes that use your color palette. Then create some site templates that consider good layout and information architecture.

4. Replace All Existing Fileshares

SharePoint is great at document management, it really is. Check in and out, versioning, even the interface: all good features well implemented. Even SharePoint detractors can’t help but admit that it does documents well. But don’t do what many companies do and migrate all documents to the SharePoint Intranet and remove the existing fileshares.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Why SharePoint 2013 Isn't for You

There’s a lot of noise on the street since the announcement of SharePoint 2013. We’re headed towards the largest SharePoint conference of the year in Las Vegas this November and it’s only going to get louder. Where does that leave you, the end user of SharePoint? About where you were before the announcement came out, I would think. It should not affect you at all.

Where Is All the Noise Coming From?

If you listen closely to the groundswell, what you hear is a bunch of developer geek speak about SharePoint 2013. There is the marketing coming out of Microsoft, but the Man-on-the-Street conversation is mainly from developers and IT Pros who are talking to each other about how to set it up, how to optimize it, how it is different from 2010. This has absolutely nothing of relevance for people using SharePoint on a day to day basis.

The day to day talk is a distraction to SharePoint end users. In general, the users are not interested in the technology, they are interested in the solutions the technology can provide. This is nothing new. We had the same type of situation after the release of SharePoint 2010. At that time, I took the same position: It’s going to take two to three years for SharePoint 2013 to become relevant to the daily user.

The Current Situation

SharePoint is not an app that gets upgraded every month as part of an update cycle. It is a development platform for providing business solutions. Large clients who rolled out SharePoint 2010 in the past two years are going to find it hard to justify moving on to 2013 in the near future, unless they can find a business justification for spending the time and money it will take to make the transition.

At conferences where I speak, I ask people what SharePoint version they are currently using. Over the past year it has been mostly 2007, with half of those using a hybrid solution that combines with 2010. Those clients who are implementing SharePoint for the first time will start with 2010, but those with existing infrastructure are going to stay with that until there is a real business reason, real financial justification, to run an upgrade.

So Who is 2013 For?

With that said, who should be interested in SharePoint 2013? Why, developers of course! 2013 is still in beta. Enough said. Stop reading and get back to work. Unless you are a developer, an author or a training company, why are you concerned about SharePoint 2013?

I’m not being facetious. I think it is a real distraction for day to day users to be concerned about the “new” functionality of SharePoint 2013: Social, My Sites enhancements, Managed Navigation, the App Store. To upgrade to 2013 is a business decision that will have to be justified at a much higher level than the end user. Will the business gain enough impact to make that upgrade worthwhile?

Final Words

What’s my advice to people actually using SharePoint to get their work done? Keep your head down and out of the line of fire. SharePoint 2013 isn’t for you. For now, let the developers and IT Pros work through the bits and see what’s there. When your company is ready for it, they will let you know.

Editors Note: If you're intersted in another view on SharePoint 2013:

— SharePoint 2013: 7 Features Users are Going to Love by @andrewbish
 

About the Author

Mark Miller is recognized internationally as a Senior Storyteller, weaving engaging tales to simplify the explanation of complex, technological solutions. His current mission is to save the planet from the default SharePoint 2010 interface at NothingButBranding.com. He is the founder of two of the largest, online SharePoint communities in the world: href=”www.nothingbutsharepoint.com”>NothingButSharePoint.com and href=”https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/eusp/Pages/default.aspx”>EndUserSharePoint.com.Mark is a founding member of href=”http://sharingthepoint.org/Africa/Home.aspx”>Sharing the Point, a group of SharePoint evangelists who travel the world bringing support and encouragement to underserved SharePoint communities.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Video Blog: Importing Labels to SharePoint 2010

There are many positive features to using the Term Store taxonomy management feature within SharePoint 2010. Unfortunately, not everything that we need as information managers is one click away. 

For example, when importing terms into the Term Store using the .CSV template, the ability to bring along synonyms such as alternate spellings or acronyms isn't as seamless as it could be. This video discusses two workarounds to importing "Other Labels" into the SharePoint 2010 Term Store.

Editor's Note: Mike Doane writes and blogs frequently with taxonomy tips. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Microsoft Goes Back to School and Gets Smart: SharePoint 2013 & Education Services

Sometimes Microsoft gets a good idea and then doesn’t follow through on it. This is the case with SharePoint and support for education. There’s a long history here and Microsoft appeared to drop a major opportunity. But SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 may just change that.

Virtual Learning Environments

Or VLEs, as they are known, are virtual classrooms that enable students and teachers to communicate. There are class schedules, assignments, reading material, email, instant messaging, even online quizzes and tests. Some VLEs also offer videos and other online training options.

It’s rare that you go into a school today and don’t find at least one classroom using a VLE, and it’s an option that many students and parents like. However, there is often a lack of standards within a single school on the VLE platform used.

While school administrators put pressure on teachers to meet state technology standards, often via VLEs, they do not require a particular VLE to be used. As a result many teachers, even in the same school, use different platforms and it can be very confusing to both the student and parent to keep track of which VLE is used for which class.

The need for a uniform professional VLE is schools is critical for the success of both the student and the VLE. SharePoint could be that standard VLE. Did you know that a large number of education institutions in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States use SharePoint as their VLE? For them it is a richer, more cost effective platform that can support not only VLE requirements, but also business processes and more. It’s the perfect market for a platform like SharePoint. But it hasn’t been easy. As many schools know, Microsoft didn’t fully understand the market in the beginning.

A History of SharePoint for Education

Long ago, in SharePoint 2003, there was the Class Server Project — a VLE. Class Server was a tool that you could use as a teacher to do an assignment or quiz to send to a class of students, who would then do the work and send it back. A leading expert, Dave Coleman, who owns a consultancy in the UK that specializes in the Education market and is a SharePoint MVP, told me that Class Server was excellent. Unfortunately, Microsoft dropped it when SharePoint 2007 came out.

At that point, Microsoft shifted the Class Server project over to Codeplex and renamed it the SharePoint Learning Kit. It’s not a project that Coleman uses for his clients and it has received much criticism in the education market. In the Codeplex documentation, the SharePoint Learning Kit is a Windows Services 3.0 solution that will also work on SharePoint 2007. It supports SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004 and Class Server content, managed within document libraries.

In his business, Dave says he does not see many schools using it partly because it’s open source (the same issue that Moodle tends to come up against). To use it (or Moodle) you have to rely heavily on forums and the internet to resolve issues, there’s no formal support structure. Add to that a lack of resources available and it’s easy to see why it’s not a popular option for education institutions.

With the introduction of SharePoint 2010, Microsoft still chose not to offer education specific services, but it did promote it as a great platform for education. Considering the great strides Microsoft is making in the education market with its Office 365 for Education hosted solution, it seems strange that Microsoft hasn’t offered some out-of-the-box capabilities for its premise-based SharePoint. More surprising, is that few SharePoint partners offer education services.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Weekend Reading: Goodbye SharePoint, Hello Web Analytics

August is over and with it goes our SharePoint focus. But we ended the month with a bang, finishing up the series that gave us a 35,000 foot view of SharePoint 2013, looking at SharePoint governance from a few angles and returned to a question asked earlier in the month: SharePoint and WCM, perfect together?

Our contributors gave us a cheat sheet for recognizing an internet charlatan (print it up before your next interview), a look at new Federal records management requirements that apply to the public sector but will reverberate throughout the records management world and one more attempt to figure out who's in charge of metadata. Poor metadata, always pushed around.

Enjoy the holiday weekend all!

It's Time to Say Goodbye

SharePoint Governance: Needed Now More Than Ever

Jennifer Mason (@jennifermason):  Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the Tweetjam about SharePoint. One of the topics that came up was the importance of Governance. In this article I want to dive deeper into this topic and stress how important governance is within your environment. 

Got SharePoint? Start with the End User in Mind

Rich Blank (@pmpinsights):When it comes to information worker tools, it’s rare I hear someone from IT say “we walk a day in the life of our end users and start backwards from there.” Seldom do they ask “how do our people want to work?” or “what tools and information do our workers need exactly?”     

Is SharePoint Integration a Mandatory WCM Requirement?

Ian Truscott (@iantruscott): There are a lot of opinions about Microsoft Office SharePoint, some favorable and others less so, but no matter the camp you sit in, there is no denying it’s ubiquity in our organizations.

According to a recent AIIM (the Association for Information and Image Management professionals) Industry Watch Report “The SharePoint Puzzle,” that ubiquity is here to stay.

35,000 Foot View of SharePoint 2013 for End Users

Brian Alderman (@brianalderman):This is the last article of a four-part 35,000-foot overview of some of the major changes expected in SharePoint 2013. What's in store for the end user?

SharePoint Business Governance Strategy: Human Forces

Frederik Leksell (@letstalkgov): You can't run a SharePoint project and expect it to be maintenance free. You need to have an organization, both during and after the project.

Interview: NewsGator's J.B. Holston on Being a SharePoint Partner, Future of Collaboration

Barb Mosher Zinck (@bmosherzinck): When you think about Microsoft partners, one of the first that comes to mind is NewsGator. A successful third party integrator to Microsoft SharePoint, NewsGator Social Sites has over 4 million paid seats and is Microsoft's premier partner for social software integration. And while this last little while has seen a number of interesting events happen for NewsGator: Microsoft's acquisition of Yammer, a new version of Social Sites, a new version of SharePoint and a new CEO, it only spells good news for the social software company. Here we offer some of J.B. Holston's (now the former CEO of NewsGator) views on these topics.

Making Enterprise Information Secure, Accessible

What You Need to Know About Incorporating Social Media Into Your E-Discovery Strategy

Sheila Mackay: An employee, excited about a new product the company is developing, mentions it on Facebook. Due to his privacy settings, a competitor gets wind of potential trade secret information. In another situation, a disgruntled employee sends a negative Tweet about his company to hundreds of followers, including company shareholders.

New Public Sector Records Managers' Challenges: Transparency, Participation, Collaboration

Cheryl McKinnon (@cherylmckinnon):When was the last time a definition of records management left a person feeling inspired? August 24, 2012 just might be that time.

Managing Metadata - Any Volunteers?

Erik Hartman (@erikmhartman): Almost every content management (CM) book, presentation or other CM-related publication talks about metadata. So most CM people know what it is, what it's for and what it looks like.

But when it comes to insights about who manages the metadata, the available sources are quite limited and contradictory.

VMware Horizon Suite Secure Mobile Access to Enterprise Information Helps CIOs Sleep Better

Virginia Backaitis: Content Management from its earliest days has been about getting the right information to the right person at the right time. This was long before there were laptops, before email, before the web, before smartphones, before e-Readers, before tablet computers, before whatever comes next.

Failures, Charlatans and Writers, Oh My!

The Three P's of Avoiding Social CRM Failure

Chris Bucholtz (@bucholtz): With the social era in full swing, we hear on a near daily basis about all the benefits a social media and social CRM strategy can bring. Tactically, they can help sales with potential leads, give service a new window into building customer satisfaction and provide marketing with fresh opportunities to engage and entice new customers. Strategically, they can help you avoid becoming obsolete and irrelevant as customers increasingly go social.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com