SharePoint Buzz

Canada's First Look at SharePoint 2010

SharePointBuzz — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:02:00 GMT

If you are in Toronto & Mississauga this week, then you are luck to get Canada's First Look at SharePoint 2010.

Mississauga SharePoint User Group
Monday, October 26, 2009: Rob Windsor is presenting An Overview of SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 is being unveiled this week at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference. This session will provide an overview of the product with a particular focus on what’s new for developers. The tools included in Visual Studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010 make developers more productive and new hosting options for SharePoint solutions provide more flexibility in deployment. This talk will cover the new designers, explorers and templates and overall developer experience for SharePoint 2010. Along the way we’ll see several of the enhancements to the end-user experience including the ribbon, in-place editing, and the new page and dialog interface model.

For event details and registration click here.

Toronto SharePoint User Group
Wednesday, October 28: First Looks at SharePoint 2010 Presented by Savash Alic (Microsoft Canada) Principal Specialist, Ent Sales – SharePoint (MOSS, WSS, MCDBA, MCSE certified, MBA)

Join TSPUG for a special meeting on the last Wednesday of October where Microsoft’s Savash Alic will present Canada’s first look at SharePoint Server 2010. Savash is a SharePoint loyalist who is dedicated to the product since its’ very early days in 2001 implementing solutions. He has been selling SharePoint in a technical capacity for the last 4 years at Microsoft Canada however he is a technologist at heart who started his professional career in ’94 and worked at several Microsoft Gold Partners delivering and managing projects.

To attend, please send an RSVP to Susie.

Sources:

How To Install SharePoint 2010 Beta on Windows 7

SharePointBuzz — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:29:00 GMT

Quick post: Windows 7 has been officially been released today, and it brings lots of features.

If weren't able to attend the SharePoint Conference 2009 or keep up with twitter, then you might have missed that SharePoint 2010 can be installed on Windows 7. This approach is obviously recommended for Developers and for production.

Alpesh Nakars has written a series of posts on how to prepare and how To Install WSS4 on Windows 7.

Until the release of SharePoint 2010 Beta, you can learn how to install SharePoint 2007 on Windows 7 / Vista [2]. Now there are some noticeable visible differences that you can expect but that's alright.

Look for more posts on SharePoint 2010 Beta on SharePoint Buzz.

Pre-register for the SharePoint 2010 Beta

SharePointBuzz — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:07:00 GMT

Things have been pretty hectic at the SharePoint Conference 2009 with all the new changes and enchancements that are coming. It's been an amazing couple of days meeting so many of those part of the SharePoint Community.

From Steve Balmer's keynote we learned that the SharePoint Server 2010 Beta will be available in November 2009.

This is a quick reminder, if your interested, to pre-register for the SharePoint 2010 Beta.

If you aren't sure of the list of features, a complete list will be provided but here's a snippet from the press release:

A new ribbon user interface that makes end users more productive and customization of SharePoint sites easy
Built-in support for rich media such as video, audio and Silverlight, making it easy to build dynamic Web sites
New Web content management features with built-in accessibility through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, multilingual support and one-click page layout, enabling anyone to access SharePoint Server sites
Business Connectivity Services, which allow developers to connect capabilities to line-of-business data or Web services in SharePoint Server and the Office client
The addition of two new SharePoint SKUs for Internet-facing sites, including an on-premises and hosted offer
and more

Look forward to more info as we keep up the overload of information. In the mean time, follow us on twitter!

SharePoint Conference Day 0

justsharepoint — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:37:41 GMT

This is the happening place for all SharePoint Nerds! Yes we – the SharePoint Buzz Team are here to do Just SharePoint at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center starting from October 18, 2009

With 7000+ attendees, the registration line was going to be really long. Good thing the team registered first and then went in to check at the hotel. Otherwise we would be standing here in this long queue.

We met few people at the Welcome Reception and then headed over to the first Share Event of the Conference - #ShareIndian and then #SharePint!

It’s been a great start and we have met a lot of people already who are on twitter. Still not met all and we are looking forward to meeting them in the coming days!

Stay tuned for more SharePoint Conference updates and photos.

Honoured to Say I'm a SharePoint MVP!

SharePointBuzz — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:39:00 GMT

I received some great news on October 1, 2009 - I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 2009!

If you are not aware of the Microsoft MVP award program then here's a quick snippet from the site:

"Since the early 1990s, Microsoft has recognized the inspiring activities of MVPs around the world with the MVP Award. MVPs freely share their deep knowledge, real-world experience, and impartial, objective feedback to help people enhance the way they use technology. Of more than 100 million users who participate in technology communities, around 4,000 are recognized as Microsoft MVPs."

I am simply honoured to be receive the SharePoint MVP award. I hope I can continue to help the SharePoint community for the coming year!

I received the MVP gift just today and decided I should share this news with my loyal visitors. What did I receive? Why not check out the unboxing the Microsoft MVP Gift from another MVP.

Ideas to Increase End User Adoption

SharePointBuzz — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:50:00 GMT

As they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat. In the SharePoint world, it’s no different. For many SharePoint users, SharePoint gives you the ability to perform your function in more than one way. The first obvious barrier to SharePoint is the licensing costs. This post thankfully, is not about the different ways to develop or configure SharePoint. Rather this post is brainstorming different ideas to increase end user adoption.

The problem is not the technology platform but rather a paradigm shift on how end users work. In many large organizations, end users have become used to using email to share documents, storing multiple versions of documents within file shares and have multiple logins to view different data. SharePoint has become the platform to implement but don’t always know how to engage users and have them collaborating, communicating and participating.

I wanted to provide a place for different brainstorming ideas to be jotted down. You are welcome to contribute to the list. I’ll start with some of my ways to increase end user adoption:

1. In Person Training

a. Lunch and Learns / Workshops - provide free food during lunch hour and present on a different topic on a predefined schedule

b. Train the trainer – teach a small group of enthusiastic power users and facilitate training sessions where they each teach another small group

c. Training for Specific Role – training and workshops / labs designed around a specific SharePoint role

2. Text based Content

a. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) – provide a set of commonly asked questions and their answers

b. Tutorials – create an area where step by step instructions are provided on how to perform common SharePoint tasks grouped by roles. This tutorial area can either be a page(s) based site, wiki site, blog site or discussion board.

c. Blog – share company specific information on how to perform a task that is important or popular during that time. This could be related around company events (BBQ, Christmas party, etc.) or even around specific processes (request vacation time, retrieve payroll specific information, etc.)

3. Multimedia content

a. Podcasts – provide a site using the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint or your own home grown solution that has audio / video based content on how to perform common day to day SharePoint tasks or event specific tasks that users can motivates users to collaborate and share information on a SharePoint site

b. Videos – allow multiple departments to have an area where they can upload videos on how to use a site.

4. Community Oriented

a. Contests - ask users from every department to help name your SharePoint portal

b. Feedback – release a beta solution to your test environment / sandbox and ask users to provide feedback on it can improve or to share bugs that might have been missed

Depending on your organization, one or more of these ideas will help drive end users to adopt the SharePoint platform. What ideas have you used to increase end user adoption?

Want to Upload Files to SharePoint from a Smartphone?

SharePointBuzz — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:10:00 GMT

By JASON HALL
Published August 10, 2009

Sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus to solve problems is the foundation of Collaboration. Arguably the most popular structured method for collaboration today is Microsoft® Office SharePoint®. Incorporate that with the rapid progress of SmartPhone capabilities over fast 3G networks and you open up Collaboration potential to a projected 449 million Global SmartPhone Users by 2011. Over the next few years, many mobile workers currently toting laptops will likely trade their bulky notebooks for a corporate-issue smartphone that slips into their pocket.

Given the Worldwide growth of SharePoint and SmartPhone users it only makes sense to provide mobile workers with the capability to upload that important document directly from their SmartPhones . The team at H3 Solutions have developed an Innovative approach to upload documents into SharePoint utilizing their mobile application framework - Mobile Entrée®. If you’re unfamiliar with Mobile Entree then read my article, “What is this Mobile Entree thing?”.

Let's go through the process of exposing a document library to a mobile community utilizing the Mobile Entree Framework and the Basic Plugin. Naturally the first thing you’ll want to do is setup a Document Library. Once the Document Library has been created we’ll need to make it available to the mobile community. Mobile Entree includes a configuration screen within SharePoint that is located from the Site Actions menu.

Click Mobile Entree Configuration from the Site Actions menu.
On the Mobile Entree Configuration Page page, click SharePoint Mobile Entree from the Global Config Section.
In the SharePoint Mobile Entrée Properties section select the Document Libraries and Views to be available to mobile users from the Document Library Config.
Click Apply Changes

Now your Document Library will be available to a mobile community. If you have specific access requirements then be sure to set up the rights within the Document Library in SharePoint. Only the User or Group of Users specified will be able to view the Document Library(s) from their SmartPhone; Just like

Let's upload a file to SharePoint from our SmartPhone. Using a web browser from your mobile device navigate to the SharePoint site by entering the same URL as you would from your desktop. As indicated in the image (below), the mobile user would select the appropriate Shared Documents folder within the list of Document Libraries. In our example you can see that the Shared Document library is empty.

Select ‘Upload’ from the menu.
Click the ‘Browse’ button (Depending on the screen resolution of your mobile device, you may need to scroll down in order to see the button)
From the File Explorer window choose a file to upload (I have chosen ‘Book1.xls’ for this example).

Once you choose a file for upload Mobile Entree will return you to the Document Library screen where you have decided to upload the file. Utilizing Mobile Entree your mobile community will now be able to upload content from their mobile device. What’s more is they will be interacting with the SAME SharePoint site and the SAME URL as they would from a desktop

References

RBC Capital Markets Corporation, "Wireless Indsutry," Sizing the Global Smartphone Market (accessed August 10, 2009).
Currently only Windows Mobile, Blackberry & Palm Pre devices support the capability to upload files to SharePoint utilizing Mobile Entree

SharePoint Conference 2009 - Session Sneak Peak

SharePointBuzz — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:44:00 GMT

Excited about SharePoint 2010? I definitely am; that's why I have registered for the SharePoint Conference 2009. This will be THE conference to attend as this is the first time Microsoft will publicly be sharing information of what SharePoint 2010 has to offer. As a registered member, I received a sneak peak into some of sessions that will be offered, such as:

SharePoint 2010 Overview and What's New
Upgrading to SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 Capacity and Performance Planning
SharePoint 2010 Security and Identity Management: What's New
Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Development
Upgrading SharePoint Server 2007 Code to SharePoint 2010
What's New in Business Connectivity Services (The Business Data Catalog Evolves!)
FAST Search for SharePoint - Capabilities Deep-Dive
Advanced Dashboard Creation with PerformancePoint Services for SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management Deep-Dive

If you haven't registered for SharePoint Conference 2009, I recommend you do; with almost 250 sessions being presented, it's a no-brainer!

SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration: The Business and Human Factors View of SharePoint

SharePointBuzz — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:53:00 GMT

Guest post by Michael Sampson, an Industry Analyst and Consultant focused on improving the performance of distributed teams.

Late last year Microsoft Press published my first book, Seamless Teamwork, which is focused on how a business team can embrace the best of SharePoint for team collaboration. You may remember the book ... SharePoint Buzz ran a contest for a free copy.

I've just written a broader book on using SharePoint for collaboration, from a business and human factors perspective. It's called SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration. The main premise of the book is that the point isn’t to have a nice shiny SharePoint implementation; the point is doing business better. There are six focal chapters in SharePoint Roadmap:

Chapter 2, focused on improving collaboration between people. This chapter talks through a number of models about how to think about this.
Chapter 3, which talks about where SharePoint natually shines in supporting team collaboration, and how to address some of its shortcomings through add-on products.
Chapter 4, all about governance. I argue that optimizing the technical governance of SharePoint isn’t enough, and instead outline what is required. I also propose a structure and decision process for making governance decisions.
Chapter 5, on engaging with the business. Once you have a good sense of what SharePoint is capable of doing, you need to explore where and how those capabilities can used to do business better. This requiring engaging with business groups and teams, and I outline a number of approaches.
Chapter 6, on user adoption strategies. There’s little point in doing all of the stuff we do with SharePoint if no one uses it … so this chapter talks through a number of approaches to cultivating user adoption. And within this chapter, I talk about the meta-message of my first book, Seamless Teamwork.
Chapter 7, the final focal chapter, talks about how to get started. I propose that you play a game of SharePoint baseball, with base 1 being a pilot project.

I think this is a unique book in the SharePoint space, and that there’s a great need across the world for the concepts and ideas in this book. This was confirmed for me when a buyer at a Fortune 5 company said, “We were looking for a book on how to take a business and technology view of SharePoint, and found your new book.” (To which an author says, “Cool!”).

If it sounds like this book could add value to your work with SharePoint, I invite you to download and read Chapter 1. Ordering Details SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration is available immediately.

It is sold exclusively online, via http://www.sharepointroadmap.com

Guest Blog - Free SharePoint Web Parts & Solutions for SharePoint User Groups

SharePointBuzz — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:39:00 GMT

My name is Steve Gaitten. I am the Director of Online Operations at Bamboo Solutions, a leading provider of Web Parts & Solutions for SharePoint. It’s an honor and a privilege to have a chance to appear on one of my favorite sites about SharePoint, SharePoint Buzz. Kanwal has done an incredible job of creating a community and a valuable informational resource for SharePoint professionals. One of the things I love most about SharePoint Buzz is that it’s one of the few sites about SharePoint that actually runs on SharePoint. That buys a lot of credibility with me.

The subject of this post is a new program offered by Bamboo in support of the SharePoint User Groups. We’re calling it the User Group Community Project. With this program, any SharePoint User Group may register and obtain free Bamboo products. Participating User Groups can continue to earn additional products by providing product reviews or just blog posts on general SharePoint topics.

You might ask, what does “free Bamboo products” include? There are no restrictions. Participating SharePoint User Groups can choose any of the more than 60 Web Parts and Solutions available from Bamboo’s online store. Many SharePoint User Groups are interested in administrative products that can help them manage their SharePoint sites and membership lists. Products like Password Change Web Part, Password Reset Web Part or the User Management Solution Accelerator are very popular. Another very commonly requested product is Bamboo’s Calendar Plus Web Part. This feature rich replacement for the standard “out-of-the-box” SharePoint Calendar is great for maintaining and promoting lists of SharePoint User Group events.

Why is Bamboo Giving Away Free Products to SharePoint User Groups?

I think the marketing angle on this program is pretty obvious, and I don’t want to be disingenuous about that. If you want to find the most influential and most sophisticated SharePoint users, SharePoint User Groups are a great place to start. We hope that by making our products available to these organizations, even more SharePoint professionals will seek out Bamboo products on their day job.

That being said, we do genuinely love SharePoint User Groups and simply want to help them succeed and thrive. We know these groups are chronically under-funded and operate on a shoestring budget. They often have to scrounge for cash just to provide food and soda at meetings, so obviously they don’t have the purchasing power to acquire advanced Web Parts and packaged Solutions to enhance their SharePoint sites. This provides Bamboo with an opportunity to step up and meet the need.

How Does it Work? What Do SharePoint User Groups Have to Do?

We really tried to keep this simple. Any SharePoint User Group that is interested in taking advantage of the program should sign up here: User Group Community Project Registration Once the registration is complete, we will issue the User Group an initial $1,500 credit and it’s time for a shopping spree on the Bamboo online store. To earn additional credits, SharePoint User Groups can write reviews of the products they’ve tried, or just provide a blog post on any SharePoint topic of interest. There is no limit to the total number of products that can be acquired by a particular group. With very little extra effort, any SharePoint User Group can arm their SharePoint portal to the teeth with the most useful, most desired SharePoint add ons available.

We’ve already had a great response to the program in its first week. About 25 SharePoint User Groups have registered already, and we’re really just getting started. I’d like to thank everyone who has helped us to spread the word, especially our friends here at SharePoint Buzz. If anyone has questions, comments or suggestions about the program, I welcome your email at steve.gaitten@bamboosolutions.com

Thanks!

;) -S