igroup want you to get the most from SharePoint. That’s why we’ve created and researched information that will help you. All we do is SharePoint – we’re Microsoft Gold Partners, and all our SharePoint consultants are real experts.
Here’s how to improve collaboration.
The new co-authoring capabilities help people work simultaneously with colleagues on Office© documents. Major benefits of this offline and online capability include:
- · more than one person can edit a Word document or slides in a SharePoint Online document library at the same time. To review a document, users can send a link to the document in a SharePoint library, and all of the reviewers can provide their feedback in the document simultaneously
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With the release of Office 365, Microsoft will present the next version of Microsoft Online Services, a cloud-based collaboration and communication service based on SharePoint 2010, Exchange 2010 and Lync Server 2010. Office 365, provides SharePoint, Exchange and Lync as a subscription-based Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, hosted in cloud datacenters managed by Microsoft.
SharePoint Online – the cloud-based version of SharePoint 2010 – provides users with many of the same features of SharePoint 2010, but without the need to manage the hardware or software required for a scalable and secure collaboration solution. This article from Microsoft provides an overview of how SharePoint Online development is similar to, and different from, SharePoint 2010 development.
With the next release of SharePoint Online, SharePoint developers will be able to develop collaboration solutions using the same skills and tools they use in developing for SharePoint 2010, including Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, C# or Visual Basic and the SharePoint APIs and SDKs. There are many similarities between developing for SharePoint on-premises and in the cloud, but there are also significant differences that will impact how solutions are built.
Understanding these differences enables an understanding of what solutions can be created to run in SharePoint Online and how to develop those solutions.
SharePoint Online Customisation Similarities
In SharePoint 2010 development, SharePoint can be customised using the browser and SharePoint Designer 2010 and by building solutions using Visual Studio 2010. With SharePoint Online, customisation with the browser and SharePoint
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igroup are Microsoft Gold partners, and all we do is SharePoint. We want you to get the best possible experience from your SharePoint deployment. Here are a few useful tips that will make your life better:
- You should check out a document only if you want to make sure that no one else can change it until you check it back in. If you want to collaborate on a document, do not check it out.
- If you are deleting something in SharePoint 2010 and you do not see a message that states the deleted item is being sent to the Recycle Bin, neither you nor your IT department will be able to restore it once it has been deleted.
- Don’t know the first letter of someone’s name? Try a wild card search by substituting the unknown letter with an asterisk (*).
- Need to add an event to your calendar? Just point to the date on the calendar, and then click Add.
- A SharePoint calendar enables you to work with multiple Exchange and SharePoint calendars at the same time. A view for a calendar can display a maximum of ten calendars.
1 — Business Connectivity Services
The Business Connectivity Services (BCS) provides access to external data sources such as databases, external business systems and web services.
2 — List Validations
List validations are a very powerful way to validate not just documents but any content before it goes into a list. This feature improves column property entry, often called tagging.
3 — Enterprise Managed Metadata
The Enterprise Managed Metadata Service allows you to centrally define taxonomies that can be leveraged across farms to quickly classify and find content. There are two main features of the service, the first being the ability to publish content types to other site collections and farms and the other being the taxonomy term store.
4 — Search
Search has certainly evolved since SharePoint Portal Server 2003 as the scalability of the architecture has improved. It’s now possible to have multiple index servers, and index partitions can represent a portion of the index and live on the query server.
5 — Remote BLOB Storage
External BLOB Storage (EBS) has evolved into Remote Blob Storage (RBS), and helps provide a more scalable architecture. RBS allows BLOBS (documents) to be stored in external systems in order to keep the database size smaller and more manageable.
6 — Audit Trail
Audit trails are not just for workflow anymore as they were in SharePoint 2007. The audit trail functionality applies to most events pertaining to documents and it is extensible. The audit trail can be used to track all scanning events.
7 — Document IDs
Document IDs is a new capability that assigns a unique identification number to a document. It is embedded with a special URL and can be used to retrieve a document regardless of where it is moved within a site collection.
8 — Document Sets
A Document Set enables grouping of documents belonging to a workflow, project or other similar group together into a single working set. Document sets allow these documents to have one consistent set of metadata, can be downloaded as single ZIP files and can be workflowed as one unit.
Want to know more – call igroup. All we do is SharePoint – we’re the SharePoint experts.
Problem:
Opening a file directly from a SharePoint 2010 on a workstation with Office 2007 installed can result in an “Unable to open file <filename>” dialog.
Resolution:
Install the latest Office 2007 Suite service pack (Currently Service Pack 3)
SharePoint experts – igroup
Lots of people say that they are experts – we truly believe we are, and we have evidence to back it up.
There aren’t many companies to whom Microsoft recommend customers, but igroup are one of them. We recently began a SharePoint engagement with the education division of a renowned international services company, thanks to a recommendation by Microsoft.
The project is to use SharePoint to create an online community for education professionals, allowing the procurement of services together with an area where services can be offered SharePoint Enterprise is the preferred option, as there needs to be potential for several thousand users during the course of a day.
Phase 1 has already been live for a couple of months and work is progressing with a view to implementing Phase 2 shortly.
Both igroup and our customer are very pleased with the way the business relationship is building, so a big “thank you” to Microsoft for being the initiator on this occasion.
I think igroup can legitimately be called “experts”.
If you’d like to discuss a SharePoint project please call us on 0845 838 2184 or visit our website at www.igroupltd.co.uk
Hello. The quarters of the year seem to go by faster and faster. It’s time for the Winter 2011 newsletter already.
Enjoy reading through, and feel free to contact us with any comments or questions you may have.
Cloud computing has matured from buzzword to a dynamic infrastructure used today by several organisations, yet many technology experts have differing views about what it means to the IT landscape and what cloud computing can do for business. However, leading analysts agree that this new model offers significant advantages for fast-paced startups, SMBs and enterprises alike. In the following sections, you’ll learn about cloud computing defined, cloud characteristics, drivers for adoption, public clouds vs private clouds, how enterprises are using the cloud, and the future of cloud computing.
Today, forward-thinking business leaders are using the cloud within their enterprise data centres to take advantage of the best practices that cloud computing has established, namely scalability, agility, automation, and resource sharing. By using a cloud-enabled application platform, companies can choose a hybrid approach to cloud computing that employs an organisation’s existing infrastructure to launch new cloud-enabled applications. This hybrid approach allows IT departments to focus on innovation for the business, reducing both capital and operational costs and automating the management of complex technologies.
Cloud Computing Defined
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Unless you’re absolutely certain that you have the expertise in-house to do the job, you’d be well advised to get someone else to take the pain. Quite simply, you can’t afford to risk your business suffering loss or damage.
Here at igroup we specialise solely in SharePoint, to give our customers expertise and experience. We’re Microsoft Gold partners, and all our technical team are highly qualified and experienced Microsoft certified specialists. No-one knows SharePoint like we do, as our existing customers will confirm.
Because of the level of knowledge we have, we can ensure that your migration is quick, painless and successful. We take away all the risk that you might expect to face if doing the work in-house, which is a real load off your mind.
You may think that the risk is worthwhile, but please beware. We’ve been approached by lots of companies who have tried to complete the migration themselves, but have caused more problems and issues without achieving anything. At that point, things can get really desperate and it can take a lot of time and effort to dig out of the hole.
Here are a few things to think about:
- you need a plan
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Talk to anyone about embarking on a SharePoint migration project and the chances are that the whole of the discussion will be related to the technology. At igroup, we take a more holistic approach to the whole migration process, and in order to help you with your planning, here are a few key points that everyone should know. Clearly not technology based, they are still every bit as essential to the success of your project.
- · think of a SharePoint migration as a series of small consulting projects
- · for each consulting project, form a team with the right people
- · recognise that a SharePoint migration is really a change-management problem
- · make sure that your teams believe that a migration to SharePoint will help their departments work more efficiently and effectively
If you keep in mind that successful change requires vision, skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan, you’ll be well on the way to making it work. If your migration plan for SharePoint is missing any of these concepts, you can expect a less-than-ideal project experience.
Managing complex change
To summarise
- § make sure you are clear on the overall and department-specific SharePoint vision, goals, project phases, and expectations
- § be sure your company has a solid training and support strategy. Feed the team with information to facilitate this
- § ensure that an information architecture strategy exists and will work for users across and within organisations
- § think of each project as a pilot of the process itself and use an incremental approach over a massive push to migrate everyone at once
- § recognise that migrating to SharePoint requires everyone to engage in an iterative, ongoing learning process and won’t be without struggle or confusion, which will pass with time
- § appreciate that SharePoint is as much a change-management and consulting problem as it is a technology roll-out
Find out more – call us today on 0845 838 2184, or email sales@igroupltd.co.uk
