Whilst SharePoint is a Microsoft product and you’d expect them to come up with some good marketing strategies, we feel that some ideas are better than other.  Here’s a link through to some benefits for IT professionals which we thought had some great content.  After all, people in IT can be the hardest to convince sometimes!

Check it out:   http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/product/benefits/IT/Pages/default.aspx

When consumerisation is properly planned and managed, it enables businesses to deliver productivity gains and competitive advantage. This paper describes strategies and best practices that help ensure that corporate assets remain secure and establish new roles for empowered employees and IT as partners.

Read more in this interesting white paper from Microsoft…              Strategies for Embracing Consumerization

My Sites: share and manage personal documents and information

• create your own personal My Site to share personal information and professional expertise
• access and manage important documents from your PC, phone or browser
• follow your colleagues’ latest activities and updates using notes and activity feeds
• protect sensitive personal content and control who can read, edit and access files

Team Sites: keep teams in sync and manage important projects

• manage and share important documents to help teams work together efficiently
• track key project milestones and schedules with shared calendars
• create, edit and review documents and proposals in real-time
• manage important meeting notes and project delivery schedules
• share documents and information easily with trusted business partners
• enable real-time communication with colleagues right from within SharePoint
• apply your own unique look and feel to team sites with custom theming and branding

Intranet Sites: keep up to date with company news and information

• keep employees up to date with the latest company news and information
• access key business process information eg policies and procedures
• find important documents and people easily
• share ideas and seek input from the company using community discussion forums and surveys
• alert employees to news and business developments using blogs

Website: market your small business using a simple public-facing website

• use simple out-of the box web templates to personalize sites
• choose your own personalized company domain
• update site content quickly and easily using familiar tools
• help customers find the information they need on your site quickly

SharePoint Online helps organisations meet these challenges by providing a flexible web-based solution with tools and services to help workers manage information and work together easily with others.

The tools and services provided by SharePoint Online enable individuals and teams to:

• ·         build out company-wide intranet sites
• ·         share information more securely with colleagues and trusted business partners.
• ·         maintain granular control of sites, documents and lists with user and group permissions
•           upload documents to online libraries, share documents with others, and manage how documents are used
• ·         display project calendars to track milestones and resource availability
• ·         show announcements and alerts
• ·         publish blogs and RSS feeds, or provide a list of links to other blogs, forums, and resources
• ·         maintain a list of contact names and information
• ·         create navigation for your SharePoint Online sites that best meets your organisation’s needs
• ·         provide links to other important websites
• ·         create specialized websites – Document Workspaces and Meeting Workspaces – to help manage particular projects or work items

Log in and team up

All of your employees—whether they’re power users or casual workers—can easily and securely access the same Office tools and information. They can be productive on PCs, phones, and browsers from virtually anywhere*. And don’t worry—their documents always show up in high fidelity.

Stay in control

Tightly integrating cloud-based and on-premises workloads enables you to maximize your current technology investments, deploy at your own pace, and get the benefits of the cloud in a way that works for your business.

Rest assured

Our globally-redundant architecture provides built-in scalability to ensure that the right level of technology is available for your users, adjusting to meet seasonal or cyclical demands.

99.9% uptime guarantee

You can count on Microsoft, an industry leader in productivity, for reliability. Microsoft provides a financially-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Use what you’ve got

Office 365 tightly integrates cloud-based and on-premises workloads to enable you to maximize your current technology investments, deploy at your own pace, and get the benefits of the cloud in a way that works for your business.

Microsoft Exchange Online for Enterprises - Microsoft^® Exchange Online is a hosted messaging solution that delivers the capabilities of Microsoft Exchange Server as a cloud-based service. It gives users rich and familiar access to email, calendar, contacts, and tasks across PCs, the web, and mobile devices.

Microsoft SharePoint Online for Enterprises – Microsoft SharePoint Online is a Microsoft Office 365 service for businesses of all sizes. Instead of installing and deploying Microsoft SharePoint Server on-premise, any business can now simply subscribe to SharePoint Online to provide their employees with an enterprise grade solution for creating sites to share documents and information with colleagues and customers.

Microsoft Lync Online for Enterprises– Microsoft^® Lync™ Online is a next-generation cloud communications service that connects people in new ways, anytime, from virtually anywhere. Lync Online provides intuitive communications capabilities across presence, instant messaging, audio/video calling and a rich online meeting experience including PC-audio, video and web conferencing. Transform interactions with colleagues, customers and partners from today’s hit-and-miss communication to a more collaborative, engaging, and effective experience.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus – With Office Professional Plus, users get the latest version of the Microsoft Office applications, seamlessly connected and delivered with cloud services, so they can access their documents, email, and calendars from virtually any device. Office Professional Plus includes the new Office Web App – online companions to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel^®, Microsoft PowerPoint^®, and Microsoft OneNote^®—which let users review and make minor edits to documents directly from a browser.

Microsoft Office 365 Apple Devices - Microsoft Office 365 Apple Devices and Office 365 capabilities on the Mac and iOS (iPhone and iPad) devices.

Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving – Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving is a cloud-based archiving solution for organisations that have deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 on-premise. Exchange Online Archiving is an enterprise-class service that assists these organisations with their archiving, compliance, regulatory, and e-discovery challenges while simplifying their on-premise infrastructure, thereby saving costs and easing the IT burden.

Microsoft Office 365 for Enterprises Support – Microsoft^® Office 365 for enterprises Support, both technical and nontechnical, is included in the subscription fee to Microsoft Office 365 for enterprises.

Microsoft Office 365 Mobility - Mobility solution – access to services from phones and devices –  are available for two online services, namely Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint^® Online.

Microsoft Office Web Apps – Microsoft^® Office Web Apps include Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel^®, Microsoft PowerPoint^®, and Microsoft OneNote^® applications that helps users access documents from almost anywhere. Users can view, share, and work on documents online with other users across personal computers, mobile devices, and the web.

Office 365 Security and Service Continuity – Security, continuity, privacy, and compliance policies and controls for the Office 365 for enterprises service offerings are available. Microsoft provides Office 365 customers with an overview of how each of the Office 365 services is designed to provide a high degree of security, privacy, continuity, and compliance – service goals that are derived from the Microsoft Risk Management program.

Office 365 Identity – Microsoft provides information about the design, policies, and best practices related to Office 365 identity, including the creation of user accounts, password policy, co-existence, directory synchronization, and single sign-on ( identity federation). Users can gain access to Office 365 by authenticating to their Office 365 user accounts – either through a prompt to provide valid credentials or through a single sign-on process. Once authenticated, users’ identities refer to the user names associated with the Office 365 accounts.

If you’re not sure just what SharePoint is, let us give you a quick hint.

What is SharePoint?

​Microsoft SharePoint 2010 makes it easier for people to work together. Using SharePoint 2010, you can set up Web sites to share information with others, manage documents from start to finish and publish reports to help everyone make better decisions.

Why use SharePoint?

The capabilities of SharePoint 2010 work together to help your company quickly respond to changing business needs. Using SharePoint 2010, your people can share ideas and expertise, create custom solutions for specific needs and find the right business information to make better decisions. For IT, SharePoint 2010 helps you cut training and maintenance costs, save time and effort and focus on higher business priorities.​
What can SharePoint do for you?

Improve productivity, efficiency, agility. Catch a glimpse of the exciting work customers are rolling out across their enterprise. See what SharePoint 2010 can do for you.    Watch Microsoft’s video   MSCOMRTM Image 2

If you’re looking for a SharePoint partner to help you with your deployment, give us a call now.   

What if you could take your existing it infrastructure and make it more flexible, more productive, and more powerful ­— all for less money than you’re currently spending?

Introducing . . . . . . cloud power

Microsoft provides the most comprehensive approach to cloud computing on earth—delivering software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solutions across multiple environments using familiar tools and technology—so you can drive your business into the future.  igroup, working with Microsoft, can provide the perfect hosting service for your SharePoint deployment.

Increase business productivity while paying only for the computing power you need. Take advantage of flexible, public cloud computing with Windows Azure^® platform application development and hosting solutions provided by igroup. Reduce capital expenses without limiting your IT infrastructure.

igroup is your cloud power authority

We know that all this talk about cloud computing can sometimes be a bit confusing, but igroup can help you make sense of it all. When your business teams with us, you get:

• security knowing you’re working with a Microsoft Gold partner that specialises in SharePoint, and nothing but SharePoint
• 30 day contracts
• your hosting from Microsoft, in Azure

igroup can give your business the guidance and support you need to find your own cloud power.  As SharePoint specialists, we’re the best people to ask.

The power of the cloud

Cloud power is a new approach to IT.  What does it mean for your business?

• ·         Power that is COMPREHENSIVE

Enjoy a complete “IT as a Service” offering—the infrastructure, the application platform, the productivity applications—all delivered on demand for you.

• ·         Power that puts you in CONTROL

Harness as much cloud power as you want and remain in full control, whether your datacenter is on-premises, off-premises, or a hybrid of the two.

• ·         Power that is FLEXIBLE

Build, run, migrate, or extend an application to the cloud on your terms with flexible cloud technologies that leverage your existing IT investments.

• ·         Power that you can use NOW

Leverage your existing technology investments while taking advantage of the new value cloud computing provides. Cloud power means moving ahead—not starting over.

• ·         Power that will take you into the FUTURE

Future-proof your investment with a set of familiar identity, management, and development tools designed to help take you into the future of cloud computing.

Benefits of cloud power

Add real value to your business with cloud solutions.

• Cost-Cutting

Reduce ongoing operational costs and capital expenditures on hardware, software licenses, and implementation services.

• pay only for what you use
• accelerate time-to-market
• reduce data centre facility costs
• Scalable and Elastic

Adjust to changing resource demands more quickly and with less effort.

• provision and de-provision resources dynamically
• maximize resources for better efficiency
• reduce unused capacity
• Efficient

Benefit from shared hardware, automated processes, and familiar technologies.

• increase peak-load capacity with reduced energy use and physical footprint
• provide access from virtually anywhere, using any PC, mobile device, or browser
• centralise management of your infrastructure
• Reliable

Focus on developing your business, not on maintaining its infrastructure.

• experience 99.9%+ uptime and 24/7 support with Windows Azure
• benefit from fast disaster recovery and data backup protection
• enjoy dependable data integrity, privacy, and access with unswerving regulatory compliance
• Pay-as-You-Go

Control your costs with the cloud’s usage-based pricing model.

• track usage by day, week, month, and year
• forecast costs more consistently
• know exactly how and where resources are used
• Flexible

Easily adapt to your business’s changing needs.

• scale up or down to meet the changing demands of your business
• choose among interoperable private, public, and hybrid cloud solutions as needed
• easily adapt to an ever-changing, distributed workforce

Is cloud power right for you?

• are you able to provide effective communication and collaboration services to all employees, no matter where they’re located
• is your IT infrastructure flexible and agile enough to adjust to frequently changing demands
• how effective is your disaster recovery solution
• do you plan on making IT cost reductions while maintaining or increasing service levels
• does your IT infrastructure provide a strategic foundation to help make your company more competitive

“We get a highly scalable en­vironment, pay only for the resources we need, and relieve our it staff of the systems management and administration responsibilities of support­ing a dynamic infrastructure.”

Jim Graham

Technical Manager, 3M

Don’t forget though – it doesn’t matter whether you’re an organisation growing from a small start, or a large one that’s continuing to expand – you can benefit from the cloud.

Get cloud power on your terms.

Cloud power is about creating new technology solutions that help drive your business forward. Contact us today to find out what it can mean for your business.  igropu are SharePoint specialists and we can give you the best advice.

Call igroup on 0845 838 2184 or visit our website at www.sharepoint-cloudhosting.com.

Let us help you to get your head in the cloud, and your business feet on a firm foundation.

For more information about Microsoft cloud solutions, visit: www.microsoft.com/cloud

Thanks to Microsoft TechNet for this very useful article which covers default permission levels and user permissions:

Default permission levels

Permission levels are collections of permissions that allow users to perform a set of related tasks. SharePoint Server 2010 includes five permission levels by default. You can customize the permissions available in these permission levels (except for the Limited Access and Full Control permission levels), or you can create customized permission levels that contain only the specific permissions you need.

Although you cannot directly edit the Limited Access and Full Control permission levels, you can make individual permissions unavailable for the entire Web application, which removes those permissions from the Limited Access and Full Control permission levels.

The following table lists the default permission levels for team sites in SharePoint Server 2010.

If you use a site template other than the team site template, you will see a different list of default SharePoint groups. For example, the following table shows additional permission levels provided with the publishing template.

User permissions

SharePoint Server 2010 includes 33 permissions, which are used in the five default permission levels. You can change which permissions are included in a particular permission level (except for the Limited Access and Full Control permission levels), or you can create a new permission level to contain specific permissions.

Permissions are categorized as list permissions, site permissions, and personal permissions, depending on the objects to which they can be applied. For example, site permissions apply to a particular site, list permissions apply only to lists and libraries, and personal permissions apply only to things such as personal views, private Web Parts, and more. The following tables describe what each permission is used for, the dependent permissions, and the permission levels in which it is included.

List permissions

Site permissions

Personal permissions

We’ve thought long and hard about the post-sales service that we offer to our customers, aiming to make it the best around.  It isn’t just a question of “the customer is always right”, because on the odd occasion when the customer isn’t right (yes, it does happen!), it’s vital that the best advice is given in order to avoid potential problems.  What could be worse that helping a customer to do something badly – “I told you so” is not good customer service.

The more we thought about it, the more we came to the conclusion that above anything else, we wanted to give our customers the type of service that we’d expect to receive ourselves.  Not exactly rocket science, just good old common-sense.

So what can you expect if you decide to chose igroup to provide SharePoint support services for you?

• our entire team are highly qualified and experienced Microsoft certified SharePoint specialists, giving you access to the very best people around
• we can provide recommendations on best practices and tips about maximising your investment
• standard support (pay-as-you-go or contract) is available 9:00-17:00 Mon to Fri
• you can upgrade to 24/7 support if you need that extra reassurance
• you will have named, dedicated points of contact, thus ensuring a good rapport and working relationship is built quickly

Those are just a few of the benefits you’ll experience from our after-sales support packages.  Some of our customers offered the following comments in response to a brief survey we conducted recently:

• responsive
• friendly, easy to talk to
• listened to what we needed to achieve
• we only had to buy the days we needed to resolve the problem

Once you’ve made the decision to source SharePoint support from igroup, you have two types to choose from, contract and non-contract.

Our innovative “pay-as-you-go” service allows you to buy days (credits) singly or in blocks which are valid for up to 12 months.  Having credits in hand means that you’ll always be able to get support when you need it.  This choice is particularly good if you are only making minimal use of your SharePoint deployment.

If you decide on the contract option, you’ll enjoy huge savings on the single daily rate.  Go for this option if you need regular support or have a large project to implement.  If your deployment is critical to the smooth running of your day-to-day business you can be assured that you’ll have done the very best to minimise any risk from potential problems.

Whichever way you go, you can be sure that the service you get from us is the same because everyone gets the very best.

Anyone using igroup as their hosting provider will benefit from our comprehensive and competitive SLAs:  we aim to achieve 100% web site availability for our customers and will issue credits to compensate for downtime.

If you’re interested in igroup’s hosted SharePoint service, find out more by giving us a call on 0845 838 2184 or visiting our website: www.igroupltd.co.uk for more information – we’ll be happy to discuss your requirements and show you all the benefits you’ll get with our support packages.

Our commitment is to our customers, 100%.