How many times in life have you come across the phrase “If you’re not going to do it right, it’s not worth doing”? If you’re reading this you probably deal with technology, how many times have you been told or told others that they don’t understand how complicated it is to create something that runs as expected?
C is for Collaboration
The SharePoint Infrastructure is about supporting the style of collaborative working that is becoming popular, and required to achieve productivity goals today.
C is for Community
The SharePoint Community is about opening the discussion to as many voices as possible and creating world wide institutional knowledge, voluntarily!
C is for Conference
The SharePoint Saturday Conference was created because there was demand that a group of determined volunteers felt they could meet. I know Washington DC is one of the largest technological centers in the world, and home for a vast amount of SharePoint development, but it surpised me today … this is a real conference! Watching other volunteers swirling around NVCC today, on top of the months of preparation, I thought about how amazing all of the SharePoint Saturday, community run Code Camps, and other volunteer events really are. As if one day wasn’t complicated enough I hope that you’ll see that things have “been done right”. There will be room for improvement, but don’t be surprised when you see these great pieces…
Amazing, real conference boothes
(don’t worry Jen told me she’s good at negotiating)
An entire Gym turned into an exhibit hall.
Thank You Hollis for all of your great work!
And ofcourse great bags with a mug, pad, and lots of good stuff
I’ve made a bold statement “open source community” so let me digress for a second before giving you the juicy details of Community day at DC’S SharePoint Saturday the Conference (SPSTCDC). When I started my career I can vividly remember a joint user group or NT Server and Linux Administrators in New York City. In one corner the NT group, dark suits, short haircuts, and obedience to the technology provided. Sitting opposite were the Linux professionals, a varied array of khakis, jeans, and some t-shirts (gasp in NYC in the late 90s), long hair and beards, and a passion for pushing the technological limit. To say the least the different groups didn’t see eye to eye.
Flash forward to today and probably some of the same Microsoft professionals have learned from their Linux/Open Source counterparts and we’re in an environment where User Groups present implementations, demonstrate theory, and SHARE code! In my opinion because the SharePoint platform is based on bringing value, productivity and collaboration to the workplace our community comes equals the open source community model, with the exception of some licensing issues (ok, give me some liberty here!). SharePoint User Groups all across the country are created to server specific user needs and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the tool that an organization has chosen to work with. We are lucky in this area to have the Baltimore SUG (http://www.baltimoresug.org/default.aspx), SUG DC (http://www.sugdc.org/), and Federal SUG (http://www.fedspug.org/SitePages/Home.asp ) specifically supporting SharePoint but also the Capital Area Cloud Computing Group (http://www.capcloud.org/ ) and the Capital Area .NET User groups (http://caparea.net/ ) integrating content when users request it.
SPSTCDC is bringing these groups into one location so you can learn what their niche is, when their events are, how runs them, and how you can participate as a user and/or volunteer. Thursday is Community Day and here is the schedule:
9:00 – 10:15 am – SUG DC
Real Life value from the community
10:30 – 11:30 am – FEDSPUG
From Community meeting to Implementation: How Project Management was implemented after one presentation
11:30 – 1:00 pm Lunch
1:00 – 2:00 pm – Women In SharePoint
The Myth of the SharePoint Unicorn: Staffing, Recruiting and Developing a SharePoint Team for SP2010 and Office365 Success
2:15 – 3:15 pm – Baltimore SPUG
The Business Value of SharePoint Community What is the impact of SharePoint community for SharePoint practices, experienced professionals and newcomers to the SharePoint platform?
3:30 – 4:30 pm – SharePoint Community Panel discussion
A moderated panel discussion about the future of the SharePoint Community of the Washington DC area and beyond. Learn about each organization, and voice your questions and suggestions for the future of our community.
ALL DAY EVERY DAY – Visit the Community Booths to learn more about the organizations, meet the founders, and ask questions!
What seems like a century ago (an entire two years) I was training users on the adoption of Microsoft Office 2007 and the wonders of the new ribbon. To quote Microsoft’s training materials “But it’s a good change”. Really? I have always wondered who the learning specialist was, and what type of sense of humor they had to have by including such an ironic line. In the realms of Change Management (the warm and fuzzy kind, not the system change management some of you developers just thought of) the transition from Office 2003 to 2007 was basically a nightmare. It was as if you were suddenly forced to buy a new car, and now you couldn’t find the ignition!
Now there is the much less awe inspiring transition form 2007 to 2010. Amazingly, as if the Windows 7 commercials were accurate, the new functionality in Office 2010 now compares to what web based rivals have been doing over the past two years and what users have been asking for! While this comes to no surprise to consultants, it is refreshing to see that the behemoth can change directions. Collaboration has now become the binding feature set of Microsoft Office. Here are some new features (in no special order):
Backstage – while this isn’t 100% new, it replaces the document management panel that has been available since 2003, but is now much more prominent and allows some cool direct interaction with document properties within SharePoint (and actually 2008 file servers).
Web Based Word, Excel, and OneNote – Excel has been available since MOSS 2007, but now it’s partners in crime Word and OneNote have been added to the Web Client List. Available using a web service methodology documents can be opened via the web and/or the client (beating out it’s competitors).
Simultaneous Editing - It’s been available for a while in other products, but now multiple workers can edit, and view other people’s edits, at the same time in Office Products.
Social Media within SharePoint Mysites – Tagging, rating and micro-blogging about documents in progress, all associated together in a folksonomy (instead of a taxonomy – you know created by the people, for the people)
Wow, it’s Gov 2.0, how exciting! But what’s the reality of just these few interesting pieces being used within the Government? This post is called “Office System Collaboration” because the tools mentioned above have been designed more than ever to be a single package. Remove one of the pieces and it seems that you get exponentially LESS functionality. Let me try to give you a scenario:
Soap Company A holds a conference to launch it’s new soap (let’s imagine it’s in October), all attendees are expecting to walk away with a bar of soap but it will be available in a few weeks instead. The key note introduces all of the amazing new capabilities of the new soap and attendees are excited to learn the details. The next day, during break out sessions the attendees realize one thing – the Soap smells good, but only if you use Soap Company A’s water at the same time (thanks Randy for the analogy).
In my small bite of reality (mostly Government) organizations are still using 2003 version of office products and are very slowly starting to use any type of Collaboration (especially SharePoint). So how can we think of using the new soap (SharePoint 2010) when there’s very little possibility of having access to the water (Office 2010)?
As mentioned in a previous post, I believe that SharePoint 2010 can stand on it’s own in most cases because the ribbon functionality highlights SharePoint as a collaboration tool. Another aspect that could get buy-in from technology organizations is the increased out of the box compliance with 508 standards. It seems however, that the interdependence of the Office System actually creates a larger burden or Governmental support organizations to determine the ground up requirements to enable full integration. Hazzaaa for all of the vast improvements in Office 2010, but like past upgrades, will the users ever get to experience the functionality?
My daughter’s 10th birthday was a few days ago, but it wasn’t until the drive home from work yesterday when every radio show was talking about “The decades 10 best…. the decades 10 worst….” that it hit me, a decade has passed, and wow what a decade it was. If I wrote down the activities going on right now they would seem very similar to 10 years agon on the surface, yet differences like living in New Jersey and living in Maryland are greatly significant. I’m not here to write a memoir of the last 10 years, but to publicly acknowledge all that has wonderfully changed.
Resolutions
Relax and enjoy. When I worked in New York City I was onced asked if I was from California, because I was so laid back. Now, well, that’s not the case. So while this is not a SMART goal (see www.ipeccoaching.com for definition) I will stop looking for what’s next at every moment, and enjoy what I’m doing instead. Which is:
SharePoint in Government - I will be working to bring the best SharePoint solutions to all of my consulting engagements. I’d share my exact tactics, but some things need to be kept into suspense until they’re released (ok, several white papers at least)
SharePoint User Group – Participate in a local DC SharePoint user group as a leader (or maybe even create my own adventure)
SharePoint Presentations – Present at at least 2 SharePoint Saturdays, and build some core presentations around government Collaboration.
SharePoint Blogging – Post at least once a month, more if possible.
Relax and enjoy , That includes a vacation without e-mails, blogging or tweets!
My client has a Human Resources (HR) form that is supposed to be completed within a 25 business day window. The goal for my C-level client is to have 80% of these forms throughout the year. Unfortunately the forms are created in another system, so all I’m building is a tracking list. To preserve the innocent business process I have recreated a generic version of the list for review.
Columns:
Division, Sub-Division, Form For, Form Number, Date Form Issued, Date Form Expires, 15 day Notes, Extension Request Date, New Expiration, Date Form Completed, Form Administrator, Business Days for Completion
INSERT IMAGE HERE
The basic formula to calculate the difference between two dates is =DATEDIF([Start Date],[Completed Date], “d”) This, however, does not take into consideration business days.
Following the logic of that post I translated the calculated column into:
=(DATEDIF([Start Date],[Completed Date],”d”))-INT(DATEDIF([Start Date],[Completed Date],”d”)/7)*2-IF((WEEKDAY([Completed Date])-WEEKDAY([Start Date]))>0,2,0)+1
To track my client’s goal, I then created a KPI to determine the percentage of forms where the Business Days Completed were less than 26.
INSERT PICTURE HERE
This is not a perfect solution because it does not consider holidays, and of course my client is in government so there are a LOT of holidays. Luckily, if the goal of 80% is met with this calculation then it could only possible be higher if holidays were considered.
Images will come soon (Doing some maintenance on my sample Site Collection). Thanks to all my Twitter friends who helped.
SharePoint Saturday DC (December ’09 Edition) was a huge success even in the snow! In my unveiling of a new series of presentations I attempted to record the presentation. Note, I said “attempted”. Unfortunately all of the “OHHHHHs” and “AHHHHHs” from the audience – thank you everyone for your participation – were lost. But to keep in the spirit of SharePoint and Twitter and the unbelievable community I’m posting a very quick and rough screen capture of my presentation. I will be creating 5 follow-up posts detailing each solution. ENJOY, and let me know what you think.
Ok, so there’s a lot of cool stuff in SharePoint 2010 that all of the 7500 attendees, their co-workers, and blog followers are very excited for… Why does it matter? Well, in my opinion, it matters because it focuses even more energy directly towards collaboration, when collaboration is needed.
Microsoft has first achieved this by retooling the interface with the ribbon. The ribbon is important because it solidify’s SharePoint’s use as a functional tool! SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) has an identity crisis – is it an internet, and intranet, a tool? Now, while still having all of those different personalities a user of collaboration will focus less on the ‘how’ of working and be able to focus on the ‘what’ of their content.
Using Enterprise Content Types and Managed Taxonomies in SharePoint 2010 Daniel Kogan
There are new ENTERPRISE content types and Metadata features,
- “Think about the new scenarios and possibilities we’ve opened up”
Using Enterprise Content Types and Managed Taxonomies in SharePoint 2010 Daniel Kogan
There are new ENTERPRISE content types and Metadata features,
- “Think about the new scenarios and possibilities we’ve opened up”
It’s all about governance, management, consistency and standardization -> Managing the business process
No longer are you content types stuck in a site collection – app to app site to site etc, everything we’ve been asking for
Content Type Syndication – consistent across the entire enterprise, will be able to apply policies from one location
Publishing Content Types – connects to “the hub” the centralized content type store, records all of the corresponding columns and the association with the workflow (not the workflow itself) From the hub you can publish, unpublish, republish (update), Roll-up errors from all consuming site-collections. For the consumer themselves you will be able to create a new content type based off the hub, view import errors.
New on Content Type page “Manage Content Type Publishing”
Site Collection Administrators can look at the hub to see the different services and the Content Types that are being consumed.
Metadata driven strategies – Daniel has broken it down by Local vs Global and Managed Taxonomy to Open Hirarchies, to Open Folksonomy (tagging)
Different ways to apply metadata – through the web browser, through the office client (document information panel in 2007 and backstage in 2010)
Managed keywords – centrally stored words when the user starts typing sharepoint presents alternatives to the meaning. With the centralized information this creates true value for keywords
If a term is unknown a user can navigate through a taxonomy tree to find the correct value
Using the taxonomy creates a pivot that you can filter by a parent value, and then you can filter again by a child value
Managed Metadata – A “super choice field” connected to central database to pull information, New Column Type, standard selection, and then user can select from services that are available, and if the item is not there (and you have the right priviledges) you can add a term set without going to the centralized store.
Term set is comprised of synonyms that will guide user to the “approved” value
Term Management – Term set about 1000 terms, Term can contain 30000 items, decision needs to be made of how to organize to meet value
For a term you can have the default language, the description. The Default label, and the alternative labels
If a term value changes and it merges with another it becomes a synonym across all enterprise
With the installation of language pack you can support mulit-languages
Can import Excel/CSV into a hierarchy
What’s the business value of all of the keywords and tagging?
Metadata can be switched between language when stored in the central location.
Filter column is now inclusive or exclusive – a hierarchy built within the filter UI
Gives the power to actually realize a combination of tightly managed to social tagging information.
In beta Managed Keywords will be in the Base Content Type but full ship will probably be different
Burton Group: Governance, Politics, and Diplomacy with SharePoint: Success factors beyond Technology
Most of presentation is aimed at organizations with approx 7500 users, but smaller organizations can get ideas and not follow all of the steps (too overwhelming)
Why governance
- Internal competition between groups, products, etc. creating interpersonal conflict
- Inconsistency of information
Why SharePoint specifically?
- Ease of deployment and grass roots nature of empowering the end users who are sometimes minimally monitored (with out governance)
- Frequently overlaps with other installed capabilities
Focus on people, policy and process not technology
Have a separate maintenance manual, standards list, and information architecture which would fit into the governance framework
The key audience are the owners of the SharePoint sites the business owner and maybe their IT partner
Make sure to include compliance to not only set up ‘why’ something is done, but ‘how it will be tracked’
SharePoint 2010′s Hidden Gem: HiSoftwares’ Roundable on Accessibility with Time McConnell microsoft’s program manager
Why this wasn’t a main presentation I’m not sure. The gentlemen from HiSoftware, Thomas and Ken, shared the history of accessibility, the current state, and provided insite into where web accessibility is possibly going.
Tim walked through all of the efforts that have been made to make 2010 accessibly. In short SharePoint masterpages, layouts, and standard features meet the WCAG 2.0 AA standard that most websites are built to today. As usual if we make customizations, we’re responsible for making it follows the same high standards.
In short there is a lot more context for users with skip navigation, skip ribbon, skip quick launch, the content editor is using all html controls, and Microsoft has followed the new ARIA standard to provide full context for assistive devices. Time also stressed that while they have updated technologies that have made every effort for older assistive systems to work as well.
Thomas from HiSoftware showed compliance sheriff and how it even more closely integrates with SharePoint 2010. This continues to be a highly adaptable product that can keep your company out of trouble, or completely within compliance.
Creating Dashboards as easy as One, Two, Three – An Introduction to PerformancePoint Services Jason Burns, Wade Dorrell
- As expected webparts that directly integrate into SharePoint
- There is a Dashboard that shows in SP and automatically updates at any time
- PerformancePoint creates a SharePoint list with custom Content Types
- A Dashboard list is created to contain all dashboards
KEY NEW IDEAS
- Clike-Once Deployment
- Wizard build from scratch authoring
- WYSIWYG with precreated templates
- One-Click deployment to SharePoint
Advanced Features
- Can apply master pages to pre-built templates
- Demonstrated a Balance Scorecard that presents data in a single dashboard from diverse data sources
- KPI Details report, configurable in dashboard designer, what do the KPIs mean, who’s responsible, conditional display allows you to display specific reports for specific items
- Scorecards can now be filtered
- Within specific graph on dashboard users can click and change information to be more accurate to what they’d actually interested in.
- Reports can be expanded into a stand alone window to be more easily read
- when done. click and select ‘reset field’
- Composition tree (shown in keynote and very cool), keeps items with the top provider on the top, however can sort from smallest to largest if you’re looking for detractors
- From the Composition tree you can open analytic inteface and add measures to find more appropriate information
- From the analytic you can go to a chart, and that chart can be opened within the application
- No new server, Create a BI center Site template, or activiate PerformancePoint Feature
- Upstairs “Easy as 1,2,3″ Hands on Lab
Resources:
http://www.microsoft.com/bi
http://www.microsoft.com/performancepoint
Scaling SharePoint 2010 topologies for your organization Simon Skaria, Umesh Unnikrishnan
- Service Model Recap: Flexible deploymnet, Improved security – Claims based authorization, Cross-farm communication via web services, Simplified admin model, Service Isolation, Multi-Tenancy
- Choosing an architecture – found that a best practice is to follow a logical infrastructure instead of starting with physical
- New service architecture allows not only adding physical fire power at the Web Front End layer, but also at the Application server layer
- Underneath logical topology you must think about the business needs, any regulatory restrictions (the legal department might not want anyone else to have access), and your actual inforamation architecture
- New recommendation is to put Usage logging services on a seperate server because it retains a lot of information
-No one farm is the same, so the following examples are samples, not definitive suggestions
Small = <5000, Mainly collab users, not dedicated IT for SharePoint,
- Logical Topology – 1 App Pool with Publisheded Intranet web app, and another App pool with A web app for My Sites and for Team Sites
- Physical Topology – 2 WFEs/App servers and 1 SQL server
Mostly default settings and when have growth (but usage pattern is the same) they could just add more servers.
Medium = 10,000 – 50,000 SharePoint users, 10 SharePoint staff, not much intra-organization divisions, but lots of projects
- Logical Topology Still one farm, but here’s where the proxy groups come in – 2 custom groups and a default group of services.
- One application pool for HR (to keep it seperate), another app pool for Intranet and Mysite, and thean a final for Finance.
Physical Topology
- 3 WFEs
- Sperated out Query and Index servers, and then 2 other app servers with some redundancy.
- Multiple SQL servers for performance
- Manage growth by adding App Servers and WFEs
Large = over 50,000 users, all over the world, Internal hosting with different SLAs, using all of the features.
- Logical Topology An enterprise service farm, published content far, a collaboration farm a my site farm, very complex but the point is that it is centrally controled
- Physical Topology – Centralized servers for servers and a distrobution depending on bandwith usage and all of the other requirements.
But What about upgrading services from 2007 to 2010
- 2007 does not interoperate with a 2010 farm
- Two modes of upgrade, all at once or phased. If you do a phased approach one farm at a time (mostly for large organizations)
An SSP upgrade will move from a 2007 SSP to:
- A search service app
- User profile
- Exel service
- App registry
- managed metadate
This is automatic in the upgrade process, with right permission the upgrade will also create Databases as needed
SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Part 1: Fundementals Sean Livingston
Supported Scenarios
- In-Place Upgrade
- Database Attache
- Single Click Install (Windows internal, SQL Express)
NOT Supported
- Upgrade from anything before WSS v3 SP2/MOSS 2007 SP2
- Side by side installation
- Gradual upgrade
For upgrade will give tools like the pre-upgrade checker, stsadm -o EnumAllWebs, and SPdiagV2 – all to give insights into what exactly what you have
Customizations are the biggest issues, unique to your environment, that hampers upgrades
BEWARE of modifications to a Content Database, the pre-upgrade checker will compare to a standard DB. The command is HIGHLY recommended, not required. It won’t change anything but assist in making troubles less likely.
Sean says “You can Bing it” if you want to find out exactly what feature the report has found!
Have included specific PowerShell Cmdlets
- Upgrade-SPContentDatabase for resuming upgrades NOT when connecting a Database
- Upgrade-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
-Upgrade-SPSingleSignOnDatabase
Have focused on how to upgrade features by creating several declaritive statements, this is new capability, Advice to not upgrade if it’s not really necessary
Visual Upgrade, Default mode for upgrade, biggest complaint is the UI move from 03 to 04, can be set per sites in a site collection. There is a preview mode – but don’t add anything while previewing!
Items NOT UI Compatible
- My site host
- report server web parts
NEW Patch Management – identify patch level across all servers in farm, created a backwards compatibily mode that allows you NOT to do a full farm upgrade (for a short period of time)
Next major feedback from users was the downtime for upgrade. Downtime is tied to the structure of your farm and data. One major functionality is the ability to run parallel upgrade of databases.
Fixed Logging by adding one log per session, seperating error log, and a seperate fixed upgrade log also.
Found that upgrading 2 databases at the same time worked the best for multi-tasking, more might interupt each other
SharePoint can support Project Management, but it’s the companies process that dictates what tool to use, and how to configure.
WHAT’S NEW IN 2010
Project Task List – A Gantt View that works, Dependencies, connecting with microsoft project (out of the box)
Chart webparts – What is currently the seperate Dundas charts have now been included in SharePoint. You can chart information from any list within SharePoint or external source
Did I mention Project 2010 can sync with SharePoint?
There is no more breadcrumb navigation, it is now a back button that demonstrates internal hierarchy
There are now web parts to support the management of resources
What to look for when setting up project management in SharePoint across your organization (Why Bamboo Built PM Central)
- Consistency of site set-ups
- How to alert project managers and user
- being able to connect with project (PM Central currently connects with 2007)
Yesderday was a great day. Starting of with a Keynote from Steve Ballmer and Jeff Teper, with help from Tom Rizzo and Jared (sorry I didn’t catch your last name!) we were introduced to the new power of SharePoint. For this post I won’t go into too much detail about the Keynote, but I will provide a direct link to the postings I created during each of the events. This was supported by EndUserSharePoint.com and reportedly viewed by 996 people over the day. Please note, not necessarily full sentences, and it might not make full sense..but that’s why you can ask questions!
Keynote: Unveiling Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Steve Ballmer announces ‘SharePoint is an enthusiastic crowd’. This proves that at least 7400 people have embraced a new way of working. Mr. Ballmer continued to say that ‘SharePoint is at tle center of innovation’ for Microsofts future. We saw live demos of visual studio running on Windows 7, and SP Designer connecting easily to databases. So far so good!
Introduction to SharePoint Designer 2010: Top 10 Great Things to Know, Asif Rehmani www.sharepoint-videos.com
“Let’s build a sub-site” There are three different ways! In the ribbon, New Button within the sub-site section of the summary page, or file new item!
Can change the site name within the summary page!
The ribbon gives you access to all of the standard “Create” functions witin the browser. A new summary page is created when you create/edit a list. Settings, Views, Customization, Forms, Settings, Workflows.
Out of the box “Site Pages” for all sites, not just publishing enabled. Using SPD can be faster than the browser to add lists to pages because you do not have the server post back.
XSLTListViewWebPart replaces dataviewwebpart. (but I don’t know the benefits quite yet)
6. Create New Content Tyeps and attach to Lists directly through SPD – as shown in Keynote you can do external content types
4. XSLT lst view web parts.. Everywhere… Most powerful weparr – can be manipulated in SPD AND through the browser (different from current list view )
Creating a view from SPD instead of browser – Views, New
Creates view based off of default view – creates XSLTListView, can change layout and conditional formatting!
3. Connect to Data Sources outside of SharePoint
Databases
XML Files
Server side scripts
web services
(Without your developer)
BE CAREFUL – suggest using Single Sign On
2. Create Business Connectivity Services External Content Types (Used to be Business Data Catalog)
and the number one reason for using SharePoint Designer is….
Create powerful (and now) reusable woflows.
New categories
List Workflows (old school/current)
Reusable Workflows
Site Workflows
Reasuable workflows are assigned to a content type (or multiple).
NEW – fully integrated in environment, no wizard pop-up
It’s the little things, like a Rich Text E-mail editor built in to SPD!
More little things:\
Start typing and action and the system will show the different options
there is a SAVE button
Through ribbon attach to lists, any lists… yeeehaw!
Drum roll please… you can package workflows as a template in a wsp file!
Introduction to SharePoint Applications using InfoPath and Forms
Bojana Duke and Peter Allenspach
Peter is setting the need for Infopath QUALITY DATA – Agenda – Intro of InfoPat, Demo, Demo, Demo – They sure know how to play to the afternoon crowd.
Background – Form Designer, Form Filler, and Form Services
Power of InfoPath – Form Logic and data connection without code
NEW Feature to SharePoint 2010 and InfoPath 2010, “Customize Form” button opens infopath. Fields are directly connected to SharePoint list and displayed in the datafields
Did I mention that everything in InfoPath is within the Ribbon? Now pop-up windows (well at least so far).
NEW Feature – Comes with a set of pre-built rules.
Automatically pub;ishes form back to list.
Can add the usual repeating tables, can skin the list using pre-existing SharePoint themes. Immediately available!
My battery is on it’s last legs.. Thanks for reading, have a safe night! and see you tomorrow
NEW – Infopath is connected to the sandbox infrastructure (Eliminating the need to work with your administrator (diabolical laugh goes here).
, That includes a vacation without e-mails, blogging or tweets!