Building a SharePoint Web Site: Three Important Planning Points to Remember
January 30, 2012
In “3 Things to Know Before Using SharePoint to Build Your Website,” Will Saville of BrightStarr makes a few key points to consider before diving in head first. With a SharePoint deployment, planning is imperative.
What does Saville suggest for success? For starters, talk about business requirements and value 80 percent of the time and SharePoint technology capabilities 20 percent of the time. This helps you keep on track with your business goals. Second, know that out-of-the-box SharePoint capabilities may not meet all your needs, so plan to customize with Web parts. And last but certainly not least, consider your content:
If content is king, then Content Managers must be pretty important. But, it’s incredible how easily they can be side-lined. A poor editing and content management experience will lead to low user adoption, which will ultimately result in content not being published as quickly (if at all). Because SharePoint isn’t a point WCM solution, it’s really important to consider their needs and make sure it works from a content management perspective as early on as possible.
Getting your content managers on-board early will keep them engaged and encouraging of user adoption. The project success comes down to the people you have working on the project and their drive for innovation.
To customize your SharePoint site with Web parts and to make a user-friendly site that makes for easy adoption, look to a comprehensive solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Having Fabasoft Mindbreeze in your SharePoint system combines on-premise information with Cloud information, connecting your users to what they need. For an enriched user experience, the Mindbreeze InSite capability. . .
recognizes correlations and links through semantic and dynamic search processes. This delivers pinpoint accurate and precise ‘finding experiences.’ And this with no installation, configuration or maintenance required. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite is the website search that your company needs.
Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze’s full suite of solutions.
Philip West, January 30, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Proctor and Gamble Highlight Need for New Data Management Solutions
January 27, 2012
It was recently announced that the giant corporation Proctor and Gamble (P&G) has adopted even more project life management (PLM) software from equally as giant Siemens, a leader in the field of PLM. A recent article, P&G and Siemens Extend Ties – Analyst Blog, on NASDAQ explained how the two companies are strengthening their relationship. While not all companies come even close in comparison to the PLM needs of P&G they can take a note on the utilization of PLM.
The article explains the benefits of PLM by saying,
“P&G has always given great importance to its research and development. Its technologists have been responsible for several historic “firsts” that revolutionized their product categories. Siemens’ software was very useful to P&G, as it helped the retail giant to share workflow between many individual laboratories, or groups of labs that comprised P&G’s Research and development division. The PLM software helped to link labs together to standardize processes or share information.”
It is true that PLM benefits companies of all sizes by reducing costs associated with data management but it also does something much more, something P&G highly values – it streamlines workflow between departments. All too often as a concept moves through the various channels and chains of commands files get lost or can’t be shared because of incompatibility issues. New data management solutions eliminate those problems by offering cloud solutions and new methods of tackling PLM. Companies wanting to not only reduce expenses but also needing to share information between departments more effectively must adopt new data management solutions.
Catherine Lamsfuss, January 24, 2012
Protected: Resources for the Small SharePoint Owner
January 27, 2012
SharePoint 2010, Windows Azure, and the Issue of Scalability
January 27, 2012
SharePoint has not seen the same explosive growth in small or medium sized business as it has in larger organizations. One reason is simply the time and monetary investment that is required in running such an overwhelming infrastructure. Andrew Connell addresses this issue and its possible remedy with Windows Azure in his piece, “SharePoint 2010 + Windows Azure – Why You Should Care & the Development Story.”
Connell states:
Historically SharePoint has been very popular with large organizations because they can shoulder the financial and resource requirements required to deploy SharePoint. However one place where SharePoint hasn’t grown as fast is in the small and medium side business (SMB) area. The reason for this is most likely the cost and resource requirements (not just hardware, but people as well) necessary to deploy and maintain it. With Office 365, many of these barriers have been removed and therefore it represents a new era and opportunity to grow the SharePoint customer base. Therefore this is an area you should be very aware of and should learn how you can best leverage and exploit this new and untapped market of possible SharePoint customers!
Connell goes on to give specifics regarding the solutions in Office 365, and the ways that small or medium sized business might find SharePoint more amenable to their size and financial viability. Even as SharePoint becomes more accessible to smaller organizations, some third-party solutions are already customizing options to fit a variety of business needs.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze is one excellent third-party option for an organization of any size looking for an enterprise solution. Their scalable offerings are customized based on the needs of the customer, and expansion is an easy option whenever needed. Read more about “Three Configurations for Dynamic Scalability and Deployment.”
The blog entry begins,
In enterprise search, quality, usability and style are as important as relevancy of results and performance to engage your users right from the start. Let’s take a look at typical scale-out scenarios that become relevant when implementing enterprise environments with Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
The article then goes on to describe the different levels of deployment and how an organization might choose where to begin their installation. Keep in mind that moving from one level up to the next is effortless. Additionally, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is currently expanding onto the Cloud, where an organization’s storage needs are never limited.
So for SharePoint devotees looking for a way to make SharePoint more viable for smaller organizations, consult Connell’s findings above, but also explore the solutions presented by Fabasoft Mindbreeze and find a scalable solution that works for your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Report Indicates Increase in PLM Usage
January 26, 2012
As PLM cloud solutions grow in popularity across all industries it is not surprising to see reports predicting an increased growth in the months to come. CADD Edge, an engineering industry website, reported in the article, Product Lifecycle Management solutions to experience changes in 2012, of an increase in PLM adoption within the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry for a variety of reasons.
As the article explains,
“The report also predicts PLM will become a universal strategy among CPG companies, which have generally been slow to adopt PLM. Young expects PLM to become an obvious advantage for such enterprises during the next 18 to 24 months, as these businesses are dealing with unstable raw material costs and an increased emphasis on regulatory compliance.”
While in this circumstance PLM is the most logical choice in an effort to reduce expenses it also has many more benefits, foremost being the ability to streamline collaboration between development, manufacturing and administrative departments within companies. Access to files, all files, has traditionally been one of the major issues surrounding IT within the engineering industry. A severe lack of search ability and access has caused money to be lost b/c of duplication and lost man hours.
While PLM will most definitely save companies money as this article suggests there are so many more benefits. Inquiring into new data management solutions is the best starting point for any company wanting to eliminate waste. By utilizing PLM and cloud services companies can begin focusing on innovation again rather than costs.
Catherine Lamsfuss, January 24, 2012
Protected: 2012 SharePoint IVP Products
January 26, 2012
Slaying Data Tigers: The PolySpot Approach
January 26, 2012
A recent study conducted by Mindjet estimated twenty-one minutes a day were wasted searching for data among employees. Although that number seems small upon first glance once the math is done one realizes just how much money that costs companies. The blog post, Employee productivity: 21 critical minutes, on Polyspot’s Web site puts that cost upwards of two weeks’ worth of pay per employee putting a little more bite into that statistic.
So, what is a company to do to eliminate this waste? The answer, according to Polyspot, is quite simple really – utilize a search engine. As the post explains,
Search engines are often seen as a commodity. However, when used properly, they can breathe new life into information distribution within a company, saving employees valuable time that would otherwise be wasted. Now more than ever, with the appearance of so-called “Big Data”, these information asset management technologies provide a strategic gateway to a company’s entire knowledge base, enabling each and every employee to become more flexible, responsive, efficient and productive.
All too often as big data looms over their heads companies throw more and more money into data silos and other data management products thinking the storage of such vast amounts will fix the problem. As the post points out, however, storing data is the least of a company’s problem. As more business applications are being created and added into a company’s system more data is, in turn, being produced. In some instances the applications are meant to manage the data yet in reality only create more.
Without proper search within a larger data management solution companies are doomed. With entire industries existing solely online data will only continue to grow. Complicating the increasing data problem is the ever increasing types of data popping up making traditional search applications irrelevant. To be truly competitive in today’s market companies facing data problems must stop turning to applications to solve their problems and listen closely, rather, to Polyspot’s advice: invest in search.
Catherine Lamsfuss, January 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Simplified Database Maintenance in SharePoint
January 26, 2012
Database maintenance tasks are a part of general SharePoint infrastructure upkeep and care. However, as Steve Hord writes, it is not always the easiest task for a SharePoint administrator. In “Find active databases used by SharePoint Server 2010,” Hord writes the following:
One of the best ways to know what databases your SharePoint deployment uses is to keep a record and add database names each time you create a new database. This isn’t always easy as there usually isn’t enough extra time during the day to keep records. Plus, more often than not your SharePoint database maintenance tasks tend to occur either late at night or in the pre-dawn hours when no users are accessing the system, so remembering to add a new database name to an ongoing list is really tough.
Hord then goes on to give a few tried and true methods for finding the active databases in the SharePoint installation as well as their properties. However, some administrators might desire an easier method for database maintenance. We have found that many third-party solutions offer an ease of maintenance that SharePoint simply cannot supply.
Read about one of our favorite offerings, Fabasoft Mindbreeze, and its Fabasoft Mindbreeze Database Connector solution.
The Database Connector enables the connection of databases to Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. Furthermore, directory services such as Active Directory can be accessed via LDAP and searched very efficiently via Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. The development of the Database Connector is based on the data integration connector, making it easy to connect databases to Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise.
So while there are tips and tricks for almost any SharePoint issue or gripe, there are more and more quality third-party solutions available that replace of enhance SharePoint’s functionality. Check out the Fabasoft Mindbreeze offerings and see if they can supplement or replace your organization’s current SharePoint infrastructure.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: SharePoint Joins the iPad Revolution
January 25, 2012
SharePoint How-To: Keep It Simple
January 25, 2012
There is a saying in the library world, and apparently a version has made its way into the SharePoint world. This version is, “Make it easier to use than not to use and it will get used.” We could all learn a thing a two from this principle, but let’s look at what Kerri Abraham has to say about SharePoint in, “Give Them Instructions!”
Referring to the principle above, Abraham says:
Someone in the SharePoint community used this quote in a webinar I watched years ago and it has never left me, I find myself quoting it often because it is just dorky (and easy) enough to remember. And again, proves the point that easy sells! The real gauge of an elegant solution is in its ease of use, not in how complicated it was to build. So how do I make SharePoint easy? I provide great instructions. I test solutions with users and think creatively about how they might end up frustrated or lost and include those tips in the how-to. Then I place the link at the top of the page for a consistent method of presentation.
It is worth taking a look at Abraham’s entry and viewing her instructive photos and screenshots. Ultimately, the point is well taken. Give clear instructions, make it simple, and any organization’s SharePoint installation will be cleaner and more efficient. However, we also think that third-party enterprise solutions often offer a platform that is more intuitive and easier to use out-of-the-box. One we particulary like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Read what the Upper Austria Chamber of Commerce had to say about the Mindbreeze ease of use:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise enables access to information from various data repositories throughout the organization (such as e-mail systems, file systems, data bases). By expanding the scope of Fabasoft Mindbreeze, the service center staff is now able to receive all relevant information at a glance with only one search query. The simple and intuitive user interface eliminates the need for time intensive training.
Abraham’s creative solution for implementing instructions might help end users with the everyday functions of SharePoint. If additional efficiency is required, research Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see if it can meet your organization’s enterprise needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 25, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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