Protected: Launch SharePoint Services with Collaborative Solutions
March 22, 2012
Navigating SharePoint Trials
March 22, 2012
SharePoint has almost become a corporate mandate, but how can you tell if and how SharePoint will work for your organization? Many companies want to run a trial to see if SharePoint is a good fit. CMSWire covers some SharePoint trial options in, “Office365 or SharePoint Foundation – What’s the Best SharePoint Trial?”
Chris Wright covers some of the major pros and cons:
But the world is slowly changing. The Cloud is now everywhere, and many enterprise applications and services are happily migrating. SharePoint is one of them, included as part of Microsoft’s wider Office365 offering. SharePoint Online, available as a free trial for 30 days, is now another way to investigate the world of SharePoint. However it is important to realize that Online differs from Foundation, and indeed all the locally installed versions, in a number of significant ways. So for the new users wanting to evaluate SharePoint, which is best — SharePoint Foundation or SharePoint Online?
But what happens if a trial is run and SharePoint is not a great fit? The internet is full of content generated by SharePoint developers and users who give practical advice for customizing SharePoint to more effectively meet certain needs. If you determine that your organization cannot invest added time and money in customization, there is another option, third party solutions.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a strong enterprise search suite that is already tailored to the needs of end users and developers, cutting out the customization step and allowing more intuitive interfacing with all users.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze is more than a search:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or to be more precise, understands what the most important information is for you at any precise moment in time. It is the center of excellence for your knowledge and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud data together.
Read more about their offerings and see if Fabasoft Mindbreeze might be an asset to your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Time for SharePoint Reference Data Cleaning
March 21, 2012
Optimizing SharePoint 2010 with Powershell
March 21, 2012
For SharePoint developers who need to customize their infrastructure, Powershell can be a powerful appliance to achieve set goals. Craig Pilkenton offers his suggestions for maximizing the tool in, “Using Powershell to… Upload Documents in SharePoint 2010.”
Powershell is the tool for getting things done in all versions of SharePoint (and your servers/desktops too!). It has the capability to automate, monitor, notify, and even ‘react’ to results. Not only does it have custom compiled ‘activities’ to get work done, it has the ability to call any command-line executable or pull in .NET library’s to handle anything not already given to us by Microsoft (or even our own cmdlets). In this article we’ll go over how to use some of the new “manage content” SharePoint cmdlets to interact with the platform just as a user would.
Pilkenton is a Senior Microsoft Consultant at CDW, so his advice is credible and valuable. He even lists a couple of items for consideration before using Powershell, and breaks down the internal structure line by line.
But for those who are not Senior Microsoft Consultants, and even those who may be intimidated by a command line driven program, there are other options. Many third party solutions exist to make customization more intuitive, with less technical skill required.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers an entire suite of enterprise solutions to work alongside, or in place of, SharePoint. Read more about their quick, service-oriented, and cost-effective offerings:
The award-winning high-tech product is your personal assistant. 24/7, 365 days a year. Regardless of which data you are looking for and with which system you are working with – Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise answers your questions with pinpoint accuracy.
SharePoint is a powerful and ubiquitous tool in the world of search, but for those who cannot devote the time and attention to such a large infrastructure, a smaller more intuitive solution may be just the fit.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 21, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: What SharePoint is All About
March 20, 2012
How to Improve SharePoint Information Architecture
March 20, 2012
Over at the SharePoint Pro Blog, Robert Bogue recently posted, “5 Steps to Making SharePoint Information Architecture Work for You.” Information architecture can be an extensive process, creating the structure and tools for your information such that it can be stored, retrieved, and managed in the most efficient way. In the article, Bogue covers some productive steps to take toward creating better information architecture. First on Bogue’s list is to identify attributes:
Identifying the attributes is typically a process of identifying all of the content in your organization that people want to store and find. This might include invoices, purchase orders, time sheets, et cetera. Each of these has a series of attributes such as the invoice date, customer ID, or vendor ID. These may be valuable for organizing the information for retrieval.
Identifying attribute values and creating ranges and groups are also discussed. Of course, you cannot leave out designing a powerful search and navigation experience when discussing an organization’s custom architecture.
This light read is a good introduction to Information Architecture and provides some basic ways to beef up your existing system. But to strengthen your SharePoint system while spending less time on training and configuring add-ons, consider Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Part of the full suite of solutions is the Fabasoft Folio Connector, which provides uniform, reliable management of your digital content. Here is a highlight:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is able to search all data sources connected to the platform simultaneously. In addition to data from, for example, Microsoft Exchange or the file system, the Fabasoft Folio Connector allows to query information objects and documents from Fabasoft Folio, too.
Learn more about connecting your enterprise-wide information assets at Mindbreeze, where they seem to have the benefits of a proper installation down pat.
Philip West, March 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: 101 Complex SharePoint Samples
March 19, 2012
Combine the Cloud and On-Premise Capabilities in SharePoint
March 19, 2012
Over at the SharePoint Pro Blog, Chris McNulty recently posted, “The SharePoint Decision: Do We Choose Cloud or On-Premises?” In the article, the author looks at SharePoint Online versus on-premises SharePoint. SharePoint Online lacks a few features found in an on-premises farm, but SharePoint Online opens new doors that are appealing. McNulty offers a list of questions to ask yourself with respective scores for each answer that may help you decide between the two SharePoint options.
McNulty has this to say:
It’s also important to remember that a cloud vision is almost always a future-looking strategy. Since the cloud is uniformly available, it’s easier to deliver content to users with less respect for their immediate location or device (PCs, tablets, smartphones). Similarly, although Office 365 and SharePoint Online lack features relative to on-premises SharePoint, this isn’t expected to be a permanent situation. If we project forward through the next release of SharePoint, we can forecast a time when the on-premises and cloud versions of SharePoint provide nearly identical functions.
The guidance questions cover a variety of topics, such as the extent of your SharePoint IT team, geographic limitations, and budget outlooks. These questions may be helpful to help you evaluate your system, but we like a simpler solution. Consider a third party solution that combines the best of both worlds. A solution worth a close look is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. One of the key components in their full suite of solutions is the information pairing technology:
Our information pairing technology makes you unbeatable. Information pairing brings enterprise information and information in the Cloud together. This gives you an overall image of a company’s knowledge. This is the basis for your competitive advantage. In this way you can act quickly, reliably, dynamically and profitably in all business matters. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise and the Cloud fit perfectly together. The Cloud makes you and your business mobile – Mindbreeze makes itself at home in the Cloud.
Read more about the integrated solution that requires no installation at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, March 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Give SharePoint a Solid Foundation with Mindbreeze
March 16, 2012
In “SharePoint Performance Troubleshooting,” Jason Himmelstein addresses the broad issue of improving performance issues in SharePoint. He points out that this can be a hard issue to confront as many end users may not adequately articulate the problem, such as ‘SharePoint feels slow’ or ‘uploads take a while.’ From an IT perspective, fixing such a problem isn’t easy without specific details.
But with user education a topic for another day, Himmelstein speaks to more general areas that IT can look at to “ensure that any bottlenecks users experience are not SharePoint-related.”
Himmelstein explains his approach:
When I initially sat down to start this article, I quickly realized that you can’t begin to troubleshoot performance issues until you have a sound baseline to start with. Otherwise, the likelihood of you figuring out what is going wrong in the environment is extremely low. With this in mind, I decided to tackle this topic from a bit of a different perspective, examining what forms the base of a solid and well-performing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 farm and working backward from there.
The author outlines some main areas. First on the list, Himmelstein says you’ll want to look at your Windows server hardware sizing and make sure the platform that supports SharePoint is sound. In terms of the SQL Server tier, Himmelstein suggests that is the one in which you’ll want to make your hardware investment. Web server load testing and other performance issue causes are also discussed in the lengthy article.
Himmelstein searches for that solid base in SharePoint. We agree a solid base is needed for optimum performance, but you may not find that with an out of the box SharePoint installation. A comprehensive third party solution, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, can give your SharePoint system a solid foundation and extended capabilities.
Daniel Fallman points out:
. . . in Microsoft SharePoint only one facet of a company’s knowledge can be presented. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise 2012 Winter Release puts an end to this shortcoming. It enables all information that is connected to Mindbreeze to be displayed in Microsoft SharePoint. This takes place smoothly via Web Parts.
Read more at www.mindbreeze.com.
Philip West, March 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: AvePoint Takes SharePoint to Japan
March 16, 2012
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