Protected: SharePoint Users Break Security Breaches
February 21, 2012
Using SharePoint Effectively: Simple Tips for your Users
February 21, 2012
As a follow up to the popular, “7 Ways to Use SharePoint Effectively,” the SharePoint Engine Blog published, “7 More Tips for SharePoint Success.” The brief list of tips are full of handy and effective ways to keep your business processes and business intelligence on track, mainly through simple, yet efficient document management features.
Some of the SharePoint Engine tips include opening up documents to collaborators and training all staff to do likewise. This will contribute to the sense of teamwork and get communication and ideas flowing. During training, include a how-to on restoring previous document versions to eliminate the time spent on re-writing or re-constructing content that has already been built. And add some flexibility to the work environment:
Allow for telecommuting for specific tasks, such as training. It’s easy to set up documents and other training materials that can be pulled from anywhere that gives you access to the web. This lets those who are sick at home stay up on work, cuts cost during training, and gives you an additional incentive by which to retain your top talent.
Building a sense of teamwork and collaboration among your users will improve the use and adoption of SharePoint capabilities, which will lead to idea development and collaboration in pursuit of your business goals. To get the most out of your SharePoint and enterprise search investments, look to Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
The new release of Mindbreeze displays a simple and easy to navigate search feature with index tabs that break down search results in specific groups and topics. With this feature, users can immediately see what documents contain their search term and in what context it is mentioned, meaning a fast search and find experience. Daniel Fallmann of Mindbreeze explains the search capabilities:
It is our goal to tame the information overload. Through semantics and relevance you don’t just get exact results, but also a better overview. If you are searching for files, for example, you will also find relevant documents and not just search result hits that contain the search term.
Check out the full suite of products at Mindbreeze to find the solution for your document collaboration needs.
Philip West, February 21, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: FAST Search for SharePoint Needs to Be Babied
February 20, 2012
Five Fundamentals to Remember for your SharePoint Intranet Development
February 20, 2012
If you are considering a SharePoint intranet deployment in your organization, you may want to read James Robertson’s, “Don’t Ask Staff What Features They Want on a New SharePoint Intranet.” Robertson points out that staff may often be unfamiliar with SharePoint capabilities and unsure how to articulate what functions they need in the farm to enable new ways of working. Instead, Robertson provides five fundamental approaches for determining your new SharePoint intranet functionalities, one being how to understand staff needs through an effective intranet needs analysis.
Other fundamentals to remember include understanding the patterns of work in your organization, developing a common definition of what SharePoint is among all stakeholders, using other organization’s intranets as a guide for what works (and what does not), and starting with a simple, easy to navigate intranet.
And the take away point for your intranet planning,
Most of all, don’t fall into the trap of starting with SharePoint features, and working back to the project scope. Even with the best will the world, it’s easy to get caught up in technology discussions and decisions, losing sight of the overall objectives and outcomes.
Robertson’s points are all sound advice for embarking into the next phases or your organization’s development in the enterprise search environment. Asking the right questions will help ensure that limited project resources are spent on the key aspects rather than unnecessary functionalities that will only complicate the system.
A third party solution, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, can also help you connect the dots in your SharePoint adoption. The Fabasoft Folio Connector integrates all your business information from the intranet, Cloud, internet, and knowledge portals in the corporate-wide search, while maintaining your strict access rights. With Mindbreeze, users can easily search and reuse information from documents, contacts, projects, Wiki articles, conference agendas, and more.
Philip West, February 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Enterprise Search Giants Keep Focus on Cloud and Social Solutions
February 17, 2012
Sim Ahmed discusses IBM vs. Microsoft in enterprise search in his recent ComputerWorld article, “SharePoint is a ‘Document Coffin,’ says IBM.” The ‘document coffin’ comments from IBM happened at the Lotusphere 2012 conference where they announced a host of new features for their line of enterprise software in an effort to offer up some competitive edge against SharePoint and Google’s Apps for Businesses. IBM is no stranger to critiques for their lacking enterprise software as SharePoint adoption continues to increase.
So what does IBM have in store?
The theme of this year’s Lotusphere is business made social, and IBM has taken the opportunity to announce several social networking orientated changes to its line of enterprise software. IBM demoed new additions to its Connections community portal product, including the new Activity Stream feature which resembles status feeds on most popular social networks. The Activity Stream can pull in information from multiple apps and feeds, including third party applications by using the OpenSocial framework. Community managers can gain a better understanding of their users with built in metrics and sentiment tracking.
In addition, IBM showcased their much anticipated cloud-based document collaboration and editing software called IBM Docs. But critics have been quick to point out that any system can become a document graveyard without the right people and planning in place ahead of time.
No matter your system, you need the right solutions in place to facilitate findability and reusability of your business information. For an established Cloud solution, consider Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Here you can read and see the easy and powerful search features of Mindbreeze in Folio Cloud.
William Wallace explains,
Whether you need to find an e-mail, document, contact, team room or any other object, Mindbreeze searches your Cloud with speed and intelligence. Under Mindbreeze in Folio Cloud you can select the sources that you want to search quite simply via a menu box directly in the search screen. You can conveniently select the source(s) that are relevant for your search and also select restrictions based on the tick-box options.
Folio Cloud gives you search and collaboration capabilities and the most return for your enterprise search investments. Point your browser to Fabasoft Mindbreeze to find what works for you.
Philip West, February 17, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Free SharePoint Training Videos Teach the Basics
February 17, 2012
Another Take on Visual SharePoint
February 16, 2012
We noted the excellent article “How to Do Visual Best Bets for Built In SharePoint Search”. Mikael Svenson has done a very good job of explaining the details of an earlier article about best bets (content which may of interest to a user) enhancements to SharePoint FS4SP.
Users find useful suggestions and content flagged as having particular relevance to a query. The suggestions in many systems are in the form of “facets” or highlighted results. Busy users can scan the results list and note the suggestions. A visual component can make it even easier for a SharePoint user to spot potentially useful content.
We learned from Mr. Svenson:
Visual Best Bets is a feature of FAST Search for SharePoint which lets you point to a file with html content to be displayed above your search results. For example an image, Silverlight or flash content can be used to graphically enhance what is linked to the keyword term. The Visual Web Part uses an iframe to accomplish this and loads up your content inside the iframe. This is useful as you can easily edit the html file at will. But why go the extra mile for a separate file, or opt in for FS4SP for this feature? The Best Bet web part support the showing of keywords and keyword definitions. Keyword definitions are formatted as html. And a definition with html formatting is in effect a Visual Best Bet. (If you have more than one Visual Best Bet you want to assign to the keyword you would have to add them all to the same html for this to work.)
We agree, and we want to add that there are numerous other options available to a SharePoint licensee. These range from the integration of visual displays from Microsoft-certified third party developers to custom code. One company with some interesting technologies is Nevron. The firm’s components can convert a SharePoint page into an advanced dashboard or a report. The user no longer looks at a results list. With Nevron-type technology, the user sees a report which answers a specific business question.
At Search Technologies, the technical team can implement FS4SP via PowerShell or other system, integrate third party components, or develop a customized solution to meet a SharePoint licensee’s specific needs. To learn more about Search Technologies’ customization and FS4SP services, navigate to the Search Technologies’ Web site.
Iain Fletcher, February 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Discover Point: Search Shows the Unseen
February 16, 2012
Discover Point comes at search and retrieval with the “automatically connect people with highly relevant information.” I find this interesting because it makes search into a collaborative type of solution. Different from a search enable application, Discover Point pops up a conceptual level. After all, who wants another app. When I need information, I usually end up talking to an informed individual.
Government Computer News reported on this approach in the write up “An Info and Expertise Concierge for the Office.” GCN perceives Discover Point as having a solution for the US government which “prevents agencies from constantly reinventing the wheel and instead helps users move forward with new tasks and projects…” This is an interesting marketing angle because it shifts from assertions that few understand such as semantics, ontologies, and facets.
GCN continues:
DiscoverPoint from Discover Technologies is designed to point users in the direction of the most relevant information and subject-matter experts within the shared platform environment. As your job focus changes, so do the searches that DiscoverPoint makes….But the really cool things start happening after you’ve been using the system for a while. As more personnel and documents relevant to what you are doing become available on the system, they will show up on your discovery page.
The idea of having a system “discover” information appeals to the GCN professionals giving Discover Point a test drive.
Discover Point is compatible with SharePoint, Microsoft’s ubiquitous content management, collaboration, search, and kitchen sink solution. Discover Point’s news release emphasizes that the firm’s approach in unique. See “Discover Point Software Selected Product of the Month by Government Computer News.” The Discover Point Web site picks up this theme:
Discover Technologies’ approach is truly unique, in that we do not require the manual creation of databases or MySites or other repositories to understand the needs of each and every user. We continuously analyze the content they dwell in, and establish an understanding of the users’ interests based on that content. Once this user understanding is gained, and this happens very quickly, then the proactive delivery of information and ‘people’ is enabled and the cost savings and quality benefits are realized.
Unique is a strong word. The word suggests to me something which is the only one of its kind or without an equal or an equivalent. There are many SharePoint search, retrieval, and discovery solutions in the market at this time. The president’s letter tells me:
‘Discover’ is able to understand what your users need, in terms of both information and ‘experts’ with whom they should be collaborating. This understanding is gained via our patent pending algorithms, which are able to examine user related content and ‘understand’ the subject matter being addressed, and therefore the subject matter that each and every one of your employees is focused on. Once this takes place, our products can deliver both info and people to your users, personalized to match their individual needs. The bottom line is that you need your experts, your most highly paid and critical personnel, to minimize the amount of time they spend doing administrative or manual activities and to maximize the time spent tackling the key problems that they are uniquely qualified to address. That is what DiscoverPoint does for you, and it pays for itself in very short order!
The company offers an Extensible Search Framework and an Advanced Connector Engine. The company also performs customer UIS (an acronym with which I am unfamiliar). The firm also has a software integration business, performs “high performance data indexing”, and offers professional services.
The company has an interesting marketing message. I noticed that Google’s result page includes a reference to IDOL, Autonomy’s system. We will monitor the firm’s trajectory because it looks like a hybrid which combines original software, a framework, consulting, and services. Maybe Forrester, Gartner, and Ovum will emulate Discover Technologies’ Swiss Army knife approach to findability and revenue generation?
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: DocAve and SharePoint Swim in Content Oceans
February 16, 2012
Keeping Enterprise Content Alive
February 16, 2012
It is easy to dump content into one of the popular content management systems, but assigning value to that content while storing it and making it searchable is quite a challenge. Word of Pie weighs in on keeping enterprise systems alive, be it in SharePoint or through other solutions in, “Keeping Your Content Alive, With or Without SharePoint.” The author points out that the issue lies not with any one particular system, but rather with an overall need to refocus content management systems.
The author states:
. . . a strong collaborative system, properly designed and implemented, can give Content life. I think Billy (Cripe) puts it best when he says that Content should be exhibited. I think that this type of system where Content is developed and readily revisited and leveraged is great. It just isn’t the only way.
The author goes on to explain that the value of information lies in its context; therefore, a successful content management solution will incorporate the context in assigning value to the content. Fabasoft Mindbreeze and their suite of enterprise search solutions assigns this type of value and context to the content it manages.
Read more in the press release, “More Time for the Essentials with Fabasoft Mindbreeze.”
With the new release, Fabasoft Mindbreeze displays search results clearer and more structured. Index tabs break down search results in specific groups and topics. That way, users see immediately what documents contain the search term and in what context it is mentioned. With this structured overview, users find what they are looking for much faster.
Subsequent releases have improved on the performance of Mindbreeze, but the framework listed above remains the same. If your organization needs to bring its content back to life, include Fabasoft Mindbreeze on your list of options.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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