Beyond Search

Don’t Panic! Relax, SharePoint Is Easy with the Right Knowledge

Stephen E. Arnold — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:54:34 +0000

Let’s say you’re an IT professional, but you were just given your first SharePoint project. You have a general knowledge of the collaborative content platform, but not enough to tackle a project blindly. The most important thing is to not panic, take a deep breath, and check out CMSWire’s article, “Wrapping Your Head Around the SharePoint Beast.” The title rings true for many professionals who have never handled the content behemoth before. The article reads more like an advice column for handling personal problems than SharePoint, but then again you could apply the advice to your romantic relationship.

Moving on to the article’s meat, we are advised to learn SharePoint’s basic structure. Take a look at the code, visit the farm, and then migrate over to learning platform basics. You’ll be useless as a developer unless you know how the product works. Also don’t forget that the Internet provides a bevy of SharePoint communities willing and eager to provide support and talk shop.

Here’s what I take as the best advice:

Any developer who wants to stand above the fray will invest time and effort into learning the different options for SharePoint development and when to use each option. You don’t need to be an expert in every option, but you should at least know there’s a better way.

It’s true that there are many ways to arrive at the same solution and some of them are better than others. Learn what works best for different types of problems. Another thing that new SharePoint people won’t know is that the out-of-the-box search platform isn’t the best. SurfRay’s Ontolica Suite is an option if professionals are seeking a high-quality IVP search partner. It doesn’t require any programming. All you have to do is configure it in the administrator interface and it is automatically deployed to users with the options for custom searches, filters, search suggestions, and much more.

Whitney Grace, February 11, 2012

Superheroes and Sidekicks: PLM Implementation in Gotham City

Catherine — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:14:10 +0000

BAM! POW! BOOM! The most famous superhero with a sidekick certainly is Batman and Robin. Stephen Porter of Zero Wait State thinks there is a sidekick to the PLM superhero who is often forgotten. His blog post The PLM State: Don’t Sleep on Robin – the Hidden Value of Project Management focuses on the importance of the project management role.

Porter suggests that impeccable planning and project management is necessary for any successful PLM implementation.

“Marrying vision with discipline is the optimal approach for deploying strategic solutions like PLM. The marriage of purpose and goals with the pragmatism of execution keeps things from being too ambitious and ensures that the project will be completed in a reasonable amount of time.”

Without Robin – a.k.a. the project man – there is “no balance and things go awry.” He is the key to making sure everything goes as planned.

Attention to detail and precise planning are the keys to success – with or without superpowers. In fact, that is what PLM is all about. Some companies like Inforbix are taking it a step further. With their data access solutions, Inforbix offers manufacturers those details that make all the difference. Their software is quick to deploy, easy to use and affordable for all. Forget Batman and Robin, it sounds like Inforbix is Superman!

Jennifer Wensink, February 11, 2012

Adobe Plays the Open Source Card

Stephen E. Arnold — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:04:36 +0000

Thetus endorses Flex and Flash in “The Adobe Flex Open Source Hubbub.” Adobe Flex, long used to develop applications for the Adobe Flash Player, is now being unleashed on the open source community. The write up states:

The Flex SDK is already available to the open source community, but under the control of Adobe, meaning that they solely have the power to actually make any changes to Flex. Now Adobe has officially decided to relinquish this control and send Flex off into the great wide, open source world. . . .In order to cement ongoing commitment to Flex in the community, Adobe has a proposal in place with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to guide the future of Flex.

Under Apache’s program, changes to software development kits are voted on by contributors in the community. We applaud Adobe for taking this step.

What about HTML5? We’re still not there yet. Stay tuned for further developments. Open source may not be a life saver for either Adobe or Hewlett Packard. What is it? A way out with some face saving?

Cynthia Murrell, February 11, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

Android App Developers Prepare for Global Expansion

Stephen E. Arnold — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:02:19 +0000

Android is a big winner or a potential headache. Here in Harrod’s Creek we just don’t know. The dramatic increase of smartphone and other tablet users over the past couple of years has resulted in the creation of thousands of apps. Read Write Web recently reported on the international smartphone market in the article “There is a Huge Market For iOS & Android Apps Overseas, Report Says.”

According to the article, the mobile analytics company Flurry has been tracking the progression of Android and iOS penetration all over the world. The company has found that despite the fact that the United States is the most mature smartphone market, app developers should consider pursuing emerging markets like China, Korea, and the United Kingdom.

The article states:

Flurry encourages app developers to look overseas for potential growth markets. For instance, in China there are 122 million middle class adults age 15-64 that are not using iOS or Android. In the U.S. that number is 91 million (figuring a 200 million potential smartphone user base or about 60% of the population).

While the U.S. remains a hotbed for testing new apps, be prepared to see global app expansion in 2012. With Android “sort of” open and fragmentation a headache for some developers, can Android crush the annoying iOS and deal a death blow to Microsoft?

Jasmine Ashton, February 11, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

Learn How To Fix the Most Common SharePoint Mistakes

Stephen E. Arnold — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:54:45 +0000

It has been a while since I have written about a top ten list, ladies and gentlemen, but I am so glad that I found another SharePoint top ten list to share with you. The list comes from SharePointProMag.com, it is by Todd O. Klindt, and the title is, “Top 10 SharePoint 2010 Configuration Mistakes—And How to Fix Them.” What I like about this article already is that instead of simply listing the mistakes Klindt has given us the solutions, so we can also use this piece as a repair manual as well. It starts off with a basic mistake: “Scrimping on SharePoint’s RAM or Hard Disk Space.” We all know the solution for that one. Moving on we find the usual advice about only following basic setup models, using a single account, running apps in separate pools, and caching.

Here’s one I haven’t considered, however:

Mistake #10: Not Pointing Your SharePoint Servers at Themselves

When SharePoint works, it is magnificent. When it doesn’t work, it can be a nightmare to fix. For this reason, anything you can do to ease troubleshooting is time well spent. To that end, I make sure that every server in the SharePoint farm points to itself for all web apps. If I get sporadic reports about SharePoint not responding, I can easily use RDP to log into each server and try to pull up SharePoint. If this attempt works, then I know that the server is working. If SharePoint does not come up, then I know in exactly which Microsoft User Location Server (ULS) logs to look for the relevant errors.

It makes sense when you think about it, but the logical answer isn’t something we usually think about first. It reminds me about telling end users to restart their computer to fix a problem. It’s the easiest thing to do, but not many do it. I am surprised that Klindt didn’t mention augmenting SharePoint’s out-of-the-box enterprise search with a heftier product. SurfRay’s Ontolica Enterprise Search is a SharePoint search enhancement that can be deployed across many departments and configured to each department’s individual needs. Similar to the impracticality of using only one SharePoint account to administer all activity, Ontolica can be altered to fit any and all search and permissions structures.

Whitney Grace, February 10, 2012

A Quote to Note: Google Plus Is a Winner

Stephen E. Arnold — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:16:45 +0000

Navigate to “Google Social is Exploding Online!”

It is now safe to say that Google+ is becoming an enormous success, with nearly half of the unique visitors of Twitter (40,411,065 unique visitors in December). With a steep upward trend and knowledge of the power behind a Google product, expect continued growth from the unequaled search engine’s social platform known for ingenuity, creativity, and revolutionary product offerings.

There you go. Google TVs are coming as are more cloud apps.

Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

When Disaster Strikes – Loss of a SharePoint Farm

emily — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:14:35 +0000

Most SharePoint developers and administrators have nightmares about losing their content. Any number of things can go wrong when one deals with fragile electronic data storage and retrieval. Quite frankly, it is a miracle that data disasters do not strike more often. Our blog author, Paul, describes his terrifying account in “Five Things I Learned From Losing My SharePoint Farm.”

He recounts his thoughts and actions immediately after the loss:

I went home and made the first sensible decision of the evening. I went to bed. Partly I thought I should stay up and work on the problem but I was shattered and I wasn’t going to solve anything in the state I was in. When I woke up – at 5:00AM, screaming – I got to work and thankfully by midday I had the farm back in a working state and all the data accessible. During those painful hours I learned 5 valuable lessons that I thought were worth sharing for relative newcomers – like me – to SharePoint.

Paul goes on to suggest some practical solutions so that others do not suffer his same loss. Ideas include regular SQL backups and details documentation that is stored outside of the SharePoint installation itself, outside being the operative word there.

Many organizations are turning to smart third party solutions to help make the backup and restore process much simpler. Add automatic backup to the features of the Cloud and SharePoint administrator nightmares could be greatly reduce in frequency and severity.

One alternative that many organizations are turning to is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Their comprehensive suite of solutions can stand alone or compliment an existing SharePoint infrastructure. Particular attention is given to their backup and restore options here.

Emily Rae Aldridge, February 10, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

Oracle’s PLM Summit Focuses on Profitability

Catherine — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:14:16 +0000

The 3^rd Annual Oracle Agile Product Lifecycle Management Summit just wrapped up in Santa Clara, California. The focus this year was to Optimize Your Product Value Chain for Increased Profitability.

The attendees were introduced to “trends, challenges and best practices that are helping organizations to:

Accelerate innovation through ideation management and collaboration, product portfolio management and analytics, data consolidation and cleansing, and a rich enterprise product record.
Design for supply with product cost management, outsourced manufacturing and product collaboration, product supply risk analytics, and spend consolidation.
Align the value chain through integrated portfolio and business planning, enterprise quality management and analytics, accurate and clean product data publishing, and rapid product commercialization

There were general sessions discussing everything from profitability to optimization; as well as break out session and industry focus groups.

Oracle is not the only company “turning innovation into a competitive advantage.” Technology companies like Inforbix may not be as big, but are offering companies, big and small, the same advantages. Inforbix is designed to simplify data access, increase profitability, and yet be affordable for manufacturing companies of all sizes. Who knows – may be next year Inforbix will be holding a summit of their own!

Jennifer Wensink, February 10, 2012

A Corner for Helpful SharePoint Info

Stephen E. Arnold — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:06:41 +0000

Johnny’s RIA Corner publishes some valuable information, like “Fast Tips for FAST for SharePoint #2.” However, we have to say that the site wins the Hard-to-Read-SharePoint-Information Award. The inverted colors are really hard on the eyes, especially in articles with multi-colored code. Please, Johnny, consider fixing this trendy problem.

The article mentioned above shares a couple of query tips. The write up states:

When trying to query for a document that has a question mark (?) in its name or address as part of a FQL query, you may notice weird behavior from FAST. . . . Sending the query as is, will cause FAST to automatically evaluate the question mark as a wildcard character that will match any single character. Since this is not our desired result, we need to tell FAST not to use wildcards in our specific string.

The code changes for achieving this feat is included in the post.

Cynthia Murrell, February 10, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

Facebook Reigns Supreme

Stephen E. Arnold — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:04:14 +0000

In a world dictated by technology the latest and greatest products headline the news. Apple products such as the iPad, iPhone and iCloud continuously dominate the news and the attention of tech lovers everywhere. However, as captivating as these products may be, when it comes to internet searches they are not the fan favorite.

According to the Experian Hitwise article “Facebook Was the Top Search Term for Third Straight Year,” social media continues to dominate the public’s interest. “Experian Hitwise, a part of Experian Marketing Services analyzed the top 1,000 search terms for 2011, and Facebook was the top-searched term overall in the US. Analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches.”

Furthermore, social media terms have topped the list for the past six years. It seems that social media outlets such as Facebook show no obvious sign of slowing down but in a world where it’s out with the old and in with the new it will be interesting to seethe data for 2012.

April Holmes, February 10, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com