Tools and Tips for Maximizing SharePoint Functionality
January 11, 2012
There is a large chunk of the IT blogosphere devoted to SharePoint and enterprise, and a sizeable percentage of that is carved out for tips and tools to increase functionality. It makes sense. Enterprise is becoming a requirement, not just an option. Enterprise solutions, especially SharePoint, are massive creatures, requiring a lot of time and energy. Therefore, any tip or trick to get the most out of the system is of interest. The SharePoint Engine blog weighs in with, “7 Ways to Use SharePoint 2010 Effectively.”
The author writes:
The immense landscape that is SharePoint functionality is easy to lose track of. As a result, even those who don’t make major mistakes can still fall well short of taking full advantage of the platform. To help you as you try to milk this magnificent Microsoft system for all it’s worth, here are 7 simple ways you can use SharePoint to better your business.
The advice ranges from setting up mobile access to centralizing task locations. All these customization tips are smart, and will likely increase efficiency and retrieval. However, we wonder if a smarter solution exists, one that automatically implements these intuitive customization features, without having to spend the time to do the customization. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers that type of enterprise solution. Read more about their enterprise solution.
Highly efficient enterprise search and specific connectors link together data sources in companies and organizations. They integrate the knowledge of different sections of a company into a uniform, linked whole . . . But an all-inclusive search is not everything. Creating relevant knowledge means processing data in a comprehensible form and utilizing relations between information objects. Data is sorted according to type and relevance.
SharePoint is created to be an infrastructure, a shell. Powerful, yes, but costly to customize. That’s why many organizations are turning to third party solutions, such as Mindbreeze, to bridge the gap with SharePoint. Mindbreeze in particular will serve as a standalone solution or as an addition to an already existing SharePoint infrastructure.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Optimizing Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy
December 12, 2011
Two main concerns need to be balanced when pursuing an effective mobile strategy for any organization: efficiency and security. CMS Wire reports in, “Mobile Risks and Opportunities: Is Your Company’s Strategy Optimized?”
“A balance needs to be struck so that the organization can take advantage of the new technology, but not at the cost of lost confidential information or an IT infrastructure that is unmanageable. How can IT be expected to support five versions of essentially the same application but from different vendors (not all of which may be in business next year), running on every imaginable mobile device and operating system — that everybody wants connected to the corporate network?”
Add the necessity for mobile enterprise to the equation to further complicate the challenge. Mobile changes can occur so rapidly that a plan needs to be in place in order to keep pace. But keeping pace without regard to security poses its own threat.
“The internal audit, risk management and IT security teams should provide advice on the risks. However, care should be taken that excessive concern about risks does not result in being slow, or even late, to seize the opportunities.”
Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers a mobility solution that ensures security and efficiency are both priorities. Unlike broader solutions like SharePoint, you never have to worry about access and security issues with Mindbreeze.
“Smartphones and tablets allow you to act quickly in business matters – an invaluable competitive advantage. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile makes company knowledge available on all mobile devices. You can act freely, independently and yet always securely. Irrespective of what format the data is in. Full functionality: Search results are displayed homogenously to the web client with regards to clear design and intuitive navigation.”
Change will always be a challenge in IT, but success is possible through anticipating the threat and responding with a smart solution. We think Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth a second look for this, and many other reasons.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 12, 2011
Sponsored by: Pandia.com
Spotlight: Mindbreeze on the SharePoint Stage
November 1, 2011
A new feature, mentioned in the Beyond Search story “Software and Smart Content.” We will be taking a close look at some vendors. Some will be off the board; for example, systems which have been acquired and, for all practical purposes, their feature set frozen. I have enlisted Abe Lederman, one of the founders of Verity (now a unit of Autonomy and Hewlett Packard) and now the chief executive of Deep Web Technologies.
Our first company under the spotlight is Mindbreeze, which is a unit of Fabasoft, which is one of the leading, if not the leading, Microsoft partners in Austria. Based in Linz, Mindbreeze offers are remarkably robust search and content processing solution.
The company is a leader in adding functionality to basic search, finding, and indexing tasks in organizations worldwide. In August 2011, CMSWire’s “A Strategic Look at SharePoint: Economics, Information & People” made this point:
SharePoint continues to grow in organizations of all sizes, from document collaboration and intranet publishing, to an increasing focus on business process workflows, internet and extranets. Today, many organizations are now in flight with their 2010 upgrades, replacing other portals and ECM applications, and even embracing social computing all on SharePoint.
The Mindbreeze system, according to Daniel Fallmann, the individual who was the mastermind behind the Mindbreeze technology, “snaps in” to Microsoft SharePoint and addresses many of the challenges that a SharePoint administrator encounters when trying to respond to diverse user needs in search and retrieval. In as little as a few hours, maybe a day, a company struggling to locate information in a SharePoint installation can be finding documents using a friendly, graphical interface.
My recollection of Mindbreeze is that it was a “multi stage” service oriented architecture. For me, this means that system administrators can configure the system from a central administrative console and work through the graphical set up screens to handle content crawling (acquisition), indexing, and querying.
The system supports mobile search and can support “apps,” which are quickly becoming the preferred method of accessing certain types of reports. The idea is that a Mindbreeze user from sales can access the content needed prior to a sales call from a mobile device.
According to Andreas Fritschi, a government official at Canton Thurgau:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise makes our everyday work much easier. This is also an advantage for our citizens. They receive their information much faster. This software can be used by people in all sectors of public administration, from handling enquiries to people in management.
Why is the tight integration with Microsoft SharePoint important? There are three reasons that our work in search and content processing highlights.
First, there are more than 100 million SharePoint installations and most of the Fortune 1000 are using SharePoint to provide employees with content management, collaboration, and specialized search-centric functions such as locating a person with a particular area of knowledge in one’s organization. With Mindbreeze, these functions become easier to use and require no custom coding to implement within a SharePoint environment.
Second, users are demanding answers, not laundry lists. The Mindbreeze approach allows a licensee to set up the system to deliver exactly with a group of users or a single user requires. The tailoring occurs within the Fabasoft and Mindbreeze “composite content environment.” Fabasoft and Mindbreeze deliver easy-to-use configuration tools. Mash ups are a few clicks away.
Third, Mindbreeze makes use of the Fabasoft work flow technology. Information can be moved from Point A to Point B without requiring changing users’ work behaviors. As a result, user satisfaction rises.
You can learn more about Mindbreeze at www.mindbreeze.com. Information about Fabasoft and its technology are at www.fabasoft.com.
Stephen E Arnold, November 1, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Research in Motion and Aggressive Mobile BlackPad
August 21, 2010
I struggle to locate emails on my BlackBerry. I struggled to buy a working app on the BlackBerry store. I now struggle with a news story that links Research in Motion to Crusher Tank software and luxury car maker BMW. I rented a BMW once, and I gave up trying to get the radio to work and set the air conditioning. I cannot wait to see a table with a combination of BMW technology and Crusher Tank software.
What do you make of “RIM Said to Plan Crusher Tank Technology for Tablet Computer”? As you can see from the photo on the splash page of this blog, even my Microsoft SharePoint engineer, Tess the Boxer, can use the Apple iPad. Will she be able to handle RIM’s forthcoming tablet?
Will the BlackPad have the durability of this Crusher tank? Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_swGyNR8UhGg/SBoduyYjJPI/AAAAAAAAAI8/jBff0KtcnFQ/s1600-h/crusher2.jpg
Here’s the passage from the Bloomberg story which I hope is deadly accurate like the Crusher tank’s armaments:
The yet-to-be-announced tablet will run on software developed by QNX Software Systems, which RIM bought from Harman International Industries Inc. for $200 million in April, said the people, who didn’t want to be named because the plans haven’t been made public. QNX’s software is used in products from companies including Cisco Systems Inc., General Electric Co. and Caterpillar Inc. RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, is racing to introduce its tablet as rivals debut similar devices that fill the gap between smartphones and laptops. By using QNX technology, RIM could take advantage of the independent software developers who already create applications for QNX and build on the popularity of its BlackBerry smartphone with corporate customers.
I have no opinion about the issues related to access to BlackBerry email. I would imagine that Crusher tank technology can deal with almost any unpleasantness. If the technology won’t do it, maybe RIM could drive a Crusher tank over the issue, flattening it in no time.
The iDrive control device that baffled this addled goose.
I am more interested in the BMW technology.
My observations:
- The mobile heat is on for RIM from phones to tablets to far off lands which want access to email. I am not sure Apple will relate to the artistic elegance of the Crusher tank. I think the Google Math Club will find the BMW less environmentally pleasing than a Prius but well suited to speeding to meetings with various governmental entities.
- The Apple iPad seems to be a winner, and I wonder if the alleged BlackPad can capture the market segment fascinated by the tablet form factor. Apple is rumored to be readying a Mini Cooper iPad which might rain on the RIM tank parade. A flotilla of Android tablets seems to be making its way across the big blue sea with an ETA in the Fall of 2010.
- The BlackBerry application store is not quite up to Apple’s level and I think it lags the dross-riddled Android app store. BlackBerry has its consumer work cut out for itself. I still find the BlackBerry app I downloaded amusing. It would crash the mobile device. Solitaire is a tough nut to crack or BlackBerry to squish as the case may be.
To sum up, the macho positioning of the Research in Motion BlackPad is interesting. I just want to make phone calls, maybe read a book at the airport, and check some email. Do I need a BMW-infused, smart tank technology for these functions? RIM, if Bloomberg’s story is spot on, seems to hold the belief that I do indeed. (I must admit I secretly admire the Crusher tank.)
Furthermore, the word choice in this Bloomberg BlackBerry BlackPad article strikes me as somewhat ominous. The goose is frightened of the consonantal tintinnabulation.
Stephen E Arnold, August 21, 2010
Freebie
A Surprising Ripple for Wave in the SharePoint Ocean
May 31, 2009
Information Week published an interesting article about Google Wave. You will want to read Thomas Claburn’s informed essay “Google Wave May Challenge Microsoft SharePoint” here. Unlike the gushing at the nerd-centric Web logs, Mr. Claburn steps back and points out that Google Wave is a not exactly the consumer thrill ride that those receiving free HTC Android 1.5 G2 mobile devices cheered.
Mr. Claburn wrote:
Wave also has the potential to blunt the success of Microsoft’s SharePoint. While Google isn’t positioning Wave as a SharePoint competitor, Gundotra at a press conference following the Wave demonstration highlighted Wave’s openness as something lacking in SharePoint. Within a year or two, businesses considering SharePoint but worried about vendor lock-in may have an attractive lightweight alternative.
Wave is a demo, not a product or platform as I write this. If Mr. Claburn is right, Microsoft may have to shift its attention from one more suicide run at Google’s Web search bunker and shore up its defenses in its SharePoint stronghold.
Stephen Arnold, May 31, 2009
Useful SharePoint Info, Useless Presentation
July 30, 2008
A happy quack to J. Peter Bruzzese for his “Desperately Seeking Enterprise Search” which appeared in the July 30, 2008, InfoWorld Web log. You can read the story here. For me the most useful part of the write up was this passage:
Although the MOSS and Search offerings are still available and current, Microsoft has moved on with offers like Search Server 2008 Express and Search Server 2008. From a feature comparison perspective, MOSS 2007 still wins out despite the lack of streamlined installation; it more than makes up for that with such features as People and Expertise Searching, Business Data Catalog, and SharePoint Productivity Infrastructure.
One useful part of the write up is the inclusion to links about SharePoint in its various incarnations. These comparisons and descriptions can be tough to find on the InfoWorld Web site. I recommend that you snag these links and tuck them away for future reference.
Now, to the presentation. Mr. Bruzzese just writes the articles, some other group sets up the InfoWorld Web log. Here’s what you will encounter if you try to print the page: partial printing and two blank pages. Pretty annoying.
There are some workarounds involve that browser extensions, but here’s a work around that doesn’t require installing any:
- View the source
- Scroll to the beginning text for the story; that is, “There’s a new search player…”
- Copy the text of the story plus any tags to this point in the story: “I’d like to know your opinion.”
- Paste the text into an HTML editor or even a blank Word document
- Save the file.
InfoWorld is so eager to sell that it uses a pop up before you see this story. This is called a “prestitial”, which I dismiss instantly. Then it dumps into the page with the useful information lots and lots of ad baloney, which I also ignore.
You can go back and edit out the embedded calls within Mr. Bruzzese’s quite useful write up. So only Mr. Bruzzese gets the happy quack. The Beyond Search addled goose is winging toward InfoWorld’s Web wizard’s automobile to deposit an avian memento on the vehicle’s waxed fender.
To bad a good story was made hugely annoying to me by a presentation that is more confused than this addled goose.
Stephen Arnold, July 30, 2008
SharePoint: The Digital Maginot Line
June 19, 2008
Internet News has a must read story about Microsoft SharePoint here. Richard Adhika’s “Search, Social Networking Key in SharePoint” nails the identify crisis that Microsoft faces with this server product. SharePoint is search and social networking, The story casts into sharp relief that SharePoint is a polymorphic product. With millions of users, three flavors of search, and dozens of Certified Gold Partners selling add ins and add ons SharePoint is important to Microsoft.
To me the most interesting statement in the essay is:
Echoing statements by analysts and other vendors, he said the danger is that the millennials working in enterprises will “turn to outside services on the Internet,” which may breach compliance regulations and spur fears about information leaking outside the organization. Corporate IT is “increasingly thinking about how to build an internal social networking platform,” Koenigsbauer said, adding that SharePoint Server 2007 provides native support for wikis (define) and blogs, and lets users push content to mobile devices.
SharePoint, if I interpret Mr. Koenigsbauer’s comments as intended, suggests that SharePoint is a Maginot line, the line of concrete fortifications designed to protect France from Germany. Perhaps SharePoint in its search and collaborative form will work.
Stephen Arnold, June 19, 2008
SharePoint Search: The Answers May Be Here and the Check Is in the Mail
May 1, 2008
A Microsoft wizard named Dan Blood, a senior tester working in the product group that is responsible for search within MOSS and MSS, says that he will use the Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog “to provide details on the lessons that we [his Microsoft unit] have learned.” The topics Mr. Blood, a senior tester working in the search product group, include (and I paraphrase):
- His actions to optimize MOSS and MSS
- Information about optimizing index refreshes; that is, make sure the 28 million documents in his test set are “freshly indexed”
- Configuration of the SQL machine that underpins MOSS and MSS
- Monitoring actions to make sure the search system is healthy.
MOSS and MSS
My hunch is that you may not know what MOSS and MSS mean. I’m no expert on things Microsoft, but let me provide my take on these search systems. MSS is an acronym for Microsoft Search Server. MOSS is an acronym for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. MSS originated as the search subsystem from within the more comprehensive MOSS system, given a smattering of improvements, then packaged as a separate service. Microsoft plans to eventually roll these improvements back into the MOSS line.
This image comes from http://sharepointsearch.com/images/searcharchitecture.gif. You can read another take on this product here.
Microsoft Yanks Azure Hosting
May 29, 2014
SharePoint mobile apps hosting on Azure was widely touted what seems like just a few short months ago. However, news recently broke that SharePoint is yanking the solution off of the platform. The details are covered in the PCWorld story, “Microsoft Yanks Azure Auto-Hosted SharePoint Apps Service.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft is pulling the plug on a new model of deplying and hosting apps for SharePoint that relied on the company’s Azure platform. The goal of the AutoHosted Apps Preview program was to offer SharePoint developers a ‘friction free’ experience for provisioning their apps by tapping Azure resources, but the service fell short of expectations because, in Microsoft’s words, it ‘lacked some critical capabilities.’”
Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and often turns his attention to SharePoint glitches and concerns. Users are often looking for tips and tricks to help make SharePoint more effective and accessible, and on ArnoldIT.com he offers those too. So stay tuned to Arnold’s SharePoint feed for more about the Azure change and all the latest SharePoint news.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 29, 2014
Microsoft Watched and Learned as Markets Matured Over the Years
April 10, 2012
There are currently over 125 million SharePoint users and the goal is to reach 500 million with next release of Office. It is clear SharePoint is a ubiquitous system that continues to grow. And with consumers driving social and mobile demands, it is clear that SharePoint, and all of enterprise search, needs to keep up with the growing demand. Jeff Shuey continues the SharePoint mobile and social discussion in his post, “Social SharePoint – An Oxymoron?”
Shuey had this to say,
I wrote a post in 2009 asking — Is Microsoft late to the game? The answer then was yes. However, over the last few years the market has matured and Microsoft has watched and learned. They have taken the long standing Microsoft mantra of Any Place, Any Device and Any Time and have applied some SharePoint salve to it. As the Forbes article states … Microsoft is in a prime position to make it happen.
This is by no means the first discussion on social demands in the enterprise search world, but Shuey does add another interesting level to the discussion by bringing in other sources, like Forbes, and quotes and expert opinions.
Collaboration and social technology development is inevitable as business gets social. To tap into the new possibilities now without having to wait for a new release, consider a third party solution to complete your enterprise search system. We like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. The Mindbreeze solution:
. . . smoothly integrates itself into your website so that the user doesn’t even realize that Cloud services are working in the background. Furthermore, InSite always knows what a user is interested in. Navigation behavior on the website serves as the basis for recognizing their interests. If the user finds themselves on one of your sub-pages on the topic mobility for example, even at this level Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite still displays further information such as blogs, news, Wikipedia etc. on the relevant topic.
Check out the full suite of solutions at Mindbreeze to see what works for you.
Philip West, April 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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