New Formotus Release Seeks to Provide Enhanced SharePoint Mobile Experience
May 4, 2012
Formotus recently announced a new version of its mobile business application platform with enhanced SharePoint integration and capabilities. The new release is discussed in the Virtual-Strategy.com press release, “Collaborate without Complexity: SharePoint Mobile Workflow Platform for iPad and Android Released by Formotus.”
The new release is summarized:
Formotus makes it possible for organizations to create and deploy custom mobile business applications built around Microsoft® Office InfoPath™ forms. The new feature set announced today enables companies to implement flexible collaboration frameworks with robust forms that can be routed and shared among mobile users in a wide variety of ways. Formotus mobile workflow forms require no SharePoint modifications and work with any version including on-premises, hosted, and Office 365 SharePoint Online.
The new possibilities, such as mobile workflow forms and social collaboration, are discussed in the release along with example scenarios that are now supported. Formotus CEO Adriana Neagu says that the new version is “a whole new task-oriented mobile experience that is easier, smarter, more beautiful, more powerful. The fact is, a person using our platform on an iPad or Android tablet, won’t be able to tell that there is any SharePoint behind the workflow.” These are big and exciting claims for not only workflows, but the whole mobile experience.
SharePoint is no doubt the go-to content management system for all kinds of organizations and enhanced mobile capabilities will surely be an appeal for users. But for complex workflows and successful social collaboration, users also need efficient and effective access to valuable business knowledge. It seems that the experts at Fabasoft Mindbreeze understand the value of powerful search and mobile access.
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.
With the full functionality of Fabasoft Mindbreeze for Enterprise and united on-premise and Cloud data, users will be able to act quickly in business matters with smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Read more about the full suite of solutions at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.
More on Formotus: Founded in October 2005 by Adriana Neagu, co-inventor of Microsoft Office InfoPath, and serial entrepreneur Joe Verschueren, Formotus technology enables companies to rapidly create a business solution ? without any coding ? that works across platforms so companies can design once and deploy anywhere. Formotus looks to future-proof companies because the same forms that work on today’s devices will also work on the new devices that they will support tomorrow.
Philip West, May 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Prepare Your Organization for SharePoint 2013
April 30, 2012
SharePoint users are hotly anticipating the release of SharePoint 2013. Will the changes be large or small? How will it affect an organization’s existing infrastructure? Market Watch turns hypothesis into practical action, discussing the upcoming release and also preparations that you can take now to prepare your organization. Read the full report in, “Eight Ways to Prepare for the Next Release of SharePoint Now.”
Quest Software, a provider of enterprise tools for SharePoint, offers the following:
Microsoft is gradually revealing details on what users can expect in the next version, which many anticipate will be available in early 2013. With widespread expectations beginning to surface around social capabilities, the cloud, and a new interface, the early anticipation indicates users are already thinking about what’s next for SharePoint. As organizations start considering the next version, there are many ways they can prepare the environment to gain immediate benefits now, and be ready to quickly take advantage of new features later.
Quest goes on to layout what it calls a “next version readiness” plan. However, we think that things could be made a bit simpler. Microsoft is known for its ritualistic three-year cycle of software overhaul. However, smart third-party enterprise solutions like Fabasoft Mindbreeze update on a timetable that is much less disruptive. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise unveils new releases quarterly for on-site installations, and even more often for Cloud installations.
Updates are performed seamlessly, requiring no major overhauls or contingency plans. Rather, updates make the user experience even more pleasant. Above all, findability and efficiency are increased with Mindbreeze, whether it stands alone or works in tandem with an existing SharePoint infrastructure. Explore the entire suite of offering by Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see what they can do to improve your organization’s information management system.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 30, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Overcoming Perceived SharePoint Barriers with Mindbreeze
March 26, 2012
Over at the AIIM.org SharePoint Experts Blog, Rich Blank confronts the tensions between SharePoint adoption, social technologies, and business goals in, “Is SharePoint an Obstacle in Your Organization.”
Blank summarizes:
“Bottom line is that SharePoint is not the obstacle. SharePoint has simply forced organizations to focus on real underlying information management, governance, compliance, service delivery, and cultural change issues at scale. In fact, if you view things holistically, the vast Microsoft ecosystem provides all the capabilities, security, and compliance required for effective communication, collaboration, news/information, team sites, communities, social, search, ECM at an attractive total cost of ownership.”
Blank suggests that organizations can focus on delivering collaboration as a service in order to introduce capabilities to users. He also warns against rushing into the hype of social business without carefully considering the overall architectural vision and basic information management principles.
This is not the first discussion on SharePoint out-of-the-box capabilities not meeting collaboration expectations in the organization. One way to make your SharePoint system accessible and more powerful is by integrating a third party solution. We like the feedback we’ve heard from customers of Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Mobility and Cloud search capabilities are just some of the Mindbreeze benefits. With information pairing, Mindbreeze allows you to connect valuable business knowledge with the right people:
“It sounds easy at first glance but it’s technologically highly complex. 6 years of research and development work later, Fabasoft Mindbreeze has the answer: Information pairing. This involves the boundless networking of company relevant information within an enterprise or organization and placing it in the Cloud. In my opinion acting in this way in all business issues is reliable, dynamic and profitable – the basis for competitive advantage.”
Read more about the full suite of solutions at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.
Philip West, March 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Increase SharePoint User Adoption with Mindbreeze
March 5, 2012
SharePoint 2010 is no doubt a ubiquitous content management platform, but not all employees jump on the bandwagon so quickly. Communication experts Sam Marshall and Camilla Herrmann weigh-in on the SharePoint user adoption debate in, “Are Employees Rejecting SharePoint?”
Marshall and Herrmann both point out that SharePoint is a powerful application, but Marshall brings the focus to a uSamp survey released last year that revealed 80 percent of organizations using SharePoint said employees continue to share documents as email attachments.
Harrmann offers this rebuttal:
Perhaps the most collaborative tool in the Swiss Army penknife that makes up SharePoint is the people search. Properly configured, updated and linked to My Site profiles, it’s the way to find the person that you need in a large organization. Once you have tracked them down, however you collaborate after that, SharePoint has done its job.
SharePoint success among your employees may be determined by how you define collaboration and your expectations for the software. Perhaps rating documents for usefulness, people search, and forum comments are all features that can serve as a gateway introduction to the social enterprise arena. But with the core list and library features, SharePoint can, and should, be doing much more for your employees. Marshall argues the user interface is particularly unpleasant and does not charm the lay-user employee that is inclined to modern Web sites that are increasingly informative, aesthetically pleasing, and functioning with real-time data.
To fill in the user-interface gaps in your SharePoint system, consider a third party application. We like the good reviews for the Fabasoft Mindbreeze suite of solutions. With clear navigation and a self-explanatory interface, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise facilitates findability.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users. Get a comprehensive overview of corporate knowledge in seconds without redundancy or loss of data.
While debates abound about SharePoint user-adoption, Mindbreeze can save employees time by connecting them to the right information via a user-friendly interface. Navigate to www.mindbreeze.com to read more.
Philip West, March 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Social Business: Collaboration Trends for 2012
February 27, 2012
Leigh Jasper’s blog series, Collaboration for Grown-ups, reflects a focus on the benefits of enterprise collaboration across supply chains. Jasper, of the ComputerWorld.com Blog, looks at collaboration challenges with big data and the social and mobile forces arriving to the enterprise search world in the first post, “Collaboration Trends for 2012: Part One.”
And as big data becomes a key basis of competition, it will also necessarily become the foundation for new forms of collaboration. In 2012, I believe that more companies will recognize that along with having to deal with storing and analyzing big data, they will need to adopt collaboration platforms capable of capturing, sharing and analyzing it.
With growing data, it is no wonder SharePoint adoption is growing, as well. Of course, 2012 trends could not be discussed without mentioning social and mobile media in the enterprise. With consumer demand for social networking and personal mobile devices driving trends, enterprises are looking to search and analyze this data, such as the conversation between brands and their customers. But the supply chain is also feeling the impact. Jasper suggests that 2012 will see collaboration in the supply chain go beyond email and file sharing and businesses will look to solutions for capturing the many-to-many flow of content.
Business-to-business collaboration development is inevitable as business gets social. To tap into the new possibilities, consider a third party solution to complete your enterprise search system. We like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Managing director Michael Hadrian explains the Mindbreeze solution,
Fabasoft Folio Cloud enables quick, secure and mobile collaboration both internally and between international companies. Business processes with customers and partners cannot be realized any quicker or more cost effectively…This enables worldwide connected collaboration and secure data exchange in protected team rooms.
For a complete search solution with the power of information pairing, check out the full suite of solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, February 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint, Training Not Required?
February 24, 2012
Lorette S. J. Weldon, a librarian, offers a unique approach to conquering SharePoint in her piece, “SharePoint, Training Not Required.” Weldon argues that many of the skills and tools used by information professionals transfer well to the SharePoint environment, therefore, intense training is not required if some analogies are made.
Weldon observes:
Through my study last year, I found out that librarians were using SharePoint in the corporate, government, and non-profit sectors . . . Microsoft embedded social media tools within the SharePoint platform. World-wide librarians have been customizing SharePoint by using their social networking skills from MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. It is a ‘plug and play’ social media tool for the office. It has helped to embed the researching skills of the librarians within the normal business flow of their sectors.
Weldon makes a unique observation about the connection between librarians’ skills and their ability to navigate SharePoint. However, a chorus of opinion does exist amongst those who are not trained information professionals and cannot successfully navigate SharePoint. For those individuals who are muddling through, a smart third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze may be worth a second look.
Read more about their quality, usability, and style:
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise user interface is based on Web 2.0 technology and combines simplicity with elegance. The operation is self-explanatory. Work just as you are used to. Access your data from anywhere. Also on smartphones and tablets. Elegant design, easy operation. With you wherever you are. Find and access your enterprise and cloud information straight away.
Until we are all trained information professionals, work with Fabasoft Mindbreeze to improve the quality of your SharePoint experience.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 24, 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
Training Ideas to Get End Users Understanding SharePoint
February 2, 2012
EndUserSharePoint.com’s Kat Weixel worked with the SharePoint community to build a certification test for team site administrators. The plan details can be read in, “End User Certification: A Test for the Rest of Us.” The community-generated test is not an official Microsoft certification, but it may give just as good insights because it was built by the end user community. Weixel’s goal:
I’m hopeful this will allow IT professionals or others in SharePoint management positions to feel far more comfortable handing out the coveted “full control” of a site. We can ask people to attend training or watch tutorials or read materials…but we can’t easily measure their absorption of all that learning. I think a certification test can really help fill that hole, and I can’t wait to develop it!
It is no doubt that end user training is heading to another level and taking cues from the social and collaboration trends. A certification test could be a handy tool for site administrators looking to get newbies up to speed. However, to really turn your users into power-users in the SharePoint system, you may need more than a Q and A.
To bypass the need for some expensive or time-consuming training, consider a third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, which extends the capabilities of your SharePoint system. Their Web Parts based information pairing capabilities give you powerful searches and a complete picture of your business information, allowing you to get the most out of your enterprise search investments. And your end users will benefit from the fast and intuitive search with clearly displayed results and simple navigation.
Mindbreeze’s intuitiveness means less training required. They also have tutorials and wikis that are easy to use and more efficient. Here you can browse Mindbreeze’s support tools for users, including videos, FAQs, wikis, and other training options. Check out the full suite of solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, February 2, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint 2010 Not Ready for Enterprise
December 19, 2011
SharePoint is broad, powerful and widely adopted, but its drawbacks are also commonly publicized. Not known for its ability to innovate rapidly, Microsoft suffers from a lack of agility, especially in fledging applications. Bjorn Furuknap tackles the drawbacks of SharePoint 2010 in, “SharePoint Server 2010 Isn’t Really Ready for Enterprise Applications–And What Microsoft Should Do About It.”
With SharePoint 2010, there’s a new ballgame, but sadly, it’s riddled with bugs that prevent it from being a great platform for building enterprise or even professional applications . . . It may just be that I’m working with more ‘enterprise’ projects now than earlier, but it seems to me that the issues I see with SharePoint 2010 are more serious and obvious than in 2007.
Some of the specific examples Furuknap lists include Office document formatting and the immaturity of social features. He blames SharePoint’s shortcoming on their (unsuccessful) shift to innovation at the expense of a stable and basic platform. Perhaps he is right. But who do you turn to in order to keep up with fast pacing technology? We think third party solutions are the answer, and one we really like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. The industry must be thinking the same thing, as Fabasoft recently received the KM World Trendsetting 2011 Product of the Year.
’Our focus on agility, quality, usability and style in the monthly shipments of our latest product innovations enables us to integrate and implement client requests into our product development rapidly and sustainably. In addition to our on-premise offering, everyone can now try out our product in the Cloud, immediately. This is a possibility much appreciated by our clients and partners alike,’ says Daniel Fallmann, founder and managing director of Mindbreeze Software GmbH.
Furuknap has a point. Microsoft needs to get back to the main thing, creating a stable and effective enterprise base. However, ease and functionality can be achieved despite the challenges if a smart third party solution is adopted.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 19, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Startups Challenge SharePoint
December 15, 2011
Enterprise 2.0 is a term being thrown around the blogosphere to indicate incorporation of social media functionality into workplace software. The leader in enterprise, Microsoft SharePoint, is quite clearly incapable of keeping up in any discussion of enterprise 2.0. Andy McLoughlin, co-leader of the enterprise 2.0 startup, Huddle, offers his insight in, “This 32-Year-Old Entrepreneur is Bent on Beating One of Microsoft’s Largest Businesses.”
McLoughin says,
There’s a huge amount of room to improve upon SharePoint as a content collaboration tool the enterprise. It’s sold as free software, yet any CIO who has tried (and failed) to implement it knows that it’s far too easy to spend many months and hundreds of thousands of dollars getting it ready for deployment. Users generally hate it and most licenses will never be deployed.
We agree. SharePoint at its best is simply a basic platform, or foundation, and functionality is only achieved through potentially costly add-ons for deployment. However, good third party solutions are out there. One is Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise user interface is based on Web 2.0 technology and combines simplicity with elegance. The operation is self-explanatory. Work just as you are used to. Access your data from anywhere. Also on smartphones and tablets. Elegant design, easy operation. With you wherever you are. Find and access your enterprise and cloud information straight away.
To set itself apart from the newer enterprise startups, Fabasoft has been an up-and-comer in the industry for ten years, having received the KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year four years running. With a track record of anticipation and innovation, Fabasoft Mindbreeze will continue to offer solutions that make sense in a changing technological culture. To fix today’s problems, and work toward tomorrow’s solutions, look at a smart installation like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 15, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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