Offline SharePoint

Yesterday Colligo Networks announced its second quarter financial results. I was pretty pleased with the progress the company is making – with sales up 100% year over year and strong funnel of business into 2009. But the big news in the quarter was how the Microsoft Partner Ecosystem is really driving our sales.

A bit of history. It was always our belief that the bulk of our revenues would be generated through Microsoft partners. However, like most ISVs, we started off in May 2006 selling our SharePoint product line direct out of necessity, while recruiting partners in parallel. On November 28, 2006, we announced the Colligo for SharePoint Partner Program. At the time, we had about 20 partners signed, though very little revenue flowing through the channel. By mid-2007 we started to see results. At the same time, we were pretty pleased to see an article in ChannelWeb with the title “25 ISVs You Must Know”, along with the quote:

“Colligo, Vancouver, British Columbia, was cited by several VARs for its technology that brings offline capabilities to SharePoint.”

Someone was finally noticing!

Fast forward to 2008. We are now seeing a significant amount of business coming from our channel partners, who number over 110 today. A lot of them are listed here. A few noteworthy partners that are kickin’ it are Blue Rooster in the United States, Mind Business in Germany, and Unique World in Australia. Thanks to all of you for your support.

Colligo sales through the channel tripled from first quarter to second quarter 2008. If there was ever any doubt about the power of the Microsoft Partner Ecosystem, it’s gone now! And, by the way, we couldn’t have done it without the support of the Microsoft field teams (sales reps, TSPs, etc.) and our partner account manager in Redmond.

If you are a Microsoft VAR, SI or consultant, we want to talk with you. We highly value our partner relationships and strive to provide you with exceptional value. Some of the benefits we can offer are listed here.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what one of our partners had to say:

“Our partnership with Colligo was a strategic decision,” said Tim Wallis, CEO of Content and Code Ltd. in the United Kingdom. “Colligo for SharePoint fits well with our business model and allows our customers to meet key requirements, including the capability of working offline and great drag-and-drop functionality. Colligo for SharePoint allows our customers to expand on an existing MOSS platform and opens opportunities to branch out within the organizations.”

If you like what you see, please apply here, or email sales@colligo.com, to become a Colligo for SharePoint partner today.

This year, the Colligo team distributed over 1,000 free t-shirts at the SharePoint Conference in Seattle and at the Tech-Ed IT Professionals Conference in Orlando, Florida. The Share. t-shirt has become so popular that we’ve received several requests to purchase it online.

Now you can now buy your own Share. shirts on the Colligo Online Store. In addition to the standard black and white shirt, there are also other styles and colors available. This is your opportunity to stand out at the next Microsoft conference. In fact, you will stand out anywhere. I recently wore my Share. shirt to the Vancouver Folk Festival. Lots of people commented on the positive message… I didn’t have the heart to tell them about the SharePoint connection

Get your Share. T-Shirt HERE

Colligo Contributor version 3.1 has just been released. The big news in this release is more advanced support for metadata, which is particularly useful for using SharePoint in ECM applications. Now you can set folder level metadata in SharePoint using the Contributor Client, Add-In or Pro – a feature not currently available on the server. The key enhancements in version 3.1 are highlighted below:

• Folder-Level Default Metadata Support SharePoint supports default metadata at the library-level. But with Contributor 3.1, users can set folder-level default metadata – to automate the classification of content. They can easily set default metadata once, and eliminate prompting at the time of drag-and-drop:
  
  1. Set default metadata properties at the folder- or list-level
  2. Set metadata prompting on and off at the folder- or list-level


• New Office 2007 Metadata Support – In addition to the “Edit Properties” dialog box in Colligo Contributor, users can now set document metadata right within Office 2007 applications (Office Button >Prepare >Properties). When documents are saved, changes made within Office applications are immediately reflected in the Contributor view of the document library (online or offline) and synced to the server (when online).


• German Language Support - Contributor Pro, Client, and Add-In for Outlook have been localized in German. Contributor is now available in English, German, and French. Stay tuned for additional language options.


• Add-In for Outlook Performance Improvements - Version 3.1 has now been optimized to support larger Colligo folder hierarchies in Outlook so the user experience is faster on startup and background sync.

You can get a FREE 30-day trial today HERE

For the past week I’ve been kayaking up Clayoquot Sound – a positively blissful experience. The trip was organized and guided by my dear friend Kim Crosby from Wildheart Adventures, who always puts on a terrific trip. But (sigh) now that I’m back to reality I noticed a few interesting blog posts that I wanted to share.

Andy Dale MCSE, who works for Officetalk in the UK, wrote a couple of interesting posts. The first one entitled “Six Summer SharePoint Sizzlers” highlighted a number of SharePoint Add-on products that he found interesting. His comments about Colligo Contributor were very flattering, indeed:

“Award winners at Tech Ed 2008. Colligo is a real SharePoint gem because it provides easy offline synchronisation allowing laptop users to always have access to their most important SharePoint libraries.”

In a later post, he did a more in-depth review of Contributor. I love the title: SharePoint “Open All Hours” and this quote:

“SharePoint is now at the heart of many businesses and the addition of Colligo makes it an even more powerful tool and a saviour for the customer facing staff who travel the globe visiting existing and potential customers.”

The next post, “Recording – Exchange Public Folders vs SharePoint – the battle (Community Day 2008)”, is by Joris Poelmans (AKA JOPX), Application Group Manager at Dolmen (www.dolmen.be), a leading Belgian IT services company and Microsoft Gold Partner.

The post is based on a session at “Community Day 2008”. On Community Day, 9 User Groups, Belgian Dynamics Community, Biwug, IT-Talks, Pro-Exchange, SCUG, SQLUG, Visug, Winsec, and XNAbug combined their efforts and organized a joint-event.

The post features an interesting recording of a “battle” that pits SharePoint against Exchange Public Folders. This is very topical for me given the recent series of posts I did here on Email Management in SharePoint. In the recording, Ilse Van Criekinge, Exchange MVP (and Community Day keynote speaker) and Joris Poelmans (SharePoint MVP) stage a “punch up” to see if the new kid on the block, SharePoint, can give a black eye to the old master, Exchange Public Folders. I think SharePoint fares rather well and only comes out with a few minor scrapes. A special thanks to Joris for demoing Colligo Contributor Client about 30 minutes into the recording. I think that Colligo Contributor Add-In for Outlook can help SharePoint bulk up even more against EPFs because it enables users to drag and drop emails into SharePoint document libraries from right within the Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 interface. Now that’s a battle I’d love to see: SharePoint+Contributor Add-in vs. Exchange Public Folders – Las Vegas here we come!