How Rapid is Rapid for SharePoint 2010 Payback?

May 20th, 2010

At the Office and SharePoint 2010 launch last week in New York, Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division and the keynote speaker, pulled a few interesting facts and figures regarding return on investment on SharePoint 2010 from a recently commissioned Forrester Consulting report. The report is called “The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010” and is very thorough in its analysis. Forrester interviewed 11 organizations that were early adopters of SharePoint 2010, or I suspect were part of the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 TAP program, and from their interviews, created a “composite” company and associated ROI framework to reflect the investment in an on-premise SharePoint 2010 implementation. For the record, the composite organization they created was a 7000 worker professional services firm with $1 Billion in revenue and 25 offices in the US and 15 in Europe. (Sound like anyone you know?)

Regardless of who the mystery composite company could be, some of their conclusions on ROI were quite interesting! The risk adjusted ROI figure (otherwise known as the conservative figure) was 104% with a payback period of just over 10 months. The total cost of implementation was around $1.5 million with the total benefits of $3.1 million in the same time period. That’s a pretty rapid pay back period and I’d say very good ammunition for any CTO or IT director to pry some budget from Finance to do the upgrade! The report is still on the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 home page, and the link is listed below. If it disappears, let me know and I’ll send you a pdf copy.

Download the report here.

Author: Barry Categories: SharePoint Tags: ,

The Intersection of SharePoint and Exchange for Email and Records Managment

May 13th, 2010

I found a very interesting interview that Don Lueders conducted with Adam Harmetz from Microsoft for the SharePoint Records Management blog. Adam is Microsoft’s Lead Program Manager for the SharePoint document and records management engineering team. He’s also one of our excellent contacts at Microsoft who’s ideas and opinions are highly valued by both our management and engineering team. In this interview, he lays out where Microsoft sees Exchange and SharePoint intersecting for email and records management and discusses some of the important new capabilities for Exchange and SharePoint 2010. It makes for a very interesting read. Thanks Adam for the Colligo plug regarding email management in SharePoint!

Check it out here.

Author: Barry Categories: SharePoint Tags: ,

Join Colligo at the May 20 Virtual Conference: Climbing the SharePoint Summit

May 12th, 2010

Virtual Conference: Climbing the SharePoint Summit
May 20, 2010 – 10:00 am – 5:00 pm Eastern

Join Colligo at Climbing the SharePoint Summit – a free online one-day conference for SharePoint developers and administrators.

Speakers include industry experts Todd Baginski, Asif Rehmani, Andrew Connell, Michael Noel, Robert Bogue and others for a series of free technical sessions that will help you get the most value from SharePoint.

2 tracks – 10 sessions! Topics for Developers and Admins!

  • SharePoint site Lifecycle- Creating and Archiving sites
  • Customizing SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Content Management Document Sets
  • Creating Custom Silverlight Applications with Business Connectivity Services and the SharePoint Client Object Model
  • Architecting a High Performance and Fault Tolerant SharePoint 2010 Farm
  • Generate and Publish Electronic Forms on Your Intranet Using InfoPath 2010… No Code Required!
  • And more!

Register for the virtual conference here.

Live from New York… It’s the Office 2010 Launch!

May 12th, 2010

The official Office 2010 Launch has just taken place in the same studio that they shoot Saturday Night Live. It’s a great space but smaller than you might think. There were plenty of presentations from Microsoft people as well as select customers plus a pretty thorough demo of Office 2010. Here’s a great play-by-play summary of the event by Paul Thurrott including a covert photo of the stage, since cameras were not officially allowed in the studio.

Office 2010 Launch Play by Play

Author: Barry Categories: SharePoint Tags: ,

SharePoint 2010 Worldwide Launch

May 12th, 2010

I’m in New York for the worldwide launch of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. Colligo was invited by Microsoft to participate in the launch today, so I’m heading over to NBC Studios in a half hour to see Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division and others take the covers off “Wave 14″..

Last night, Microsoft hosted a party at the NBC Experience store. A bunch of customers, partners and, of course, Microsoft-ies, were there. I had the company “Flip” with me, and made a short video of the event.

On the video you can see:

  • Gideon Bibliowicz, who heads up SharePoint products at Microsoft
  • Paj and Ruth (who organized the event), both from Microsoft
  • Rasool Rayani from Metalogix
  • Tony Lanni, and Tiani Jiang from AvePoint
  • Marsha from Mercer Consulting
  • Nic Betts from Pfizer
  • Chris Johnson from Microsoft (he put the on stage demos together)
  • Dan Pontefract from Telus
Author: Barry Categories: SharePoint Tags: , , , ,

Colligo is a Gold Sponsor for the May 20th US Launch Event Series 2010 in Atlanta

May 11th, 2010

We’re at the big New York launch event tonight and tomorrow. Next week, we’re Gold Sponsors in Atlanta.

This is one of a series of events held throughout the United States. No matter what your job is, you’ll find a launch event that delivers technical content you can use today, and gives you the inside track on what Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 have to offer. There are all day or half day in-person events and virtual events that you can attend anytime. It’s all free.

Register or learn more here: www.microsoft.com/business/2010events/default.aspx

Answers: EPF To SharePoint Webinar Questions

May 7th, 2010

Eric Legault, a well known Outlook MVP, was the guest speaker at a very successful Colligo webinar on the topic of “How to Drive User Adoption When Migrating Exchange Public Folders to SharePoint”. During the webinar we received several questions from attendees, some of which Eric was able to answer live. However, a number of questions were answered by Eric via email after the webinar and you can read those questions and answers below.

If you are interested in learning more about this important topic, you can view the on-demand webinar and download a copy of the associated white paper here.

As you talk about Outlook are you referring to Outlook 2007 or 2003?

In general, both versions. The Contributor, Attachment Manager and Send + File addins all work on both versions. In the context of the webinar, when talking about existing Outlook integration with SharePoint, the only key difference is that Outlook 2003 did not support two-way synch to SharePoint with non-mail types (Contact, Task and Appointment folders and their equivalent SharePoint Lists).

Can you prompt the user for many metadata fields before loading into SharePoint? These metadata items will be different for each library/folder.

Yes, each library/folder pair has its own unique setting for metadata prompts. You can also have a global setting to prompt for metadata that will apply to all folders.

If you are actually referring to the fields that you can set default values on, or controlling which fields appear on the metadata prompt form, let me know and I can answer more in depth.

Can you have many metadata fields?

Absolutely. Keep in mind that metadata is created and managed entirely within SharePoint, but all metadata fields defined within the List or Document Library (or within Content Types that are associated with the List or Document Library) are available for offline use once you have selected a List or Document Library for synchronization with Contributor.

Hi, is it also possible to come very short to the user permission function, because we have very often the problem that the users want to send an attachment to a group of colleagues which have no permission in standard?

If users receive an e-mail with a pointer to an attachment that the sender uploaded to a specific Document Library, then the receiver must have access to open that file within that Document Library. If they do not have the appropriate permissions, they can click the “request access” link on the landing page they will see in SharePoint when they try to access the file.

Otherwise, you can build your own plug-in for the Attachment Handler add-in that can do custom security validation such as the scenario you describe. In fact, there’s a sample project that you can download that details how to achieve what you are requiring.

How would we move 400 GB of Public folders to SharePoint

For this scenario I would recommend that this migration project be carefully managed. First of all, determine whether all of the content within all of the Public Folders are actually being used within your organization. By trimming the context you can dramatically reduce the scope of the project and the effort and time required of your users or administrators to migrate the content.

Secondly, undertake a mapping exercise to determine where the content in SharePoint should go, with a focus on migrating to as few SharePoint Sites and Document Libraries as required. This of course depends on your corporate taxonomy and existing policies for Document Management. Elements such as Content Types, hosting documents in user-related Sites that they have existing memberships with, and ensuring that the right people have the right permissions are all factors that should be taken into consideration.

Once the above requirements are sufficiently analysed, then it’s a matter of training your implementers to follow best practices within the Contributor environment when you being your migration. This includes keeping the number of mapped folders to a manageable minimum and enforcing shorter site/library names so that the user experience for accessing SharePoint content when offline is maintained at a level that doesn’t impact user adoption.

It looks like this requires MOSS not WSS?

Actually, all versions of SharePoint are supported – WSS 2.0 and 3.0, MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010 (but not SPS 2001).

Is all functionality (move, add metadata, etc.) available when you’re offline? Are changed synced when you log back on?

If the SharePoint Document Library or List is connected using cached mode, then yes – you can drag and drop e-mails into those mapped folders when offline and fill in the metadata fields. All content and metadata values will be submitted to SharePoint when you are next connected during the next synchronization interval (or when synchronized manually).

Sorry if I missed this, but if folder is set to NO CACHE can user still select individual file when viewing the Sharepoint view?

Yes – as long as they have a valid network connection to access SharePoint (and display the SharePoint Site within the Outlook folder).

We are using SP 2003 in our university and we are now migrating to 2007, can you recommend a business process which would benefit from the development of an overall automated workflow?

Workflows are specific to SharePoint and are actually outside of the domain of the Contributor product suite. However, in my experience expense forms are prime candidates for workflows since they involve a submitter and one or more approvers. Take a look at designing these expense forms within InfoPath and hosting them inside SharePoint Forms Libraries, and using the Workflow capabilities within SharePoint to manage the flow of the form amongst the users. Then you can use Contributor to provide offline access to these Forms Libraries by mapping them to Outlook folders.

We have a number of public folders that are email enabled for information to be funneled to a generic address for multiple people to read – eg purchasing@acme.net – can we still do this using SharePoint library and then the Colligo connection to outlook?

Are you referring to e-mail enabled Document Libraries, or e-mail enabled Public Folders? I’m assuming the latter, in which case the content isn’t in SharePoint yet. If you want to get the contents of these Public Folders into SharePoint, then I recommend selecting or creating an applicable Document Library, mapping that into Outlook using Contributor, and then drag and drop e-mails from within the Public Folder to the Colligo folder that’s mapped to the Document Library.

Can the ProjectID field that you were using be a “picklist” from a list in sharepoint – A list of projects for instances?

Yes. All SharePoint List Fields are supported within the Contributor Metadata Editor.

Can the contributor rule for Attachment size be controled via Group Policy to prevent users from changing that threshold?

The Default Rules plug-in that ships with the Attachment Handler add-in reads the attachment size limits for prompting and blocking from the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ColligoNetworks\DefaultCAMFilterPlugin registry key. If you want to extend this to use Group Policy, you can override this value by building your own Attachment Handler plug-in. See this example for how to implement your own business rules.

I have a question about migrating distribution lists from Public FOlder contacts to a Contact list in Sharepoint – I haven’t been able to create and replicate the same feature – is there a Sharepoint Distribution List object?

You have two options – create Distribution Groups within Active Directory (that can be used as Exchange Distribution Lists within the Global Address List), or create Groups within SharePoint. For the latter, you can add either SharePoint Users/Groups or Active Directory Users/Groups as members of the SharePoint Group.

Note that SharePoint Groups are more focused towards permissions and Site membership management, not for messaging scenarios. So you can’t add a SharePoint Group as an item within a SharePoint Contacts List.

With the offline synchronization, does it skew the built in Sharepoint Usage reporting?

Best question of the day! The short answer is yes. I don’t have a real log file handy, but it’s possible that you can differentiate between user and Contributor requests for files if the values in the cs-method or cs(User-Agent) fields (these are likely ones) differ based on the access type. Note that these fields are in the raw W3C Extended Log Files from IIS, in the \system32\logfiles\sts folder. These fields or similar ones may also be exposed when viewing usage reports from within SharePoint Designer:

Use reports to measure site performance and usage – SharePoint Designer – Microsoft Office Online:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101741361033.aspx#3

You mentioned in your penultimate slide that “folders should be changed to metadata fileds”. What exactly do you mean. Can you elaborate?

Take this sample folder hierarchy in a Product Documentation library:

  • Current Products
  • User Guides
  • Administrator Guides
  • Marketing Materials
  • Specification Documents
  • Products Under Development
  • User Guides
  • Administrator Guides
  • Marketing Materials
  • Specification Documents
  • Legacy Products
  • User Guides
  • Administrator Guides
  • Marketing Materials
  • Specification Documents

It would make much more sense to create two metadata fields instead:

  • Product Type (Choice Field: Current, Under Development, Legacy)
  • Document Type (Choice Field: User Guide, Administrator Guide, Marketing Material, Specification Document)

This way users don’t have to first navigate the folder hierarchy to determine where they want to upload a new document. Users looking for documents also don’t have to browse through every folder to see what’s available. All relevant groupings can be created as Views within the Document Library, such as a filtered view for each of the three Product Types and the four Document Types.

Author: Barry Categories: SharePoint Tags: , ,

Microsoft Launch 2010 – Orlando

April 22nd, 2010

Exhibiting in Orlando at the Launch 2010 right now. As in Denver traffic past the booth is brisk. An interesting study in the value an individual places on their contact information. In Denver many people came by the booth. Lots of great discussions. But quite a few did not want to be scanned (and then spammed). Here in Orlando, I bought a $50 Best Buy gift certificate and most everyone seems to want to be scanned. Wonder where the threshold is? $20? $25? ;-) Not sure what my threshold would be.

Author: Bill England Categories: SharePoint Tags:

Launch 2010 – Denver

April 21st, 2010

Exhibited at the Launch 2010 event in Denver today. Very exciting. Lots of people pouring in early. Set up was from 6:30am to 7:30am and by the time I made my way to our table/booth at 7:15am there were minglers mixing and a line up forming near the door. A well run show with some excellent, fairly high-level sessions.

Now on to Orlando for the next Launch event. See you there!

Author: Bill England Categories: SharePoint Tags:

Malcolm Gladwell Visits Vancouver (and Meets the Colligo Team)

April 14th, 2010

One of my heros is Malcolm Gladwell – author of the Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw. I’ve always found his research and insights to be very enlightening and I seem to find a nugget in every book that I can apply to my business. His early insights on how traditional social networks operate are, in my opinion, brilliant. (Many thanks to Bill England for lending me his copy of the Tipping Point a few years back).

He recently visited Vancouver and the Colligo leadership team had a chance to see him speak. His talk was about whether social media, by itself, was capable of creating a revolution. His conclusion was no; social media is about creating weak ties, while strong ties were needed to create revolutions. Facebook, Twitter etc. are good at creating acquaintances, but it takes deep, trusting friendships to create real change.

Linda Solomon from the Vancouver Observer did a great job of summarizing his talk and it’s worth the read.

After his talk we attended a private YPO reception with him and had a chance to carry on the conversation. He’s a great guy and very generous with his time. Here’s a photo of the Colligo leadership team with Malcolm Gladwell.

Malcolm Gladwell Meets the Colligo Crew

L-R: Ed Kaczor, Wendy Rose, Genèse Castonguay, Malcolm Gladwell, Randy Halischuk, Barry Jinks

Author: Barry Categories: SharePoint Tags: