Jun 16

Are You Good at Collaboration?; Benefits of SharePoint Virtualization; Microsoft’s Unification Plan For PCs, Phones, Tablets

By Chris DooleyNo Comments

SharePoint Daily LogoMost days I am the first person in the office and I take my time to get coffee, answer a few emails and generally breathe a bit before everyone else comes in. Today I wish someone else had been here first. I turned on the lights and noticed that the carpet looked a bit odd, took one step and heard a loud squish. Carpet shouldn’t generally be squishy, so I knew something was wrong. After a bit of searching, I found our office aquarium water filtration system had backed up and overflowed. I have no clue how to fix this, so I followed my instincts and took a picture of the flooded floor with my phone.  :-)  I did finally find a pitcher and was able to scoop some of the water out to at least stop the overflow. So, to make a long story even longer… I believe that cleaning up fishy water at 7:30 AM means it is time for a long weekend. SharePoint Daily will be back Monday morning with hopefully dryer carpets. Have a great weekend everyone. –Chris

Top News Stories
Help Shape Steve Ballmer’s WPC 2011 Keynote Speech! (Microsoft)
WPC 2011 is your event, and we would love to get your comments on topics you want to hear from Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO. Help us shape his 2011 WPC Keynote speech by leaving your requests below. Are you interested in learning how Microsoft is leading the industry transformation to the cloud? Or how Microsoft is committed to partner success? Is there something specific about the business vision, commitment, or consumerization of business that relates especially to you, the partner, which you want to hear Steve Ballmer speak to?

So You Think You are Good at Collaboration (CMSWire)
There seems to be general agreement that better collaboration will result in better business performance. There is evidence that this is actually not always the case, but for now let me go with the collective wisdom. So when business performance decreases or someone makes an ill-informed decision, the view is taken by senior managers (who seem rarely to collaborate) that something needs to be done about improving collaboration. The answer, according to these managers, is to introduce better technology. Indeed, when a business case is made for SharePoint (which it rarely is, of course), the justification is that it will improve collaboration. I can say for certain that it will not because no one in the organization has ever measured collaboration performance. This is like building a by-pass for a town without first measuring journey times and congestion of the traffic using the current road network.

Navigating the Benefits and Challenges of SharePoint Virtualization (SearchContentManagement)
SharePoint 2010 farms usually consist of multiple SharePoint and SQL Server systems all working together to provide the necessary processing capabilities. Because so many different servers can be involved in a SharePoint farm, the collaboration platform is a prime candidate for server virtualization. SharePoint virtualization can dramatically cut hardware and data center costs, but there are some considerations that should be taken into account prior to virtualizing a SharePoint installation.

Microsoft Begins Distributing Internet Explorer 9.01 Update with Critical Security Fixes (ZDNet)
June 14 was Patch Tuesday. And this time around, there were lots of Internet Explorer (IE) security vulnerabilities that were patched. Microsoft is addressing many of these security issues in one fell swoop, with the newly released IE 9.01, its June Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer. This update is available, as of yesterday, via Windows Update, according to a new post on the IE blog.

Who Needs a Cloud? Microsoft Sold 31 Million Copies of Office 2010 (PCWorld)
Microsoft is taking aim at some unspecified critics on the one-year anniversary of Office 2010, saying the product has sold a copy every second despite the rise of Google Apps and other cloud-based alternatives. “When we released Office 2010 to the world one year ago [on June 15], our critics weren’t easy on us,” Microsoft Office corporate vice president Takeshi Numoto writes in a triumphant blog post that was to be published on the Microsoft website Wednesday. “They said we were heading in the wrong direction by continuing to invest in our desktop applications in addition to the cloud. Even more recently, there’ve been more predictions of the PC’s demise. But the reality is, based on the market results we see in our sales and adoption data, people continue to love Office on the desktop and they’re embracing Office in the cloud.”

Microsoft Office 365: Some Pros & Cons (ITProPortal)
Microsoft 365 is a collection of Microsoft products available online. Instead of buying the physical products, small businesses and enterprises pay a monthly subscription for access to products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, SharePoint and Lync, accessible via their web browser. Comparisons are regularly made with Google Apps, but existing Microsoft users will appreciate getting added convenience from a familiar product:

Microsoft’s Grand Unification Plan For PCs, Phones, Tablets (InformationWeek)
Microsoft has for years exhibited a split personality around its desktop and mobile products. Its PC environment has been defined by the familiar Windows icons, while its mobile platforms have undergone a series of revisions. The most recent, Windows Phone 7, broke from Windows Mobile and the Disneyfied KIN phone with its distinctive Live Tiles interface. Get ready for this scattershot approach to end next year when Microsoft introduces the Windows 8 client, along with its first true tablets and the second generation of Windows Phone. Microsoft for the first time is looking to unify its various operating systems with a common look and feel that reflects the fact that users, from office workers to gamers, now want to jump freely between a range of devices without sacrificing familiarity.

 

Around the Blogosphere
Establishing an Audit Trail of SharePoint Security Activity (SharePointEduTech)
I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir when I say more and more information resides in SharePoint and more and more of that information is confidential ranging from HR data, customer records, financial information or sensitive information that you don’t want to end up on WikiLeaks. SharePoint permissions provide proactive access control over who can access what information and how.  But any regulatory compliance framework as well as information security best practice also demands an audit trail and thankfully SharePoint 2007 and later provide that.  The SharePoint audit log allows you to track a variety of security events including:

Is There a Business Case for SharePoint in Informal Learning? Thought Leader Interview with BT’s Sundar Balasubramanian (SharePoint and Assessment Blog)
Director of Learning Solutions at BT, Sundar Balasubramanian, describes use of SharePoint for informal learning within BT and other companies and advises how to make a business case for using SharePoint for informal learning.

SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata – About the series… (Andrew Connell)
I’ve worked on a few books around SharePoint in the 2007 & 2010 release. My focus is typically around core SharePoint development and the entire Enterprise Content Management (ECM) space, specifically Web Content Management (WCM) going back to my Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 days. I entertained plans to work on a SharePoint 2010 ECM book but took a pass this time around due to various reasons. While I’ve decided that I do not want to write a book on the subject, I still had some stuff I wanted to say that wasn’t your typical “how to” & reference book content, but I wanted to include my take on it. So this time around I am going to put these thoughts here on my blog… what better place! Best of all, there’s no book you’ve got to wait for or to take up more space on your desk! Plus, I get to say what I want to say… no technical editor suggesting I have to rephrase something… my voice.  :)

CloudShare for Demo Environments (Owen Allen’s Blog)
I’d like to tell you a story.  One of the software development companies that I’m working with, Ooyala, is building an integration with SharePoint.  In April (2011), we were planning to have the public unveiling of the product at the NABSHOW in Las Vegas.  It is a huge convention, and we had secured a demo kiosk and were planning to get enough of the product developed so that we could illustrate how the final product would work. One of our development teams was in Argentina, another development team was in Redmond, WA, and Ooyala has headquarters in Mountain View, CA.  We needed a development and testing environment that would enable all three groups to work together and to share an environment in preparation for the show.

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Upgrade Web Part Properties (SharePoint 2010)
Upgrading is among the most important  aspects of  the software development process, because we need to remake the product with new features and enhancements, provide additional flexibility, and generally develop an even more useful product than the original. Upgrading a Web Part can mean changing the number of properties of the Web Part, or reorganizing the structure of the Web Part properties; the final step in the upgrade of a Web Part is to ensure that our Web Part works correctly. Each of the Web Part properties has a Name and Type.  If there is only a change to the Name in the new version, it’s easy to upgrade the Web Part, but with changes to the Type, we must reorganize the structure of the Web Part properties.

 

SharePoint Job Listings*
SharePoint Developer – Guam
The Defense and Maritime Solutions Business Unit has an opportunity for a SharePoint Developer on Guam. Funding is expected in the Summer of 2011. The SharePoint Developer will be responsible for full implementation of the Microsoft SharePoint Server, Microsoft SQL Server and updating internal and external web sites for our customer. The SharePoint Developer will be responsible for developing and implementing the customers SharePoint site and SQL Server. Provide SharePoint and SQL administration and training to the end user along with maintaining current web servers. The SharePoint Developer will develop procedure guidelines and documentation for the customer.

Microsoft SharePoint Engineer – Coralville, IA; Herndon, VA; Riverview, FL
The Microsoft SharePoint Engineer will perform a variety of job responsibilities related to supporting, maintaining, and enhancing the SharePoint 2010 infrastructure as well as developing solutions for realizing business efficiencies.  Job responsibilities include but are not limited to: providing tier 3 support and incident resolution for Vangent’s SharePoint user base, troubleshooting and resolving SharePoint 2010 issues within the Vangent environment, developing and implementing SharePoint-based solutions, and working with the management team to identify potential SharePoint solutions to bring greater efficiencies to Vangent business processes.

 

Microsoft Updates
Best Practices for Team Collaboration Sites (SharePoint Server 2010) (TechNet)
This article is one of a series of best practices articles for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. This article describes the typical characteristics and best practices for hosting collaboration sites in a SharePoint Server 2010 environment. SharePoint Server 2010 makes team collaboration easier with features such as My Sites, blogs, wikis, and co-authoring. When you plan for team collaboration sites, remember that these sites typically exhibit the following characteristics:

 

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* Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to be included in SharePoint Daily™.

 

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