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more on sharepoint like this please. the thing i find most difficult being a one-man IT shop is never seeing anybody else's implementation and get inspiring ideas where i can. I liked your previous sharepoint article too but it seemed to end when it just started getting good.
My pleasure, GF ... I've been in the same spot, SharePoint-wise - that's why I enjoy writing about it now. Lots of innovative stuff going on out there and I love passing it on.
I have no particular reason to read about Sharepoint, but it was a very interesting article indeed!
We have been using discussion boards in an effort to attack item #2. Users who care about certain discussion boards can attach the board to their outlook file and monitor from there (the place that they seem to live the west). Not to say that a bunch of crap doesn't leak into the conversation trail, but at least it gets captured outside the email folders of the team.
I like your implementation as well. Care to comment on the advantages/disadvantages of your implementation versus discussion boards?
I like your implementation as well. Care to comment on the advantages/disadvantages of your implementation versus discussion boards?
Advantages/disadvantages of this approach vs. discussion boards? Yes, absolutely - actually, there's an entire article in that one. Stay tuned ...
Excellent article, Scott! Though I would go a little further and make it one library appropriately parsed by views or permissions depending on security requirements. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, but SharePoint is vastly underutilized in almost every company.
Another of my gripes is that too many developers fall back on their strong knowledge of C#/VB code to create a solution instead of researching SharePoint (SP) to find a more OOB solution. I suspect at least 2/3 of coded SP solutions could have been done without the code. Of course, then it becomes a matter of how much time is the developer willing to invest (and the client to pay for) to find the SP solution? What to do? LEARN MORE SharePoint! If anything, SP constantly teaches me humility, but I still keep coming back to it (kind of a love/hate thing).
Keep the great articles coming, Scott!
Another of my gripes is that too many developers fall back on their strong knowledge of C#/VB code to create a solution instead of researching SharePoint (SP) to find a more OOB solution. I suspect at least 2/3 of coded SP solutions could have been done without the code. Of course, then it becomes a matter of how much time is the developer willing to invest (and the client to pay for) to find the SP solution? What to do? LEARN MORE SharePoint! If anything, SP constantly teaches me humility, but I still keep coming back to it (kind of a love/hate thing).
Keep the great articles coming, Scott!
i never where to start to go beyond the OoB elements, and woud love to know more about creating basic applications that use dataentry and tables/lists from multiple sources. I've fiddled and created views of single sources before for simple calender lists on events for site front-pages, would love to take such things further. A new purchase-order system at my place is an often requested such thing too which is probably not that difficult but it's just knowing where to start and given little time to just "play".
MSDN and Technet (and their blogs and community discussions) are pretty good places to look. (They are actually the only remotely informative places at microsoft.com, really.)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee198298
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee428287.aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/sharepoint2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/aa905688
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/default.aspx
I'm sure there are blogs/sites entirely devoted to Sharepoint, like so many other tech products. https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sharepoint+blogs (Tailor to suit.)
Have fun!
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee198298
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee428287.aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/sharepoint2010
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/aa905688
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/default.aspx
I'm sure there are blogs/sites entirely devoted to Sharepoint, like so many other tech products. https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sharepoint+blogs (Tailor to suit.)
Have fun!
When it comes to mastering SharePoint, there are enough resources to fill an encyclopedia. Findign the ones of interest to you and me is the tough part. I use Bamboo Solutions Daily Digest to present a summary of articles along with Technet, WordPress blogs and a couple others.
While SharePoint is often underutilized, there is also the trap of trying to put EVERYTHING into SharePoint. Many applications are better off where they're at and even though I absolutely love SharePoint, it is not always the best solution. There are many articles and blogs out there with solutions. If you have something like a "new purchase-order system", Google or Bing it. Somebody probably wrote about it. Yes, explore putting solutions into SharePoint, but sometimes you have to accept that other apps are doing the job just fine.
While SharePoint is often underutilized, there is also the trap of trying to put EVERYTHING into SharePoint. Many applications are better off where they're at and even though I absolutely love SharePoint, it is not always the best solution. There are many articles and blogs out there with solutions. If you have something like a "new purchase-order system", Google or Bing it. Somebody probably wrote about it. Yes, explore putting solutions into SharePoint, but sometimes you have to accept that other apps are doing the job just fine.
"The number of SharePoint deployments in the world today has six digits in it, and four-fifths of them suck."
As one of the suckees, I got a lot out of this article. Indeed, I have a meeting in ten minutes to discuss another potential SharePoint use here.
The problem I have is that I don't know when it is appropriate to use SharePoint vs. our existing traditional shared network folders. There's also the issue of user training. They already know how to use network folders, and I haven't found a reason to force them to do otherwise. I've never seen a 'working' collaboration configuration, so I don't know exactly what we're trying to accomplish.
Even within the IT department, we don't eat our own dog food. We're in the middle of an Active Directory migration. Most of the collaboration takes place in meetings; most updates are via e-mail. We have a few procedural documents in SP, but those are usually also e-mailed (as attachments, not as links to the SP site).
As one of the suckees, I got a lot out of this article. Indeed, I have a meeting in ten minutes to discuss another potential SharePoint use here.
The problem I have is that I don't know when it is appropriate to use SharePoint vs. our existing traditional shared network folders. There's also the issue of user training. They already know how to use network folders, and I haven't found a reason to force them to do otherwise. I've never seen a 'working' collaboration configuration, so I don't know exactly what we're trying to accomplish.
Even within the IT department, we don't eat our own dog food. We're in the middle of an Active Directory migration. Most of the collaboration takes place in meetings; most updates are via e-mail. We have a few procedural documents in SP, but those are usually also e-mailed (as attachments, not as links to the SP site).
I think the main reason projects are not successful is because SharePoint paradigm is really out of touch. It's much easier to implement things like wikis using different tools. We have a few applications and they don't work that great, there are issues with the workflow where some of the documents just fall through the cracks. IE is required, I have tried to use other browsers and they just don't work. It's rather complicated to create filters. The search is marginal at best ... This is unfortunate as a collaboration tool is really needed in our environment but management is not willing to spend money upgrading to the latest version.
Microsoft does it again - somehow they killed 1-2-3 with an inferior Excel and once more, when Exchange is horrible and SP sucks -- it's time to get corporate IT to dust off Lotus Notes.
Every project I have worked on had a Sharepoint set up. At the start, everyone tries to upload their files and send each other links. After a week, people remember why they stopped using Sharepoint in the last project - its clunky, slow, unreliable, intranet only access - totally useless when you are all working on a customer site.They all revert to emailing documents to one another, and their laptops hard drives & MS Exchange become the project repositories.
Given the choice between paying lots of money for a basic file share / Dropbox and email, or getting Sharepoint for free, I would pay the money and take the file share.
Maybe this is not the best way of working, but people will always gravitate to the most convenient way of working, and Sharepoint will never be it. Until there is a secure, user-friendly Dropbox-like solution for content sharing, people will continue to email files to each other.
Given the choice between paying lots of money for a basic file share / Dropbox and email, or getting Sharepoint for free, I would pay the money and take the file share.
Maybe this is not the best way of working, but people will always gravitate to the most convenient way of working, and Sharepoint will never be it. Until there is a secure, user-friendly Dropbox-like solution for content sharing, people will continue to email files to each other.
In addition, there's this article by Chris McNulty on performance issues stemming from bad organizational practices:
http://www.sharepointpromag.com/blog/sharepoint-pro-by-admins-devs-industry-observers-23/sharepoint/5-reasons-sharepoint-performance-issues-142855
http://www.sharepointpromag.com/blog/sharepoint-pro-by-admins-devs-industry-observers-23/sharepoint/5-reasons-sharepoint-performance-issues-142855
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