Collega, David Drinkwine, does a (slightly more than) pen-on-napkin estimate for building a truly world class intranet for a large enterprise organization. Vos can read about it here: (http://www.bigapplesharepoint.com/pages/View-An-Insight.aspx?BlogID=86&stitle=WCI).
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SP2010 est frigus effercio, sed volo sunt esset adaequatum lingua in album et bibliothecis occasus 'pages cum venit ad administrandi contentus genera:
Eodem sermone in locum WSS / MUSCUS. Mutato nomine "Delete" ad "removere" quod sit simpliciter magis sensus.
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My latest article for SharePointBriefing.com is up and kicking here: http://sharepointbriefing.com/features/article.php/3887276/The-Road-to-SharePoint-Mastery.htm
Hic elit:
Hoc est basically a pulchellus brevi et condensatione version meae popularis publica praesentationis in "ad discite SharePoint." Non banjo iocos, autem.
Reprehendo eam!
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(Note: et ibi positi erant, transeunt ad minim: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/?p=1912)
Update 09/01/09: Fundatur in arcu egestas ut tempus, I need to clarify that InfoPath is supported in the sense that BPOS provides forms libraries. What I mean when I write "not supported in any way" is that InfoPath forms services functions are not supported. That means that you can’t publish an InfoPath form to BPOS and and have it render in the web browser. It also means that some out of the box workflows, which use InfoPath (even in MOSS standard edition) don’t work in BPOS because their initiation and other forms use InfoPath. Hopefully that clears things up.
I had a chance to really dig into Microsoft Online’s offering earlier this year and specifically the business productivity online suite (BPOS). This came along before I even hard a firm plan to set out on my own at Arcovis. I immediately saw, autem, that BPOS could be a key part of my company’s internal infrastructure and over time, it has become exactly that. Arcovis, uses it on a daily basis. I thought I’d share some of that experience from a practical perspective in case you want to evaluate it for yourself or are just curious about it.
As the word “suite” in BPOS implies, you get a small bundle of applications:
You can buy each of them separately, I believe. It’s all spelled out relatively clearly on the Microsoft online site. You may be able to get better deals through MSFT partners. Arcovis has been working with Cloud consilia and they seem to know their stuff, so I’d include them in your list of vendors if you do a multi-vendor search.
I outline my experience and thoughts for each of these respectively.
This is a hosted exchange environment and from my perspective, it works like any other Exchange server I have ever used. It’s fully integrated with all of my fellow Arcovis partners’ environments and gives me access to the calendar (which is huge). Good stuff.
It also provides the Outlook Web Access (OWA) interface. That means I can get my email on any machine that has a web browser.
My HTC mobile phone, running Windows Mobile 6.1(?) connected to it nicely via Active Sync. It did this in exactly the way I expected and wanted.
I don’t consider myself much more than a casual outlook and exchange user so there may be really important Exchange features that just aren’t supported and I wouldn’t necessarily know it.
I think the strongest recommendation I make for this is that I am completely unaware that my exchange environment is “somewhere else.” I don’t know see any difference in Exchange and how I use it on a daily basis versus the half dozen or so other times I used someone’s exchange environment. In facto, this is better because it simply works.
Bottom line – hosted exchange is what it needs to be and I’m very happy with it.
This is a truly indispensible tool when you’re in the consulting business. I fire up instant live meetings several times a week to show intermediate work product to clients, to watch them break my solutions so that I know how to fix them, do sales presentations, etc. Live meeting is bundled with BPOS and it’s very easy to use.
I’m even less of a live meeting expert than I am on exchange. Autem, for my purposes, it’s great.
Ita, I use communicator almost only for presence information. I say “only” but have that presence data available to me whenever I’m connect has become addictive. With communicator installed and running, my colleagues know when I’m available, what my schedule is like at this moment, and can IM me (though the IM interface is pretty dull, at best). It’s one of those things that I really miss when I don’t have it. I actually get a little annoyed when my colleagues aren’t running communicator because the presence information is missing.
The presence indicator feels pervasive. It shows up in SharePoint whenever their name appears as an author to a document, assigned a task, etc. It shows in email, embedded right in outlook. It shows up in the communicator client itself.
For the most it just sits there running in the background and decorates my outlook and SharePoint screens with real-time presence information. It’s very cool.
My favorite bit, utique, is SharePoint.
BPOS provides a modified version of MOSS standard edition. I’ll explain “modified” below. We’ve been using our BPOS SharePoint portal for stuff like:
Basically, all the stuff you’d expect to use SharePoint for.
Along the way, we use technical features like:
What can’t I do with it? There are a bunch of things that would be nice:
The last bit is a little sad because we can’t do as much search configuration I would like.
You basically give up a lot of technical capability and are forced to live within the confines of out-of-the-box SharePoint functionality.
I can live with that. I have found myself wanting to slap together an event receiver or use a custom action once or twice,, but for the most part, I don’t notice the lack.
I should add that this is not a comprehensive list of the differences between a hosted “on prem” MOSS environment and SharePoint on line. Cloud Strategies has a very detailed presentation that goes into all that if you’re interested. I’m speaking from the perspective of a business owner leveraging the tool.
Microsoft provides a nifty desktop application that enables quick and easy access to all of the BPOS functions:
You don’t need to use it, but eliminates the need to log into each of the applications separately and for live meeting, It’s quite nice because you can do a “meet now” session with just 2 clicks (one on the “web conferencing” button above and another on the web browser that pops up). It’s also nice to get OWA with one click, though you can just put that in your browser favorites as well.
The other major advantage with this desktop application is that it provides a background kind of single sign on service. As long as this is running in the background, I can open up web browsers and connect to my BPOS environment without ever needing to enter credentials.
Microsoft made BPOS available to me for free so I am not currently paying the monthly per user fee at this time. Autem, I see value there and you can accept on faith (an non) that I would pay for this service. The fact is that I can’t count on Microsoft providing this for free forever and it’s become so strongly integrated with my business that moving … the mind quails.
BPOS is an insanely feature rich platform. Exchange, SharePoint (MOSS Standard!), presence, instant live meetings – it’s a lot of functionality that I would sorely, sorely miss if I had to live without it. My business would be severely impacted without it. Could I find replacement functionality? Probably, but I think I would have to cobble it together from a variety of other vendors, complicating my life. BPOS has so far proven itself to be stable and reliable. For the right kind of customer (like my company), BPOS is worth strong consideration.
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Ego secutus MSDN forums bene super anno, (et nusquam paene 2 Hie annis) and every now and then I hear from someone how “hard” it is to do that. I find it quite easy and thought I’d share my “technique”. This technique also works for www.endusersharepoint.com (http://www.endusersharepoint.com/STP).
Accipiens exemplum MSDN, Primum vexillum ad forum page ut quaestiones generales enim hic SharePoint Main Page: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointgeneral/threads
Vos should animadverto ut forums sunt statim mereantur RSS, ut ostensum:
Ive 'been usura Google Lector, ad gerenda mea RSS nutritor pro iamdudum (www.google.com / lector). I go there, add the RSS feed for the forum and now I’m getting all new forums posts via RSS. My Google feeds for SharePoint forums look like this:
Google praestat me a nice intuitu ad se dispositis:
Et tandem, Google dimittit me uti tincidunt ut scroll per Commentaires in via hac forums.
Velociter currit iustus focus in illis stationibus per possum sentio possum facere utile collationem.
Alerts close the loop. Updates to posts don’t come through RSS (sed opinor olim usi). Autem, si stipes responsio ad forum stipes, the forums alert me via email and IM that someone responded in turn. Aut, si autem non potest scire, quid utile alii ad collationem, EXERCITATIO in eam Explicite et possum rogare summis montibus cum alii respondent.
Nec minus in hora hebdomadam hanc, et in iudicio et consuetudine, varius tincidunt discere artes et shortcuts ut hoc fit secundum naturam,.
I use the exact same technique for End User SharePoint.Com’s “Stump the Panel” forums. This is their RSS feed: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/STP/rss/.
Forums formidolosum sunt via, fortasse optimum breve de recto usu, Morbi aliquet, quam praeclara in literis questus mundi, latissime, uses SharePoint. Give it a try!
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Quod quidem expendendo tempus (aut mori, usquam) working out governance plans is because we want the SharePoint solution to be as effective as possible. We want good infrastructure and rules to keep it humming and safe in case of disaster. We want good security processes to both properly secure the environment but also make it reasonable to manage. We want a good information architecture that will stand the test of time, ideally managing to survive a major organizational change in the company.
To achieve that desirable objective, a governance document and plan can devolve into a bunch of “thou shall” and “thou shall not’s”, ut in:
“Thou shall” and “thou shall not” certainly have their place in the governance plan.
A more successful governance plan will also have a strong marketing angle. It should sell and justify itself to the maximum extent possible. A truly successful governance plan relies upon the voluntary cooperation of all SharePoint users. (There are fringe cases where community cooperation is not needed, such as when SharePoint is used by a very small number of tightly managed users; I’m sure you can think of others). If the user community doesn’t buy into your governance plan then it will be partially successful at best.
I use that word “buy” deliberately. The community will buy the governance plan if it’s fundamentally sound and you go to some effort to sell them on it. Selling leads to marketing and that’s why I think that a governance plan should be considered a marketing plan too. Convince your end users that they need to follow the governance plan and they will voluntarily follow it. If you can get a critical mass of people following the governance plan then the plan’s benefits follow and you’ll have a stronger environment for it.
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Scribere possem fusius de MSDN forums, etiquette, nominando conventions, quaerere, etc. I may do that, in facto. I wanted to point out a small thing which may help people have a better overall experience.
I’ve lately been telling people that if you run into some kind of problem with your SharePoint environment, development project or other SharePoint related activity, post a question to the forums earlier in your action chain rather than later. I know for myself that when I have a problem, a number of potential solutions present themselves right away. I order these potential solutions in terms of likelihood, applicability and how easy they are to investigate. I go through that list and by the time I’ve gotten to #10, I’m making registry changes to a key “/foo/bar/almostThere/isThisIt/noThisIsNotIt/iCantBelieveIAmDoingThis/finallyThere!” on the advice of a blog found on page 8 of a Google search. When that doesn’t work, I finally post a question to MSDN (e.g. hic: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointgeneral/threads).
I suggest that you reverse that approach. Post the forums much earlier in your investigation because:
Ita, basically, it’s easy and free and you have a good shot at getting some kind of answer, but it will take a while to get that answer (iterum, unless you’re lucky).
I used to think that I should hold off on looking for community help because I don’t want to waste someone’s time asking for help when I could find it out myself. Some forum moderators and active participants may feel that way, but I don’t (saltem, I don’t feel that way any more). I don’t see any downside. The worst case is that you post a question and then answer it yourself some time later, possibly “wasting” some one’s time. I don’t see a big risk in that and there’s value in the researching of questions like that in any event.
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Ive 'lego pauci in retrospectives 2008 and this has got me to thinking about 2009. Here are my guesses at the future of SharePoint in 2009.
MVP sum, et ex SharePoint, I sometimes get a little advance information before it’s public. I am NOT making any such information public. I really haven’t been around long enough to be entrusted with that kind of stuff anyway.
Cum illo de via,, in praedictiones ...
I believe that FAST will become a very hot topic in 2009. It’s already well known in the enterprise search community. Autem, quod quisque ludit in circuitu SharePoint 2009 will soon be interested in this product and what it can do for them. New consulting companies will spring up around it and existing partners will work and scramble to add it to its portfolio. This time next year, audivi fere omnes in synagoga et opinionem SharePoint QUADRAGESIMA.
FAST is targeted at large companies and that will continue. I think there’s at least an outside chance that Microsoft will release a more focused version of the product that is accessible to smaller companies. Failing that, they will open up the SharePoint search engine so that it can be customized along the lines that FAST can be customized. Verbigratia, FAST uses pipeline architecture for consuming content and indexing it. FAST admins and developers can assemble pipeline components per data source and even create new pipeline components. We don’t have this flexibility with SharePoint today. If FAST remains firmly targeted at very large companies, SharePoint quaerere recipient aliquod ieiunium features est scriptor.
Et erit in 2009.
I believe that it will provide us the ability to secure views on a list or document library. Hoc plus spei potest esse quam opinionem
Spero is mos suggero nonnullus melior suscipio pro users in finem SharePoint artifex, et maxime workflow.
Nescio multaque, I have been actively tracking what I do find here: http://delicious.com/pagalvin/SharePoint_O14.
Hodie, most SharePoint vendors seem to be gadget oriented. Take Bamboo aut Corasworks enim. They have a huge following and great portfolio of products. Autem, videntur illi quidem mihi gadgety vel elit / tool focused. Admin tools, workflow instrumenta, etc. That’s not a criticism at all because SharePoint can definitely use some gadgets.
In 2009, quibusdam mercatoribus (et forsitan se Bamboo, si hoc legere Recte) pariter ponam verticalized negotium applications in forma Templates, features, solutiones, etc. I’m thinking about the fabulous forty templates today but tailored to specific industries. I’m sort of surprised it’s not already exploited this way. SharePoint is a platform for delivering these kinds of things. What’s everyone waiting for? They won’t wait any longer in 2009.
Simul, Silverlight alius frigus. NET erit cibus novum effercio, melius et magis interesting gadgets.
Sharepointreviews.com erit communitas essentialium Catalogus haec producta.
2009 videbunt cessum ultimum User ut focus in a major bloggers, organizations and Microsoft themselves. Marcus Tullius Cicero Finis User SharePoint.Com lusit magna munus in in 2008 and will continue to do so in 2009. End Users will begin to blog, Adjuvabit transmutare in user coetus minus technica venues et convincere etiam aliquis vel ordo ad finem deducere pura User focused colloquio.
Speaking of conferences – they will continue to expand and grow in number and focus. Aside from end user content, et permanere ad tincidunt ad tincidunt et administratores.
Rectum Conferentiarum erit committitur ad colligunt esse colloquia et dabit vivunt pascitur remotiora attendees qui non potest eligere vel non attendunt ad personam.
Liber collapse mos venues, quales Mike Lotter scriptor (al) SharePoint sabbati.
Ipsum quod futurum est, quia futurum tincidunt magna novus influxus, admins et finem users quisnam erit appetitus genus notitia istis provideat.
Demand for social computing features will rise. All things being equal, ut efficax coetus sociales implement consilia computandi melius et fortius eorum competitores.
Minor turmas suscipere horum features citius et efficacius, quam magna turmas.
Lorem ipsum dolor: cave
In 2008, multum SharePoint bloggers et Institutis et consumpta multum tempus remanens ex Microsoft se optime quorumdamve problematum solutionem (plerumque technicis problematibus).
There are still opportunities to define and foster adoption of best practices. Autem, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet institutionem remanens ex nobis, configurare et curo SharePoint, turmas suas centeni et milleni sunt installing, Vestibulum ac moribus optime administrandi SharePoint sine illis adpropinquavit.
In 2009, a lot of companies are going to realize they have some deeply rooted problems to solve and will be looking to the elite members of the SharePoint community and Microsoft for help to fix them. I think this will extend well into 2010 et nequaquam excludunt umbraculum providere industria remediation officia turmas quod vere postulo utor SharePoint, sed quia laedendi male pauperum decisiones diluculo in eorum exsecutionem.
In 2009, Mater navis revertentes Bob Fox domum perducat.
Non committitur operantes SharePoint me in aliquo reali, donec Januarii 2007. Videtur mihi traditis SharePoint ipsa capax est et probatum sit amet aufertur biennium pretium. Puto quod multipliciter, non uere sibi de donec corrigas infrastructure update. Adhuc habet et cimices problems, sed per viam, venerunt omnes cum weve 01/2007. 2009 annus futurus sit in signum SharePoint.
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Hoc est satis popularis "fabulosa 40" Template. It also has a bug which is widely known (Ego etiam blogged de quam ad infige).
Sogeti dimisit a codeplex project hoc septimana quod figit cimex (quod est delicatus per se, sed non terra-fracturis) sed etiam petere ad soluta multo thornier problema: security. The fab 40 Template requirit ipsa liberalis securitatem occasum (users indiget contributor gradu accessum ad virtualiter omnia). Not any more! According to the codeplex summary:
"Hoc ipsum etiam includit consuetudinem workflow actio qua in Template ad operari sine ad omnibus users conferre permissions ad cursus album."
Quod bonis effercio et dignitas reprehendo ex.
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