I see and read all the time about how SharePoint uptake is increasing but I want to share with you a personal metric I have found that indicates exactly this.
For quite a while I’ve been posting videos on YouTube firstly under the Saturn Alliance banner and then under CIAOPS. The most popular for years has been:
Getting Started with Virtual PC – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSBbpPDWFUE
which covers the basics of getting a Virtual machine running using Microsoft Virtual PC. This week was I went through my metrics I noted that this video has now risen to highest number of views:
Linking SharePoint 2007 with Outlook 2007 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9CnBNVnBjk
To me this certainly indicates, in some small way perhaps, that SharePoint is indeed gaining in popularity. Further reinforcing this view came when I attended the partner launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 in Sydney this week. Much of the productivity benefits of Office 2010 need to be experienced with SharePoint 2010 as the back end. It was heartening to finally see Microsoft putting SharePoint on the same plain as other Office 2010 and recommending that partners go out and start implementing it. I couldn’t agree more.
New portals from CIAOPS
Now that the June update for my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide has been released (including the first instalment of how to get SharePoint Foundation 2010 running on SBS 2008) I can now turn my attention to getting two new portals ready for release on July 1.
Part of the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide has always been a DVD that contained not only guides covering Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows Foundation Server 2010 (WSF) but was also filled with training material, white papers, videos and more. The major problem has been that as this information grows the DVD ISO became larger and larger making it longer to upload as well as download for subscribers. Also, even though I include a searchable index of the Guide documents, it doesn’t include all the other material on the DVD.
To overcome both of these issues and provide even greater resources for Guide subscribers I am moving all the content to a hosted SharePoint site. This means that both subscribers and I can add information to the site and have it all readily indexed and available. Much easier.
Also on July 1, I plan to make available via subscription a Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) portal. In here will be information in and around BPOS including how to get signed up as a partner, marketing and sales material, a technical knowledge base and an extensive list of BPOS links.
Again the idea is that subscribers can also contribute information and knowledge to the portal in order for it grow in value. I have a few people testing it now but I plan to make it available for $120 ex GST (basically $10 per month) for subscribers.
Having both of these as SharePoint sites also has another benefit for subscribers, it gives you real world experience with SharePoint. Firstly, subscribers can improve their knowledge of SharePoint by using the portals, secondly they can understand how SharePoint can be used as a knowledge store and finally it means I will be able to update both sites on a regular basis rather than only monthly. Using the power of SharePoint attributes, such as email alerts, subscribers will be able to know exactly when new or updated information becomes available.
In the longer run I plan to start using shared OneNote files to provide even greater flexibility with the information I make available. This is part of the ongoing iterations being made to try and improve the information the CIAOPS makes available.
As always if you want more information or have some suggestions of what should be included don’t hesitate to contact me (director@ciaops.com) as I’d love to hear. Oh yes, all existing Guide subscribers will automatically get access to my new BPOS portal for the duration of their subscription. Another great reason to sign up to the Guide.
Co-authoring documents with SharePoint 2010
One of the major reasons for implementing SharePoint 2010 is that, combined with Office 2010, you can do something called co-authoring. This means that two (or more) people can be working on the same file TOGETHER! Thus, no more locked files and waiting for the other person to save and make it available.
As you can see in the above screen shot here I am co-authoring a Word document saved on a SharePoint 2010 Foundation server. When two people access the same file and place it in edit mode you’ll see a little people icon in the lower left of the screen indicating multiple access. If you click on that icon you’ll see a list of people currently co-authoring the document.
If you also combine Office Communications Server you can chat or even speak with this person directly. Imagine how much better that would be than emailing a document back and forth. Also imagine how well this will work across the Internet using something like Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) when this features becomes available soon.
You’ll also note that document shows the edits the other person is making live. In the above screen shot you are looking at user Robert Crane and can see that the administrator user is making changes to a paragraph. These are almost real time (depending on your connection speed to SharePoint 2010).
When changes are saved to the document by others they show up marked in green like for you, so:
As you save the document your changes are also committed to the document and you receive any saved updates by other users. No more attachments necessary, as the file lives on SharePoint.
There are plenty of features and abilities with this co-authoring of Office 2010 and SharePoint. Best of all it is available across the whole Office 2010 application range. I can tell you that in OneNote 2010 this is absolutely brilliant, making a great product even better. It actually turns out that this co-authoring concept came from what previous versions of OneNote could do with SharePoint. As I have said before, OneNote is really THE killer app for SharePoint and now it is available in every version of Office 2010 so how can you afford to ignore it?
If you haven’t given co-authoring, or OneNote for that matter, a try then I suggest you do.
When SharePoint gets locked
Ok, so today you go in first thing to use SharePoint and you don’t see all the items on the menu bar even when you are correctly logged in to the site. Instead of seeing:
you see:
So you can’t do things like uploading files, checking and checking out, weird eh?
Had exactly the same issue a while back and it turns out that the whole SharePoint site was locked or more simply, put into read only mode. How did that happen? Well, each night an stsadm –o backup task was scheduled to backup the SharePoint site to a data file. Problem was that the backup terminated unexpectedly, which meant that it hadn’t reset the site to read / write after initially make it read only for the backup process. Ah ha, all makes sense now.
More importantly, how do you fix the issue? You go into the SharePoint Central Administration on the SharePoint server and select the Application Management tab.
Select the option Site Collection quotas and locks from the SharePoint Site Management section in the top right.
Make sure you have the right site collection at the top and set the site to Not locked if set to Read-only (as is the case here).
Now when you go back to the SharePoint site and refresh the page everything should be working as normal.
Took me a little while to work what was going when I came across for the very first time but now you can fix it in a manner of seconds and look like a SharePoint whiz.
Revisiting balance
http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog/archive/2007/07/16/the-one-thing.aspx
http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog/archive/2007/07/16/its-all-about-control.aspx
and
However most people don’t achieve balance without effort. If you try and stand on one leg and tie your shoe lace you are certainly going to have to do some work to prevent yourself from falling over. Everyday, in fact, your ability to walk upright requires a constant balancing act yet you do it so often that you don’t even realize you are doing it. Also, because you do it so often your body has developed a way to ensure maximum balance with minimal effort. That didn’t happen overnight, it took years and years of practice yet many time we forget that. Shouldn’t you be able to achieve the same ease of result with everything else? Not without putting in effort you won’t.
The key to balance is control as I wrote in an earlier blog post and control requires effort and discipline (i.e. sweat). In many ways control comes back to being a mental discipline because your mind controls just about every function of your body. Interestingly, one could also content that those who can’t control themselves are destined to be controlled by others.
Like a true Zen puzzle, there are many small pieces which individually they appear very simple. However as you start to interlock them you begin to discover that they actually interact and influence each other. Understanding the pieces comes first, getting them to work together is the challenge and only then do you achieve balance. Yet that all comes to naught without control.
If balance is the goal, effort is the way.
Blog URL rectified
When I started this blog I simply used the native blogging in SharePoint v3. As I felt that was a bit bland I then used a Codeplex template to make it look a bit slicker. One of the big benefits was that the URL of blog posts became more ‘standard’. Thus instead of:
http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog/Lists/Posts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=816
it became:
which as you can see has the date and topic of the post. Problem is that behind the covers the URL was still the top more complex one.
Now if you subscribed to the blog via Feedburner you could read the post but when you clicked on the post in your reader you received a login prompt. Typically, you’d go no further.
To my own detriment I have known about this issue for a while but never gotten around to getting it fixed. I was having a conversation with Hilton Travis about the issue recently and he quite rightly pointed out that even though the RSS feed does display in the reader correctly it only displays the first part of the blog post. Thus, if it is a long blog post and you want to read it and click on the item to get more you are confronted with a login and password. As Hilton quite rightly pointed out, this fact is limiting my readership and frustrating existing subscribers. D’oh, what an idiot I am! Good example of a failure of customer service there. Shame, shame, shame.
So long story short, I believe the issue should now be resolved so that if you click on a link from Feedburner that has a cryptic URL would should be taken to the correct post, without any password prompts and the URL should now read the updated friendly one.
If it doesn’t PLEASE let me know and I will fix this. Apologies to all who have suffered through my lack of attention on this matter and I hope your reading experience with this blog is now much better.
SQL Server Express 2008 R2 Database size increase
In my ongoing saga to provide the best solution for SharePoint Foundation on SBS 2008 I have been alerted to the fact that SQL Server Express 2008 R2 has had its maximum database size limit increased from 4GB to 10GB by Andy Parkes (thanks Andy). The actual SQL Server Express 2008 blog (yes there is a blog) mentions it here:
Why is that important for SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008 you may ask? Well to install SharePoint anywhere you need a version of SQL Server installed first. Generally, if you don’t already have a version SharePoint will install a free version automatically for you. With WSS v3 this version was SQL Server Embedded Edition 2005 (#SSEE) which has no limit on the size of databases (although it has other restrictions). SharePoint Foundation 2010 in contrast installs SQL Express 2008 which has a database limit of 4GB. So if you did really want to install SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008, and migrate your existing WSS v3 site across without having to pay for a version of SQL Server and your SharePoint content database was > 4GB then you were out of luck.
So, if you have SharePoint content databases > 4GB and you don’t want to pay for a full blown version of SQL Server you can now use SQL Server Express 2008 R2. Only problem is that you have to install this version first before installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 AND you also have to do an advanced SharePoint install, which means you have to setup and configure SharePoint manually on the server. This is not a simple process for someone not familiar with SharePoint so I would not recommend it.
I think this is where SharePoint sometimes gets a bum wrap. Out of the box there are some limitations, however they can be overcome, problem is that information isn’t always readily available. That is exactly why I document all of this in my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide that I make available for people. If you are going to be working with SharePoint my Guide is going to save you hours and hours of mucking around looking for the answers. Come July 1 I’ll also be announcing another improvement to the Guide so stay tuned.
So thanks to Andy Parkes I’m off to rewrite my SharePoint Foundation 2010 on SBS 2008 guide to incorporate SQL Server Express 2008 R2 because bigger databases are always better right?
Job recruitment
I’ve been helping another reseller with some recruitment using a method I’ve developed over the years to find not just competent technicians but also good employees. However, I must admit that I’m pretty disappointed in the quality of responses that I’ve seen so far. I was also stunned to see that none of the applicants for the position used any sort of social media tools. No Linkedin, blogs, etc to promote their qualifications.
To me this indicates that good technical people don’t reply to online job ads any more. So what are they doing? I reckon they have their details up on places like Linkedin, for example, and use it to connect with people and solicit testimonials from their contacts. I’d also say that they are blogging about technical topics to demonstrate firstly their discipline to write regularly but also provide a ‘living’ CV that they can refer anyone to as a way of highlighting their ongoing efforts in their professional field. There are plenty of other ways that smart people are using social networking to get ahead. Take a look at this example:
The Google Job Experiment – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FRwCs99DWg
If you are someone looking for a better job then you really need to be using social networking and becoming connected with as many people as possible. In many cases it is the strength of weak ties that lands you the job you never expected via a friend of a friend. Best of all, most of the tools of social network are free to join and maintain.
Now if you are looking to hire someone I gotta say that the same message also applies to you. If you think you are going to land that great employee simply by running an online ad I think your chances are going to be fairly slim. Many smart businesses, again are using social networking to stay in touch with ex-employees, customers and other contacts. In this way they are extending their reach and ‘weak links’ so when the day comes that they need someone they will either have that individual with their existing social network or they can use their network to find someone.
As a business or an employee you need to maintain and foster your networks but by doing this you are constantly giving yourself the greatest chance of having the position or person you want find you. Personally, I think now days the first place I’d start looking for someone is via Twitter or Linkedin. Why? It doesn’t cost anything. Only after exhausting all my social networks would I consider running an online ad.
Most amazingly of all, many small businesses totally ignore social networking as a method of recruitment. Most prefer to employ ‘someone they know’ but few utilize the tools that effectively allow them to do just that. To me, this is simply another example of how important social networking is in the SMB market. Smart business are leveraging it for all sorts of things like marketing, publicity and, as I outlined here, recruitment. Most businesses know how hard it is to recruit good staff. You have a much greater chance if you go to where progressive talent is located (i.e. social networking). If you simply run an online add you are really just ‘hoping’ there ‘maybe’ someone out there. Not a very good return on investment in my books.
Times are changing. If you are a good business or a good employee don’t rely on the old ways of recruitment, start to understand and utilize the tools that social networking provide and save yourself time, money and really stand out from the crowd. I really feel sad for not only all those people who have submitted ‘bland’ CVs for me to evaluate but also for the business who is using this method to recruit. The chances of any of them truly finding what they are after is very slim in my books, very slim indeed.
CIAOPS 