CIAOPS Office 365 Bootcamp and SharePoint spotlight announced for Brisbane

I am happy to announce a special combination of CIAOPS content in Brisbane on Friday the 26th and Saturday the 27th of October in conjunction with SMBITPro – Brisbane.

On Friday the 26th I’ll be conducting an Office 365 Bootcamp and then on Saturday the 27th I’ll be running a SharePoint spotlight session.

Both days will be held at Kedron-Wavell Services Club, 375 Hamilton Rd, Chermside, QLD 4032 from 9am. Entry price is $299 inc for both days and includes meals, parking, refreshments, WiFi, etc.

Details of the event including registration can be found at:

http://ciaops261012.eventbrite.com.au/

If you use the promotional code EARLYBIRD prior to the 21st of October you’ll receive a $50 discount off the entry price! SMBITPRO members receive special discounts, the details of which they can obtain from their local committee.

I am expecting places to fill quickly so I suggest that you book your place early to avoid disappointment.

Office 365 bootcamps are filling fast

If you want to learn more about the Office 365 product, how to administrate it and how to profit from it (if you are a traditional IT reseller) then you’ll be please to know that I am now running two Office 365 training bootcamps in Sydney and Melbourne:

http://ciaops0912.eventbrite.com.au/ – Thu 27th September, Sydney

http://ciaops1012.eventbrite.com.au/ – Wed 3 October, Melbourne

places are filling fast, so I suggest that if you are interested in attending that you book. The cost is only $249 dollars and includes a full day’s training, meals, course notes, etc.

In broad strokes the bootcamp will cover the following agenda;

– Clouding computing providers (features, benefits, opportunities)

– Office 365 from Microsoft and Telstra

– Office 365 pricing and components

– Preparation (checklists, gotcha’s)

– Office 365 plan differences

– Sign up process

– Configuring

– Domain name allocation

– Exchange Online

– Lync Online

– SharePoint Online

– Office Professional Plus via Office 365

– Client deployment

– Hybrid deployments

– Integration with existing networks

– Migration

– Troubleshooting

– and more

The focus of the bootcamp is not only in providing real world hands on experience but also to assist resellers in passing the recently announced 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Business exam which is a requirement of the Microsoft Small Business Competency.

After attending the bootcamp you’ll not only have much greater experience and understanding of how to deploy the Office 365 product but you’ll also have a number valuable tools to make the whole process much easier.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 37

In this episode I speak with SharePoint MVP Christian Buckley about the importance of governance in SharePoint. Basically this means have a plan and managing your SharePoint installation rather than simply letting it run wild (which so many do). You will find the podcast at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/2012/09/04/episode-37-christian-buckley/

but you can also subscribe to it via

http://ciaops.podbean.com

to access all previous and future episodes. I’d also appreciate a like over on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/n2kpodcast

if you enjoy the show.

If you’d like to come on the show to talk about something I’m always looking for people so please free to contact me directly (director@ciaops.com). Alternatively, if you have a suggestion for a show topic or someone who you’d like to hear from as a guest please also contact me with any suggestions.

SharePoint news

I attended a recent presentation by a Microsoft and it highlighted a number of interesting points in and around the upcoming version of SharePoint:

1. There will apparently be no Search Server Express 2013. The model around search in SharePoint is changing. It seems SharePoint Server 2013 Standard will search only across SharePoint sites. To enable the ability to search external data, like file shares, will require SharePoint Server Enterprise. Given that SharePoint Foundation can also search across SharePoint sites I don’t quite understand how all this fits together. Does that mean that SharePoint Server Standard search is the same as SharePoint Foundation search? What it seems to mean is that there will be no stand alone free search product.

2. To use Office Web Apps with SharePoint will require a separate server. Apparently, you can’t install SharePoint and Office Web Apps on the same piece of hardware. This is because Office Web Apps functionality can also be consumed by Exchange Server 2013. Therefore it needs a separate box.

3. SharePoint Workspace is end of life. The replacement for local sync’ing of documents will be SkyDrive Pro, which will run a small app on the local machine and create a local folder in which it will store off line material. Interestingly, this mean one less product in Office Professional Plus as well. That kinda makes it a little less valuable doesn’t it to my way of thinking? However, I would say that I couldn’t see a future for SharePoint Workspace. It was kinda a product looking for a home, somewhat like Ray Ozzie.

4. Microsoft will be releasing native apps for a range of mobile devices including iPads, iPhones, Windows Phone and Android. This was a very exciting piece of news and not unexpected given what Microsoft have done with OneNote and Lync of late. It will be very interesting to see how these apps compare to the existing third party ones. I certainly look forward to their integration with Office 365 being better.

5. The difference between SharePoint on premise and in Office 365 is slight. Not unexpected but for a smaller business that wants to take advantage of all the SharePoint goodness, including the new Office Web Apps, it now makes so much more sense to go with Office 365. The infrastructure stuff if becoming more difficult and more expensive as it ‘defaults’ to enterprise installations (with lots of hardware). If you want to get all the benefits of the latest in SharePoint without the deployment and infrastructure headaches, Office 365 is the go.

6. If you are planning to upgrade from SharePoint 2007 (MOSS or WSS v3) to SharePoint 2013 onsite you are still going to have to do it in two hops. Firstly, to 2010 then to 2013. This is the same as it was from WSS v2 to SharePoint Foundation 2010. Sigh. I understand why but it would be nice to not have to run up a “swing” migration server just to upgrade.

A number of interesting changes happening with the SharePoint product. The most interesting for me will be the native apps for mobile devices as well as Skydrive Pro functionality. When I know more I’ll post here.

CIAOPS Podcast–Episode 36

Mark O’Shea returns to the podcast to give us an update on what been happening with him and technology. Mark shares insight from Microsoft TechEd US as well as what he see coming down the pipeline from Microsoft. Beware, plenty of opinions are expressed in this episode.

Mark O’Shea – http://twitter.com/intunedin

http://intunedin.net/

Listen to episode at – http://ciaops.podbean.com/2012/08/21/episode-36-mark-oshea/

Don’t forget all the other podcasts at http://ciaops.podbean.com and appreciate a like over at http://www.facebook.com/n2kpodcast.

Remember if you want to be a guest please contact me (director@ciaops.com).

Making it easy to stay in contact

As I pass the local cafe strip this morning I noticed a recently opened cafe had a for lease sign in the window. It would be unsurprising to me if they have unfortunately gone out of business because to my mind they had missed some very important opportunities to stay in contact with their customers.

To start with, the cafe never had an email address. How many people live via their email these days? I did have cause to contact the cafe about an event I was organizing there and guess what? An email is so much easier than looking up their phone details and they are free! Strike 1.

Next, they never had a web site. Not even a basic one. It isn’t difficult to create a very basic free one page web site with a registered domain. I have created lots of my own special interest web sites using the free Google Sites tool (www.ciaops.org.au if where you’ll find them). They are far from perfect or Web 2.0’ized but guess what? They are up there and they work. They get the message out. Having a web site would have been really handy when the cafe decided to change their opening hours unbeknownst to me until I arrived on the doorstep early one morning for a meeting. I can tell you that I was not please at all that the only way I could find out about this was by coming to the establishment. Strike 2.

I am only assuming here, but surely it isn’t too difficult to get your establishment listed in local Internet guides, coffee sites, etc? This is where I would think that you start attracting a regular audience and community. You make it easy for them to provide feedback, you solicit comments and you reward regular customers. Hell, even a Facebook page is easy to set up these days. I can’t understand why they didn’t make it easy for people to ‘check in’ on Facebook or Four Square. Why? Because the people that do this sort of thing are the influences. They are the people that other look and see what they are doing and then follow. These influencers are connected. They expect the places they frequent to be connected and easy to ‘check in’ to. So, strike 3 and you’re out.

I watched with interest as this local cafe started up. I frequented the establishment in an effort to support a local business but I could see that it was going to struggle without embracing even the simplest of technologies. Just like water and electricity any business needs to embrace technology and explore what can help them retain customers and better engage with them. Surprisingly, much of the technology is free and simply requires a little bit of effort to setup and maintain. It is all about using the best tools for your business and technology is something EVERY business owner needs to have on their tool belt.

Checklists

The of the simplest and most effective business tools is the humble checklist. The other great thing about checklists is that you can use them just about everywhere. The power of checklists for me really hit home when I used to run up servers for a living. Before I decided to adopt the checklist mentality, I’d always be forgetting something or getting lost on exactly what step in the process I was on.

Enter a simple check list. My server checklist started off pretty basic but over time it grew to be quiet comprehensive. Sure it doesn’t give you a perfect result every time but it makes the chances much better and it provides you with a much more consistent result. The other thing with a good checklist is that you can give it to someone else to follow and they should get the same result.

So many businesses I see make the same mistakes over and over again. They are totally inconsistent with what they are delivering. This doesn’t just apply to small businesses it also applies to big business as well. If you are planning on repeat any process, then that is an opportunity to develop a checklist for it. Sure, it takes a little time up front but the more time you do it the easier it becomes with a checklist.

Chances are that once you have a good checklist you can start automating some of the steps in there to save you time. There are a multitude of technologies that can not only create checklists but also automate them. I am going to point out SharePoint as something that I use regularly for checklists. I also use OneNote extensively for checklists since I can access it on every device that I have, just about anywhere that I am. Another really great free app I use is called Wunderlist which has a really simple interface and allow me to track my to-do list.

If you are repeating processes and not using a checklist then you are doing things the hard way Spend a little time, create a checklist and then use it the next. I guarantee you’ll see the improvement and save time.