SharePoint 2010 training

Probably the biggest change in SharePoint 2010 is the interface which now includes an Office style ribbon. In many ways it is probably going to be like how the Office ribbon was accepted by users. At first they hated it, mainly because it was different, but then after a while they found that it actually made things easier. Then they loved it.


I reckon it’ll be the same with SharePoint 2010. I think that the new ribbon interface will also improve the acceptance and usage of SharePoint because it is less like a ‘boring web site’ and more like a true ‘web app’ now. I also think that making it more like Office is also a winner. Initially I was sceptical but now the more I see it and more I use it I think that it does really make sense. The main reason is that, as I have always said, SharePoint works best when combined with office.

To get you more familiar with the new SharePoint 2010 interface and how to do the things you used to do in SharePoint v3 Microsoft has an excellent video training course that can be found at:

http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/make-the-switch-to-the-new-sharepoint-2010-user-interface-RZ101806469.aspx?redir=0

It is totally online and takes about 60 minutes to complete and if you are planning on using or working with SharePoint 2010 then I highly recommend you take the time and complete training.

If you know of any other good SharePoint 2010 training let me know (director@ciaops.com) so I can tell people.

More SharePoint talk

With thanks to Susan Bradley who put my name forward for this, I’m happy to say that I have recent featured on the RunAsRadio program.

 

Show #152 Robert Crane Manages Sharepoint 2010! can be download via a number of different audio formats for you to listen to at your leisure.

 

In the episode I speak generally about some of the issues around creating well managed SharePoint sites and some of the challenges that IT Professional may face with a SharePoint site in their environment.

 

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

Real world BPOS solution

I’m always on the lookout for real world solutions of Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services, especially those for SharePoint. As such, I came across the following blog post:

 

http://www.mickhuxley.com/?p=89

 

from Mick Huxley. Although he is a techie he is also a volunteer for the SES (State Emergency Services). Now this is basically a totally volunteer organization that provides a major amount of emergency and disaster relief. Interestingly, it seems that the SES has been given BPOS accounts.

 

Mick’s blog post talks about:

 

“Personally I have seen EOS/BPOS yield immediate results for my unit.  We have Distribution Lists, owned by our Controller for the distribution of incoming pages.  He is able to update the list membership on the fly to ensure that only unit members whom are active are notified.  Likewise each week an automatic email is sent advising of the Duty Officer, Team Leader and Operations Controller for the week.”

 

he also speaks of the benefits of SharePoint:

 

“SharePoint has provided us with a location to store our unit documents online and work on them away from Local Head Quarters (LHQ).  This has improved my Units ability to focus on training and incidents.  Whereas previously some members would skip training to complete “paper work” they can now work on the docs, outside of training nights, and spend training time increasing their skills.”

 

he concludes that

 

“Is the SES the only Organisation that would benefit from BPOS?? No, not at all.  Hosting these solutions outside the Organisation can reduce time to provision, reduce technical headcount, reduce carbon footprint, reduce datacentre requirements for cooling and power and reduce Capital Expenditure, whilst improving availability and potentially security.”

 

The trouble is that most people simply look at SharePoint and expect it to ‘magically’ do everything. You gotta mould to your needs and this requires some investment to get the most out of it. SharePoint is simply a tool, like Excel, you only get out of it what you put in.

 

To me this is simply more evidence that BPOS and hosted SharePoint provide real solutions for any organization, commercial or not. As much as I am disappointed by the current lack of uptake of SharePoint I feel better when I see stories likes these from the front lines. I know that one day soon we’ll reach a tipping point and people will begin to recognize the benefits SharePoint can play in their organization.

Webinar preview posted

Today’s webinar, Learning SharePoint Lists, has been posted up on my YouTube channel. It contains about the first eight minutes or so of the full 60 minute webinar that was run today.

Learning SharePoint lists webinar

 

We also have a number of free 30 minute webinars you can download if you want to get a feel for the style and content of our presentations:

 

Introduction to SharePoint – http://rapidshare.com/files/312292856/091112.avi

Basics of using SharePoint – http://rapidshare.com/files/312282952/091126.avi

 

there are also others available for download including:

Basics of SharePoint Administration

SharePoint Questions and Answers 1

SharePoint and Office

Document libraries in depth

 

which can be purchased online from : http://www.pagebloom.com/content/productCategory/o/92160/c/49875

 

If you wish to be informed of when new webinars will be available please sign up to the CIAOPS webinar email subscription list.

 

If you have any feedback on the webinars, suggestions, or topic suggestions please don’t hesitate to email director@ciaops.com and I hope to see you at the next webinar.

I’m not the only one

I posted some thoughts yesterday about the ramifications of the demise of Essential Business Server for the SMB and particularly Small Business Server market. I was reading through Susan Bradley’s blog and was interested to see that she raised many of the same concerns in a recent blog post including:

 

“Make no mistake the chatter is less about a concern over the future of “M” and more over the future of “S””

 

and

 

“What’s the future hold?  I’m not going to lie to you and say that Response Point, Office Accounting, MPAN program and now this, doesn’t put a slight bit of chill up my spine.”

 

When people of Susan’s stature start voicing these concerns you really need to be paying attention I believe. Again, this not about the product or the market segment, I truly believe that it is bigger than this. If you still have doubts have a look at this article:

 

’Cloudy days ahead from Microsoft’

 

as the subheading says here:

 

“MICROSOFT has switched its cloud computing marketing from half-hearted to full bore.”

 

This means that the focus has shifted (rightly or wrongly) from infrastructure to cloud. This is where Microsoft is throwing its resources. Maybe Microsoft’s solution is half baked but that doesn’t stop them allocating their resources there. History shows us that Microsoft tends to start slow and awkwardly in many markets but eventually, usually through sheer brute force, they take a dominate stake. I see no reason why the same won’t occur here.

 

Now you can quote me that this time it is different because of Google and guess what I totally agree with you. Why? Because it again reinforces my point that this online stuff, for better or worse, is not going away. The reality is that it is the traditional in house stuff that is.

 

You shouldn’t need to ‘read the tea leaves’ as Susan says in her post, to see that markets generally go where the dollars flow and Microsoft is currently tipping its bucket into the cloud. To reap the benefits you’ll have to probably follow their lead because in the end it is their products that people sell and support.

 

Technically, maybe the cloud stuff isn’t quite there but guess what that doesn’t matter because it is not the greatest driver here. Because the IT industry is being commoditized here major decisions are now based on cost. The cry is no longer ‘I want the best technology’ it has become ‘I want the cheapest technology’ because to the customer, most technology now looks identical whether it is delivered in house or from the cloud. Therefore in a world where there are few differences between products price becomes the differentiator and the cheaper one always wins. It would certainly seem that this is what we are seeing now.

Search Server 2010 Beta

With all the new Office applications currently available in beta don’t overlook the next version of Search Server Express. You can download Search Server 2010 beta from:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dfd0cfac-f52c-4c02-a972-0e4f1c4e7977&displaylang=en

 

You will need a 64 bit operating system, but unlike SharePoint Foundation 2010 it says that Search Server Express 2010 will run on Windows 2003 and 2008.

 

Here’s what the new version looks like after you install it.

 

image_4_08BFA2B7

 

Doesn’t look like much does it? But I have spoken many times about the power of search WITHIN a business, so don’s be fooled by the appearance. If you click on Advanced you’ll see:

 

image_6_08BFA2B7

 

which really doesn’t look much different from Search Server 2008 below:

 

image_8_36ACF56F

 

I’m currently working out what the differences are and will post any information that I find here soon.

 

Again, don’t be fooled by the apparent simplicity of Search Server, it is something most businesses really need and best of all it is a free download!

Big news day

The first bit of news is that Microsoft is officially killing off Essential Business Server (EBS) which was sorta a bigger version of Small Business Server. The announcement came as a surprise to many and disappoints some who have been building a business around a product that suits larger businesses. Some of the reasons for the death of EBS?

 

“midsize businesses are rapidly turning to technologies such as management, virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness.”

 

so says the Official Microsoft EBS blog.

 

Next bit of news is that Microsoft plans to release Office and SharePoint 2010 on the 12th of May which was announced on the SharePoint Team blog.

 

Even though the Official Microsoft EBS blog says, discontinuing EBS:

 

“will not impact any other Windows Server products and solutions, including the next version of Windows Small Business Server (SBS)”

 

you gotta wonder eh? It certainly only seems like a matter of time before that which instigated the demise of EBS starts to white ant the SBS end of the market. Most IT people will tell you that what happens at the larger end of town ultimately end up filtering down to the smaller end.

 

Almost two years ago now, in this blog, I speculated that SBS 2008 would be the last version of SBS we would see. I still believe that is the case, however I believe we may see something called “SBS” which really isn’t. I’m not going to split hairs on what ‘being SBS’ actually is, because I will still content that the fate of SBS will be the same as EBS. It will take longer to eventuate because the SBS product has a longer history and greater support base but it will happen in the end.

 

The imminent release of Office 2010 further marks a march to cloud computing and change in the landscape. Why? Because not only will Microsoft make available a version of Office available for free download but it will also have versions (including a free one) available via the web.

 

Office and SharePoint 2010 will survive because they can go to the cloud, EBS didn’t because it couldn’t. As I said, I reckon that the same logic applies to SBS, it is going to struggle as a product to survive a move to the cloud. Personally, I wouldn’t be betting my business on SBS at the moment.

 

On the other side of the ledger I think that it is good for Microsoft to reduce the number of products it sells and focus more of its energy on making those that sell well better. If all the resources from EBS get thrown into SBS to make it something better, then that can only be good? Microsoft needs to do what it believe is right for its business. At the end of the day that is going to burn some people who believed in the EBS product but in all my travels I have never seen an EBS installation and have only heard of one actual client who had installed it. Now I will readily admit that I am not as well travelled as other IT Professionals and I probably move in the limited circles of the ‘S’ in SMB, however I would have expected to have seen and heard more of EBS in all the time it has been released.

 

To say that current IT trends are not having an effect on customers and resellers is naive. Technology people need to appreciate that many aspects of traditional IT are being commoditized and perhaps sadly coming to be the domain of accountants rather than technicians. Someone told me once that change takes longer than you think to occur but when it does it ends up being much greater than you could have imagined. I certainly wonder what even the next 12 months will bring. The only certainty will be change but the uncertainty is just how much.

 

When a volcano erupts it can reek some of the most drastic changes on our environment, causing, flooding, tsunamis, earthquakes, solar winter and so on. Yet at the same time the earth that is brought to the surface during a volcanic eruption is some of the most fertile. In a nutshell every change brings threats and opportunities, what the end result becomes is only determined by a reaction to these events. A rational person appreciates that if they can’t change their circumstances then they can only react to the circumstances they find themselves in.

 

As much as I appreciate people will suffer because of the loss of EBS, I also see great opportunity in the changes that are brought to the IT landscape. It is up to myself to determine how best to exploit these for my business, because quite simply they are a fact of life and will always continue to be so. I may not like them but in the end I’ve just gotta deal with them.

SharePoint Lists webinar

Sign up for the next CIAOPS webinar now

 

100311 – Learning to use lists

 

This webinar will teach you all about SharePoint lists. You’ll be shown the many different forms of lists that are available including how to create your own custom lists from Excel spreadsheets. You’ll  find out which type of list is the best to use in each individual situation. You’ll see how to customize lists and connect lists to applications like Outlook and Access. Finally, you’ll learn how to display lists on a dashboard page and link information for instant updates.

Details

Date: Thursday 11th March 2010
Time: 10:00am Sydney Time
Duration: 60 minutes
Cost: $10 inc GST
Level: 2 (Intermediate)
Prerequisites: None

Registration: To register send an email to director@ciaops.com.

 

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