Under the radar

Had occasion to be in a bookshop today and was drawn to the computer section. Great, I thought, I’ll see if I can find a good book on Sharepoint 2007. Suffice to say that sadly, there wasn’t one.
 
There were two very ordinary books on Sharepoint 2003 and the third on Sharepoint 2007 was actually more about programming Sharepoint 2007 using .ASP and dotNet.
 
As the year draws to close I am asking myself more and more why small to medium businesses don’t user Sharepoint. Firstly, I think most SMB businesses don’t even know that Sharepoint exists, that if they have Small Business Server 2003 they probably alreday have Sharepoint and if not then it is free to download! Reason number two is simply tha fact that Microsoft don’t market it very well at all. All their marketing is aimed at the enterprise end of town which kinda understands intranets and portals. Thirdly, most businesses are not willing to invest the time to learn the product. I hear it all the time, “Ah yes, that looks great but I’d rather stick with my three known menu items in Word thank you very much. That looks far too complicated to me”.
 
So Sharepoint 2007 continues to fly under the radar. Maybe one day it will be seen as they immensely helpful tool that it is. I wonder whether the spreadsheet had this much trouble getting off the ground? “Ah yes, that looks all well and good but I really prefer writing things down with my trusty pencil and paper. Look I can even erase the data if I need. Can your fancy SPREADSHEET do that?”
 
It is immensely frustrating to try and get people to understand a tool that will really lead to major productivity benefits in their business. I can’t begin to tell you how much time and effort Sharepoint saves in my business. A good example was this week when a client asked me to reconfigure a complex email fowarding setup in Exchange server. Now I didn’t intially set this up so trying to work out what the hell was going on was very time consuming. However, once I had it all worked out I added all the details of the configuration to our customer specific knowledge base in Sharepoint 2007 so that when this configuration needs to be altered in thre future at least it will be much easier to work out where to start.
 
I know that the take up of Sharepoint 2007 isn’t really going to pick up until Microsoft puts some more marketing effort behind the product. But, thinking out it, why should they as Windows Sharepoint Services is free? Why would Microsoft spend marketing dollars in promoting a free piece of software?
 
So it looks like a battle on all fronts. Firstly, to make customers aware of the product. Secondly, to make them actually understand the product and finally to encourage Microsoft to put some marketing muscle behind the product.
 
Hopefully as a great man once said – It always looks darkest before the dawn.

Microsoft Filter Pack

Bet you didn’t know that Sharepoint 2007 doesn’t index Office 2007 documents did you? Well, there is a bug that prevents indexing of the latest Microsoft Office documents. See here if you don’t believe me!
 
Finally a solutions is available – Microsoft Filter Pack. The details about installing it on Windows Sharepoint Services 2007 are located here.
 
Finally, we can index Office 2007 documents!

Office Sharepoint Server 2007 training

Microsoft has release some training resources for Sharepoint Server. Now most of these are still applicable to Windows Sharepoint Services so they are well worth a look. There is a stand alone version which can simply be downloaded and installed on a machine. It includes documentation and videos which should improve its take up by users.
 
I’m still working my way through the content and will add some more comments about this Microsoft resource when I have completed all the modules.

It’s all about the information

As anyone who has read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber will tell you the value of any business is not what the owner believes it to be worth but what someone else would pay for it. In this respect it is important that as much of the information about a business and how it does business is documented in a meaningful way.

I believe that is where a tool like Sharepoint can really assist since it is not only flexible and easy to use but it is also free. Read my recent thinking on the matter in the following document, which can also be found in the Supportweb Document Libraries.

Sharepoint 2007 and Outlook 2007 video now available

Probably the final video I’ll do before Christmas (I think anyway). This video focuses on the integration between Sharepoint 2007 and Outlook 2007 in three key areas. Firstly, the ability to link document libraries allowing the use of Sharepoint document libraries offline. Secondly, the linking of calendars means that event information between Outlook and Sharepoint can be viewed in a single instance. Finally, most parts of Outlook are RSS enabled, which means you only have to subscribe via RSS to view the information making it easier to see what has changed recently.

To view the video directly on You Tube click here, otherwise go to our Video – Links area to view all our video presentation.

As always we welcome any feedback or suggestion you may have on how we can improve our offerings.

My BS warning is flashing

Seems to me that everyone you talk to these days is flat out. Problem is guys, I just don’t believe you.
 
Ok, once in a while I can understand but every bloody time I talk to you? I doubt it. Geeze, if you are really that busy it tells me that you aren’t very good at managing your time and that you are probably wasting it doing stupid things your not supposed to be doing but you do them any way just so you say that you are busy and look important to others.
 
Someone once told me that they associate being ‘flat out‘ with being successful. Maybe, but to me if someone is always ‘flat out’ it tells me they are inefficient, they aren’t working on improving things they are just doing things the same old way. If you had any brains I’d think you would say, hey maybe I’m so busy because I shouldn’t be doing some stuff or maybe I need to find a way to do this stuff in less time. From there improvements spring forth – surely?
 
Now, after speaking with a few people about this issue I have confirmed that I am definately from a different planet because everyone thinks being ‘flat out’ is good. Hmmm…to me a person who is in control of what ever they are doing (but can go ‘flat out’ when required but not constantly) is far more successful.
 
But hey, as I said, I’m from a different planet!