Tag: SharePoint

SharePoint Guide breakout

The CIAOPS SharePoint Guide is now going into its fourth year and continues to add content and information. Here is some subscriber feedback:

 

“The Computer Information Agency and their Windows SharePoint Operations Guide has made a considerable difference in the way we deploy and integrate SharePoint Services within our client sites. CIAOPS regular testing of new software releases and associated updates gives us the confidence to go to our clients with the best advice”

 

Part of the Guide has been the inclusion of information around Office 365 since SharePoint Online was part of the Microsoft offering. However, from January 1 2012 things will be changing.

 

From the first of the New Year the Office 365 information in the Guide will be broken out into a new product with a different subscription model and a different offering. More information about this will be announced soon. However, all existing SharePoint Guide subscribers will continue to receive access to the new product as part of their existing subscription as long as they stay subscribed to the SharePoint Guide.

 

This means, that if you have ever thought about being a CIAOPS SharePoint Guide subscriber and if you sign up before December 31, 2011 you will not only receive the SharePoint Guide but also the new Office 365 Guide for the duration of your subscription. After that date you’ll have to purchase each separately. Thus, for $ 299 ex GST up to the end of year you will also get the Office 365 Guide for free.

 

If you want the best information on SharePoint and Office 365, including documents, videos, tutorials, support, etc then you have until the end of the month to sign up for the existing CIAOPS SharePoint Guide. Come January, the Office 365 information produced will only be available with an additional subscription (details to be announced).

 

For all the information about the CIAOPS SharePoint Guide visit – www.wssops.com.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Power User Cookbook


Here’s a good book that  I recently helped review that maybe worthwhile for SharePoint types. You’ll find it at:

http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-sharepoint-2010-power-user-cookbook/book

The power of Microsoft SharePoint as the Enterprise collaboration platform is ever-growing; due to the wide range of capabilities it offers, SharePoint 2010 can help transform your business so you can quickly respond to the changes and challenges that you face. For End Users, SharePoint helps you and your team work “better, faster, and smarter”. This book will take your SharePoint knowledge further, showing you how to use your skills to solve real business problems.

As the description says, it is designed to take you beyond just the basics and help you improve your skills with SharePoint Server 2010.

If you are interested in posting a review of the book to the web in return for a free e-copy of the book please contact me (director@ciaops.com).

Office Web Apps and iOS, now working

I wrote a post a few weeks ago highlighting the fact that Office Web Apps (the ability to view and edit Office documents in a browser) on Office 365 still wasn’t working with the upgrade to iOS 5.0. I was interested to find out yesterday that it is now in fact working.

 

So what changed? Well, I have upgraded to iOS 5.01 but don’t think that was what resolved the issue. The reason is that at the same I last tested Office Web Apps on iOS 5.0 I also tested it on Android 3.2.1 and got similar problems. Now however, it seems to work on both platforms. This to me indicates that the backend has been changed. Thus, it seems we’ve had an update on Office 365 which is great news.

 

Things are certainly much better but they are far from prefect. In my testing on both iOS and Android I have found Office Web Apps on Office 365 to be very fragile. I still get plenty of browser crashes, document lock up and text ending up in unexpected places. This is totally understandable considering the complexity of Office Web Apps but it indicates that there is some work to be done to ensure stability on mobile platforms.

 

Importantly I can now report to users that Office Web Apps on Office 365 does work in edit mode, which it never used to, but in my testing so far it is still a little fragile.

It’s more than that

Recently, I have had so many people contact me and ask how can I make SharePoint “look like a drive letter” or say “I want my users to navigate a whole SharePoint site through Windows Explorer”. It parallels the concept that people want to simply ‘dump’ all their static file share data (which hasn’t probably been touched for centuries) up into SharePoint and use it like a big disk.

No, no, no and NO! If you are going to simply use SharePoint as a storage location for all the ‘crap’ you have on a hard disk then you are much better off with something like Box.net. SharePoint is a collaboration tool, it includes features that static file shares have. To name but a few:

– Check in/check out
– Version control
– Filtering
– Meta data
– Tagging
– Ratings
– etc

Most resellers seem to simply want to ‘dump’ a customers data into SharePoint and run away. These are exactly the same people who bemoan the lack of opportunity and revenue afforded by the ‘cloud’. The idea is to help your customers understand the new features that SharePoint has and help a customer incorporate these into their business, and (shock, horror) get paid a consulting fee to do it!

There is just so much more to SharePoint that people fail to realize. Like any tool you need to learn about to get the most from it. Why do people use < 10% of the functionality of other Office applications like Word, Excel, etc? Because they never venture past the default menu options (that’s why the ribbon interface was invented to try and expose all the features).

Sure you can use SharePoint as a big disk and map it to a drive just like you used file shares back in the 15th century. But hey, how about you actually spend some time and learn what SharePoint (and other Office products) can do and really improve your productivity? It may even help you and your customers get your job done quicker and easier. How novel!

Installing SharePoint Services SP3 on SBS 2008

Here’s a little video I’ve just done on installing Windows SharePoint Services SP3 on Small Business Server (SBS) 2008.

Office Web Apps and iOS 5, still no go for editing

A little while back I wrote an article about using an iPad with Office 365 in which I lamented at how the iPad works fine as a reading device with Office Web Apps but struggles when it comes to editing.

 

My hope with the updated release by Apple of iOS 5 that things would get better, unfortunately they haven’t.

 

photo_46275E8C

 

Here is what happens when I attempt to edit a Word document using Office Web Apps on an iPad 2 running iOS 5, the document cannot be opened for editing.

 

photo2_46275E8C

 

We get a similar result when attempting the same thing with Excel Web Apps.

 

Damm! Is all I can say. I know that Office Web Apps work well in most other browsers on most other platforms, yet here, no go. It is a real pity as an iPad is such a sweet device and would work well for remote users.

 

So as it stands an iPad works really well as a SharePoint reading device and for working with SharePoint data. Where it falls down is when you actually want to edit Microsoft Office documents (whether in the browser or offline). Hopefully, both Apple and Microsoft can work a little closer together to make this functionality complete but whether that will happen is anyone’s guess.

CIAOPS SharePoint Brisbane bootcamp

Just announced another full day SharePoint bootcamp in Brisbane on Thursday the 10th of November 2011. For details and registration please visit:

 

http://www.ciaops.com/bootcampbne/

 

Don’t forget that this a full day hands on course that not only includes all meals and documentation but also a 12 month subscription to my SharePoint Guide (www.wssops.com) and an external hard disk full of SharePoint machine images you can use for your learning well after the course is over.

SharePoint 2010 Certification Exams

Once you have a bit of SharePoint experience under your belt you’d really like to consolidate that and let people know via certification. The best options are the following 2 certifications available from Microsoft:

 

70-667 – TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring

 

70-668 – PRO: SharePoint Server 2010, Administrator

 

However, if you come from the world of SMB and SharePoint Foundation things are going to be a little more tricky than simply sitting these exams. This is because both of these exams focus not just on SharePoint Foundation but also SharePoint Server. This means you are going to need to know about not only SharePoint Server configurations but also things like Network Load Balancing, Virtualization, and so on.

 

70-667 is perhaps a more basic exam with a number of questions presented in sequence. You can generally return to any of the questions at anytime and review your answers. 70-668 is little different in that it gives you scenarios that you need to read, then you are expected to answer a few questions based on the scenario. Once you have answered these questions you can’t return and review them. Thus, you only have a limited time to read, digest and answer what is presented in each case.

 

If you are coming from an SMB background and SharePoint on SBS you are going to need to learn about SharePoint server. The best suggestion (apart from my Guide and installing it on a VM) is to have a look at these publications:

 

Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration By Todd Klindt, Shane Young, Steve Caravajal – http://astore.amazon.com/c00ef-20/detail/0470533331

 

and

   
Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Administrator’s Companion By Bill English, Brian Alderman, Mark Ferraz – http://astore.amazon.com/c00ef-20/detail/B0043M52KY

 

Not that I have read it but there is also the following book specifically focused on the 70-667 exam:

 

MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-667): Configuring Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Training Kits) – http://www.amazon.com/MCTS-Self-Paced-Training-Exam-70-667/dp/0735638853/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317964888&sr=1-3

 

At the end of the day both the 70-667 and 70-668 are focused on SharePoint Server but if you know your SharePoint Foundation stuff and are prepared to learn a little about SharePoint Server then you should be able to pass the exam and add these certifications to your roster.