A Matter Of Degree

FREE Ontolica Actionable Search Result Webpart for SharePoint

Today the folks at SurfRay (makers of Ontolica) released a free download of an actionable search results webpart for SharePoint (SP 2010, and FAST Search for SP).  To quote their description:

"This free result action web part adds four of the most commonly used document action menus to SharePoint search results. The solution adds a drop down menu similar to that found in SharePoint document libraries.

• View Properties
• Send Link Via Email
• Add to My Links
• Open Document Location

This web part deploys as a replacement to the Core Search Results web part in SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint."

Here's what you'll need in order to deploy and test it in your own environment:

- SharePoint 2010 with a functioning Search Service Application and Search Center
OR
- SharePoint 2010 with FS4SP.
AND
- Access to the SharePoint server.

I have the download and can’t wait to try it in my SP 2010 dev environment.  Definitely an easy step toward better Search experience and greater SharePoint Search Maturity!

SharePoint Conference 2011 - Day 1 - Keynotes - #spc11

I just came out of the SharePoint Conference Keynotes and wanted to share a few quick thoughts. 

First, a stack of statistics shared by the various speakers:

About the conference:
7500 attendees
240 sessions
200 partners/vendors
New track for end-user adoption (running lunch & breaks)

About SharePoint:
700,000 SP developers around the world
1162 books on SP (dev only?)
4x the visual designers for next version
Over 4,000 partners in SP ecosystem
93,000 people trained by partners on building solutions in SP
1,000 people just working on SP R&D  (implied: these are at MS)

General enterprise statistics - from DelBene Cloud keynote:
65% deploying at least one social software tool
84% of orgs have a remote workforce
70% of IT budgets spent maintaining inflexible & siloed systems
4 million millennials enter workforce each year

Next, my takeaway:

At the end of his keynote speech, Jeff Teper urged the audience - "Now don't you dare go home and say "I didn't know I could do that with SharePoint."

And the response of my colleague sitting next to me (a SP developer and administrator for a global company of 200,000 users, who gets my vote for Most Likely to Qualify for MS's New Certification "Microsoft Certified Architect for SharePoint" Without Taking Any Refresher Training) was:  "My users already know they can do that with SharePoint.  They want to know, 'Why can't I do that within my company?'  MS Access is not allowed, SharePoint Designer is not allowed..."

Which is a story I've heard from many different clients and community members, and which tells me that cultural issues remain one of the strongest factors influencing user satisfaction and adoption of SharePoint (and ultimately, its maturity within an organization).  And yet the track for end-user adoption, the "SharePoint Express," new to the conference this year, occurs only during lunch and breaks.  There are a few governance sessions at the conference; it will be interesting to see if they cover this problem of releasing control not only of SharePoint but of the complementary programs and systems that can make it a fully-realized solution for the users.

Choose Your Resource: Two visualizations of the Business Intelligence Options in SharePoint 2010

[Update 9/3/11 - both charts have been edited to reflect Derek's input (see comments)]

I've been wanting to share this SharePoint resource for a while: two different views of the options for Business Intelligence / Data Visualization on the 2010 platform.  Both views break down the options in terms of dataset size and dynamic vs. static presentation; you can choose the format that works best for you:

2010 BI Solutions - Venn View:

 

2010 BI Solutions - Quadrant View:

  

My thanks to Chris McNulty, whose matrix of different BI options in SP 2010 provided the seed for these visualizations (the matrix can be seen on slide 28 of our joint presentation "See Beyond The Numbers"), and to Matt Jackson, who suggested the quadrant view and provided input on both views.

As always, I welcome feedback and suggestions.

Bacon-savers, Inaugural Post: SharePoint Group Calendar Workaround by Thomas Zepeda McMillan

Today, right now, I'm starting a new series of blog posts on the people I mentally call the "bacon-savers."  These are the folks whose blog posts I find, or whose advice I receive, when I'm sweating over an issue and leave me thinking, "wow, that person really saved my bacon."  I want to do more than just leave a comment somewhere, so I'm going to start reaching out with some props.

I just encountered the frustrating issue with the Group Calendar in SharePoint 2010.  You most likely already know that the SP 2010 calendar gives you the choice to "Use this calendar to share member's schedule", and this choice allows contributors to invite other people to SP calendar events, and display free/busy information for selected people.

 
You may also already know that the problem is with that "add person" functionality.  There is no way to enter people and save them so that the calendar continually displays their information.  Every time you leave the view, your selections are wiped out.  For anyone who wants to display a team's time off schedule or free/busy information on a site, the existing functionality does not help at all.

You can review the following discussion threads to see the level of frustration this has caused:

• Group Calendar looses People (TechNet)
• Group Calendar View (Social Technet - SharePoint 2010 Forums)
• SharePoint 2010 Work Group Calendar (MSDN)
• "Group Week" view of calendar does not save list of members (Social MSDN - SharePoint 2010 Forums)

That fourth forum is where I found McMillan's solution. He did all the work of tracking down how the entities are added, and used jquery to define resources in the group view.  A commenter, Sylvain, provided the code to define people.  It worked perfectly for me in a demo environment.  While we wait for MS to address this, this is an awesome workaround.

Thomas Zepeda McMillan, thank you for saving my bacon. 

 

Managing IT Project Requests with SharePoint 2010 and Project Server

 
Detail of "Rush Hour!" by rovingmagpie on Flickr.

If you use SharePoint to corral incoming project requests to your IT department, you should check out the Project Server-based request management and evaluation system created for Microsoft by Scott Jamison and the folks at Jornata.  I had an opportunity to get a preview of the solution back in March, and it answers many of the issues I've seen my clients and colleagues have in terms of tracking and prioritizing application requests.  One of the features I like best about the system is that it enables users to assign Strategic Impact to each request (often left behind when Who's Screaming Loudest - I mean, Priority - is the main evaluation category).  While Project Server may not be within the scope of all IT departments, I still recommend a review of this solution for its mature approach to project tracking.

The system was released this past month at TechEd, and Scott will present it at SPTechCon Boston this week. 

For more information, you can:

Download the solution and installation guide from the MS Download Center

Watch the recording from TechEd

Read the announcements from Scott and the MS Project Server Team

 

Review - Essential SharePoint 2010 - the SharePoint book with a focus on SharePoint Maturity

 

This review of Essential SharePoint 2010 is long overdue (the book came out at the end of August 2010), but since its release I've been developing a different perspective on SharePoint as a whole, and am excited to be able to review it now through that lens. 

The authors are Scott Jamison, Susan Hanley, and Mauro Cardarelli (this year with additional content from Chris Bortlik and Donal Conlon).  I was a big fan of their Essential SharePoint 2007, and recommended it to my colleagues and clients as a book that really took a business approach to the product and was targeted to the IT Professional, Project Manager, and Business Analyst rather than to developers or server administrators.  The 2010 version continues with that point of view.  In the authors' own words: "Most books are designed to address the "how" behind SharePoint... this book complements the typical SharePoint book with some of the "what" and "why" of SharePoint."  The book's focus on on planning and governance, including such tools as tables of "Mapping of SharePoint Features to General Business Objectives" and "Suggested SharePoint [Success] Metrics," are extremely useful for an IT Director, project leader, or anyone taking a consultative role on a SharePoint implementation. 

Now I am finding that this is one of the few books on the market, if not the only one, that supports a mature and optimized SharePoint implementation as much as a planfully well-founded one.  Part II comprises nearly 200 pages on implementing SharePoint "to its fullest potential."  Its sections on Search, Business Process, Business Intelligence, and Composites & Applications relate directly to these competencies in the SharePoint Maturity Model.  A SharePoint implentation owner could potentially improve his or her implementation's SharePoint Maturity several levels by reading and applying the informaton here - for example, the section on Search could take an implementation all the way through the 300 level (without any custom development).

In addition to the planning and foundational concepts, there is a good amount of beginner-to-intermediate-level how-to and hands-on which can really empower the business user - for example, how to design a workflow in Visio 2010 that can be imported into SharePoint.

To sum up, it's the perfect book for all those folks in the SharePoint community who DON'T identify themselves as developers or administrators - and it should be required reading for the folks who do!

You can get the hard copy here or the Kindle version here.



SharePoint Experts tell you The One Thing You Need To Know About SharePoint 2010

Christian Buckley at Axceler is building an excellent resource for the SharePoint community by recording brief videos of a variety of SharePoint experts, influencers, and evangelists, each speaking on a different single aspect of Sharepoint 2010.   The videos are a great way to learn about different facets of the product from the folks who are deeply focused on it.

You can find the collection of videos here on Axceler's site, or via a YouTube search.  Christian plans to build the series all year long, so expect this collection to grow in the weeks and months ahead.

Fun fact:  Christian keeps it interesting by using a different musical track for every video (and also by including the occasional blooper at the end).

I was honored to be included this past Saturday at SharePoint Saturday Hartford.  I chose to speak about ratings, i.e. the four different ways to rate content in SharePoint - two overt ways and two hidden ways.  To find out what they are, watch!

First Look at Data from the SharePoint Maturity Model

A big thank you to all the folks who came out yesterday to the first ever SharePoint Saturday in Hartford!  The event was sold out and many of the sessions were standing room only.  The folks from New Horizons, Third M, and CTDOTNET did a great job organizing and running the event.

I presented the SharePoint Maturity Model (an updated version of the one I released on End User SharePoint back in November), and I want to extend a very special thank you to the attendees from my audience who turned in their SMM self-evaluations.  Your results are the seed of a data model that I plan to expand and build out in the coming months and years, to be a resource for those who are looking for answers to questions like:

• "For my industry and company size, how far along are similar organizations with their SharePoint implementations?"
• "After n years of SharePoint use, where do companies typically fall in the maturity model?" 
• "Is maturity correlated with number of years of SharePoint use, with SharePoint version year, or with investment in Enterprise vs. Standard?"

Although the data set is small and limited in the industries covered, I'd like to share yesterday's results here to give a sense of the potential of this assessment:

 

 

 

 
 
 
That last graph is making me smile - the insurance companies (which reported tens of thousands of users) are further along with their business process maturity, whereas the IT Consulting firms are big on the customizations - shocker!

My presentation from yesterday can be found on SlideShare. 

An Excel spreadsheet that you can use to graph your own maturity levels (with the format of the spiderweb graphs above) is available for download at http://bit.ly/SMMExcelTemplate.

Thank you again to everyone, it was a great day!

 

Fix for Datasheet View Issue / Error in SharePoint 2010

 
If you are experiencing an error in SharePoint 2010 as follows:

"The list cannot be displayed in Datasheet View for one or more of the following reasons:

- A datasheet component compatible with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation is not installed.
- Your Web browser does not support ActiveX controls.
- A component is not properly configured for 320bit or 64-bit support."

I've compiled the following steps you can take from forums and articles around the web:

If you are running Office 2010, 64-bit (with IE7 or IE8):

1. Ensure that your browser settings have the site in Trusted Sites in the Internet zone, and that ActiveX controls are enabled.

2. Install the 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components.  I can confirm that this solution has worked for several of my colleagues. 

Solution source:   http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepoint2010general/thread/e3eacc3d-d0da-41fb-bdeb-e524050820e6

MS Knowledgebase article:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2266203

 

If you are running Office 2007:

1. Ensure that your browser settings have the site in Trusted Sites in the Internet zone, and that ActiveX controls are enabled.

2. Ensure that the Microsoft Office Access Web Datasheet Component and the Windows SharePoint Service Support options for Microsoft Office are installed. (Steps here)

Solution source: http://blog.sharepointhosting.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=399ed944%2D72d2%2D4932%2Dbc13%2Dde0586abf2d1&ID=81

MS Knowledgebase article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909506/en-us

 

Dispatch from SharePoint Saturday Boston - Afternoon Sessions

If you missed SharePoint Saturday this past weekend, the organizers are posting the speaker decks here on the front page of the site and as meeting resources to each of the individual sessions.  We had great turnout for the event and I want to sum up the experience with just these three words:  learning, connecting, fun!

In the last session of the day, I had the privilege of co-presenting with Chris McNulty of KMA on Data Visualization in SharePoint 2010.  You can view the presentation here on Slideshare.  I talk about this subject because I truly believe in the value of using an enterprise intranet or portal as more than just a document repository - it should be a dynamic system that pulls together content and data from the entire organization, and presents it in ways that make the business not only more efficient but more innovative and insightful.

The session just prior to ours, presented by Mark Miller and Derek Weeks, provided some excellent data on SharePoint use within the organization.  The session was entitled "Survey Results:  How is your company using SharePoint?"  They presented the answers to seventeen questions (you can read more about the genesis of the survey here, see the Slideshare presentation here, and download the full report here) and asked for an audience show of hands before each reveal of the survey data, which made for a really fun and interactive session. 

One of the questions in particular highlighted how little companies are currently leveraging their business data in SharePoint.  Here's the question and the responses:

How do you expose legacy or other application data to your SharePoint users?

Access data through separate native legacy / application interface - 31%
SharePoint Data is integrated into a different system and pulled by users from that system (i.e. data lives in sharepoint, is consumed by other systems) - 9%
Access all legacy and new data through a single, integrated user interface within SharePoint - 11.33%
External data currently not available - 41.00%
Other - 7.67%

Let's just take a look at that graphically, shall we?

 

See that large purple area on the left?  That is one big missed opportunity, where end users can't access business data at all.  And if I understand the question correctly, the large blue area represents a similar opportunity to make end users' lives easier and expose or integrate that data in SharePoint rather than making them use two separate systems.

I'd love to hear more from folks on either:

1. how they are currently visualizing data within SharePoint, or

2. how they aren't but would like to be. 

Please feel free to leave a comment here, or contact Chris or me directly if you have any questions about the presentation, or about bringing business data into SharePoint in general.  We'd love to help!