Since a few years I execute the job of SharePoint consultant. SharePoint seems to be one of the most successful product, maybe even the most successful product Microsoft has launched. Then why should a guy like me complain about that Microsoft is wrong in their bring to market? They probably earn billion$ with SharePoint. And they should, because it is a great product! But at the end of this post, in the quote you can see my worry.

During the SharePoint Evolution conference SPEVO held in April of this year, my memory was refreshed of something that was said during one of the analyst sessions in the SharePoint Conference 2009 (SPC09) in Las Vegas.
The SPEVO was actually the SharePoint Best Practices Europe Conference, but because of the launch of a new version called SharePoint 2010 there were not a lot best practices to share on SharePoint 2010. BUT the organizers of this conference really got the message I’ll talk about in this blog post. They organized a IW (Information Worker stream) In fact, they organized even 2 parallel streams. Well done Steve Smith!

During a session from Symon Garfield, he explained why 70% of all projects fail. There are several reason, like unclear requirements, scope changes. One of the main failure reasons is that a SharePoint project can’t be driven only by IT.
SharePoint is a business driven product. IT can install, deploy and support it, but it can not solely drive it toward long term success.
You also need to have a good user adoption plan, and some corporate guidelines (let’s call them governance) to make sure that when people really start using SharePoint, it doesn’t get a maze where you can’t do or find anything. If you take a look at the Microsoft Press books, about 99% of the SharePoint books are technically focused. There is a lack of business side books. (Thank you Michael Samspon for representing this 1%)

During that analyst panel session at SPC09 there was a discussion about having a third pillar next to the Developers and IT PRO’s. The name was not specified, but lets call this group Functional people, or Functionals.  For me, but also for all SharePoint projects in general, I thought that was good, no even great news.

But until now, nothing has changed. From Microsoft’s opinion you are or a developer, or an IT PRO.There is no new group. Or you write code, or you have access to Central Admin.

A good example of this are Ignite Sessions. They are organized for IT Professionals and Developers, but not for Functionals. Even with such a huge release of  SharePoint 2010, where a lot extra power is provided to PowerUsers, and it very important to have that link between Business and IT.

Or the Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Developer and IT Professional Learning Plan.

In my first conversation with Karine Bosch (a Belgian SharePoint MVP) right after a BIWUG session  we were talking about what we did in the SharePoint world. When she explained what she does I replied, “Oh, you’re a code sh|tter”, without being disrespectful. That’s good because we need SharePoint code writers I replied, (you can also read developers)  to cover non ‘Out Of The Box’ functionality , When I explained what I do, I summarized it with “I’m a document sh|tter”. And We also need them (I guess). Actually that’s also what Karine confirmed.

That’s why in my humble opinion that Microsoft is acting wrongly. Until now, they don’t provide any special documentation or support for these Functionals. Besides some sales and marketing information on how SharePoint will make your organization more productive, there is no specific information for the Functionals. They are just twilights. They act the “Build it and they will come” way.
And they should pay attention to this, because otherwise SharePoint might become one of these “Oooh darn, it’s a SharePoint” applications.

That’s also why I am so happy that guys like Michael Samspon, the author of Seamless Teamwork, a book on using SharePoint from a business perspective, Raymond Dux Sy , the author of SharePoint for Project Management: How to Create a Project Management Information System (PMIS) and Paul Culmsee take a different approach on SharePoint. I will do my best to provide useful information like these guys do in their blogs, webcasts, books, … That will be my way to contribute to the grey twilight zone that Microsoft can’t fill.

On the other hand, I must admit that I know a few, but just a few guys that are good at coding, have a good knowledge of the the Out Of The Box functionality of SharePoint and are able to talk to the business and translate their requirements to SharePoint functionality. These are the golden egg chickens…

But to conclude, what I’m trying to explain is that Microsoft, and the Microsoft partners will be judged by their clients (the business) based on the return SharePoint gives to the business, not on it’s nice technical gracefulness.

Just for the record, here are my my questions to Microsoft.

What are your intentions to this issue? (When)Are you planning to setup a functional stream?

A fellow consultant and blogger Michael Sampson @collabguy organized a survey on Site Closure.

Michael is the author of the book  Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways, which I recently received from Combined Knowledge (many many thanks for that Zoé and Steve). I would recommend this book for everybody who is interested in empowering people and team with SharePoint.

But I don’t post this just to talk about this book. The reason I write this post is because Michael has launched a survey on Site Closure. And The survey will close on friday July 9th. So this is yet another last minute post…

His next book, SharePoint Roadmap Governance Themes, greatly expands on the governance chapter in SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration. Two themes have been explored to date — Site Creation Rights, and User Adoption Strategies — and there are reports available on both of those. The third theme for investigation is Site Closure Policy. In other words, what do you do with SharePoint sites when their useful life is at an end, however you define that?

As with the previous two reports, there’s a survey. If you have involvement in setting governance decisions for SharePoint at your organization, please take the survey now.

Respondents who complete the survey will receive a free copy of the research report, due for publication in July 2010.

The survey closes on Friday July 9 … so please do it now!! Thanks.

Open Lecture – How to Best Gather Requirements for SharePoint

Monday, June 28, 2010 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM CEST

USPJ Academy invites you to the first open lecture of the academy. If you want to learn more about USPJ Academy, please visit our web pages at http://www.uspja.com/

Poor requirements can be attributed to failed SharePoint implementations. The key to successful SharePoint implementation is properly developing requirements. A lot of people know that this is important, however, only a handful of folks truly understand what it takes to do this right.

In this presentation, you will learn key techniques in effectively eliciting, analyzing, prioritizing, validating and documenting requirements for SharePoint projects.

In addition, participants will be able to identify:

• Key components of requirements gathering process

• Why requirements traceability is paramount in defining ROI in SharePoint projects

• Why having a well defined business case is necessary to effectively initiate requirements gathering

The primary audience for this class are executives, managers, analysts, consultants who wish to properly implement SharePoint and immediately reap its’ organizational benefits.

Participants will get presentation notes, checklists, and templates.

It’s a great lecture, held by one of the true masterminds of SharePoint project management, Dux Raymond Sy. (Twitter: MeetDux)

Register (no cost) on https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/729809009

As you probably know there are different kinds of Lists and Libraries available in SharePoint (WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007). This table shows an overview of available lists and libraries for MOSS 2007 Enterprise.

You can easily reuse a List or Library, with or without its content. For instance, you have created a survey and you would like to re-use that survey (maybe several times a year, but this doesn’t really matter, you just want to reuse it) without having to input all questions and eventually branching again. The same thing may apply when you Webcast want to reuse a Document Library or a List with several columns.

It’s quite easy to reuse a list. In the following procedure you will see some screenshot how you can do that. I have also created a Webcast about reusing a list or library in SharePoint 2007.

This is my initial setup:

I have a survey called: Users satisfaction.
In this survey there are several questions, and some questions are branched. (This means that depending on your answer, you well go to a specific question instead of the next question)

• The first thing you need to do is save the List/Library as a template

• To create a new List/Library based on this template: Click on View all Site Content and then create and select your Template.

When you want to delete a list template, you can browse to the List Template Gallery http://servername/Sitename/_catalogs/lt/Forms/AllItems.aspx

Recently I had to configure a SharePoint workflow where an item had to be copied to another list when the Approval Workflow status is approved. It was ok to start the workflow manually. The workflow had to be created in SharePoint Designer 2007, since no other specialized workflow software is/was available.

The problem I had was that when I assigned a condition that would check if the Approval Status equals Approved. But this doesn’t work when you use this condition, it will be skipped, because internally SharePoint uses a number for the workflow status.

Also, if you Edit in Datasheet (your list or Library) you can see the numbers is stead of the text.

Here is an overview:

So, I need to modify my workflow like : If Approval Status Equals 16, ….

The same policy applies when you would like to have a view where you display items based on their Approval Workflow Status.

This list is partially copied from David Wise blog

Yes, my ticket for Sunday to travel with the Eurostar from Brussels to London is booked. I called the Belgian call center this morning at 09:00 and they confirmed that there were no more places available to leave on Sunday. The operator I talked to yesterday confirmed me that at 10:00 Eurostar will announce extra trains, and they can book them as soon as they are announced. What I don’t understand is that the operator this morning didn’t provided/knew this information, even when I specifically asked for it.

Anyway, I called back at 10:00 and this operator was aware of the extra scheduled procedure and I managed to buy a ticket to leave tomorrow at 12:59. SharePoint Evolutions (and definitely a big SharePint with lots of travel stories) here I come. I hope other people will get there safely and on time.

Oh yes, my flight from Antwerp -> London city with Cityjet was cancelled yesterday, and I called there call center just a few minutes ago. They cancelled my flight back and will refund it to my credit card.

It was a stressful experience to arrange transport to London, but eventually I turned out pretty good for me.

Happy and save travels to all other #SPEVO attendees

I was so happy that I could go to the #SPEVO SharePoint Evolutions Conference next week. I reserved an airplane ticket from Antwerp to London, but due to volcanic ash my flight was cancelled. Like many other people in the SharePoint community I have an issue to get to London.

So today I’ll try to book one of the (hopefully) extra scheduled Eurostar trains from Brussels to London. The call center opens at 09:00, so I still have to wait about 20 minutes.

Some people start to do roadtrips like @zimmergren, @mariannerd or @billbither .

I wish al travelers to #SPEVO good luck and safe travels and hopefully we can SharePint together in London

Yesterday Jeff Teper announced on the SharePoint Team blog some great news

–quote–

Today we reached an exciting engineering milestone- the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) for Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010!

RTM is the final engineering milestone and a major achievement for all of the internal teams who worked so hard to get to this point. As tirelessly as our engineering teams worked, we would never have reached this milestone without incredibly active participation from our customers and partners. More than 5,000 organizations and partners have worked with us on rapid deployment and testing of the products, and the feedback that we’ve received from all these programs has shaped a fantastic set of products that I’m sure our customers will love.

Our Volume License customers with active Software Assurance (SA) on these products will be one of the first to receive the 2010 set of products. They will be able to download the product in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Dutch via the Volume Licensing Service Center starting April 27. Other languages will be available on a rolling timeline. Customers without SA will be able to purchase the new products through Volume Licensing from Microsoft partners starting May 1.

–End Quote–

Full article can be read via this link

Microsoft®  has released a whitepaper on business productivity for SharePoint® and Office.

This paper shows how two products, Microsoft ® Office and Microsoft SharePoint ®, contribute to the powerful architectural design of the Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure (BPI). The BPI stack approach suggests that only by thinking at a capability level (for example, “What do users want to do?), and then adding the right aspects of capability in each place (client, server, and services), can we create desktop applications that also deliver rich server and services capabilities to information workers.

This paper describes how the 2010, 2007, and 2003 versions of Office work together with the 2010, 2007, and 2003 versions of SharePoint technologies. Although we provide an overview of Office and SharePoint features working together in past versions, this paper focuses on the integration features of the Microsoft Office 2010 experience with Microsoft SharePoint 2010.
The scenarios outlined in this paper show examples of how the power of SharePoint 2010 and related servers can be combined with capabilities of one or more Microsoft Office 2010 applications to deliver rich, intuitive, and easy-to-use capabilities directly into the hands of desktop users. The scenarios cover the following value areas:

• Collaboration Without Compromise
• Bring Ideas to Life
• Anywhere Access
• The Practical IT Platform

The paper concludes that to realize the best user experience with Office and SharePoint integration features, organizations should upgrade client programs to Office Professional Plus 2010 and server technologies to SharePoint 2010.

The whitepaper can be downloaded at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9690494

A nice day today. 2 days earlier than expected the SharePoint 2010 beta is released. It is available on MSDN (for MSDN subscriptions only)

If you have a MSDN subscription you can download it from this location https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/subscriptions/securedownloads/default.aspx

SharePoint Designer 2010 BETA , SharePoint Foundations 2010 BETA (WSS 4.0) and Office 2010 BETA has also been released. Happy downloading and experimenting!

BUT… there are some issues. PLEASE read a http://bit.ly/2rNgl8 blog before you start installing