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?

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

Since May 8th the Information worker VHD files are ready to be downloaded. You can find them at http://is.gd/cfVcv

You can also download them with the Akamai download manager

• Virtual Machine 2010-7a parts 1-12
• Virtual Machine 2010-7a parts 13-22, SFV & Setup Guide
• Virtual Machine 2010-7b

The download is about 18 GB big.

This is the content :

Virtual machine “A” contains the following pre-configured software:

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services
3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2
4. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition
6. Microsoft Office Web Applications
7. Microsoft FAST Search for SharePoint 2010
8. Microsoft Project Server 2010
9. Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
10. Microsoft Visio 2010
11. Microsoft Project 2010
12. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2

Virtual machine “B” contains the following pre-configured software:

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the “CONTOSO.COM” domain
2. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

Active directory has been preconfigured over 200 “demo” users with metadata in an organizational structure. All of these user profiles have been imported and indexed for search within SharePoint Server 2010.
SharePoint Server 2010 has been configured in a “Complete” farm using the default SQL Server 2008 R2 instance. A default site has been created using the Team Site template at http://intranet.contoso.com/ and a FAST Search Center at http://intranet.contoso.com/search/.
As shipped virtual machine “A” requires image “B” for email. Running image “B” is optional.

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

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

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

–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

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

More information on their blog

They provide an overview of the next 10 matches, a leaderboard off all users, a top15 users, .. and it updates automatically!

Have a lot of fun with this nice WebPart!

Oh yes :  It is also multilingual

I was creating a workflow in SharePoint Designer (SPD) to send an e-mail to a user when a task is created for him or when a task is modified. The purpose of this workflow was that the user does not have to create his alert me for this list. (to avoid users who don’t subscribed to have an excuse for not completing their tasks)

Then I started testing this workflow and it worked . But I also received an alert from SharePoint (the ALERT ME).

That made me think… Why am I getting an Alert me message?

So i took a look in My Alerts, there were no alerts configured. Even when an item was changed I got my workflow notification (which was good because my workflow was configured good) and I received an Alert Me.

So I started looking in the settings of this list and found this. In Settings / Advanced setting there is a entry E-mail Notification. Send e-mail when ownership is assigned. It is marked in red.

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