When I was searching for some Nintex video’s on Youtube, I found this very nice video of Mike Fitzmaurice explaining with his well known and recognizable voice what Nintex Workflow 2010 is.

For the readers who are not familiar with Nintex workflow, it adds a drag-and-drop workflow designer, connectivity and advanced workflow features to the Microsoft SharePoint document management and collaboration platform, empowering business users and IT Professionals alike to quickly and easily automate business processes; from a simple leave approval request, to complex integration across external applications and data sources.

The slogan of Nintex is “Worklfow for everyone™” and if you ask me, that’s what they bring

I would like to add or emphasize a really important reason why Nintex Workflow is IMO “better” then a custom development workflow. Release management. When a Visual Studio workflow is ready for production and a WSP (SharePoint Solution) file is produced, you have to go to he release management procedures and processes, and they can be quite hard with SharePoint.

The moment my SharePoint 2010 environment is up and running , I will start to experiment with Nintex Workflow 2010, and if time allows me, I’ll even post about that

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.

–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