Microsoft® Adds Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to Office 365 SharePoint

Posted on November 30, 2011 by mikeb

On November 30, 2011 Microsoft® announced the addition of Business Connectivity Services to Office 365 SharePoint. Using SharePoint Designer, Office 365 users will now be able to configure BCS to include external databases, document repositories, etc within SharePoint Online.

We were particularly gratified to see this announcement. In August of 2011 Asif Rehmani wrote an article for MSDN on Customizing SharePoint Online with SharePoint Designer. Much of the content from his article will be useful as users start working with the BCS feature of SharePoint Online.

Adding BCS to Office 365 SharePoint makes a lot of sense. Microsoft appears to have finally implemented a winning method for offering Office components within a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Kurt Delbene, President of the Office Division noted that “We are seeing really positive momentum for Office 365. Customers are adopting Office 365 eight times faster than our previous service, and the solution is on track to become one of our fastest-growing offers in Microsoft history,” (quote from Press Release as posted to PRNewswire). Mr. Delbene noted that over 90% of these early adopters are “coming from small businesses.” (ibid). We think that most small business customers will lack an integrated local computing environment that integrates CRM programs, SaaS Banking, Saas Bookkeeping, etc; therefore, granting these small business customers access to BCS will lend substantial “stickiness” to online SharePoint.

Systems Integrators, ISVs and Partners with offerings built on Office 365 SharePoint should have a clear idea of what it will take for their customers to capture the value that they build into their systems. We think that, more often than not, focused, specific and scalable training for readers, site owners, administrators, and architects will constitute a substantial portion of those implementation “must haves” for the end customers.

We further think that any training plan that does not empower each class of these users with the tools they need to derive the most benefit from SharePoint Online (in other words, any “flat” plan that only satifies the needs of one group of users) will not work. As we have written earlier in this blog, recent studies have demonstrated that a lack of training still constitutes the largest impediment to user adoption for SharePoint. But filling the training void has not been an easy process. Organizations with pervasively low levels of satisfaction with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems in general and, in particular, SharePoint have demonstrated inertia on the training point. However, SharePoint Online, and add-on systems and solutions from integrators, ISVs and partners promise to fill the value gap and, thereby, facilitate long overdue training. Call us at (630) 786-7026 to further this discussion, or Contact Us.

Implement Business Connectivity Services (BCS) for SharePoint to Help Hasten User Adoption

Posted on November 29, 2011 by mikeb

Microsoft has counseled that “[f]ailure to sufficiently integrate external systems with SharePoint solutions can slow the adoption of SharePoint within an organization.” (quoted from MSDN Chapter 11, Business Connectivity Services, SharePoint 2010. The key to avoiding this failure is to use Business Connectivity Services (BCS), “a set of technologies that brings data from external systems into SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010″ (ibid) to “integrate external data” into SharePoint.

We got the message and built a suite of 11 video classes on this collection of tools. Our classes were each conceived and authored in entirety by Raymond Mitchell a widely recognized expert on BCS. Please review the SharePoint-Videos.com BCS course list. You will note that we discuss BCS Administration and Security, Profile Pages and Search, Associations, Advanced Options for External Content Types, External Data Columns, Business Data Web Parts and External Lists. Further, we show you how to create BCS Actions, External Content Types, and External Systems. Finally, we introduce you to External Content Types, which we are convinced you need to conceptually understand in order to make maximum use of BCS for your SharePoint project.

We are fully convinced that skillful applications of BCS will certainly hasten end user adoption of SharePoint within enterprise businesses. This value add is that much more attractive when you consider that our presentation is tailored for Citizen Developers who are quite interested in developing applications, but opt for a code less approach via SharePoint 2010. Accordingly, all of the techniques presented in Raymond Mitchell’s collection work sans code.

Once external systems like SQL Server, MS Dynamics, Lync Server, etc are brought into the “realm of accessibility” for SharePoint users with BCS technologies, then business processes can be streamlined for greater efficiency. An example of this process at work is the reduction in duplication of effort that enterprise business can realize by re-engineering processes like Sales, Customer Service, Human Resources, Finance, etc upon a common SharePoint foundation. Reducing duplication of effort will result in cost savings, meaning material ROI within the mandated business plan for the enterprise.

Of course, theory must be effectively translated into practice if the objectives are to be realized. BCS is one set of technologies that must coexist along with many others for SharePoint to magnetize and maintain high levels of user adoption. It is precisely with an eye towards accomplishing a translation of theory into practice that we strongly recommend corporate wide training. Stay tuned to learn more.

FactoryTalk VantagePoint Software from Rockwell Automation Brings Factory Floor Process Control to SharePoint

Posted on November 26, 2011 by mikeb

Industrial Automation (IA) is often referred to as the “dirty side of the house” of computing applications for business. The dirt here is the dirt of the factory floor. This image is emblematic of the reality that two distinctly separate computing silos exist within most businesses that manufacture products, or generate power, or even drill for oil and gas: one silo for Information Technology (IT), and the other for IA. Usually these silos function entirely separately within the business with the end result that gathering useful Business Intelligence (BI) on the IT side of the house about IA has either required expensive consulting work, proprietary products (for example, WonderWare from Invensys) or hasn’t happened. Now, FactoryTalk VantagePoint from Rockwell Automation introduces web parts that integrate IA with IT through SharePoint.

FactoryTalk VantagePoint is not the first Human Machine Interface (HMI) software to claim integration with SharePoint. Invensys made a similar claim for Wonderware back in 2009, that WonderWare Intelligence 1.0 dashboards can be rendered in SharePoint. But rendering dashboards from Wonderware in Sharepoint required the use of “best in class tools” and further customization.

Therefore, Rockwell Automation’s product, on paper, takes HMI much farther along the road to seamless integration with SharePoint. We hope that Rockwell Automation and Invensys start speaking with Neudesic, NewsGator and Yammer about enunciating their process control alarms across common IMs and mobile applications. We further recommend that they look into using Lync Server’s skill-based routing, in conjunction with SharePoint’s People Search, to consistently alert the right parties within the enterprise as quickly as possible of any IA anomalies to ensure minimal loss of production from the factory floor.

Of course, these same “IT” IM clients and mobile applications can be utilized to change settings, in real time on IA machines. HMIs usually have their own proprietary hooks into IM and mobile applications, but we advocate dispensing with proprietary hooks and simply building web parts to ensure seamless integration with marketplace standard applications that already are have the broadest possible audience.

IA may not have the “sizzle” of IT, but the ROI of software like FactoryTalk VantagePoint plugging into SharePoint can be very powerful. In addition, Rockwell’s offering contributes to wider user adoption for SharePoint as it breaks down the silos between IT and IA. Affording access to SharePoint from the Factory Floor makes the job of reporting results through IT systems that much easier for IA systems management teams. We hope to see further development from other ISVs within this important middle ground between IA and IT.

Neudesic Pulse v2.1 Delivers Enhanced Collaboration to SharePoint

Posted on November 24, 2011 by mikeb

Neudesic Pulse v2.1 delivers a promising set of social features to SharePoint, including:

Native integration with UC (Unified Communications) platforms, including Microsoft® Lync Server 2010 and Client
Micro Blogging
Bridge
Connect with Experts
Mobility and
Native integration with SharePoint My Site

But the objectives here are pure business, very far removed from a FaceBook of Google+ skin for SharePoint.

Check out Neudesic’s superb Video Presentation of Pulse v2.1 Features. This strong piece of marketing communications stays strictly focused on business, illustrating the utility of each of the features of Pulse within the context of a “team collaboration, system integration and business integration” approach. Using a fictitious character, “Cathy Meyers”, who is a sales rep for a “leading healthcare company”, this 5 minute promotional video presents each of the features of the product strictly in terms of the benefit that the feature delivers to Cathy’s effort to make a sale. For example, Cathy uses the micro blogging feature to broadcast her needs for “customer intelligence” across all of the followers within her organization to make a maximum effort to “connect with an expert” who has the information that she needs.

For organizations connected with SharePoint, the effort to connect with an expert will utilize SharePoint 2010 People Search feature. Pulse will bring an additional tool into the effort, the Skills Based search capability inherent to UC systems like Lync Server 2010 to hasten identification of the expert that she’s after and to deliver her micro blog message across a variety of devices, including mobile phones.

Once our Cathy has found her expert and gotten the intelligence she’s after, Pulse affords her a mechanism to vet that intelligence: other followers can opt to vote up or down the information that has been provided by the expert. Cool. With native hooks to Microsoft Dynamics, the information Cathy finds is correlated to the customer record. Cathy creates keywords and even a group to expedite information retrieval as her sales effort progresses. Creating the group allows her to associate specific documents with the users included in her group, thereby exercising access control. Further, the Bridge feature of the product is useful to include prospects, customers, partners, etc within the discussion, while confining them to group collaboration only.

The strictly business packaging for this product is to be commended. Pulse’s Social features do not have the notorious “out there” flavor more commonly associated with other representations of collaborative capabilities that intrigue but fail to deliver for business objectives.

AvePoint DocAve6 Will Make Enterprise Wide Governance for SharePoint Manageable through Automation

Posted on November 23, 2011 by mikeb

AvePoint’s soon to be released DocAve6 purports to address a pressing need of SharePoint enterprise business & public sector users: how do we automate and hasten the application of governance over SharePoint?

On the surface, establishing governance for SharePoint may seem like an activity that is, at best, of peripheral importance. Dig deeper. Think long and hard about low levels of user adoption within very large corporate environments (with thousands of users who ought, otherwise, to be using SharePoint). Might some silo or silos within the business be actively retarding the spread of SharePoint? You bet. But why? You need look no further to find a plausible reason why than to a familiar list of negative connotations that have been associated in the minds of many a management team with the concept of “unbridled” SharePoint proliferation AKA “let it rip!” –corporate logos displayed inconsistently from site to site; similar documents tagged incorrectly from library to library, and an “eat, breathe, publish approach” that results in risky corporate exposure via unauthorized publication of, you guessed it, potentially questionable material. In short, the thought of unbridled SharePoint proliferation inspires fear in many large firms who, in the interest of self preservation, vigorously impede the progress of SharePoint use throughout the enterprise even after buying the product. Make sense?

Therefore, if DocAve6 lives up to its promise, then the release of this product will be very big news, not to mention a real stimulus, with substantial potential to power much higher levels of user adoption and, therefore, financial payback, otherwise known as ROI. The fact is that establishing enterprise wide governance is widely accepted as the best antidote for unbridled Sharepoint.

AvePoint’s white paper on the raison d’etre for an automated governance solution for SharePoint, authored by respected Microsoft MVP Randy Williams, How to Implement an Effective SharePoint Governance Plan talks to important sticking points for enterprise business users formulating their IT purchasing plans for 2012, including positioning Governance within an enterprise architecture strategy, as Microsoft posits, in the role of defining how business and IT will interact to achieve business goals.

The rest of the white paper provides a neat, broadly scoped “how to” for establishing SharePoint governance that will certainly appeal to enterprise business and public sector users in that the points Williams makes can be used to formulate a near term and future rudimentary governance plan suitable for any size business. Check DocAve6 out, you won’t be wasting your time.

PointBeyond Gears Up for 2012 with White Paper on “Business Applications Deficit”

Posted on November 22, 2011 by mikeb

Management at UK based SharePoint Application Developer PointBeyond seem to us to be on the right track for the coming 2012 business environment. While we can’t be certain who actually orchestrated the release of PointBeyond’s “Business Applications Deficit” WhitePaper, we’re none the less pleased with this nice piece of marketing communications.

What’s nice about this piece? Well, they’ve touched several of the mandatory bases that we think should be covered by this type of presentation for the coming year. These bases are:

Utilize fact-finding to collaborate and engage with prospects in a manner that will help facilitate decision-making in the otherwise “decision averse” climate that looks to be the coming year
Enlist the services of an impartial third party to produce findings that fairly and logically support your position from factual data
Frame a call to action within a sensible proposal that serves the prospect as well as, coincidentally, your own objectives

With regard to our point 1, the white paper at hand, “Business Applications Deficit” is precisely a piece of fact finding work that is chock full of the statistics that ought truly to benefit prospects while providing a fascinating foundation for PointBeyond to collaborate and engage with them as they consider how to get out of their collective conundrum. Some of the findings have the requisite shock value to get those discussion juices flowing; for example, consider that this study found that “[o]rganisations are being hampered by their technology. 66% of respondents felt that their technology was constraining their growth and profitability.” wow.

The impartial third party that we’ve noted in our point 2, is, in this case, Redshift Research, a UK based research firm that works on a range of projects with no visible prediliction to IT topics or to PointBridge. Yes, PointBeyond commissioned the work, but the work was undertaken with credible independence. Just consider that Redshift Research found only “39% of respondents use platform based technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint to deliver their applications.”

Finally, the research results summarize a pervasive business condition of backlogged IT projects; less than satisfactory results from IT projects and systems in place; and, finally, prime vendors who are ensconced within the procurement apparatus, but fail to deliver. Juxtaposed to this malaise is a general objective, voiced by a majority of respondents, to see many new IT systems in place and operational over the coming year. The study points to a disconnect between these two conditions and then issues its call to action which, if successful, will be quite beneficial for PointBeyond and its prospects. Well done!

We expect to see the best of breed SharePoint developers avail of this type of communications frequently over the coming year. We will certainly be on the look out for other examples and will be sure to write them up.

Crafting SharePoint Projects within Enterprise Architecture Parameters

Posted on November 20, 2011 by mikeb

Shooting the rapids of so-called Enterprise Architecture (EA) requires a dextrous handle on the rudder, fortitude and solid attention to the simple objective of getting to the banks on the other side. Looking for much more maybe asking too much, but we still think it’s worth the look. Here’s why:

First let’s gauge the depth of the obstacles. Just consider the fact that the definition of EA, itself, is not clear. Educational institutions like MIT, & Carnegie Mellon do not proceed, in lock step, along the same EA path. For MIT, the definition of Enterprise Architecture quite clearly dictates that IT processes along with business processes, must take direction from a business’ “operating model”. In contrast, Carnegie Mellon provides an SEI definition of Enterprise Architecture with no mention of a business whatsoever, let alone an “operating model”.

Research on the EA topic bears out the very high level of opacity that shields EA from clarity for enterprise business. Consider the results of a July, 2011 Gartner Group study on Failed Enterprise Architecture Projects, you will find that over 50% of businesses that participated in the study never reached their objectives. So, if you head up IS or IT at an enterprise class business, then why “go there” with your SharePoint project, framing it for conformance with EA?

Despite the opacity of EA, and the dismal track record of success, it still makes sense to frame SharePoint plans around EA. We think it’s entirely safe to build your plan around the MIT definition of EA. Make sure to quantify in dollars and cents how your plan conforms, entirely with business performance objectives. Don’t forget to define governance in a manner that empowers your team with the rights to administer the SharePoint implementation and the finalized farm(s) and subsites. The fact is that framing plans around verified Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will provide you with the best opportunity you will have to gain senior management buy-in for your plan.

Sounds simply, right? Well, it isn’t simple at all given the steps you will need to take to get the agreement of Finance, and the revenue generating groups at your enterprise to back your SharePoint plan prior to making your case. Maybe getting those buy-ins will be the toughest nut of all to crack. But you needn’t fret, the enterprise features of SharePoint just cry out for the type of cross functional cooperation and support that you are going to need to muster. Fortunately this “big app” has what you need to make your case.

Get Social with NewsGator for SharePoint

Posted on November 19, 2011 by mikeb

Social Sites® for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 from NewsGator has been very well received by leading SharePoint analysts. As recently as Thursday of this week, November 17, 2011, David F. Carr wrote for Information Week, The Brainyard, that a product like Social Sites® from NewsGator transforms SharePoint “into a satisfying corporate social network”.

Social Sites® includes features that will be very familiar for users of Facebook and/or Google+; including Profiles, MicroBlogging, Communities & Activity Streams. These social features substantially enhance the collaborative capabilities of SharePoint within the enterprise which, in turn, empowers the organizations that opt for these capabilities to derive important benefits.

Take for example Kraft Foods. NewsGator includes an archive of a Webinar including Mr. Vinicius da Costa, Associate Director for Collaboration and Social Business at Kraft Foods and Mr. Doug Caywood of Microsoft. Mr. da Costa spells out the needs at Kraft to breakdown traditional silos within the business, which, while standing, handicap the business, impeding product innovation, cross departmental communication, and lengthening time to market for new products.

Sure, the need to breakdown silos is a consistent “must have” for users of SharePoint and other enterprise collaboration tools, but Mr. da Costa provides useful detail that indicates that delivery of this “must have” is still out there somewhere on the horizon. Mr. da Costa is of the opinion that a product like Social Sites® can provide him with a process catalyst that he can use to bring a “silo-less” enterprise that much closer to reality at Kraft Foods.

We see a promising market opportunity for NewsGator for other businesses like Kraft Foods that put a high premium on the ability to quickly innovate products, as required, to meet changing market needs. As well, companies with potentially competitive businesses (for example, print publishing and online publishing), where real barriers to collaboration may be in place would also benefit from a dose of “social” to enhance knowledge exchange. As well, facilitating access, through enhanced collaboration, to authoritative resources that may already be in place within the business and, therefore, readily available translates into another big benefit. We suspect that NewsGator and its partners are all over these prospects, which bodes well for the future.

Do keep in mind, however, that enterprise business still has a way to go prior to fully embracing social media. A recent study, The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption: Have America’s Largest Companies Reached a Social Media Plateau? supports the opinion that the slow progress of enterprise business along the path to social media is reality. Of course, the flip side of this opinion is to posit a relatively wide open potential for companies like NewsGator in the future.

SharePoint CRM

Posted on November 17, 2011 by mikeb

ACRM Software and Calinda Software have teamed up to enter the market for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications built on Microsoft® SharePoint®. ACRM Software is a CRM industry veteran, with over 16 other niche CRM offerings directed to specific industries, including Oil and Gas, Wealth Management, Finance and even business to consumer industries like Personal Fitness/Health Clubs.

Calinda, based in France, provides the SharePoint “muscle” behind this effort. A manufacturer of SharePoint web parts that “add on” real world functionality, Calinda’s value add is directed towards enhancing the native collaborative power of SharePoint. SocialFactor and SocialFactor365 (designed for Office365 SharePoint users), make blogging, sharing, following easier.

In sum, the alliance between these two vendors should make for a very attractive entry into this important business to business marketplace. We took a brief look at one competitor Alcero® and heard a market message that communicates “we do SharePoint ontop of SharePoint for you” what with the primary Alcero offering being Enterprise Content Management (ECM). We could not help but ask the question why do we need ECM ontop of SharePoint out of the box? The real reason, which is buried in a description of the Alcero Alexya™ is that the product allows us to include PDFs in the Document Repository, handles the meta data to render the PDFs searchable, along with other dissimilar document types. As well, this product suite includes a Workflow designer, a List manager and “Findability” to enhance search. In sum, we weren’t able to find evidence of the type of deep understanding of the needs of the CRM market that ACRM Software delivers to its alliance with Calinda.

Of course, the 800 pound Gorilla in this room is Microsoft Dynamics. The SharePoint hooks provided to date for Microsoft Dynamics deliver the feel of working in a native Microsoft Dynamics environment from within SharePoint. We suspect that Microsoft will opt for partners to exploit the opportunity of building meaty web parts that will deliver more of the power of Microsoft Dynamics within the Business Intelligence (BI) arsenal represented by SharePoint. Therefore, development is off in the future. Further, Microsoft is still not in the right Gartner Quadrant to rest on its laurels with Dynamics. Expect further enhancements and a continuing evolution on this product. In sum, ACRM Software and Calinda have a window of opportunity to build a compelling solution which, if properly presented to the market, may get them the coveted “first to market” position on this hefty market opportunity.

Eliminate Development Hurdles to Support High Utility SharePoint Implementations for Specific Needs

Posted on November 16, 2011 by mikeb

The folks at Bamboo Solutions want us all to build more customized solutions with Microsoft® SharePoint®, they just don’t want to see us hard coding them. Makes sense when you consider that the best way to get users to adopt a platform solution like SharePoint is to provide them with business specific features that deliver just what they. Makes even more sense when the SharePoint power users for the business can include what Gartner Group calls “Citizen Developers”, highly technical individuals who, nevertheless, do not want to deal with code.

A large number of the no code SharePoint web parts offered by Bamboo Solutions empower users with the means of identifying activity across large farms. This set of web parts include an Administration Toolkit along with several different alert and calendar web parts. These activity specific web parts are perfect for heavily regulated businesses with strict rules of governance in place to ensure that the vast preponderance of activity is visible to the organization as a whole and reviewed for compliance with governance.

Activity specific web parts are also quite useful for project management. Customizing SharePoint is, often enough, a major project that should be managed in an efficient manner; therefore, Bamboo Solutions offers Project Management Central, a tool designed for technical developers (notice the reference to “you and your boss” in the promotional blurb) that collects the activity, cost, and resource information needed to report project status in a useful manner.

Bamboo Solutions’ Knowledge Management Suite addresses SharePoint market interest in Business Intelligence (BI) and enterprise search. Armed with Bamboo’s Knowledge Management Suite, enterprise customers may begin to move beyond costly enterprise software designed to provide the same type of information, but not built on SharePoint; for example, Cognos Business Insight.

Looking further at the product offering at Bamboo Solutions, we note lots of web parts designed to empower users to work more broadly with lists. After all, SharePoint foundation is a potentially vast repository of information that needs to support catalogs that can be formatted into indices that are both useful and attractive. Don’t forget to hold the HTML and/or CSS code. Perhaps the most prominent of these web parts is Data View Web Part which delivers data view without the otherwise requisite purchase of SharePoint Designer.

Bamboo Solutions, in sum, offers many web parts that can inspire users to customize SharePoint as they require. These web parts are the perfect complement for the methods and techniques that we promote via our SharePoint-Video.com tutorial collection. You’ll note that we, too, endorse no code development.

Blogging Thoughts on SharePoint

Thoughts, Conversations, Interviews on SharePoint & Its Movers & Shakers from Rehmani Consulting

Monthly Archives: November 2011