Listen to Podcast Now>>

Hilton Giesenow was a speaker at the ESPC13. Check out his fantastic presentation on 'REST Assured - Best Practices with the SharePoint 2013 Data Services'. 

For more insighful content on App's in SharePoint 2013 why not read this FREE eBook 'SharePoint 2013 - Planet of the Apps' by Sahil Malik.

The European SharePoint Community is delighted to release this most anticipated report. SharePoint Under the Spotlight: European Market Report 2013 is a primary resource of key insights and trends impacting those who work with SharePoint. Download Report >>

Microsoft Migration Push

As Andrew said, Microsoft are making a HUGE push on using Apps over Solutions. Microsoft have created a great new landing page explaining the advantages of apps over solutions for customizing SharePoint 2013. It also includes videos on how to migrate from various artifacts in solutions to artifacts in apps. Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/apps/dn133840. This includes a great whitepaper on why solutions vs apps http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/8/3/883C0889-72A8-4766-8D07-4BF2F048BE36/DecidingBetweenAppsForSharePointAndSharePointSolutions.pdf.

Why?

Making a Business Solution available to End Users
I personally think the ability of having an App is a great way for End Users to be able to consume Business Solutions you build regardless of whether its for internal organization use or for external customers. The reason being is that the traditional Solution approach really only thinks in times of Site Collection Features and Site Features that are activated and light stuff up OR provide Site Templates that can be used to create Sites with things automatically lit up. The ability to granularly show these Features or Site Templates to audiences of people is tough in the Solutions approach. With the new App Catalog, it's very easy to dictate who can chose to Add the App.

Chose your language and get better ALM
You can write in JavaScript against Client-side object model already in Solutions no problems, what the Remote-Hosted Apps provides is a way to write in ASP.NET MVC, Java, PHP, HTML5 etc. and therefore have a much better mature Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) through these platforms rather than being tightly bound to the SharePoint execution and deployment model of Solution Packages. It really allows you to separate the presentation layer of SharePoint and your App as the surfaces of your app are either full page or in an App Part….technically it means you can build the app and shim the SharePoint API calls completely much easier than you could with Solution Package approach.

App has Identity
For the first time in the SharePoint World….I can build a Business Solution with an identity. When a Business User adds an App toa Site, they have to "Trust It" which essentially is given the App the right to talk to the SharePoint Parent Site (if it asks for those permissions) as the App…not as the Business User using the App. This is a huge step forward in Business Solutions.

Force of hand
I think you can see the writing on the wall in terms of both Full-Trust Solutions and Sandboxed Solutions in the future. In Microsoft eyes…On-Premises dead already so Full-Trust isn't even an option and don't expect any updates to this approach. Sandboxed Solutions are deprecated…so definitely don't expect any updates here either…and as Andrew mentioned…I hope they don't completely block them in SharePoint Online…but potentially they could.

This means you are almost being forced to move if you want to leverage anything else in the future that is introduced in Service Updates on SharePoint Online or Service Packs in SharePoint On-Premises. When I mean leverage…I mean:

• the Dev tooling will only be (I'm guessing) updated for Apps moving forward, the "legacy" Solutions Project Templates won't be
• the Client-Side object model (Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll) will only be updated (I'm guessing) moving forward and not Server-Side object model (Microsoft.SharePoint.dll etc.)
• the training and documentation I'I'm guessing) will only be updated for Apps and Client-Side object model

General Apps Limitations

Branding
The biggest concern I have had so far from customers using Apps is that when you click on the App you lose a lot of the context you have in normal SharePoint pages. For instance, in the top chrome bar your "Outlook Calendar People Sites" etc. isn't there. Although it can carry through the CSS theme, not all elements are there including the Site Navigation. In Sandbox Solutions you could deploy Application pages that actually leveraged the master page of the Site…not true with Apps.

App Security
Unfortunately, Apps don't have security…I can "add an App" to a Site, but I can't manage security to it like I can a List or Library (ooops I mean Document App ;-) ). This can cause issues and essentially you end up creating child sites and breaking inheritance on the child site and adding the App to that.

Office 365 plans in general
It's definitely worth looking at this chart to see what is supported and not in the different plans with regards to SharePoint Online in Office 365. notice for certain plan types the "App Hosting: Base" and "App Hosting: Per User" is not supported in Small Business and Midsize Business…so the reality is if you're using apps you need an Enterprise Plan for full flexibility of store stuff.

On-Premise in general
By default, the Apps architecture is not configured in a SharePoint 2013 install. There are a few hurdles to get this up and running to even run SharePoint-Hosted apps let alone Cloud-Hosted ones. This can often be a problem if working with IT for SSL certificates etc. becomes a road block.

Farm Wide Apps
Some concepts just really don't suit Apps, one of the biggest is a Business Solution that you would typically deploy to one site collection but then it calls object model code against all site collections. The biggest problem with Apps is that the user token that the App can use is bound to the Site Collection the App is installed in and can't reach any further. In a server-side object model approach, elevated privileges could be used to overcome this in the Full-Trust Solution Package model. To a degree, search can be used to fetch data to get around this, but if you are looking to modify anything outside the site collection you are done for. The only real way is to deploy the App in all site collections and store all the user tokens for each app for each site collection and use them as you need them and refresh them before they expire.

SharePoint-Hosted Limitations

Managed Code
We made a decision very early on to pick Provider hosted because we wanted to write the majority of our code in managed code (C#) so that we could write in a more object orientated way including unit tests and integration tests…something not really possible if you chose SharePoint-Hosted which does not allow managed code and forces you to use JavaScript.


Provider-Hosted Limitations

Universal story
I think the first few things to bare in mind is that Auto-Hosted simply doesn't work on-premises so you are either SharePoint-Hosted or Provider-Hosted to cover both SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Premises.

Also take into account that a P1 plan in Office 365 does not support Provider-Hosted apps either.

Controls

As soon as you jump to either of the Cloud-Hosted approaches (Auto or Provider) you lose a bunch of things. For a start…you can't just throw SharePoint User Controls on pages like the XSLT List View Web Parts or People Pickers.

Sadly this meant that we had to build our own People Picker leveraging the CSOM Search APIs so that we could fetch a list of all users…because if you just get AllUsers from the Site Collection it only returns users who have been granted access to the site or accessed the site as it reads from the User Information Lists.

High Trust story

There is a little bit more effort required to get Cloud-Hosted Apps running on-premises due to there being no OAuth via Windows Azure available on-premises. There is a good article on TechNet that explains how to configure an App for High Trust, it is certainly a complex approach that often confuses people and causes problems and I'm already finding that this is a lot of the reason people are mandating SharePoint-Hosted only.

Provider-hosted package Web Application hard coded reference

Sadly when you build a Provider-Hosted SharePoint App, it hard codes the URL of the Web Application that is part of the "Cloud-hosted" aspect of this. Also in the App is the SSL cert used and a secret, this is the same SSL cert that the Web Application component needs to be bound to in IIS (or wherever its hosted). What this means is that if you are building an App you want to provide to customers to install on-premises you either have to create unique App packages for them wwith their own SSL cert and pointing to the correct Web Application URL…OR enforce customers use the same SSL cert (that you provide) and same URL…which is not really feasible.

Versioning story

When you release an app as v1.0.0.0 and Business Users add the app, it stores this version. If you modify your App to v1.1.0.0 (or anything different from original) you may have added new artifacts like a SharePoint List to the App Web etc. If you deploy this into the App Catalog…it doesn't automatically update all the App instances in the SharePoint 2013 Farm. It is up to the Business User to upgrade the App. In a Provider-Hosted model this means that your Web Application component needs to be aware of what version of the App is consuming it..e..g. if v1.0.0.0 is consuming it your business logic in your component can't expect that list to be there. This is why Auto-Hosted would be so much easier as the Web Application component would be deployed with the App and therefore not so many versioning conflicts to be concerned with.

Conclusion

All in all, I'm very happy so far with the App architecture and you have to remember this is version 1.0. Microsoft don't have a good history of v1, and I am happy to say I think that this is a lot more mature than we all expected it to be at launch.

Jeremy was a speaker at the ESPC 2013. Check out Jeremy's blog for more insightfull content!

For more SharePoint content from Jeremy and other SharePoint specialists check out our resource centre!

You probably know the story. A company wanted a website based on SharePoint. A company looked at standard out-of-box SharePoint. A company decided to change everything. A company payed lots of money to change everything.

Companies still want a website based on SharePoint. Does the ending to the story change with SharePoint 2013? A Happy End?

Let's take in from the start.
1. A company want a website based on SharePoint.

The design is set. You know how your new site is going to look like. You probably have a graphic designer or connection to a company that can come up with a fine design made in Photoshop or Illustrator.

2. A company looked at standard out-of-box SharePoint. Their fine new design doesn't look like out-of-box SharePoint site. Yes, what to do with that nice Photoshop or Illustrator picture?

What are the odds that standard SharePoint looks just like something you want?
I would be suprised, if it actually did. SharePoint offers a few website designs, and I think of them as an inspiration and motivation to do something cool with SharePoint. I don't expect that my personal branding, my company's identity can be produced on assembly line.


Design is important. Imagine that all the brands and signs on shops on the main street were gone. Imagine flowers in all shop windows. Wonderfull. But not practical. How would you find a shoe store? You would have to open the door and go inside each and every store to see if they sell shoes. OK, this is probably a bad example, if you are like me and go inside each and every store, always looking for shoes, always looking for everything else too. But, the fact is we do not sell SharePoint and our website is not supposed to look like SharePoint. Intranet sites are also not supposed to look like SharePoint, because we do not work for SharePoint.


I think that we have to divide the "don't look like SharePoint" problem in smaller more tangible problems in order to solve it. We can't deal with "don't look like SharePoint" problem as a one single problem. Also, it is important not to mix and confuse styling, colors and fonts with functionality, master page, and page layouts. We have to divide and conquer. We have to divide look and feel into:

- Theme:
- we want our logo
- we want our colors
- we want our fonts
- we want background image
- Master Page:
- we want site logo to link to start page, not to subsites
- we want another navigation
- we want links on the top
- we want footer on every page
- we want a big banner on the top
- we want breadcrumb
- Page Layouts:
- we want more content zones on the page
- we want a content zone on the right for related links and content
- Styling
- we want 20px or 30px margins
- we want larger headings (H1,H2,H3..)
- we want border around content

3. A company payed lots of money to change everything. Yes, we all want to change that :-)
In the following, I describe "the old way" as a way we've done branding with SharePoint 2010, and I describe "the new way" as a way you also can do branding with SharePoint 2013. You can mix the new and old ways as much as you want :-) You can also decide that you only want different Theme, or that you want Theme and Page Layouts. It is completely up to you.

Theme:
SharePoint 2013 comes with a very nice feature "Change the look" that enables you to set the fonts, background image, and colors. You don't need knowledge of HTML. I wrote about SharePoint Themes in my post SharePoint Branding - Themes. I also recommend ThemeBuilder app at SONJASAPPS App Store or Microsoft Office Store that helps you define colors and fonts.

Master Page:
At this point of time, there are two ways of changing the master page:
- The old way: taking a copy of existing one and changing the parts you want to change. You need both HTML and SharePoint skills to do that.
- New in SharePoint 2013: Use Design Manager: you need your whole site made with HTML, and than you need to use time to implement the design.

Page Layouts:
There are two ways to do page layouts:
- The old way: Hire somebody to do that.
- New in SharePoint 2013: You can buy layouts as an app.

I made Simple Pages app 12 ready to use page layouts for Office 365 Small Business public facing site.

Here is the SimplePages app video:

Click here to see the PublishingPages app at SONJASAPPS App Store or Office Store.

Styling:
There is the old way: making a special stylesheet with special styles to define headings or borders.
The new way: The new "0 customization" way, is supposed to be "no styling, no custom design" way.
As I said before, it's up to you.

Sonja Madsen was a speaker at the ESPC 2013. This blog was first published on Sonja's blog here.

For more expert information on Branding check out the eBook 'Professional SharePoint 2010 Branding and User Interface Design Chapter 1 Introduction to SharePoint Branding' by by Randy Drisgill, John Ross, Jacob J. Sanford, Paul Stubbsa and Larry Riemann. Download Now>>

But there was an ingredient missing from the presentations (Jeff will be emailing me on this as soon as I post it, I just know it)around how social needs stronger measurement. For social (which equals Yammer in the Microsoft domain) to become effective, it must also become measurable, repeatable, and optimized. In the never-ending search for improving customer adoption and engagement -- which social promises, and I do believe can deliver -- the difficulty for most (if not all) organizations is demonstrating business value amidst all of the marketing and promises of the OEMs and vendors. Simply put, there must be some kind of connection to business process, a direct correlation between collaboration and both qualitative and quantitative data.

Far too many social tools out in the echo chamber tout an impressive resume of features, but cannot seem to demonstrate their ability to drive business action. Defining the return on investment of social is a hot topic. Microsoft worked with author and social collaboration influencer Mark Fidelman (@markfidelman) to create a great whitepaper on the topic which does a great job at defining the qualitative benefits (which I highly recommend that you read here), but lacks guidance on the quantitative benefits. And that lack of guidance was clear in some of the questions being asked at the Rightpoint event this week, where people are looking for practical guidance on building key performance indicators (KPIs) around their social activities, helping them to demonstrate to their management, and their employees, that social will deliver on its promises.

Social has the ability to pull together ideas, discussions, and activities from across internal groups -- which would otherwise sit in data silos, such as email, or even restricted SharePoint groups or sites. The entire culture of the Yammer team is to unlock data silos by including everyone in the dialog, allowing people to join a discussion and share expertise that may or may not be part of their current job descriptions. This kind of unstructured collaboration allows teams to create, and maintain, a threaded conversation synchronously (in real-time) or asynchronously (which is great for working with teams in different time zones or who travel extensively) so that everyone has a chance to participate. I'm seeing inside Axceler conversations that had otherwise ended months prior suddenly re-emerge as someone searches for a topic, finds the threaded discussion, and adds a spark to start it again, leveraging what was old for something new. I love that.

But are we supposed to simply accept this anecdotal evidence for improved collaboration, and go with our gut feel that its good for business, or is enterprise social something that can be measured? The two most common KPIs discussed in this context are Adoption and Engagement, but most approach even these concepts simplistically. Tracking the number of unique visitors only tells you so much. What did they actually do while on the site? Engagement is more than just time spent within the social environment. How many times did they comment, share content, upload content, Like something, rate it or otherwise engagement in social activity? Even if you have robust measurements in place to capture these movements, how well are you able to track this activity over time (to watch trending) -- or correlate this data to changes you've made to the platform, new features you've added, or other steps to encourage stronger collaboration? Very few organizations have even begun to look at social collaboration at this depth, but that is where the industry must go to show the business benefits of social.

Of course, Axceler is working hard to bridge this gap through the release of our ViewPoint Enterprise product. As a leader in collaboration governance, administration and migration, we have been working hard to extend our expertise in the SharePoint and Lotus Notes platforms to the rapidly expanding enterprise social collaboration space. If you would like to know more about the ViewPoint product, you can try it for free at www.Axceler.io. No download required, as it is a pure SaaS offering that is hosted in Windows Azure. Just sign in, connect it to your corporate Yammer account, and start experiencing the future of social governance.

I believe the next step in social productivity should closely match the way we work today -- and its business benefits should be measurable. Social in the enterprise should be more than real-time connectivity, more than an unattached conversation. Social  should enable tighter communication across the team, it should have context, and it should be able to demonstrate business value.

Christian was a speaker at the ESPC 2013. Check out Christian's blog for more insightfull content!

For more expert information on Social check out the eBook 'Socialized! How the Most Successful Businesses Harness the Power of Social' by Mark Fidelman. Download Now>>

12. If you were stranded on a tropical island and could only bring 3 things with you what would they be?
My DSLR with a solar charger and some memory cards, a real book (not an ebook) about how to survive on a tropical island and my old swiss army knife.


13. What's the best piece of advice you were ever given?
Believe in yourself and your capabilities.

14. What was the last thing you ate?
Sushi - I love Sushi … and home-made canadian burgers 

15. Who is your hero?
My wife for supporting me and giving me the time to do all the SharePoint stuff I love to do.


16. What's your most embarrassing moment?
That's too embarrassing or too private to share! But my most blissful moment was to witness the birth of our twins.

17. What's the craziest thing you have ever done?
Buying a big motor bike (my first and only) and travel with friends for 3 weeks through Scotland - without much preparation before. We really travelled light, used mostly camping sites and decided in the evening where to go to on next morning.


18. What part of your daily routine can you not live without?
The first cup of coffee in the morning.

19. If you could do one thing to change the world what would it be?
Ban selfishness and racism from everyone's mind.


20. Biggest fear?
My wife or my kids getting an incurable disease.


21. Favourite song?
I choose my songs depending on the current mood I'm in. So there is no song I would call favourite. You'll find Rock, Pop and Country in the playlists of my Smartphone. But I must admit that I like the tunes of Mark Knopfler.

22. If you could choose anyone to be your mentor who would it be?
Jedi Master Yoda, who else? May the force be with me 


23. If you could share the stage with anyone in SharePoint who would it be?
Dan Holme and Christian Buckley. They are my favourite SharePoint speakers.

Stay tuned for more SharePoint content by joining our community or by following us on twitter or  facebook.

This FREE eBook contains excerpts from Chapter 3 'Applying Branding to the Collaboration Components'. In this chapter, you will learn to;

• Set up and understand your development environment The basics: Change the look and feel of your SharePoint collaboration sites
• Create a SharePoint 2013 custom look for collaboration sites
• Work with a SharePoint 2013 master page
•  Apply a new SharePoint collaboration site master page
• Add interaction to your site by extending a SharePoint master page
• Apply a custom user interface to a SharePoint collaboration site
• The basics: Change the look and feel of SharePoint publishing sites
• Provision and apply your own custom page layouts
• Work with search site master page
• The basics: Change the look and feel of Personal Site
• Change the look and feel of Personal Sites for individual users
• Put it all together: automated installation of your branding package to multiple environments

                            Download Now>>

Register to learn how you can set up a SharePoint 2010 Extranet or a SharePoint 2013 Extranet in 1 hour and start sharing your SharePoint documents and conversations with external partners as easily as Click, Share, and Collaborate

• See a demo of BusinessGuest, the Instant SharePoint Extranet
• Learn how to deploy the SharePoint Extranet package and set it up on your project site
• See how your external partners will interact with you
• Try it for yourself!

Register Now>>

• What do you do in your spare time?  Hiking, biking, skiing, dancing, gardening, playing with my puppies, tour guide for friends from out of town around Orange County. Making art, costumes and crazy bikes for Burning Man.

• Favourite TV show? the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

• Favourite Book? Fiction: Raising Unicorns.  Non Fiction: Rick Steve Guides

• Favourite Movie? Blade Runner

• Apart from a career in SharePoint what would be your dream job? Personal Travel Guide and Photo Journalist.

• Who is the biggest party animal in SharePoint?  Robbie Leggit and me.

• Who is the biggest troublemaker in SharePoint? Robbie Leggit

• Where would be your ideal holiday location?  Costa Rica

• Have you any hidden talents? Yes, but let's keep them hidden

• If you could go on a date with someone famous, who would it be?  Johnny Deep, but just as bros.

• You can invite 3 people, dead or alive to your dinner party. Who would they be and why?  Hunter Thompson, Quentin Tarantino and Michael Jackson.  Story tellers and sign along.

• If you were stranded on a tropical island and could only bring 3 things with you what would they be? A genie with unlimited wishes, my wife and puppies.

• What's the best piece of advice you were ever given?  Don't talk so much an let others teach you something.

• What was the last thing you ate? Banana

• Who is your hero? Steve Jobs

•  What's your most embarrassing moment? My most recent was walking up on a stage in front of thousand people and accepting an award that I hadn't won.

• What's the craziest thing you have ever done?In one day.  Adrenaline 4 Adventure in New Zealand.  Jet boat up a river coming within inches of walls of canyon, climb up canyon wall and bungee jump 270 feet off a bridge, next four wheel drive five miles up canyon and then white water rafted back down river hitting class three rapids.

• What part of your daily routine can you not live without? Sharing my breakfast with my doggies.

• If you could do one thing to change the world what would it be? Allow us to all coexist without hate.

• Biggest fear? Last Call.

• Favourite song? Somebody by Depeche Mode

• If you could choose anyone to be your mentor who would it be? Yoda

• If you could share the stage with anyone in SharePoint who would it be? Steve Ballmer

Stay tuned for more SharePoint content by joining our community or by following us on twitter or  facebook.

Both are very helpful in collaborative scenarios. Let's have a look at an example. There is a team that is currently working on a software documentation. This team uses a SharePoint 2013 workspace based on the TeamSite template. To be able to tag the team's documents a new term (e.g. ProjectXYZ) has been created in the Central Administration. The project's tag is defined like this:

Now the team is able to tag their documents. All documents that are marked with the tag 'ProjectXYZ' belong to the team's current project. If the team adds a new document to the team's library, the document gets tagged automatically. This is done by adding a Managed Metadata field to the library and assigning a default value to this field.

After an incremental crawl the team's documents can be found.

Now the team decides to create a source for an internal communication. They decide to use a Discussion Board for the team communication. To be able to tag the team's discussions with the project's metadata, a column needs to be added to the discussion board:

Now a team member starts the first discussion like this:

Because of the field 'Enterprise Keywords' that has been added to the discussion board, each discussion can be assigned to the team's current project now.

But what happens if a team member posts information outside of the team's workspace that belongs to the project's context? For example: a team member creates a news like this …

… and other team members or colleagues are following the newly created hashtag #CustomerXYZ. The first thing that happens is: the newly created hashtag gets added to the hastags list in Central Administration:

Although #CustomerXYZ is not the same as ProjectXYZ, both have a contextual connection. ProjectXYZ is a project that is related to #CustomerXYZ.

If  a member of the project team starts a search with the keyword ProjectXYZ the results look like this:

The team's document and the team's discussion are found - that's expected. But it would be helpful for the team to get search results for items tagged with #CustomerXYZ too. A search for #CustomerXYZ shows this:

What the project team needs is a link of their team site to the hastag #CustomerXYZ. One way to establish this kind of linking is to use a new feature of SharePoint 2013: the indexed properties of a SPWeb object (I already created a post on this). To link a hashtag to a SPWeb object a new indexed property needs to be created in the web's property bag.

Here is how to do this by code:

After the indexed properties have been created a new crawl is required. After the crawl has been completed the team's web is linked with the hashtag #CustomerXYZ.

If someone enters #CustomerXYZ as a search query the team's web is now found in the search results too:

Adding indexed properties to a SPWeb object can be done by code (as shown in the screenshot above). It can also be done using a SharePoint Solution that can be found on Codeplex: SharePoint Property Bag Settings 2013. By the way: a SPList object can now also have index properties!

Oliver Wirkus was a speaker at ESPC 2013.  Check out Oliver's blog for more insightfull blogs!

For more SharePoint content from Oliver and other SharePoint specialists check out our resource centre!

As Jason mentions in his article, its easier to mess things up than it is to get things right. That's certainly true with SharePoint, where a clear understanding of your business objectives and careful planning, architecture, and execution are the key to success.  While his broad business innovation-killers are certainly true in this context, there are a number of things which are unique to (or at least more relevant to) SharePoint.

Understand that most of these mistakes are made with the best intentions, in many cases the result of budget limitations, time constraints, or the lack of proper skills to accomplish the end goal. The end result, however, is fairly consistent: poor end user adoption. These are not in any particular order. They're mutually-exclusive innovation killers.

1. Skip the information architecture. 
   Understanding how the platform works, how sites should be structured with planned templates, content types, taxonomy, and navigation are foundational to a healthy, extendable SharePoint environment. Far too many organizations roll it out without any thought to how end users will actually add their content and….oh, I don't know...find it again later. Setting up a proper information architecture will allow your end users to take advantage of the rich features within. Instead of struggling to accomplish the basic tasks, the platform might enable them to innovate. 
2. Deploy it, and walk away. 
   Yes, you can stand up a server out-of-the-box, in all its vanilla glory, and call it well and done...and it will work for a while. But nobody who deploys or supports SharePoint for a living recommends you do this - not if you're actually planning to use it in the enterprise. SharePoint takes care and love and feeding - not because of limitations of the platform (though there ARE one or two limitations) but because of your limited ability to design it and build it right in the first place. Or, more to the point, you'll build it right for that point in time, but as end users get smarter and figure out how to master the basic features, they'll want and need more and more and….well, you get the point. SharePoint is an iterative process, not a one-time task. What enables innovation today will not enable it tomorrow. 
3. Don't plan for governance. 
   In addition to planning out future features and capabilities, you need to proactively manage what you have deployed today. Governance is like preventive medicine: its kind of hassle now, you have to take time off work just to hear the doctor tell you that there's nothing wrong. But the early detection of what could be a serious long-term problem is invaluable. Proactive governance (is that redundant?) gives you an ongoing view into how your system is being used, allowing you to refine and improve and (back to that end user adoption concept) anticipate changing needs. 
4. Refuse to recognize the power of social computing. 
   Block out the mental pictures of productivity-killing Facebook and Twitter escapades, and recognize that social computing is much more than these consumer-driven technologies. Social computing is another layer of the search experience, helping put content and ideas (and innovation) in context to the running dialog within your organization. Without social, you are severely limiting your ability to find content and ideas outside of the exact search terms you input. With social, those search terms can be connected to people, to expertise, to user-generated keywords (folksonomy), and threaded comments, connecting you to people and ideas and content that you would not have found otherwise. 
5. Don't have a user adoption strategy. 
   Ok, this one kind of ties together the others. You really need to go into your SharePoint deployment with a strategy for how you will keep your end users plugged in and happy. Some ideas? Plan out your information architecture. Refine and iterate the platform. Proactively govern the system. Utilize the power of social tools. And communicate your user adoption strategy. Even if you're trying to do the right things, a lack of visibility into what is happening behind the scenes could cause users to quickly move from supportive to apprehensive to concerned to apathetic. The longer you take to deliver, the harder it will be to regain their trust. Include people in the process and give them visibility into the change process, and people will be more understanding (even if it takes longer than expected).

Just remember that SharePoint is a journey, not a race. You're not going to get everything right all the time. Listen to your users and be authentic, and just do your best. Oh, and reach out to the experts community for advice and best practices. Hmmm...maybe I need to write an article on 5 ways to spur innovation in SharePoint...

Originally published on AIIM.org here

Christian was a speaker at the ESPC 2013. Check out Christian's blog for more insightfull content!

For more SharePoint content from Christian and other SharePoint specialists check out our resource centre!

1. What do you do in your spare time?
Apart from doing too much SharePointing I love to walk with my dog, watch movies and TV shows and travel the world.

2. Favourite TV show?
At the moment Game of Thrones but all-time favourite is The Wire for sure! Ground-breaking television. David Simon is a genius.

3. Favourite Book?
Lord of the Rings. One word: Epic!

4. Favourite Movie?
That's a really difficult question! I frequently change my mind about this question but for now it's The Empire Strikes Back.

5. Apart from a career in SharePoint what would be your dream job?
Saving wildlife in Africa

6. Who is the biggest party animal in SharePoint?
I am still a rookie in SharePoint Party Land but I have seen that Seb Matthews knows how to party!

7. Who is the biggest troublemaker in SharePoint?
Bjørn Furuknap for sure. I have never seen anyone write such long replies and go into so many SharePoint discussions. You need troublemakers though.

9. Where would be your ideal holiday location?
A tropical island far away from civilization. No loud noise from traffic and people's ringtones! Sounds like heaven to me. This sounds strange from a guy living in the centre of Amsterdam, I realize that.

10. Have you any hidden talents?
I don't even know where to start! Is it juggling with one hand? Is it driving blindfolded? Or streaking at football games? You decide.

11. If you could go on a date with someone famous, who would it be?
Liv Tyler but only dressed as an elf.

 
12. You can invite 3 people, dead or alive to your dinner party. Who would they be and why?
Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Matt Damon. The coolest men in the world.

13. If you were stranded on a tropical island and could only bring 3 things with you what would they be?
A tent for camping, a book about how to survive on a tropical island and Wilson the Volleyball.

14. What's the best piece of advice you were ever given?
Believe in yourself

15. What was the last thing you ate?
A sandwich. Pretty rock & roll right?

16. Who is your hero?
My wife for putting up with all my nonsense and geekness.

17. What's your most embarrassing moment?
That's too embarrassing to share!

18. What's the craziest thing you have ever done?
Bungee jumping in New Zealand from a gondola ski lift at 134 meters.

19. What part of your daily routine can you not live without?
Eating

20. If you could do one thing to change the world what would it be?
Ban greed from everyone's mind.

21. Biggest fear?
An alien invasion

22. Favourite song?
Led Zeppelin - Rock and Roll. Cannot sit still when I hear that song! Fricking amazing!

23. If you could choose anyone to be your mentor who would it be?
Jedi Master Yoda, who else?

24. If you could share the stage with anyone in SharePoint who would it be?
Dan Holme for sure. One of my favourite SharePoint speakers.

Stay tuned for more SharePoint content by joining our community or by following us on twitter or  facebook.

Strongly Typed, (almost) unbridled remote access to our SharePoint data? It almost sounds too good to be true and it might be without some fundamentals. Come and see when and how best to leverage the REST services introduced in SharePoint 2010 and updated and expanded for 2013. Hilton has a look at the core principles and examine common use cases to identify and overcome common pitfalls as well as explore the changes that 2013 brings, especially in the context of the new App model. 

WEBINAR BENEFIT: The audience is taken from an intro to the topic and background on its philosophy to extensive best practices on it's use in read, write and delete.

View Now>>

1. What do you do in your spare time?
I love the outdoors and enjoy shooting when I get the time. When the weather gets the best of me, I've enjoy music production and recently have been getting into video production, which is proving quite addictive. I also enjoy motorosports, anything with wheels going fast is kind of awesome.

2. Favourite TV show?
Good question! I'm a huge Seinfeld fan and would have to put it right up there as some of the most entertaining TV ever. I've become slightly addicted recently US TV shows about buying storage units and discovering the contents, there are a few of them and they're all bonkers.

3. Favourite Book?
I spend a ton of time on planes and so I like mindless adventure - I'm a big fan of the author Clive Cussler so anything by him is fine by me.

4. Favourite Movie?
I'm a huge Star Wars fan so any of the 5 will do for me because, of course, we all know that there are only FIVE Star Wars movies… 

5. Apart from a career in SharePoint what would be your dream job?
I would to have a go at being a stand-up comedian. It would give me a great opportunity to show Robbie what real comedy is… 

6. Who is the biggest party animal in SharePoint?
It's a toss-up between Stacy Draper, Fabian Williams and Freddo Brandon or possibly the stealthy Corey Roth.

7. Who is the biggest troublemaker in SharePoint?
Aside from me of course, I enjoy the faceted thinking of Bjorn Furuknap, he courts controversy to make interesting points.

8. Where would be your ideal holiday location?
I'd struggle to choose between New York or the Maldives - it would depend on what kind of vacation I wanted.


9. Have you any hidden talents?
I have a recording studio at home and have produced soundtracks for two movies plus I'm a pretty handy Dj when the mood takes me - I'm available for hire!


10. If you could go on a date with someone famous, who would it be?
It would have to be Natalie Portman.


11. You can invite 3 people, dead or alive to your dinner party. Who would they be and why?
Leonard Nimoy, Zachary Quinto and Gene Rodenberry - we could then work out who actually is the best Spock.

12. If you were stranded on a tropical island and could only bring 3 things with you what would they be?
A good knife, clean underpants and Natalie Portman


13. What's the best piece of advice you were ever given?
"always be the fastest guy in the room, but never be the fastest guy on the freeway"

14. What was the last thing you ate?
Haribo jelly babies

15. Who is your hero?
For grit, determination, single mindedness, drive, vision and desire, it has to be George Lucas, he has been such a massive influence on how we consume movies, tv and music he has touched all of us in some way or another.

16. What's your most embarrassing moment?
I once met Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia from Star Wars) in an airport lounge and was so dumbstruck I could not even talk to her beyond a few mumbled words, I must have seemed like a total nutter.

17. What's the craziest thing you have ever done?
Went on a date with a cocktail waitress I met in a bar, who is now my wife.

18. What part of your daily routine can you not live without?
The 3 S's, except I rarely shave. Figure it out what the other one is. :)

19. If you could do one thing to change the world what would it be?
I'd assassinate Christian Buckley. Give the rest of us a chance. He just so damn nice.

20. Biggest fear?
Christian Buckley buying a bulletproof vest, or standing on a stage at an event and discovering my zipper is open.

21. Favourite song?
"The Winner Takes It All" by ABBA - I'm a big ABBA fan (don't print that, ok?) and this song reaches out to me both lyrically and technically. It's awesome.

22. If you could choose anyone to be your mentor who would it be?
Lee Harvey Oswald, then I really could get Christian or perhaps one of the really great religious evangelists (perhaps Billy Graham) to really understand how they mesmerise thousands of people and get them to part with their hard earned money.

23. If you could share the stage with anyone in SharePoint who would it be?
I'd love to share a stage with Robbie Leggit, then I could throw the bugger off it - and he knows why!!!

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In this eBook you will learn to:

• Create a Learning and Knowledge experience for the solution delivery design.
• Create a SharePoint solution delivery plan.
• Enhance the quality of your delivered SharePoint solution.

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Regardless of the source of your media (i.e., local computer, Asset Library, etc.), to begin the process of inserting video and/or audio, you will need to go to your site page and clickEdit pageas shown below:

Insert media from local computer:

• Select theInserttab from the Ribbon and selectVideo and Audioto insert media.
• Next, selectFrom my computerfrom the drop-down menu:

• Choose the media file which you'll be adding to the page from your computer. Next, select an Asset Library in your current site to which you would like the media file to be uploaded:

• After you have uploaded your media file, you will see a new tab on the Ribbon titledMedia. If you click the new tab, you will see the media player as well as your uploaded file. From this tab, you also have the option of adjusting your media player's settings and properties:

• In the mediaProperties, you have two playing options:

-         Start media automaticallywill automatically start playing the media file when users navigate to your page

-         Loop until stoppedwill continuously play the media file when users navigate to your page until/unless it is manually stopped by the user

• After you have completed adjusting your media settings, go to thePagetab from the Ribbon and clickSaveto save your settings and changes. You will now be able to see the media file autoplay on your page:

Insert media from an Asset Library:

• Select theInserttab from the Ribbon and selectVideo and Audioto insert media.
• Next, selectFrom SharePointfrom the drop-down menu to select a file from your SharePoint Asset Library

• Choose the media file which you'll be adding to the page from your Asset Library:

• After you have completed adjusting your media settings, go to thePagetab from the Ribbon and clickSaveto save your settings and changes. You will now be able to see the media file autoplay on your page:

Insert media from an embedded link:

• To begin, you will need to find the embed code from YouTube (or whatever the source site for the video is) for the media file which you will be adding to your page.

• Select theInserttab from the Ribbon and selectVideo and Audioto insert media.
• Next, selectEmbedfrom the drop-down menu to add the embedded link to your page:

• Paste the embed code into the blank field and clickInserttoinsert the media stream to your page:

• After you have completed adjusting your media settings, go to thePagetab from the Ribbon and clickSaveto save your settings and changes. Note that for this media, you are NOT given the option to change the video's settings or apply autoplay.

Share inserted media:

• Once you have inserted video into your page, you have the ability to embed your videos on other sites. This can be done by going to the right of the video on the page and selecting the Get embed code icon:

• Once you click Get embed code, a field with the appropriate coding will appear. Review the information in the embed stream setting and copy the code:

• Next, go to the other site where you would like to embed the media. Insert the code that you copied in the previous step onto the new page and poof!, you are ready to stream your video on a different page!

Bamboo Solutions were Silver Exhibitors at ESPC 2013. For more SharePoint content check out our resource centre.

We have heard this question asked more times than we can count. As a matter of fact, many of us have been the ones to ask this question in the past as well.

Prior to Microsoft

Being involved in our respective communities heavily prior to joining Microsoft lead us to understand some very important facts.  The fact that there were many more events that required speakers than there were speakers to go around.  This was very apparent to us as user group organizers and conference organizers.  The question would always come up "Where is Microsoft". This question still comes up to this day but its focus in the speaking community is centered around face time and attendance at events.

Enter Project Aware.  The goals of Project Aware are painfully simple and there are only two of them.

1)    Educate Microsoft Employees who WANT to speak and give them the tools both internally at Microsoft and externally in their respective communities in order TO speak.

Secondly and most importantly:

2)    Have a one stop location for all event hosts (user groups, conferences, etc) to go to actually FIND willing Microsoft Speakers (www.technicalcommunity.com)

That's it.  But wow is that powerful.

Bridging the Gap
The main reason organizers have a hard time getting ahold of Microsoft speakers is for the most part, most organizers don't understand our corporate model.  The assumption is that funding is provided at the technology vertical level when in fact it is provided at the very low team and regional level.  Product groups are inundated with requests to send speakers and their budget just doesn't afford this luxury.  

The other side of the shortage comes from organizers not knowing WHERE to find potential speakers. If speakers are not networked previously or they are widely unknown, the requests never come and it is up to the speaker themselves to reach out.  With the amount of travel a given Microsoft employee already does the range in where a speaker will speak as well as their impact can be easily achievable.

The Result

Quite simply the result of Project Aware is to bring the joy of speaking about technology to employees that would otherwise be too shy, timid or reluctant.  Provide organizers of user groups to major conferences a virtual rolodex to reach out and get Microsoft SME's to speak at their event. And ultimately give back to thousands of people worldwide what has been afforded to us

Summary

Short and simple if you're an event coordinator and you're looking for some potential Microsoft speakers try going to MSTC and do a quick search on the technology you are looking for and the area where your event is being held.  The only negative to this is HOPEFULLY, you'll no longer be able to ask "Where is Microsoft".

As a secondary, if you are a technology speaker (any technology) you can also register as a speaker!

View video now on how to register and search for speakers.

Eric was a speaker at the ESPC 2013. Check out Eric's blog for more insightfull content!

For more SharePoint content from Eric and other SharePoint specialists check out our resource centre!

In the AIIM, SharePoint Security - A Survey on Compliance with Recommendations for Improvement, author David Jones asked if respondents had any general comments to make about their compliance and information security issues. They had a lot to say. We've compiled and provided some commentary on eight responses that caught our attention:

 1.     "Even though governance is established, compliance is faulty and monitoring is sketchy at best."

 2.     "If you want compliance don't use SharePoint."

Content compliance and monitoring do not need to be faulty or sketchy. SharePoint can absolutely offer secure collaboration and compliance with the right tools in place. The points below offer a close look at some of the steps and solutions that can assist you.

 3.      "After migrating content it is difficult to retroactively apply rules."

Many will face the migration obstacle as they move to SharePoint 2010/2013 or hybrid environments. What's important here is that organizations can take proactive steps to clean and check content against compliance both before and after migration, and regardless of where it resides. Using third party solutions, compliance and security policies can easily be applied to scan of all the content within the platform. Some policies will be based on regulatory and industry standards, while others will be custom to the requirements of a specific organization. Rules can be set-up to determine what to do when confidential or regulated content is discovered to restrict access to it and control what actions can be taken with it. This helps to ensure that all content in SharePoint, regardless of whether it is new or old, is compliant with policies. Adding additional security around sensitive content helps reduce organizational risk and the threat of breaches. 

 4.     "Currently taking a cautious approach until third party tools are in place."

 5.      "As with many organizations that are using SharePoint, we know/understand the current and potential risks associated with it, but are still in the process of trying to "get our hands around it" from an organization/enterprise perspective."

SharePoint can be a mammoth task to secure; and trying to secure it without content compliance and security solutions is an impossible task. Third party solutions for automated, content-aware compliance and security for SharePoint will ensure you are reducing risk while also maximizing your collaboration investment.

 6.     "Our organization lacks understanding of what's actually in SharePoint, from a sensitive/regulated information perspective."

The best thing about SharePoint is you can put anything in it, and the worst thing about SharePoint is you can put anything in it. Organizations need to balance an increasingly social collaborative environment while still meeting regulatory requirements. Many SharePoint sites seem to be a Wild West of unstructured content. But, there are solutions out there that can audit your site content to help you identify and secure sensitive and regulated information, helping you rein in compliance.

 7.      "Committing resources to tighten and maintain proper security requires a major, visible commitment from upper management to initiate and maintain the effort and incorporate it into the corporate culture."

There are a lot of important take-aways from this comment. There is absolutely a need to have management buy-in and engagement on implementing proper SharePoint security features, but it's too much to cover in one blog post. The emphasis should be on making compliance and security a seamless part of corporate culture. Training takes time and relying on staff to remember all the rules opens you up to those dreaded "whoops" moments. Using solutions that monitor content for compliance issues, taking the onus off the individual is the best way to ensure policies are enforced. After all balancing the need to collaborate with the need to maintain SharePoint security is essential to reducing organizational risk. Read how policy management can impact corporate culture.

 8.     "Compliance, security and record retention are must haves for us."

This is the ultimate comment because compliance and security are must haves for all organizations using SharePoint. Effective compliance is the ability to not only have a governance strategy in place, but to also be able to manage risk by identifying issues and potential violations, and have a process in place for resolution and fine tuning. The most effective method for managing compliance and security risk in SharePoint is to protect sensitive information at the file level using automated solutions for classification, encryption and content restriction.  To better protect your organization, you should consider how automated compliance and security products can remove some of the vulnerabilities and human diligence required to maintain SharePoint content security over the longer term.

Read more findings from the report including recommendations on improving SharePoint security or find out how selecting the right content compliance and security solution will help your organization achieve the full benefits of SharePoint by reading Microsoft SharePoint Security: Evaluating a Content Security Solution.  

HiSoftware were Silver Exhibitors at ESPC 2013. For more SharePoint content check out our resource centre.

View here>>

Coextant System were Silver Exhibitors at ESPC 2013. For more SharePoint content check out our resource centre!

Stay tuned for more SharePoint content by joining our community or by following us on twitter or  facebook.

What do you do in your spare time? - Play the Saxophone, Ride Horses.

Favourite TV show? - TV? Oh, that box? Don't watch TV

Favourite Book? - The Emperors New Mind

Favourite Movie? - Bladerunner

Apart from a career in SharePoint what would be your dream job? - Pilot

Who is the biggest party animal in SharePoint? - Wow, there's too many of them! Anyway after the last conference Adis Jugo gets my vote.

Who is the biggest troublemaker in SharePoint? - Wow, there's too many of them too! Again, based on the last conference Adis Jugo gets my vote again

Where would be your ideal holiday location? Jamaica or Madagascar

Have you any hidden talents? - Origami - a paper folding diva me.

If you could go on a date with someone famous, who would it be? Cate Blanchett

You can invite 3 people, dead or alive to your dinner party. Who would they be and why? - Martin Luther triggered a whole sequence of events that have led direclty to the society we know and enjoy today. Albert Einsten, who could not speak until he was 4 years old and his parent were told he would not amount to much. Such an inspirational man. Muhammed Ali, Champion in the ring, a champion to his religion, a champion to his race and a champion to man kind

If you were stranded on a tropical island and could only bring 3 things with you what would they be? - A four foot bong, a block of ganga, and a saxophone.

 What's the best piece of advice you were ever given? - Don't settle

What was the last thing you ate? - A creamed vanilla slice (bad move)

 Who is your hero? -My Dad

 What's your most embarrassing moment? - Wrongly wearing a kilt

What's the craziest thing you have ever done? - Was a film extra in Stings film Stormy Monday, miming was never my strong suit!

What part of your daily routine can you not live without? - Having a good laugh!

If you could do one thing to change the world what would it be? - Sort out the transportation system and introduce Teleportation!

Biggest fear? - Spiders and DaddyLongLegs - hate those things!

Favourite song? - What's happening brother - Marvin Gaye

If you could choose anyone to be your mentor who would it be? If he was still alive, Steve Jobs, otherwise Bill Gates

If you could share the stage with anyone in SharePoint who would it be? - Theres far too many to choose from! No fair! Ok, any program manager of the SharePoint product team.