Year: 2011

The Role of Governance in Migration Planning
The Role of Governance in Migration Planning
Blog Posts

In a CIOUpdate.com article entitled Prolific SharePoint Sites Undermine Governance, technology writer Jake Frazier outlines a common problem with the growing number of SharePoint customers: the uncontrolled growth of SharePoint sites, and how it impacts governance. SharePoint is proliferating in the marketplace, with KMWorld reporting SharePoint licenses at over 130 million worldwide. The more sites that are created and the more content added to your environment, the more difficult it can be to change course, correct mistakes, and implement a governance model. But the business value to having a formal governance model in place is enormous. As Mr. Frazier points out,

“To accomplish the defensible disposal of information, including information in SharePoint sites, companies must put in place and enforce a record retention policy that recognizes the three major reasons to keep information: business value, regulatory requirements and legal holds.“

What is the Start Point for Business Process Automation By Eben Illingworth, Nintex
What is the Start Point for Business Process Automation By Eben Illingworth, Nintex
Blog Posts

Finding the right starting-point for business process automation is always a challenge, particularly when keeping the budget low is a priority. BPA (Business Process Automation) becomes profitable when a high volume of processes are automated, but how do you get to that point quickly to maximize ROI?

The Human Resources department is the answer. HR processes by their very nature are common to all employees so the processes you choose to automate there will reach the largest audience and return the highest value.

Some great processes to start with are:

Digital Signatures for Document Workflow and SharePoint
Digital Signatures for Document Workflow and SharePoint
Blog Posts

As business-critical processes continue to make their way onto SharePoint, they create an increasingly prevalent need for secure, legally-enforceable, and manageable automated signature capability. This is due in part by the fact that, without a digital signing capability within SharePoint, paper is introduced into otherwise automated processes each time the need for a signature authorization arises, thus creating the need to print, manually route, track, and archive paper documents. In addition to increasing organizational costs and inducing process delays, this reliance on paper hinders the enhanced efficiency and collaboration companies seek to achieve via SharePoint.

Blog 5 SharePoint Integration and User Management
Blog 5 SharePoint Integration and User Management
Blog Posts

SharePoint Integration

In the past, integrating multifunctional devices with SharePoint had been significantly difficult to achieve especially when the integration needed to take place not only on one Multifunctional device but on a heterogeneous fleet of devices. No wonder you can find all kinds of technical forums that have “SharePoint integration” as the topic of discussion and desperate administrators searching for help.

It is still a hard nut to crack for many IT specialists all around the world. Getting a fleet of multifunctional devices integrated with SharePoint and continuously maintaining and updating all of the configurations needed for a smooth documents workflow (just think of all the different user rights for specific folders, sites etc.), is a daunting task to be sure.

How to Implement an Effective SharePoint Governance Plan
How to Implement an Effective SharePoint Governance Plan
Blog Posts

Are you thinking about deploying SharePoint in your organization? You won’t have to do much research before
you come across the big “G” word – governance. Just the word itself is somewhat imposing and definitions for
it will vary. In fact, if you ask three different experts what governance means, you’re likely to get four different
answers. And while I have yet to find that one, perfect definition of governance, I can accept this one from
Microsoft: “Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that guides, directs, and
controls how an organization’s business divisions and IT teams cooperate to achieve business goals.” In short,
it is a “how to” guide.

Why do we need governance? Because we want to ensure (or even better, assure) that the IT solution
achieves the business goals. With complex systems like SharePoint, users need help. Users need guidance
on what they can do and how they do it. Trust me, they aren’t going to just “figure it out.” You may also have
content that must comply with legal regulations such as HIPAA or Sarbanes Oxley—without a governance
plan, you may be in legal jeopardy.

Scaling SharePoint through Governance
Scaling SharePoint through Governance
Blog Posts

SharePoint has become a critical business platform within most organizations, and yet many companies struggle with making SharePoint scale to meet their growing end user demands. As SharePoint grows (more users, more business scenarios addressed, more solutions deployed), it becomes more complex. Administrators are looking for best practices, trying to learn from the rest of the community. More and more organizations are thinking about governance as a way to help them to get their environments under control and to help them scale. Some of these best practices are unique to SharePoint, but most can be applied to any enterprise application. In our experience as Microsoft Gold Partners, adherence to five key focus areas will help companies get their SharePoint environments under control, allowing them to get the most value out of their SharePoint investments.

HiSoftware Sponsors European SharePoint Conference 2011
HiSoftware Sponsors European SharePoint Conference 2011
Blog Posts

iSoftware Inc., a leading provider of content-aware compliance solutions, today announced it will be a Bronze Sponsor and exhibitor at the European SharePoint Conference 2011 from the 17-21 October in Berlin, Germany.

The European SharePoint Conference is the largest of its kind offering the latest insights, knowledge and experience from some of the best Microsoft SharePoint® experts, including Microsoft Certified Masters (MCM), Microsoft MVPs and other worldwide speakers and industry thought leaders.

SharePoint – It’s all about Freedom
SharePoint – It’s all about Freedom
Blog Posts

In a recent article, It’s Not About Apple vs. Microsoft, Or Apple vs. Google. It’s About Freedom, David Johnson. Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, wrote about the unrealistic restraints that end users find are being imposed by IT systems and policy. The article begins with a fantastic quote that resonated here at Metalogix, “We are learning once again that what people want most is to be free.”

Is it Healthy to use SharePoint to Store Safety and Compliance Training Records? Yes and No.
Is it Healthy to use SharePoint to Store Safety and Compliance Training Records? Yes and No.
Blog Posts

When delivering training for health and safety reasons or for compliance with regulations, it’s usual to document that people have been through training, so that if something goes wrong, you have proof of the training. To quote the US OSHA (www.osha.gov/Publications/osha2254.pdf): Documentation can also supply an answer to one of the first questions an accident investigator will ask: “Was the injured employee trained to do the job?

SharePoint seems a reasonable place to store documentation of training, either to scan in any paper attendance or completion forms, or else if training is conducted online to use SharePoint list and record-keeping details to get the employee to confirm that they have received the training. If it’s stored in SharePoint, it will be retained with other data and accessible into the long term future, and so the initial answer to the question seems a “yes”.