SharePoint On-Premises is Still Loved by Customers – Maybe to Microsoft’s Chagrin?

To me, at least, it is no secret that Microsoft has been trying very hard for several years to get as many SharePoint customers as possible to migrate off SharePoint on-premises and to SharePoint Online (a.k.a Office 365).


Of course, I don’t have any hard numbers that show that this has been what Microsoft has been doing.  I just have my own impressions from their marketing pushes, product investments and anecdotes from people I know around the SharePoint world.

One anecdote came from a former colleague that works in IT on the SharePoint team for one of the major auto makers in the U.S.  He told me within the last year that every time the Microsoft team shows up at the company’s headquarters, that all the MS team wants to the talk about is SharePoint Online and when the company will migrate to it.

Future of InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 in 2016

Is this finally a real future of InfoPath and SharePoint Designer? 

Should a Business Extranet Application Run on a Cloud Service?

Because we make an extranet-enabling add-in for on-premise SharePoint, we are getting this question more and more.  People are wanting to know why they should even consider running their extranet applications on-premise any more when “everything is moving to the Cloud”?

(Aside: our definition of a business extranet application is an application that is designed for secure and private collaboration between a business and a business partner such as a customer, vendor etc.  On-premise SharePoint has long been an excellent and popular platform for this type of application when securely published to the Internet using Forms-based Authentication.)

What External Users Cannot Do in Office 365 SharePoint Online

There are times in every organization when it becomes necessary to collaborate with partners, vendors, clients, and even employees who are outside of the company office. SharePoint is built for collaboration, so it is a “natural” for collaboration between users from within, as well as outside, the organization.

An ideal SharePoint collaboration solution would provide external users:

• Easy, but secure, access to the files and information they need
• The functionality to accomplish the task, or to collaborate on it effectively
• The ability to communicate effectively and efficiently with other members of the team (internal and external users) in the collaboration environment
• The capability of effectively using the full range of tools that the collaboration solution provides

A SharePoint extranet hosted on-premises makes the full range of SharePoint functionality available to each user, whether internal or external, according to the limitations set in place by the extranet administrator.

The addition of Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint (ExCM), a SharePoint add-on product by PremierPoint Solutions, enables streamlined, powerful, management of SharePoint extranet users, while simplifying access and use for extranet users. It is fully integrated into the SharePoint management interface, and its features are accessible through Site Settings.

These days, however, a growing number of organizations are moving away from SharePoint on premises to Office 365 SharePoint Online, a subscription-based online solution hosted in the cloud by Microsoft. Office 365 provides limited external collaboration capability through its External Sharing feature. But is this scaled-down extranet substitute, with its limited functionality, a worthy replacement for a full-featured extranet? Let’s think about that for a moment.

Is On-Premises SharePoint Fading Away?

Or is that just what they'd LIKE you to believe?

The conference pep rallies, the executive speeches, the official videos, the company line – to hear Microsoft tell it (publicly), you’d think that SharePoint on-premises was a thing of the past – gone the way of XP, Vista, etc., and replaced by Office 365 SharePoint online.

But is it? Is SharePoint on-premises really finished?

Even though Microsoft wants you to believe the future of software is completely “cloudy” (with everything running as SaaS in the cloud), several industry articles published in the last couple of weeks have infused a healthy dose of skepticism (and caution) into the mix. Maybe…just maybe…we’re not getting the WHOLE story.

SharePoint 2016 from Ignite!

Wow! That's the first thing I want to say.
I was fortunate enough to attend the SharePoint conference 3 years ago and the difference from then to today is just amazing.  I attended three sessions here at Microsoft Ignite and the next generation is just beautiful.  The TL:DR version is that Microsoft has been forced to use their own products for the last 3 years and are now giving users the corrections for all the headaches they found.

SharePoint 2016, not till Q2 of 2016

A friend forwarded this article from ZDNet about Microsoft holding off of SharePoint 2016 release until almost the middle of 2016.  The beta should be out this year still, but...

I was really hoping to see it shortly after the Ignite conference next month. According to that article and other references, Microsoft will still be demoing 2016 at the conference.  Anyone else think they are pushing off the on-premise release till after all the capabilities are released on Office 365?

Regardless, hope to see you at Ignite!  We'll have a booth, come find us!

The Top 5 Free SharePoint-Related Software Products

Some of the most powerful, most useful, and most versatile business software is available at no cost.

That fact, in and of itself, is mind-blowing.

Below, you’ll find links to free SharePoint-related products that are capable of accomplishing a myriad of sophisticated tasks with minimal effort.

There is no reason you shouldn’t take advantage of these free products. Help yourself!

SharePoint Foundation 2013 – The king of free downloads. This is the free edition of SharePoint itself. For many small businesses and organizations, this may be all the SharePoint you really need. Download it here.

SharePoint Designer 2013 – Use this powerful tool to create sophisticated workflow automation solutions and a whole lot more. Get it here.

ChangeBot Free Edition – The automated change attendant from PremierPoint Solutions. ChangeBot handles SharePoint requests submitted by users – from request to approval to execution. The free edition is limited to automatic creation/provisioning of sites and site collections. Download it here.

The SharePoint Color Palette Tool – This free tool from Microsoft allows you to set your SharePoint color scheme down to the tiniest detail. Get it here.

PowerPivot for Excel – This free add-on for Microsoft Excel allows the user to conduct powerful Business Intelligence analysis. Using this tool, you can work with extremely large data sets; combine data from different sources (including SharePoint lists); create visually appealing analytical models; slice and dice data with DAX; and publish dashboards to SharePoint. Download PowerPivot here. (To publish dashboards to SharePoint, you need another piece, Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint, available here at no charge.)

In addition to all THESE freebies, you can access a large library of Help and How-To articles and resources at no charge on our PremierPoint Solutions website, here.

And don’t forget our library of free SharePoint training videos, also available on our website, here.

They're all useful, they're all powerful, and they're all yours for the taking. Download and enjoy!

InfoPath and "Cloud" woes

I was recently forwarded an article from a professional colleague that brought a little bit of a dark shadow to the promised land of "the cloud".  I'm a big fan of InfoPath for its ability to empower Power Users to build what they need; especially the ease of accessing web services.

Regrettably in Office 365 it is not possible to make use
of your SharePoint User Profile Service web service with InfoPath Forms Services (InfoPath forms in a browser on SharePoint).  This prevents your online forms from gathering information about users from just the place that was designed to let you do so in SharePoint.  Due to security concerns, Microsoft will simply not allow it.  This is a negligible issue that could be evaluated, in an on-premise implementation, for acceptable risk but the decision is out of your hands when using cloud services.  InfoPath will be replaced in the future, but currently I believe that it has no peer except for 3rd party vendor software.  Please read here for the article about the scenario and further resources.

Who ya gonna blame?

Yesterday I wrote No Pain, No Gain to talk about the fact that its HARD to have good systems.  That's because systems are the combination of people, procedures and technologies, and no matter what the software platform, or whether on-premises or Cloud, it just takes a lot of hard work for both IT people and Business people to have good systems.  That's fundamentally the reason some businesses have good systems and some don't.

One thing I intended to mention in the article, but forgot, is to make the point that when something is hard and takes a lot of work to do well, some people (me included at times) will look to find someone (or some thing) to blame, rather than just buckling down and working hard to get a good outcome.

With that said, I think IT people, as a group, have been "thrown under the bus" a lot in the last few years.  I think it has come first as a result of some Business people being unable to accept the fact that good systems require hard work, and that means for them too, not just IT.  So, it is easiest to just blame IT.

No Pain, No Gain

I recently read this blog post on Sharegate's blog:

Move to Office 365:  Did SharePoint Become the Reason?

The very first line of the post says this:

"It's been a long and exhausting road with SharePoint"

It inspired me to leave this comment, which I realized I wanted to make into a blog post.  So, here it is:

For business people, "IT" has been a long and exhausting road for 30 years or more.  And, one of the rarely spoken truths is that one key reason is because it is "hard to create and maintain good systems".

Systems are the combination of people, procedures and technologies.  It is really hard for organizations to combine those three things and come up with something that is really good.

Display a Security Trimmed Listing of Sites Using SharePoint Search

Depending on where you live, and how frequently you travel by car, you might have come across vast areas taken over by kudzu.  I’m always amazed at the vast land area kudzu can quickly take over.  I’ll bet if you stared at it for a while, you could actually see it grow.

As SharePoint grows in your organization, so do the number of sites each of your users has access to.  So how do you go about showing a listing of sites the user has access to, especially if their sites are separate site collections or even web applications?

If you don’t provide something for the users, it might be easier for them to find a green crayon in a field of kudzu.  You need something to help users find their sites besides relying on them to have well organized bookmarks. 

The Best Way To Get A Correlation ID Error Out of Your ULS Logs

One constant in the SharePoint world is that there are always multiple ways to do almost everything.  I can't recall the number of times I've heard someone in a meeting say "there's many ways we can skin that cat" when asked how to do something in SharePoint.  I'm not real well versed in cat skinning, but I get the point.

I work with clients and customers all over the world.  It's interesting to see all the different ways and free tools used to figure out what that pesky correlation ID that popped up is trying to tell us.  There are definitely a lot of ways to skin that particular cat.  The one I use unequivocally in every situation is merge-splogfile.  This is definitely not a brand new concept but it is new to most of the SharePoint professionals I speak with.  I'm not the first to blog about it but since it is still relatively unknown with those I speak with, and this blog has good viewership, I feel compelled to share.

Is Microsoft Pressing the “Delete” Key on InfoPath?

What is the future of InfoPath?

I frequently get asked variations of that question in my SharePoint training classes.

Microsoft’s official guidance released earlier this year declared that InfoPath 2013 will be the last version of InfoPath.  This led to widespread panic (not the band) on the part of many individuals, and numerous rants about how InfoPath should be avoided at all costs and how migration to alternatives should be initiated immediately.

Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” The same could be said for InfoPath.

SharePoint Extranet on Office 365 – Part 1

So you want to use SharePoint for an Extranet.  First, let’s briefly consider reasons you would want an extranet in case you are still on the fence.  Simply put, if you have a need to collaborate with people external to your company, such as clients, vendors, and/or customers, you need an extranet.  A surprising number of businesses still “collaborate” and share documents by emailing back and forth.  
 

I recently purchased a new home and the number of documents that had to be shared (and re-shared) via email was astounding.  What if they had a website we could just post the documents to, and track what was left for me to send, and have a calendar of all the important dates?  You get the idea.  SharePoint works great for collaborating and sharing information with non-employees of any kind.  It’s not just documents, it’s tasks, calendars, and so many more of those out of the box SharePoint features you can take for granted.

Do you really need .NET experience?



by Robert Schley

As a SharePoint training instructor, I occasionally run across postings for SharePoint positions as I cruise the Internet reading up on SharePoint information in general.  This sometimes inspires me to take a look at what kinds of positions are out there and what the current trends are for hiring.  I look through job postings, not necessarily for myself but because I’m curious about what companies are interested in.

I’ve noticed that a lot of SharePoint positions out there have a funny little sentence in them.  I’m not just talking about positions that are marketed as programming or development positions – this requirement seems to be in about 95% of SharePoint positions I look at:

“.NET experience”

You’re Invested in Your Employees – Now Increase Your ROI!

By Randy Moody

Management, you are already invested in your employees, and have a vested interest in their success, so increasing their competency, productivity, job satisfaction, efficiency, and self-confidence, while reducing employee turnover, can provide greater returns on that investment and boost your bottom line. With that in mind, here are

7 Benefits of Quality SharePoint Training

Alternatives to SharePoint – Are there really any good ones if standardization and integration is a high priority for you and you have broad needs?

Man, the negative articles from the media about SharePoint just seem to keep coming.
Here are some recent articles that I have read in the news:

• Should Microsoft kill SharePoint? (on memeburn, based on a report and speech given by Gartner at a conference)
• SharePoint is Dead – Long Live Office 365 (on CMSWire)
• Are Dark Clouds Forming Over SharePoint? (on Redmond Magazine)

I think all of this stuff is a load of crap!  It is designed to get people to read stuff and pay for it by looking at and clicking on advertisements, or pay for it with cash in the case of Gartner’s report.

What is a SharePoint Administrator?

By Robert Schley,
PremierPoint Solutions, Training Division

What is a SharePoint Administrator?  Recently I've run into some confusion regarding what skills an Administrator would need in order to manage SharePoint.  I think the point would be clearer if we make a distinction between two different types of SharePoint Administrators.

Microsoft’s Hosted Solutions Bring Big Company IT to Small Business

by Robert Schley 

At the SharePoint Conference 2012, I was blown away by the ideas that Microsoft is putting out. In the past I've seen them as wanting to slowly creep into controlling every aspect of what IT folks want to do. It could just be that I'm in a different place now and not as directly involved with IT platform work. I think that may only be part of it, though. I am farther outside of the server farm than I have ever been, but I see the IT infrastructure more from a business perspective now. It's not, "Wow, that's awesome. I want it." I now see IT as, "What can it do for me and is it worth the money I put into it?"