SharePoint 2013 Licensing: What is the one thing that would really help customers?

By Jeff Cate, Founder and President, PremierPoint Solutions

This post falls into the “my two cents worth” category.

As most know, starting with the 2007 version of SharePoint, the product is available in three editions. In the 2010 version of SharePoint, those three are SharePoint Foundation, Server Standard, and Server Enterprise.  Microsoft publishes a good comparison of what you get in each edition here for SharePoint 2010.

I think most people know that the Foundation edition of SharePoint does not require any additional license purchase other than Windows Server licenses and Windows Server CALs.  People often talk about the Foundation Edition being “free.”  We could debate whether or not this is really true given that Windows Server licenses are still required, but that debate is not for this post.

Advanced SharePoint Extranet Management: Implementing Extranet Collaboration Manager (ExCM) 2010 Advanced Features – Part 3 - User Automation

by Matthew McBride, SharePoint Solutions

One problem that SharePoint Server Administrators regularly encounter is this:
How can I know when an extranet user from a partner company leaves the company, and how can I avoid accumulating inactive accounts for users that no longer exist that are just “sitting out there?” 

Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to keep up with the “comings and goings” of extranet users who are employees of partner companies.

But Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010 (ExCM) contains within it the capability of helping our clients with specific extranet user security needs like this. The ExCM User Automation (UA) feature can be used to apply recurring policies to accounts residing in the ExCM user database.  These policies are applied by a SharePoint Timer Job, which periodically inspects each account.  UA can be used to expire user accounts based on attributes such as periods of inactivity or failure to update their password within a specified period, solving the problem of user account “housekeeping.”

The Missing Pieces in Most SharePoint Server Administrators’ Skill Sets

Last year a four-year-old boy made national news when he took his mother’s SUV for a joyride. For a boy his age, he had some impressive driving skills. He managed to maneuver onto a busy Southern California street during rush hour, making his way through several turns and intersections.

Eventually, though, his lack of training caught up with him and he crashed into a fence after crossing into oncoming traffic. Fortunately, the daring lad wasn’t badly hurt, but his mom’s vehicle didn’t fare nearly as well. He had enough skill to get the car running down the street and to make a few panicky turns, but he didn’t have the training to control his speed, keep the SUV headed in the right direction or even stay in his lane.

I often hear students tell me, “I just want to learn to configure and administer SharePoint. I’m the Server Administrator and I’m not going to be involved in the day-to-day business use of it.” Or an IT Manager may tell me, “Kelly is going to be our new SharePoint Server Administrator. She just needs to know how to administer and configure the server—she doesn’t need all that end-user stuff.”

Implementing SharePoint Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010 (ExCM) Advanced Features– Part 2 – Extranet Account Managers

By Matthew McBride

Overview of Extranet Account Managers

In the 2007 version of Extranet Collaboration Manager (ExCM), we received a lot of feedback from customers regarding Site Collection Administrators and their ability to delete external accounts.  Many of them experienced inadvertent user deletion due to the elevated permissions a Site Collection Administrator has by default.

In Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint 2010, users can only be deleted from the following Users tab ribbon in the ExCM Extranet Users menu:

Implementing SharePoint Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010 (ExCM) Advanced Features – Part 1 – Authentication Provider Mapping

By Matthew McBride

Overview of Authentication Provider Mapping

SharePoint Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010 (ExCM) can streamline the experience for users located inside your corporate network by implementing a feature called Authentication Provider Mapping (APM).  This simply maps an IP address to a specific authentication provider.  When APM is enabled and configured, it will determine whether the request for your ExCM page is coming from inside your network or from an external user.  This is achieved by specifying a range of IP addresses belonging to your internal network and then specifying the authentication provider that is to be used (Windows in this case).

Applying Master Pages with Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010

by Matthew McBride, Software Division

Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010  (ExCM) is a SharePoint add-in developed by SharePoint Solutions that streamlines SharePoint extranet collaboration and simplifies SharePoint extranet administration. In ExCM, a master page can be applied to the anonymous pages (registration, sign-in, and password reset) to achieve a desired look and feel.  There are three options when selecting a master page:

• ExCM anonymous master page (vanilla)
• Site default master page
• Custom master page

You should consider two factors when choosing the master page for your site:  branding and anonymous access.  You also need to take into account the anonymous access configuration of your Web Application and the site that will run the anonymous pages.

SharePoint Life Cycle Management

Most organizations lack a formal SharePoint life cycle management process. What frequently happens is a company finds itself facing uncontrolled SharePoint growth. SharePoint quickly becomes a disheveled mass of new sites, old sites, stale sites, and even duplicate sites. Left to their own devices, users begin creating business-critical applications in obscure SharePoint sites that IT doesn’t even know about. Without proper guidance and controls for style, navigation or branding, every team, department and business unit has a site that looks and feels different from everybody else’s. Further complicating the matter, SharePoint users (you know, those folks who have to do their jobs in order to keep the doors open and the paychecks flowing) become disillusioned because the uncontrolled SharePoint growth negatively impacts the relevance of search results, making it more difficult for them to find the content they are looking for. Decision-makers come to realize that without the proper tools, it is costly to manage SharePoint.

SharePoint Governance Plan

Is SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning on your mind?  Not sure where to start? In the Microsoft TechNet topic entitled Plan site creation and maintenance (SharePoint Server 2010), Microsoft is quick to point out that before you deploy and make sites available to users, you will need to answer questions such as:

• Do you want to tightly control site creation or to allow many users to create sites?
• At which level in the site hierarchy should additional sites be created?
• How do you find and remove unused sites in your environment?

Our New Free SharePoint Training Video Series

SharePoint Solutions is pleased to announce the release of the first two videos of a new free SharePoint training video series: SharePoint 101 – What Makes SharePoint Work. The free video series is the latest addition to our free SharePoint training video library, and introduces the viewer to key foundational SharePoint concepts and strategies, with a view towards helping organizations derive the most value from their SharePoint implementations. The videos may be accessed from the red “Free Training Videos” button at the top of our SharePoint Solutions home page at https://www.premierpointsolutions.com/.

Announcing Our New Introductory SharePoint 2010 Course for Server Administrators

In response to numerous requests over the last several months, SharePoint Solutions is pleased to announce a new addition to our catalogue of SharePoint 2010 courses: Introduction to SharePoint 2010 for Server Administrators, a 3-day hands-on instructor-led course designed to give IT Professionals a jump-start and quickly bring them up to speed on installing and managing their SharePoint 2010 environment.

Introduction to SharePoint 2010 for Server Administrators is aimed at IT Professionals who are responsible for installing, configuring, designing, and administering a SharePoint 2010 environment. It is designed for a technical audience consisting of administrators, developers, web masters, and others who wish to gain basic technical knowledge about SharePoint 2010.

No prior knowledge of any version of SharePoint is assumed. The course is structured in a manner that assumes the student is an IT Professional, and comes to class with basic technical skills. Experience with SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2007 is neither required nor expected of the student. Obviously, some students who attend will already have experience with SharePoint. The instructors will make the appropriate connections for these students in the lecture, without confusing the students who are new to SharePoint.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand what features are available in each of the three SharePoint 2010 editions (SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Edition, and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition), to help them determine which edition is most appropriate for their organization
• Understand the concepts and terminologies that are unique to SharePoint 2010
• Understand how end users work in SharePoint on a daily basis
• Learn to administer sites, site collections, and server farms
• Install and configure SharePoint 2010
• Administer site security
• Configure Kerberos security between SharePoint and external applications
• Plan and implement backup and restore procedures
• Configure and administer the Enterprise Search Service
• Configure and administer the User Profile Service
• Configure and administer the Managed Metadata Service

The course includes a simulated installation/configuration of the SharePoint 2010 Server software in a virtual Windows Server 2008 environment. Each student will have his or her own unique virtual server on which to work.
The discussion will include what versions of SQL Server can be used with SharePoint, the various topologies that can be used to scale up your environment, and planning considerations from a hardware perspective, all with an emphasis on recommended best practices.
The cost of the three-day course is $1895. Classes are enrolling now for Q1 of 2012.