ChangeBot Challenge at SPTechCon in Austin!

PremierPoint Solutions is at SPTechCon in Austin this week!

Come see us at Booth 601 if you're there too. Come take the ChangeBot Challenge to enter for a chance to win a BB8. We'll show you the droid you ARE looking for.

Future of InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 in 2016

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

Cloud Warning! The risk of online services

I ran across a dark underbelly of cloud services

picture taken by cjohnson7

this week. It was fairly unexpected but I think that it emphasizes one of the key problems when looking at cloud services.

Who really owns the data?

Can You Migrate SharePoint FBA SQL External User Accounts and Passwords to Office 365?

(Update as of August 2018:  This article is still accurate.  However, a new option for migrating on-premises FBA\SQL external user accounts is now available - ExCM Extranet Online.  Businesses with significant investments in on-premises SharePoint extranets now have the option  to use Office 365 for Intranet purposes and ExCM Extranet Online for extranet purposes.  ExCM Extranet Online supports seamless migration of SharePoint on-premises external user accounts and content.)

The short answer is: there is no way to do this and likely never will be.  Read on if you are interested in more details.

Background on SharePoint FBA and SQL External User Accounts

Using SharePoint’s forms-based authentication feature along with the SQL Membership Provider feature has been a very popular way to use SharePoint as an extranet platform for many years.  In many cases, after a company got their Intranet up and running on SharePoint, the next logical step was to provision a new Web Application for use as an extranet for collaborating with customers, vendors, etc.

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.

Are the Ramifications of In-place Office 365 External Sharing Easily Comprehendible?

The external sharing feature of Office 365 fosters the concept of being able to share a document with an external user from wherever the document “lives” in Office 365 SharePoint.   In other words, the feature-set does not natively encourage the separation of “Intranet content” and “Extranet content”.  I call this approach “in-place external sharing”. 

[FYI, I define Intranet content as documents, etc. that are only appropriate for internal employees to be able to access ( for example, a pre-launch product marketing strategy document).  I define Extranet content as documents, etc. that both internal employees AND external non-employees can have access to (for example, a post-launch product reseller fact sheet)].

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.

In-Person vs. Live Online SharePoint Training: Which Is Best for You?

PremierPoint Solutions’ Marketing Director Don Beehler recently interviewed SharePoint trainer Robert Schley about what students should consider when evaluating in-person vs. live online training.

Beehler: What are the main differences between in-person and live online SharePoint training in terms of the experience students have?

Schley: With in-person training, there is student/trainer interaction during lunch and breaks, and during those times topics related to a class often come up and are discussed. Another difference is that with live online students, I can’t see their body language very well, so it’s hard to know students if students are really getting what I’m saying or if I need to elaborate or rephrase certain information. I also can’t tell if they are ignoring me or if they are silent because they understand what I’m telling them. In class we banter more and topics just naturally come up, including things they aren’t quite getting. The online students have a more limited opportunity to interact, so they have to be willing to speak up with their questions. Successful live online students are assertive and take responsibility for their training.

ChangeBot’s PowerShell Activity – Set an AD Group as Site Collection Administrator

This post is the first in a series where we will look at how to accomplish certain tasks utilizing ChangeBot’s PowerShell Activity (available in ChangeBot Premium Edition).  ChangeBot already offers you 50 (70 if you use our ExCM product) activities to accomplish a plethora of site administration and user change request actions. If something you want to accomplish can’t be done via one of those activities, then the PowerShell activity can come to the rescue. 

With the combination of ChangeBot’s already powerful activities and the ability to run a PowerShell script as an activity – there really isn’t much that you can’t automate, audit, and run through a proper approval process, when utilizing ChangeBot. You might even have existing PowerShell scripts you need to occasionally run. Why not put official procedures around the process and let ChangeBot execute the PowerShell scripts via a user request form.