Chris Wright News & Articles

Microsoft recently announced its phased approach for integrating Yammer with SharePoint 2013, so it will be much later this year before we see any meaningful work completed to bring the two platforms together. But in the meantime, users can look forward to easier access to Yammer from within Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

Last month I wrote an article that stated SharePoint, as a brand, would soon disappear. It seems with Microsoft's recent announcement regarding its plans for Yammer, I have been proved correct.

In the not too distant future, I predict SharePoint will disappear altogether. It might take a year, maybe a little longer. But at some point soon it will be gone.

A SharePoint road map. It’s a neat phrase, and one that evokes images of nicely labelled diagrams, feature discussions and documented plans for the future.

And it won’t work. Certainly not for everyone.

SharePoint is great, but not everyone knows how best to use this formidable platform to build the system that they want. Take the humble Intranet.

This year is a big one for SharePoint 2013.

This year's SharePoint conference is now over, and as people return for Las Vegas there is time to reflect on the many announcements made at the show.

The recent beta of SharePoint 2013 brought with it a new version of its sister product: Project Server 2013. Project Server is built on top of SharePoint, and is designed to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Project for large scale enterprise project management.

SharePoint is a complex product. It can be used for Intranets, websites, portals and custom solutions. It supports document management, workflows, content creation, business intelligence and more. Is it little wonder users get confused?

As many of those who have used Microsoft SharePoint will know, it is a bit of a "kitchen sink" product. It offers the typical enterprise a bit of everything -- a bit of workflow, lots of document management, social features, calendars, basic task management -- this list goes on. As a result it can be difficult to know what bits to use and how best to use them. Intranet projects can quickly become bloated and the final product is met with a resounding whimper by end users.

Anyone interested in Microsoft SharePoint will have by now seen the new version. SharePoint 2013 is packed with lots of new and exciting features. 

So what do we think of the new Metro (oops ... we can’t use that word anymore, can we? It is now "Windows 8 style UI") stylings in SharePoint 2013? Like it? Love it? I’ll be honest, I’m not sure. I’m not sure end users are going to enjoy it.

The recent beta release of SharePoint 2013 brought with it many things. One of those was "apps."

A couple of years ago I wrote here about the dangers of “look and feel fever” when working on SharePoint projects. This is where the UI of a SharePoint implementation is customized, and the client subsequently becomes obsessed with what the system looks like rather than what it offers functionally. It is with this in mind that I noted the SharePoint 2013 announcement on the official Microsoft SharePoint blog.

So SharePoint 2013 has finally been officially announced. The community is now busy downloading the files, firing up virtual machines and evaluating the product. There is lots to be learnt and all kinds of new features to be discovered. What will certainly be interesting is how quickly businesses migrate to the new platform. From my own personal experience, when SharePoint 2010 was released, many clients chose to stay with the current version for a number of months. Will SharePoint 2013 be any more tempting?