Mike Ferrara News & Articles

Last year I wrote an article entitled “Is the Legal Industry Ready for SharePoint?”, as I had just gotten back from ILTA with fresh questions in my mind from inquiring customers about using the platform as a Document Management System (DMS), in lieu of Autonomy Worksite or OpenText DOCS Open. The article was a simple walk through on the viability of moving to SharePoint as a DMS in a law firm.

I’d like to expand on that topic now and share with you some of my experiences with respect to recent client engagements of this type.

Editor's Note: This article serves as part 2 of the article mentioned above.

At last week’s SharePoint Conference in Anaheim, I attended the “CMIS Deep Dive and Roadmap” session, which was led by Adam Harmetz, Program Manager at Microsoft and Microsoft’s lead CMIS rep; Mike Mahon, President and CEO of Zia Consulting; and Ryan McVeigh, Director at Zia Consulting and CMIS Secretary and Technical Editor. The talk opened up with Adam giving a brief overview of what CMIS is and what its goals are.

The first session of the 2011 SharePoint conference I decided to check out was in regards to Microsoft’s vision for business intelligence (BI). This has been a hot topic for many readers who are interested in moving to SharePoint or are already invested in the platform. The presentation was delivered by Microsoft’s Steve Tullis, Group Program Manager for the Office BI team, and Kamal Hathi, General Manager of the BI Group in Microsoft SQL Server.

Or maybe the more appropriate question should be: is SharePoint ready for legal? The latter is one that I am constantly asked by my clients. Part of the problem in answering that question is that I tend to be a little biased toward SharePoint as the end all be all for an enterprise platform. I’ve built my career on working with SharePoint, and you could say that I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid for a while now. But as a consultant, my job is not to tell you what the best product is; it’s to tell you what the best product is for your firm’s needs.

On the first day of SharePoint Best Practices Conference 2011 in La Jolla, CA, I sat in a session by Matthew McDermott entitled "SharePoint Search -- Challenges and Tricks". He highlighted the basic overall principles of how SharePoint 2010 search works on the back end and some common pitfalls that can happen in any firm when implementing search. He also presented us with a few handy tricks that can enhance the search results experience in SharePoint 2010. One of those tricks is the usage of the link to document content type in SharePoint 2010 libraries.

As SharePoint continues to gain traction in the enterprise, the legal industry is beginning to consider it as a major player in the document and content management arena. The buzz surrounding Workshare Point has gained a steady following, so I thought I would spend some time showing you a lesser-known competitor in this market, DMSForLegal. 

During your search for the appropriate Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution, you've no doubt considered SharePoint as a possibility. SharePoint is probably already being utilized in your organization in some way, so it makes sense to see how it measures up. But does SharePoint 2010 offer enough OOTB features to be a legitimate candidate? 

Back in March, I talked about 8 ways web content management has improved in SharePoint 2010. Each feature contributes in some way to a richer SharePoint experience that end users are quickly becoming fond of. One feature that I think needs a little more showcasing is the new content organizer. It’s not flashy like the new AJAX GUI or slick like the new WYSIWYG editor, but it may become one of the most useful tools at your disposal. 

Moving from Autonomy (news, site) Worksite 8.x to Worksite 8.5 is no small matter. With so many changes to this 8.5 release, you may wonder why it wasn't called 9.0. 

There's more than one way to collaborate and work with SharePoint 2010 (news, site), and Microsoft has SharePoint Workspace 2010 to prove it. Not sure what this Workspace thing is? Let's have a closer look.

One of the biggest paradigm shifts in today’s computing environment is the influence of social networking, and how it affects day-to-day business activities. So how will SharePoint 2010 (news, site) get with the times when it comes to social networking?

As the upcoming releases of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 draw closer, I’ve been highlighting some of the best new features that will be available this spring. This time, I’ll show you a very exciting feature that will allow your end users to work on their Office documents in a zero-client environment from within SharePoint 2010.

Some say that Microsoft hasn't really made many changes to SharePoint 2007's web content management functionality for SharePoint 2010 (news, site). While the underlying architecture may not have changed, there are some improvements that you are bound to like. Here are 8 changes to SharePoint WCM that you need to know about.

It’s no secret that the new managed metadata service in SharePoint 2010 (news, site) will be a welcomed addition to the product. What may not be apparent is exactly how this service will benefit your end-users. It will. Here's how.