SharePoint 2013 Analysis & Reviews

In the year 2008, Microsoft acquired a technology company called Fast Search & Transfer ASA for a whopping US$ 1.2 billion. With this acquisition, Microsoft capitalized on the reputation Fast Search had built for itself in the field of enterprise search and tightened its grip on the workspace collaboration ecosystem by introducing the Fast Search feature in SharePoint 2013.

We've already looked at the Knowledge community in SharePoint, now it's time to look at the Power User and the Operational Communities to see who they are,  and what the specific needs and best practices are for each.

This week there has been a lot of talk about SharePoint and while there are as many opinions as there are use cases, SmartLogic in a new paper says it could be a lot better. Elsewhere, newbie SkyKick has launched its Application Suite, while DocPath has integrated its document management system with Dynamics AX.

When deploying SharePoint within an organization, it is key to look at the needs and requirements of the user base. To simplify this process, I've identified three key internal communities.

Based on simple math, we all know that 1+1=2. This is a simple concept that we learn very early in life. When it comes to SharePoint though, when you consider the tools available to you, you have a huge advantage of being able to use more than one tool, combined together, to create an outcome that is far greater than 2.  

The latest vendor to upgrade its products in an effort to keep up with the ever changing face of SharePoint is Colligo, which has just announced the release of Email Manager v6.0 and Colligo Briefcase v6.0.

One of the principal business considerations around the new SharePoint 2013 official release is going to be pricing. We already saw signs that with the Office 365 upgrade, Microsoft is pushing users towards subscription models. But what about SharePoint 2013 as SaaS? Web hosting vendor Newtek is going to be offering just that.

In the last post, I called it like I seen it: SharePoint out of the box can’t do records management. 2007, 2010, 2013 -- none of ‘em left to their own devices are worth much when it comes to automating the retention and (more importantly) disposition of your records according to the retention schedule.

Has the massive investment in SharePoint lived up to its promise as the uber-collaboration platform for the enterprise?

Let’s start this admittedly provocative post with a question: Anybody out there actually doing records management in SharePoint?

As a SharePoint MVP, active member of the global SharePoint community, an experienced project manager with knowledge of SharePoint business user topics, I am often asked "What are the best practices for SharePoint governance?"

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.

If you think that talking about SharePoint migration challenges is like a broken record, think again. Not only are their new challenges with each new release of SharePoint, but migration isn’t just a one-time activity. Smart organizations know it’s an ongoing task. But more importantly, with the last release of Office 365, SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2013, it’s even more critical to have a good migration strategy. Let me tell you why.

I attend quite a few SharePoint conferences, and I’ve never been to a bad one, but they all have different approaches and emphasize different things. The SHARE conference in Atlanta next week definitely has a different approach than other conferences.

It may have been a holiday weekend in some places, but it was still busy in the document management space. This week we took a look at the paperless office and records management, Accusoft upgraded Content Connect to v7, AvePoint improved governance in SharePoint online, while Zoho integrated new email capabilities with its CRM app.