SharePoint 2013 Analysis & Reviews

For many of us who eagerly await the release of the latest and greatest from Microsoft we were shocked and awed when we discovered that this release removed one of the primary tools for Business Users from the product. SharePoint Designer, as we had come to know it, had been drastically changed.

Last year Iron Mountain sold off its digital assets to Autonomy. Then Autonomy got gobbled up by HP and we thought that was that. But any fears that Iron Mountain exited the information management space can be put to rest by today’s announcement of its new records management product that works with SharePoint.

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?

Let’s face it, mobility should absolutely be on your radar if you’re an IT executive or decision maker. Whether your firm has a substantial investment in mobile devices for the workforce or you’ve adopted modern BYOD policies, you cannot ignore the impact of mobile devices on how we do business. Microsoft knows this, and has been hard at work to upgrade SharePoint’s plumbing in relation to the mobile experience.

Did you miss me? Since wrapping up the Art of SharePoint Success series here on CMSWire I’ve been reviewing the SharePoint Server 2013 Preview. There’s already lots of articles and posts out there that tell you about all the cool new features but little guidance on how to use them in an organization, or what benefits they might deliver so I am back with a new series of articles which examine SharePoint 2013 from the executive's perspective.

There’s a lot of noise on the street since the announcement of SharePoint 2013. We’re headed towards the largest SharePoint conference of the year in Las Vegas this November and it’s only going to get louder. Where does that leave you, the end user of SharePoint? About where you were before the announcement came out, I would think. It should not affect you at all.

Sometimes Microsoft gets a good idea and then doesn’t follow through on it. This is the case with SharePoint and support for education. There’s a long history here and Microsoft appeared to drop a major opportunity. But SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 may just change that.

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the Tweet Jam about SharePoint. One of the topics that came up was the importance of Governance. In this article I want to dive deeper into this topic and stress how important governance is within your environment. 

This is the last article of a four-part 35,000-foot overview of some of the major changes expected in SharePoint 2013. What's in store for the end user?

There are a lot of opinions about Microsoft Office SharePoint, some favorable and others less so, but no matter the camp you sit in, there is no denying it’s ubiquity in our organizations.

When it comes to information worker tools, it’s rare I hear someone from IT say “we walk a day in the life of our end users and start backwards from there.” Seldom do they ask “how do our people want to work?” or “what tools and information do our workers need exactly?”    

Data. It overwhelms us.

Most marketers say they're failing to use it optimally. A recent survey showed that most people are not leveraging analytics well. Another study found a lack of analytical minds and skills in key roles.

Getting Good Data
Good data is step one and Forrester recently evaluated Tag Management Systems -- looking at this evolving role of data capture.

Analytics vendors play a key role too and are constantly facing new challenges. This week we saw Webtrends improve measurement of both web and social activity.

In September we'll focused on how marketers can better use their data to make decisions and optimize digital experiences. Stay tuned.

SharePoint 2013 - Disappointing, or Not?
SharePoint's evolution is pleasing many (see SharePoint 2013: 7 Features Users are Going to Love). But worth a read is SharePoint 2013: Not Quite What I Expected.

This week we also checked out SharePoint 2013 workflows and social networking and climbed up for a 35,000 foot view of SharePoint 2013 for Designers.

Most Popular

• Forrester Wave: IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce Build Online Collaboration Lead
• SharePoint 2013: Not Quite What I Expected
• MS Office Web Apps Add Touch for iPad and Windows 8 Tablets
• 35,000 Foot View of SharePoint 2013 for Administrators
• Intranet Launch Checklist

Editor's Picks

• Delivering Content to Mobile Devices: A Strategy for Implementation
• Marketing vs IT: Who Drives the Customer Experience? #BMAthriving
• Adobe 2012 Mobile Survey Highlights the Rise of Mobile and the Demise of the User Experience
• Alfresco Records Management 2.0 Provides Granular Controls, Mobile Access
• SharePoint Projects: Ant Clay on the Importance of Vision

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Featured Events (all events | post your event)

• Aug 29 -- Webinar (The New Rules of Social Knowledge Management)
• Sep 04 -- Content Marketing World Columbus
• Sep 13 -- Henry Stewart DAM Conference in Chicago
• Sep 30 -- Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco
• Nov 14 -- Forrester's Customer Experience Forum West Los Angeles

Featured Jobs (all jobs | post your job)

• Content Operations Manager in Santa Clara at Intel
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• Senior Data Architect in California at Inflection
• User Experience Consultant in London at Squiz UK

There's no predicting what will come up during a Tweet Jam, and this week's SharePoint Tweet Jam was no different.

Panelists covered the same ground that our feature writers did this week and weeks previous, touching on questions of governance, adoption challenges and breakfast meats. 

We also had reports from the conference field, with updates streaming in from DrupalCon Munich, the Business Marketing Association's Denver conference and Altamont Group's Social Media Intelligence in San Francisco. 

Read on for details.

On Wednesday, we spent our lunch break discussing what we liked about SharePoint, what we considered to be its biggest challenges, as well as what we looked forward to most with SharePoint 2013. But just because we spent an hour talking about SharePoint doesn't mean it was serious business. Who knew that SharePoint could be this much fun?!

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