Archive for October, 2009

Developing Microsoft Sharepoint Applications

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

The Microsoft SharePoint Applications helps architects and developers design, build and customize SharePoint applications that are both flexible and scalable.

SharePoint is a collaborative portal application allowing dashboard-style application components to be composited through the one interface. Often these component interfaces, otherwise known as portlets, are front pages into legacy applications. While users may initiate access to these applications through SharePoint, they are typically driven to the source application. Authentication and identity management are the hidden issues here. You can tailor SharePoint Web Services to fit your organizational needs. You learn to create and enhance new site functionality with hosted SharePoint Features. You also create sophisticated interconnected Web Parts that users can easily integrate with existing Solutions.

The goal of SharePoint portal application and SharePoint portal server is to help customers understand how to develop large scale, content-driven SharePoint applications that extend the value of existing line of business systems.  It essentially focuses on three primary objectives:

  • Large Scale - Show customers how to build a large scale SharePoint application.  This includes guidance on building in the manageability, configuration, migration , integration and performance expected from large scale applications.
  • Content Driven – More advanced SharePoint applications often include many sites and combine custom coded logic with created content.  The guidance demonstrates areas like custom navigation and publishing, composing web parts with published information, and managing a consistent UI.
  • Extend LOB Systems – Customizing SharePoint can aggregate and extend information from Line of Business systems to end users, enhancing structured business process with informal processes through collaboration.  The guidance shows how to integrate security considerations into business services, and demonstrate how to create collaborative sites that help manage business events like incident escalations and order exceptions.

If you are interested in the sharepoint training, development of Applications using Microsoft Sharepoint Services, contact Ishir Infotech, Microsoft Certified Gold Partner and reputed SharePoint Experts and Consultants.

Small ISV : Hire Dedicated Developers, Not Programmers

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Over the past several years, IT service companies and individuals felt that paying offshore contract IT developers / programmers to execute there work was a Great way to get the Job done without committing to the salary, benefits, and tons of obligations that go along with hiring a full-time inhouse employee.

A “programmer” is someone who does nothing but code new features and fix bugs.  They don’t write specs.  They don’t write automated test cases.  They don’t help keep the automated build system up to date.  They don’t help customers work out tough problems.  They don’t help write documentation.  They don’t help with testing.  They don’t even read code.  All they do is write new code.  In a small ISV, you don’t want any of these people in your company.

Instead of “programmers” (people that specialize in writing code), what you need are “developers” (people who will contribute in multiple ways to make the product successful).

Context is critical.  Management advice can be worthless or worse if it is not appropriate for your situation. The right decisions for a big company can be fatal in a small one. This has motivated us to provide all these above said benefits to all our overseas clients under one roof.

An Offshore Dedicated Development Team is customized to your requirements and business needs, and it works as an extension of your in-house staff whilst keeping optimal control over the entire software development process compared to project basis.

Have a dedicated person working just for your ISV. Thus; it is like hiring your own employee, working from our offshore development center (ODC) in India, US and UK, without incurring those huge hiring costs and overhead employee expenses.

In a small ISV you can’t afford to have people who think their only responsibility is writing code.  There are far too many other things to be done, all of which are critical to having a successful product.  If you were a BigCo, you would just hire more specialists until every job function is covered.  But as a small ISV, what you need are fewer people who are more versatile. If you hire dedicated custom software developers from companies offering offshore staffing services on monthly contract hiring basis then you can manage them as your own virtual offshore employee.

Building Enterprise Web Solutions using .NET Application Development

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Building quick to market service-oriented solutions  There is no substitute for experience. Ishir helps companies design, develop and integrate business solutions based on the .Net platform. Ishir ‘s .NET architecture and design professionals are experts in leveraging the Microsoft .NET Framework to deliver meaningful business solutions on time and within budget.

Our Microsoft .NET team develops and delivers comprehensive solutions utilizing the full range of .NET functionality. We are certified Microsoft Gold partner and our experienced Microsoft certified software architects, developers, consultants as part of.NET competency team work with your business to understand your requirements and demonstrate the capabilities of .NET framework and develop the system to the requirements. Many of our current solutions focus on Microsoft .Net platform of products. We ensure that our technical skills remain at the forefront of the industry by investing in ongoing technology training.

Ishir Infotech provides a complete solution in developing custom enterprise applications development based on .NET framework.

Our broad range of .Net expertise includes:

* .NET system design and .Net application development
* Managing upgrades and technical support for existing custom and packaged information
* .NET Desktop and Web Application Development
* Migrating web and desktop applications to .NET
* Developing web services using the .Net framework and the SOAP toolkit
* .NET Architecture and design evaluation
Custom .NET development
* .NET Software Product Development
* Web Services based .NET Application development
* Application Migration Services from .NET

Ishir’s Microsoft .Net technology competencies include:

* ASP.Net
* Web Forms, Web Services and Web Server Controls
* Win Forms
* ADO.Net
* XML
* COM Interoperability
* SQL Server
* Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1, Visual Studio .Net

For more information: Click Here

SharePoint Online Standard Capabilities

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

SharePoint Online is offered as a collaboration and communications tool for organization’s Intranets. It offers the following types of functionality.

  • Collaboration
  • Portals
  • Search
  • Content Management
  • Business Process and Forms

In the standard version, we do not get all the functionality that we would if we implemented our own version of SharePoint on premise or if we subscribed to the Dedicated Version. Here’s a look at what we get and don’t get.

Collaboration  -

What we get:

  • Six default site templates (wiki, blog, team site, document workspace, blank, basic meeting) Surveys
  • People and Groups
  • Calendars
  • Issue Tracking
  • Document Collaboration
  • Site Admin templates

What we don’t get:

  • Presence awareness
  • social networking
  • Templates (all meeting templates except basic)
  • Site Templates (My Site, News Site, Internet Presence Site)
  • Templates requiring server side code
  • Server Admin Templates

Portals

What we get:

  • Client Integration
  • SharePoint Designer Integration
  • Audience Targeting to a SharePoint group
  • Portal Site templates
  • Site Manager
  • Site and Document Aggregation
  • Document Rollup Web Part
  • Mobile Device Support

What we don’t get:

  • My Sites
  • Audience targeting to distribution groups or the ability to create audiences
  • Membership web parts
  • User Profiles Import
  • Back and Restore via SP Designer

Content Management

What we get:

  • Document Information and Panel Bar
  • Site Authoring
  • Master Pages, Page Layouts, navigation controls
  • Some retention and auditing policies
  • Three State Workflow and all standard document workflows
  • WYSIWYG Editor
  • Standard Publishing Site Templates: Collaboration and Publishing
  • Site Variations

What we don’t get:

  • Content Staging, Publishing and Deployment
  • Standard enterprise site templates
  • Records repository and legal holds
  • Email content as records

Search

What we get:

  • Search within site collection
  • Security trimmed results
  • Configurable scope

What we don’t get:

  • Cross collection search
  • Enterprise content sources
  • People Search
  • Search Federation
  • Business Data Search

Business Process and Forms

What we get:

  • Form Libraries
  • Custom no-code workflows

What we don’t get:

  • Custom workflows that are coded
  • Browser-based forms
  • SharePoint Server OOTB workflows

Customization Capabilities

Probably one of the most important questions we may have about using SharePoint Online is what can we customize. We can do customizations, but we are limited to customizing only what doesn’t require coding.

SharePoint Designer is the tool to use to customize our SharePoint Online site. With it we can:

  • Create no-code workflows
  • Modify and create master pages, page layouts
  • Create content types and taxonomy
  • Create custom site templates
  • Use the Data Form Web Part to create mashups of SharePoint data or other data brought in using Web Services
  • Create InfoPath Forms – no code allowed

If we are using Visual Studio to build custom web parts, features or workflows, then we don’t want SharePoint Online:

  • No in-line code is allowed, including code in InfoPath Forms or custom coded workflows
  • Can’t create features, site definitions, web parts, solutions – anything that requires something be installed and configured on the server.
  • we also can’t modify SharePoint files, web.config settings or security
  • No custom database modifications
  • No configuration changes that affect the web server or the .NET framework