Posts Tagged ‘SharePoint Online’

Create a Web Application in a SharePoint

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Mark, a Program Manager on the Windows SharePoint Services team focuses on the developer platform and on deploying Microsoft SharePoint Online solutions to some of his company’s customers. According to him clients often contact his company with the need for Corporate Portal or Customized Website. We have similar point of view from many others SharePoint application developers who are using Microsoft SharePoint platform. It’s one of the easiest and convenient ways to solve their tasks and one can have a complete website hosted in SharePoint web hosting.

Microsoft SharePoint is a web-oriented platform for collaboration and documents management. Using features in Project Management and task management in Microsoft SharePoint 2007 we can create a project, assign tasks and sub-tasks of the project to team members and track the development of the project. SharePoint Online also comes with some other great features such as predefined templates; discussion forums and many others. These SharePoint online applications features can be customized to create dynamic and custom web applications, to improve productivity and increase efficiency of employees.

Microsoft SharePoint server comes with solutions that are tailored for specific businesses or tasks. You can customize the template with your own logo, forms, and create user alerts. Managers and CEOs can keep track of activities using these templates. Forums and discussion groups can be used to discuss important projects. Projects can be tracked using the Internet in a location independent manner which is so essential if development team is spread in different parts of the world; work in different locations or work in a 24 X 7 environment and may be assigned to an offshore software development company. This saves a lot of time in organizing meetings and co-ordination.

Using Microsoft SharePoint Online 2007 we can centrally store the documents which can be accessed by users. We can control which document is accessible to which user. Changes to the document can be tracked. These files can be accessed from any location in the world. Many documents like Word and Excel can be opened and edited in the browser itself.

With Microsoft SharePoint Hosting we can create meeting space, and use the workspace to publish the agenda; invite attendees and discuss points. We can use the same workspace to track the points and tasks that were discussed during the meeting. We can view the calendar and determine the best time for you and the attendees before scheduling the meeting.

As we move towards a world, where time and boundaries no longer are hindrance towards doing business; Microsoft SharePoint And hosted Exchange 2007 are becoming feature rich tools which will help us improve productivity and increase efficiency. Using a vendor to host these feature rich collaborative suites will significantly save your precious dollars and time.

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


SharePoint 2010, A Business Collaboration Platform

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Microsoft branded some of its best-selling products to come with the “2010″ stamp. Many of the forthcoming 2010 editions – including Microsoft Office, Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010 which are being positioned as unified communications solutions.

The most awaited among these products is a whole new SharePoint edition called, Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the Enterprise & the Web that enables you to connect & empower people through an integrated set of rich features. Whether deployed on-premises or as hosted services, SharePoint 2010 helps you cut costs with a unified infrastructure while allowing you to rapidly respond to your business needs. You can get a sneak peek here.

There’s been a lot of excitement building over SharePoint 2010 in the industry. Some SharePoint 2010 new features are:

New User Interface including new Ribbon
Office 2007 style ribbon interface

Web Edit
Allows users to easily customize a site

Silverlight Web Part
Easy Silverlight solutions into SharePoint

Rich Theming
Few office-style themes, just like in Word and PowerPoint.

Multiple Browser Support
IE 7-8, Firefox and Safari. No news about Chrome and Opera

Visio Services
Lets you share data linked diagrams in real time

SharePoint Designer
Comes with a new UI, improved workflow and improved collaboration between designers

Business Connectivity Services (the evolution of the Business Data Catalog)

SharePoint Workspace
Incorporate offline-online synchronizations

Rich Media Support
No matter what type of rich media you’re using, SharePoint 2010 will make your life easier

IT Professional

Streamlined Central Administration
Way better organized Central Administration site

SharePoint Best Practices Analyzer
Farm health monitoring at its best with “Problems and Solutions” page

Usage Reporting and Logging
Consolidated logging and usage reporting capabilities

Large List Resource Throttling
Performance management of big lists of thousands and millions of items

Unattached Content Database Recovery
Allows temporary use of content databases, useful for recovery and restore purposes

Visual Upgrade
Easy migration from 2007 to 2010 while retaining the 2007 themes and UI

Developer
- Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Tools
- Language Integrated (LINQ) for SharePoint
- Developer Dashboard
- Business Connectivity Services
- Client Object Model (OM)
- Silverlight Web Part

How do SharePoint Online and Office SharePoint Server Feature Compare?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Depending on your unique business requirements, making a decision of whether you should host SharePoint on-premise or in the Clouds can be tough. We found the Microsoft SharePoint® Online Standard Service Description document, detailed and helpful.   Jump to Page 23 Appendix B for a feature comparison between Office SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online Standard and SharePoint Online Dedicated.  Below is summary of Appendix B from the August 19, 2009 version of the document.

This helps break out of features by:

  • Collaboration Feature Comparison
  • Portal Feature Comparison
  • Content Management Feature Comparison
  • Search Feature Comparison
  • BI Feature Comparison
  • Business Process and Forms Feature Comparison

Interested in trying out SharePoint Online?  Click here to sign up for a 30 day risk free trial (no credit card required/no obligation to buy the service)

Microsoft Online Services – Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) Business Value

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Microsoft Online Services provide businesses with subscription-based Microsoft-hosted online services that offer access to rich communication, collaboration, and productivity applications from anywhere. This hosted solution helps organizations reduce the costs of managing and maintaining business systems, which frees information technology resources and enables staff to focus on initiatives that can deliver competitive advantage to the business.

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