This is the first part of many articles to come about the new features and capabilities we can expect to find in the anticipated release of SharePoint 2013, or should I say Office 15...

This information is my research which has come from various sources over the internet and also my time spent in Redmond recently attending a SharePoint conference.  Whilst I am not a close partner with Microsoft and so I haven’t been invited to preview the new beta however I did speak to a number of sources at Redmond who did confirm some questions I asked them regarding SharePoint 2013.   However since they were not allowed to disclose any information since they have signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so I was very careful with the wording of my questions to them ;-)

The first fact about SharePoint 2013 which I wish to share is about the upgrade to its workflows.  As it currently stand the typical Out of the Box (OOTB) workflows created in SharePoint 2010 are simple sequential through each process from start...

To further add to Team Collaboration. There is an old saying “To be in business is like being in a war”,” to partner with someone is like having an allied” I believe this is true depending on one’s perception. An army or the team is subjected to morale, spirit, and strength. To truly harness the full extent of your team, in terms of these attribute such as team morale, team spirit, and team strength. We need great communicator, great visionary with soul, and the need of team communication and expression with in certain code and rules. These great aspect points to communication of team collaboration with a system or medium to expresses team mission statements, goals, ideas, insights, and moment of geniuses. I’m a firm believer that everybody has great ideas, no matter who they are, where they come from and what they do, how they may appear, how long they have been doing it newbies or old school. You will be amazed with what they come up with if you truly listen. And if we could really mix these selves expression,...

Here is some great news to all those avid Mac people especially using portable devices such as iPad, there is a new Cumulative Update which enables all out of the box enterprise dashboard, reporting and BI to work on non-windows devices.

This includes: -

Business Intelligence Center Dashboards with filters and links Excel Services Reports Scorecards KPIs Analytic Charts (my favorite, if you've seen my presentations!) Web Page Reports For more information this is the official release from Microsoft....

"Cumulative Update 2011-12 (CU 2011-12) for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 enables organizations to view certain kinds of reports and scorecards on Apple iPad devices that use the iOS 5 Safari browser. This article describes what business intelligence content users can view on iPad, how to configure reports and scorecards to be displayed correctly, and how to navigate business intelligence content on iPad." Read more on TechNet…

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Continuing from the topic of Sharing information with Partners, Vendors, and Clients. Let’s talk about Team Collaboration Solutions. Recently I have come across 2 companies; one being the suppliers of plumbing goods, the other is a construction company. The 2 have work with each other’s for years, and have had transactions of up to millions of dollars. One would assume they would have a very well set up streamline collaborative system considering the amount of transaction they have with each other and the benefits that they could gain setting up one. But they didn’t. So the ongoing reoccurring mistakes and errors happen. Without knowing why there are so many things going wrong, people in the hierarchy and partnership blaming each other to save faces, position, jobs, and cost, then the politics, resentment, and so on with a never ending cycle of unnecessary drama... Believe me it was a mess… up on a mess.

Their problems and possible solutions:

Communications—they need to interact with other...

In fact it is good question and a vital question. This question is vital in that, "the most important part of any project is the initial stage ". A saying which is a constant regardless of any projects you may come across. Whether a small paint job of a room where you have to do the prep work for a good lasting finished, to the delivery of a search capability project in SharePoint where the needs and experiences and to be experienced of  the end user must be catered for. 

How do we assess this? Well it really depends on what the outcomes we wish to achieve. The chosen methodologies, the time constraint, theresources constraint and most important of all is the needs basis. Is it abusiness need? Will covering this scope help with generating more market shares?Will this scope help generate higher customer satisfaction level? Will thisscope make us better rival or surpass our competitors and at which stage? Will covering this scope helps and keep us consistent with our business strategies.  Will covering...

Yes, absolutely. Our solution, team Site with extranet access. The Team Site template helps the needs of groups of people working collaboratively on projects, campaigns, and alliance programs. Team site over an email-base communication provides all sorts of benefits, ability to review what they only want to review, set up a process rule for approving final documents or presentations, set up alerts to be notified when specific, crucial, and prerequisite information changes and or available, participate in online real-time discussions with each-others. Plus other specific needs, wants, and benefits which can be sought through third party software.

As a consultant the exposure you get on different projects working with other consultants from various technology backgrounds which provides some interesting insight into their views.  Of course being a Microsoft technology specialists means that you are exposed and get a number of critiques.

So today I wanted to share something quite interesting which came from a consultant with Unix background and his comment that Microsoft solutions are great because the learning curve and uptake around the technology is simple to learn.

After this comment was made it got me thinking actually is SharePoint that easy to up-skill because I think that this is a common misconception since it is depth vs breadth.

I will give you an example you will work with a number of content administrators who have great exposure to the breadth.  Then you will notice that a technology specialist will have a great degree of experience around infrastructure, administration and development.  And this can comprise of the following...

It is no doubt that if you are working in Infrastructure sector within the IT profession you can’t help to feel threatened by Cloud Computing and how this might affect your employment opportunities when the major players such as Microsoft or Google market these cloud products to reduce operating costs, staffing by working on a subscription pricing model.

However you need to step back a decade or more and realise how history is repeating as it there has been increasing pressure on a lot of development and support professional have been downsized to accommodate a more cost-effective off-shoring model to countries including India or Philippines which has became a trend amongst large to medium sized organisations.

As I can remember around the 2000 period was the boom period for a number of IT professionals earning big dollars and driving exotic cars, however the next few years to follow would mean the crash of the dot coms and the end to the lucrative IT salaries and employment opportunities which would...

As you will notice nowadays that there the humble desktop has been reduced to a laptop and nowadays the laptop is becoming the desktop as there is every increasing up-take into the number of Smart-Phone and Tablet based iPads and Android devices currently on the market.

So it appears that the increasing trend of professionals based on the road and remotely away from the offices gives increasing uptake into these devices which enable people to work away.

It appears that a suite of productivity tools have also identified the trend of using these portal devices and as such makes sense to deliver these requirements.

As you are aware the two major tools on the market are Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365.

Both these tools are targeted toward small to midsize organisations looking to transform away from traditional on-premise hosting which carries infrastructures, IT professionals and expensive licensing costs into a cloud based model which is based on a subscription which grows with your...

Having noticed these days the importance that design is playing in the role of consumers choosing products.   Lets take a look at mobile phones an industry dominated by Nokia for more than a decade but why in the last few years has Nokia lost the ability to reach its market-share and consumers have been swept away by Apple style products?  Lets see the answer is quiet obvious simplicity, intuitive designs and user-ability and then Apple decided to set the standard for the tablet.  Again another product which had been around for a long time but various manufactures of the laptop or pc had failed to make a penetrate this market.

In saying that the vast number of electronic manufactures are highly educated and technical people however there has always felt a gap when designing a product for the common consumers to actually engage and connect with.  Which is why Apple has seen this niche and penetrated the market for the masses which would have to be the only technology company around capable of selling a tablet...