Why BAD Consultants are so necessary

I’d like to think that I’m a pretty good SharePoint Developer. I can jump back and forth from SharePoint Designer to Visual Studio.  I can talk to you about the pros and cons of sandboxed solutions.  I can even talk your ear off about the advantages of using Silverlight and the Client Object Model in SharePoint 2010.

But, as I reflect over the last 2 years, and the SharePoint projects on which I’ve worked with several clients, I realize that I’ve spent an overwhelming portion of my time being a Business Analyst in addition to a SharePoint Developer.

I also realized that’s exactly what each of my clients really needed - a Business-Analyst-Developer consultant. They needed a BAD consultant.

SharePoint Cincy 2012 Retrospective

Last week I attended the 2nd Annual all-day SharePoint Cincy event in [believe it or not] Cincinnati, Ohio. Once again, Ohio delivers more quality SharePoint content for the community. In addition to seeing a lot of familiar faces, here’s the lowdown on some of the things I got out of the sessions & speakers:

• The keynote was a panel of speakers from companies like Kroger, the Air Force, Fifth Third Bank, and Microsoft. Each were given a few minutes to share some of their insight on SharePoint, and how they’re using it in their organizations. I liked hearing how much Microsoft is eating their own dogfood thru their heavy internal use of SharePoint for their company portals. The other thing I took away from this is that there are many LARGE companies out there having HUGE success with SharePoint. I point this out because many times you only hear about the challenges of scaling SharePoint in the enterprise. For these folks, the internal adoption and demand for SharePoint among their user base is so successful that they’re having trouble keeping up!
• I checked out my buddy Tony Maddin and Clint Richardson for their talk on giving your SharePoint site a daily/weekly/monthly “checkup”. Got some good tips regarding what things to look at regularly to make sure your environment is still healthy. It got me thinking about the idea that SharePoint admins can actually help stakeholders with their SharePoint adoption efforts by providing timely stats on over- or under-use of SharePoint – over-use can be spotlighted (“Look at the great things this group is doing!”) and under-use can be questioned (“What is it about your SharePoint site that’s keeping you from using it?”)
• Stopped by fellow LOTR-lover Peter Serzo’s class and learned that the tabular data model is the new hotness, and is used in Denali (aka SQL Server 2012) – are Cubes on their way out??
• In Larry Riemann’s session, I got some more ideas about good ways to use Azure with SharePoint. I also like his use of Microsoft’s chart (below) to show the difference between Traditional, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS models:

All this and more! Plus I got a couple of books signed by their authors (thanx Brian and Mike).

Looking forward to next year – maybe then I’ll be able to present and introduce everyone to the Cowbell! : )

Update: Webcast with Quest Software

Last week’s webcast with Quest Software and Improving Enterprises was very successful – over 100 people attended the online event to hear about SharePoint customization best practices, and get a live demo of some of the features that Quest web parts bring to the SharePoint landscape. The on-demand video recording should be available soon – stay tuned.

Below is a copy of the slides used, or you can find them on Slideshare. Check here to see the whitepaper.

[[UPDATE 3/26/12: Click Here to view the recording.]]

Webcast on SharePoint Customization Best Practices

On Wednesday March 14th, Improving Enterprises will be teaming up with Quest Software to help deliver a webcast on SharePoint customization best practices. This is a follow-up to the whitepaper I co-authored last year with SharePoint MCM Mario Fulan. Not only will we be able to elaborate on the topics from the whitepaper, but you’ll also get to see a live demo of some of Quest’s web part products. Click here to register for this free event!

SharePoint ALM with TFS–it does exist

Last week, I presented an overview of the features and uses of Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 in a webcast to clients in the UK, in a partnership with Microsoft and Improving Enterprises. When the “About Me” slide appeared, I felt compelled to explain that although I’m one of those SharePoint guys (you know, one of the kool geeks ), it was important for them to know that SharePoint development also makes use of application lifecycle management, and in fact makes good use of TFS.

For those that don’t want to take my word for it (why don’t you trust me???) here are a a couple of links that I think you’ll find useful. I’ll refrain from saying “I told you so”…

• ALM Resource Center | SharePoint 2010
• ALM Resource Center | SharePoint Server 2007

Deploying a Visual Web Part to your Remote-Hosted Fpweb.net SharePoint Site using Visual Studio 11 (Dev Preview)

(Update: this post also published on Developer Wiki of NothingButSharePoint.com)

The Developer Preview of Visual Studio 11 is now available, and I’ve been exploring its new capabilities, especially as it relates to SharePoint development. Two of the great new features in Visual Studio 11 that I’ll discuss are

• the ability to deploy visual web parts as sandboxed solutions
• the ability to automatically deploy sandboxed solutions to remote SharePoint sites

At the end of this article, I’ll explain why I think this is such a big deal. But for now, I’ll walk thru the 3 easy steps necessary to take advantage of these features. In my case, the remote SharePoint site I’ll use is my Fpweb.net Hosted SharePoint account.

InfoPath 2010 presentation at Buckeye SPUG: May the FORMS Be With You…

Last nite I gave my InfoPath 2010 talk to the attendees at the Buckeye SharePoint User Group. Despite a nasty snow storm that swept in inconveniently right at the evening rush hour, lots of folks braved the cold and joined me in an engaging and entertaining talk about the untapped power of InfoPath 2010.

The end of the talk included a demo of a form I created call the Dog Lover’s Application. It’s simply a way to demonstrate some standard, and some not-so-standard, features of InfoPath. I used SharePoint 2010’s built-in InfoPath Web Part to embed the form on the homepage of my site. I then asked the audience – “how do you know this isn’t a custom-built web part??” The point I was trying to make is that, with enough clever design, InfoPath forms designers can create some pretty fancy composites that might otherwise normally only be associated with the realm of the all-powerful Developer. : )

My goal was to hopefully make people see the value that InfoPath delivers as another tool in their SharePoint arsenal, and to show that it can be used for more than just the basic form.

The slidedeck can be found below, or on Slideshare::