A new role in SharePoint, better toys, and all that good stuff

Starting in January 2012, I’ll be taking another step in my career by joining the Improving Enterprises team as their new SharePoint Practice Lead. Improving is a firm that focuses on Agile software development as well as certified Microsoft training, and I look forward to continue providing SharePoint consulting to clients, as well as helping to teach Microsoft Official Curriculum training to users as well.

Here’s the interesting difference between this post and the last time I posted about a career change almost 2 years ago – the tools.  Back then, I complained about how SharePoint’s new 64-bit requirement made it hard for developers like myself to create VM’s for training and prototyping. But today, I have no complaints – thanx to CloudShare! : )  Yep, now I’ve got a virtualized SharePoint environment waiting for me in the cloud whenever I need it. And I no longer have the headache of dealing with local PC settings or slow-running servers that depend on the number of CPUs on my laptop. Ahhh, the cloud…

More on my CloudShare experiences in future posts.  What about you – what SharePoint virtualization strategy will you use in 2012?

SharePoint and the Team Foundation Service Preview… in the Cloud!

{my article published at CloudShare Community Blog – Dec 30th, 2011}

In September 2011, the Team Foundation Service Preview (TFS-P) became available on an invitation-only basis. In a nutshell, it’s the beta version of Team Foundation Server (TFS) 11, but hosted in Azure (Microsoft’s cloud-based storage, computing and networking infrastructure services).  While popularity for TFS has grown over the years as an on-premise server technology, the idea of a hosted version of TFS has taken a little longer to materialize.

As a SharePoint developer who focuses on application lifecycle management, I’m a big fan of doing SharePoint development using TFS. So I decided to get a TFS-P account to see what it was like to work with SharePoint and TFS in the cloud.

To see the details of my experience, jump over to the CloudShare Community Blog, where I’ve written an article regarding using CloudShare as my virtual environment to try out the Team Foundation Service Preview…  [ http://blog.cloudshare.com/2011/12/30/using-sharepoint-and-team-foundation-service-preview-in-the-cloud/ ]

SharePoint 2010 Is Better Because: InfoPath Links Work Better

I do a lot of solutions involving workflow and InfoPath Forms Services. In SharePoint 2007, whenever I go to the Workflow Status page, it always bugged me that the “Document:” link [that links me to the related InfoPath form (ie XML document) for my workflow] always wanted to open as XML or in the InfoPath client, as opposed to the browser.  There are some customizations I could do to get it to work the way I want, but out of the box it was a no-go.

Well, it appears that SharePoint 2010 Is Better Because that Document: link now opens in the browser using Forms Services the way I’ve always wanted!  Kool!  What do you think – do you like this behavior?

Whitepaper: Best Practices for SharePoint Development & Customization

Last month, I co-authored a white paper with Microsoft Certified Master Mario Fulan on the topic of SharePoint development and customization best practices. It was sponsored by Quest Software, whose specialties include powerful add-on tools for SharePoint.

Some of the ideas in the paper include a discussion on the pains that a developer faces day-to-day when trying to create and deliver a custom solution, including the need for quick prototypes, and the challenges of managing change requests. We also discussed solutions to those pains, including governance, use of design patterns, and good deployment strategies.

I’ll be diving deeper into many of the topics from this paper in future posts, so stay tuned. You can find the whitepaper on Quest’s website, as well as on SharePoint Pro Magazine.  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

[Update 3/20/12: here’s the info regarding the follow-up live webcast that resulted from this whitepaper.]

Using Team Foundation Server with SharePoint Teams

This week I gave a presentation to my SharePoint team on Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), and how they could be used to grow our practice. I’ve been a fan of TFS since version 2005, and have watched it mature thru 2008 and now version 2010. I’ve also seen it begin to give more due respect to the SharePoint world – initially it seemed to be almost oblivious to the unique needs of the SharePoint development team. Some of the highlights of my presentation included the mention of using the automated Build Server to help SharePoint teams manage the WSP that results from their SharePoint dev. We also discussed how some non-traditional files, like InfoPath forms and CSS files, fit into typical source control story. And we talked about how SharePoint infrastructure engineers could also make use of Team System by incorporating work item tasks specific to server installations into a customized process guidance. Stay tuned to this blog in future posts as I elaborate on many of the topics included in my talk.

Who do you serve?

{my article published at NothingButSharePoint.com – Sept 22, 2011}

One of my good friends from college recently started an organization that provides a mobile produce store for communities in Chicago’s West Side who don’t have access to fresh produce. They’re meeting a huge need in those communities, and they’re serving the People in a great way.

As SharePoint professionals, who do we serve? SharePoint isn’t exactly available on the corner of every urban neighborhood in America. [yet?] : )  So, who is it that benefits from the skills, experience, and assistance of a great SharePoint’er?

One might say we serve ‘Big Business’. SharePoint is certainly an enterprise server product, and the main consumer of that type of product is the large corporation. If this is who we serve, we certainly serve them well, as SharePoint has been proven to be a strategic advantage, cost-saver, and effective collaboration platform for many large companies.

Or, maybe we serve the corporate Developer? Have you ever seen the smile on the face of a .NET developer after you teach them about the benefits of developing on the SharePoint 2010 platform? : )  When leveraged properly, SharePoint certainly opens up a world of advantages for the .NET dev team trying to create collaboration solutions for their company.

Ultimately, tho, I’d like to think we serve the millions of Information Workers out there who use SharePoint on a daily basis. At the end of the day, that’s who our SharePoint solutions are for, and if I can make just one Information Worker come to work with a smile and expectation that they’ll have a productive day because of SharePoint, then it’s all worth it. : )

As we look toward the future, I would like to think we’ll also be serving the entrepreneur who has a small shop using SharePoint Online. As the cloud continues to provide scalable and cost-effective options for small & medium business, perhaps the dream of SharePoint on every neighborhood corner could be closer than we think.

I’d be interested in your thoughts – as a SharePoint professional, who do you serve?

SharePoint Saturday–Columbus 2011

Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you that SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2011 was a great success.  A great list of speakers and topics, and oh, yeah – great food too!   Nice raffle prizes for lucky winners, including a brand new Kindle, free consulting services, and even a great SharePoint 2010 book giveaway from ICC (my employer, and a platinum sponsor of the event).

And oh yeah – in case you’re wondering, the SharePoint Cowbell was on display!

(Ricardo Wilkins speaking on SharePoint 2010 Dev at SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2011; photo credit – Brian Jackett)