You may have caught Clare’s post earlier about Highlighter’s recent performance enhancements, that were mostly due to some of the surprising ways we’ve seen it being used in the wild. To illustrate this sideways thinking (lateral and literal) we’ll take a look at exploding a humble status column into an Approval Progress Overview:

 

As you can see, we now have a quick at-a-glance idea of how the projects are doing. To create this view, a Highlighter column has been added for each of the statuses. In each of these columns we’ve set it up to display icons (cell color is also a good choice), and cleared the default. Let’s take the Approved status as an example:

All we need to do is click the Auto-create button to create some rules, remove those for the earlier statuses, change the later ones to green icons, and this column’s status of interest to a working icon:

Just to keep people on their toes lets add a little urgency to the list with a Due Date column. So now we want to change the Approved column to a red icon if the Due Date has passed, and the status isn’t yet Approved. This is done by switching to Advanced mode and adding a single rule:

Here are the results of that extra change:

If that wasn’t enough for you, here’s the weaponized version of Highlighter featuring cell colors, priority icons, and Project Manager Blood Pressure indicator:

We’re always interested to hear what you’ve done with our products (especially Highlighter); so if you’ve done something even scarier than the above, send a screenshot to support@pentalogic.net.

It is sooo much easier to keep on top of your tasks if you can see at a glance what is due when.

It’s easy to add this color coding to your SharePoint lists with SharePoint Highlighter in just a few clicks, but setting up the rules correctly is a bit of a mind-bender, so in this post we are going to show you how.

So above you can see:

• Tasks due in less than 7 days highlighted in orange
• Tasks due in 7-14 days highlighted in yellow.
• Tasks due in more than 14 days highlighted in green.

So first add a Highlighter column to your list:

http://www.pentalogic.net/sharepoint-products/highlighter/h-manual/h-configuration

Give it a name – I’ve called mine “Due When”.

From the 3 Highlighting Styles choose Highlighting, and choose to Highlight Rows, though this method would work equally well with icons or cell highlighting.

As we are highlighting the whole row we don’t really need to see the actual Highlighter column, so choose to put this to the right of the view, out of the way.

If we were using Auto Setup Rules we would now base the Highlighter column on your Due Date column – this is where it would get its information from.  But what we want to do is a bit too complex for the Auto Setup, so you can leave this box blank and go straight to to the Advanced Rules – click Add Custom.

Scary!  Not really, we just need to think logically about when we are trying to achieve.

The main thing you need to remember is that Highlighter will apply the first rule it finds that is true.  Once it has applied one rule to a row, it will ignore all other rules.

So to get the Highlighting shown above we need this setup:

So, when Highlighter checks the list, first it checks to see if the item’s due date is less than 7 days after today, if it is Highlighter colors the row orange and moves on to check the next list item.  If this rule isn’t met Highlighter checks to see whether the item’s due date is less than 14 days after today, and so on.

It’s all a matter of getting your rules in the right order.  So for example, if we change the order of the rules so the 14 day rule comes first, like this:

This is what happens to the list:

As you can see we have lost our orange highlighting for items that are “Due in Less than 7 days”.  Because Due in less than 14 days is now at the top of our list of rules this is what Highlighter is checking for first, so it is missing the more urgent items.

It’s all about getting your rules in the right order, and as you can see, Highlighter gives you the ability to move items up and down the list with the up/down arrows, or insert or delete a rule at any point.

I hope this has helped to make sense of the advanced rules, and if you have any scenarios that you would like us to work through for you then we would love to hear from you.

It’s all too easy to say that a piece of software is “intuitive” or “Quick and Easy” to use. But what’s quick and easy for me could quite possibly be mind bogglingly slow and tricky for you.

So to show you just how quick and easy it really is to set up dynamic Pivot charts and tables in SharePoint using PivotPoint web part we have produced a 4 minute video demo which walks you through the set up.

The video:

• walks you through setting up a pivot chart from SharePoint list data,
• shows you how the chart or table you have created provides a drill-down to a filtered view of your list data, and
• shows you how your charts and tables update dynamically as you list data changes.

Take a look and if you think you could make use of PivotPoint on your SharePoint site why not try it out with a 30 day free trial.

Calculated columns are a really useful feature of any SharePoint list.

Whether you want to automatically show the profit on a sale, or the financial year that a date falls in to, or tidy up sloppy user input by capitalising names.  There is a lot you can do it with a Calculated Column.

But remembering the formulas and functions needed is not always easy, especially before the first coffee of the morning.  I know there is a way to get rid of the decimal places on a number but is it TRUN, or TRUNC, or TRUNK – oh no, hang on, that last one is just to do with elephants!

So, over the years we’ve gathered together a quick reference of some of the most commonly used functions and formulas – stuck on a wall above the desk it saves a lot of time and head scratching.  We’ve found ourselves sending it to clients from time to time, and they seem to find it quite handy too.

So we decided to tidy it up – clean off the coffee stains and make a nice PDF of it – and make it available to download, free – yes that’s right, FREE!

So why not download our free Calculated Column Cheat Sheet and save yourself some time and headaches?  This easy 3 page reference sheet gives you a selection of commonly used calculated column formulas, along with a pretty thorough reference of most of the functions and operators you are likely to need in your day to day work.

Download, print, stick it on the wall, and we hope you find it as handy as we do!

SharePoint Workflows are one of the magic parts of the solution – the bits when even the most cynical and sceptical end user gets to see the benefit.

Instead of emails and bits of paper flying round your organization, getting lost, forgotten and falling between the cracks, everything is managed and driven centrally by SharePoint.

There are a whole load of scenarios where you could use workflows:

• Vacation approvals
• Expense claims
• Purchase order Authorisation
• Timesheet approvals
• Invoice payment approvals
• Helpdesk escalations

SharePoint can handle all of these processes seamlessly and automatically.  Seeking appropriate approvals, escalating, notifying, referring back and reminding as needed, whilst keeping all documentation secure in one central location.

So, that’s the upside.  The downside is that to create a SharePoint workflow you need to use either SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio.  Whilst SharePoint Designer isn’t all that hard to master it is a very powerful tool and capable of doing serious damage in the wrong hands, for this reason many organizations keep it looked firmly away from most users.  Visual Studio on the other hand really is hard to master – strictly for the mega-brains in your IT department.  So this means that cooking up a bit of Workflow magic out of the box is out of the question for most SharePoint users.

The alternative is to use SharePoint Reminder to create your SharePoint workflows. Using SharePoint Reminder and some clever filtered list views you can easily create multi stage workflows to cover any of the scenarios listed above.

This use case walks you through how to create a 2 stage supplier invoice approval workflow, using SharePoint Reminder and a standard SharePoint document library.

Reminder only drives simple workflow, it doesn’t have the advanced logic of SharePoint OTTB Workflows and it won’t do things like automatically updating lists or other systems.  But for a lot of your day to day processes, you might find that it does just what you need.

After months of heated debate, midnight-oil-burning and general blood, sweat and tears, our latest new product, SharePoint Highlighter is released for sale today!

So come on, what are you waiting for? Get those credit cards out! You know you can’t do without the ultimate tool-kit for brightening up your SharePoint lists!

We realise that although Highlighter has been the centre of our universe for the last few months, some of you may have had other things to think about.  So, in case you have forgotten Highlighter is a custom column for SharePoint that lets you add:

• Highlighting,
• Color coding
• Icons
• Progress bars
• Countdowns
• And more

Let’s face, it compared to a lot of things we look at on our screen every day – things like the Facebook Wall, or a Google Search, or even an Outlook Calendar – a SharePoint list can look pretty dull.  You can easily find yourself staring at a mass of information, wondering “What is exactly is going on here?”, and “What on earth am I supposed to do with this?”

So Highlighter gives you a whole box of tricks to brighten up those lists and libraries, and make them much more user friendly.

You might choose to highlight high priority items in red on an issues list.

Or flag unpaid invoices by color, depending on just how old they are.

Or use color coded progress bars to show where you are in relation to your KPI’s or targets.

Or countdown to a task or event due date.

The possibilities are endless and with Highlighter you have a whole range of visual indicator options, allowing you to mark up your lists exactly as you want them.

We set ourselves two challenges when developing Highlighter:

• Give people flexibility, a choice of options within one product.
• Keep it simple, and easy to use.

We looked at what was on the market already and we found that although you can buy a progress bar, or a color coding column, or a KPI column for SharePoint, there isn’t anything out there that gives you a whole bundle of these options, all in one tidy product.  In fact, to get all the features you will find in Highlighter from anywhere else you would have to go to at least 3 different software providers – and pay more than double the money. 

So we think we are there with the flexibility, but what about ease of use – don’t all these choices make for a really complicated set up interface?

Well, hopefully not.  The really complicated (and powerful) bit is there, in our “Advanced Rules” section, but lots of people will never have to use this.  We have spent time developing the user interface, making it intuitive, so that lots of scenarios are actually set up semi-automatically.  When you use the software you will see that what you want to achieve can often be managed in just a few clicks.

So, what’s this all going to cost then?  Well just $345 for a Starter Pack and $995 for a single server license – cheap at half the price we think.

Plus, of course our 30 day free trail, which will give you plenty of time to see just how handy Highlighter is.

We hope you will give the product a try, and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Download the 30 Day Free Trial Today.

What is SharePoint?

How often do we get asked this question?

And how difficult is it to find a sensible answer?

There are really helpful diagrams like this one:

Are you any the wiser after looking at that?

Then suddenly we find ourselves spouting all manner of pompous business waffle: “extensible collaboration platform”, “business process automation solution”, “enterprise search capabilities” – oh dear!

And Mr Ballmer from Microsoft is prone to get lost in just the same quagmire of incomprehensible verbosity:

Hmmm . . . not sure that “kind of magical” is going to really enlighten our clients a whole lot!

So we were delighted when we came across this – also from Microsoft incidentally, which actually does explain SharePoint – in plain English:

We really liked that one and feel it gives a good overview of SharePoint for anyone who is new to this “kind of magical” bit of Software.

But for us old hands in need to a bit of light relief – how about this one:

Good for a laugh even if you don’t speak Russian.

And we have a prize for the first person to send us an English translation of the script.

SharePoint and Access cater for an essential part of every organisation: the Power User. Whether it’s a full-time SharePoint Architect, or Jeff who’s “Good With Spreadsheets”; both can make use of these tools to help bridge the gap between custom developed systems and bought-in solutions.

The Family

From my (reasonably short) time using SharePoint, it seems there is a family tree of products that favour the Power User. Right at the top we have the grandfather (or Godfather) Excel, who provides good honest data-entry and hand-tailored analysis.

The middle generation is Access, who took the family-business spreadsheet and took it several steps further. Firstly the data was backed with a database engine, then Forms were added to allow the custom validation and entry of the data, and finally Reports were used to polish the resulting information for analysis and display.

The beauty of this was that an entire useful and end-user-friendly system could be built without needing an in-house development team nor having to buy-in a pre-made solution.

The last generation is Access’s two daughters: the serious older sister SQL Server, and the smart but friendly SharePoint. SQL Server took on the grim and complex business of dealing with data (and later married into the dour .Net family), whereas SharePoint set about taking system creation to the masses.

Of course SQL Server takes care of SharePoint’s data as a big sister would, and more than a few favours are called-in from the .Net family too. This allows SharePoint to concentrate on user interfaces and providing systems to everyday folk put off by SQL Server and .Net’s serious and frowny expressions.

What are you talking about?

To summarise before this analogy runs away with itself: SharePoint is Access with the inner workings of data processing hidden, and the idea of a customisable Power User created interface polished even further.

Why is this a good thing?

For Power Users this is good because they can concentrate on making the systems match what the users need without having to worry about things that they’d much rather a developer would worry about, like “How do I make a page to show an order?”.

Normal users get systems made by people that know the business, and avoid the ominous pause when asking a developer how long (or worse: how much) a small change will be. Having been an in-house developer for a small business I can vouch that anything that lets users do the work they need to do without effecting mine gets a giant smiley sticker (and I mean giant).

Finally, SharePoint is much more flexible and customisable than the earlier generations; all manner of additions can be made that can make it into a tool specialised for an individual organisation.

Why is this not such a good thing?

It’s entirely possible to misuse these tools (for example, using SharePoint as a tea-brewing timer); but it would take some strong arguments from a seasoned professional to dissuade an enthusiastic director deafened by the sound of a new market.

I once worked with an MD who would create a mock-up of the system he wanted in Access, and then hand it over to our team to make it into a reality. In truth the system he wanted looked and worked very little like the database (“if you click that it should actually do this”). While it is possible to create things this way, it was much more efficient (and less nightmare inducing) to talk out the requirements and design from there.

As with many complex tools, it needs someone (developer or otherwise) with a good working knowledge to use them to their full potential. It is important to know the limits of both can be done and what should be done.

In short

These tools give users the ability to easily construct systems and applications that wouldn’t otherwise be possible without a few years of getting to know Mr & Mrs .Net.

However, the more powerful a tool is the more easily misused it is (think chainsaw): It’s best to consult someone with some experience before endangering your limbs.

Well we have been promising you a paper on the subject of SharePoint for Small Business for some time, and here it is – finally.

As a small business ourselves this topic was especially interesting and we spent have spent quite some time digging in to the issues.

SharePoint, Microsoft’s fastest selling server product ever, is rapidly becoming market leader in its space, and almost endemic within the enterprise and large organizations.

But now, SharePoint also comes bundled with Microsoft Small Business Server and many small business owners and managers are asking themselves what SharePoint might be able to offer them.

Though much has been written about SharePoint in the Enterprise, there is surprisingly little information out there for the Small Business owner looking to evaluate SharePoint. We wanted to try and fill some of that information void with this White Paper.

Firstly, we wanted to dispel some of the confusion around what SharePoint actually is, and what a Small Business might be able to do with it in practical terms. Even Microsoft are pretty vague when they try to define what exactly SharePoint is.

Whilst a SharePoint specialist consultancy might be able to unravel the complexity for a client, and help them to understand how SharePoint can work for them, a small business might find that their local IT support firm just don’t have the specialist SharePoint knowledge needed to help them in this area.

Secondly we wanted to address the issue of cost.  Cost is important to all of us now, but for Small Businesses it can be a key driver in the decision making process.

There is a popular misconception that SharePoint Foundation is a “free” product.  This is simply not correct.  We wanted to give Small Businesses an idea of the costs that they might incur if they choose to deploy SharePoint.

Finally, we wanted to explore the issue of control.  The big win for Small Businesses deploying SharePoint, in our opinion, is the degree of control it can give them over managing their own IT infrastructure.

SharePoint has been designed as a platform on which ordinary business users – with no IT developer training – can build and manage their own business applications, to improve the delivery of daily tasks and business processes, like order processing, resource management and project planning.

This is the kind of flexibility that small businesses need to maintain the speed of response and agility which are often our key competitive strengths.

The White Paper is free to download from our website.

We hope the paper will help you decide whether SharePoint is the right platform for your small business.

With both Google and Microsoft offering collaboration solutions in the form of Apps and SharePoint it’s only natural that organisations should look at comparing the two. We think it’s worth looking at this debate for ourselves.

So which is better – Google Apps or SharePoint? As ever, the answer really depends on what your business needs to operate and evolve. The key point to remember is that while they offer some similar features, both solutions are very different beasts.

Google Apps has come a fair way over the past few years and one of the main advantages it has over SharePoint is its lower cost. The standard edition is free, but most organizations tend to upgrade to its premier edition option that includes intranet with Postini, a high-end email security solution. You could outsource your entire “Office” for $50 per user per year, which represents a huge cost saving over any in-house IT solution.

The main features that Google Apps has are its messaging facility, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Groups, and its collaboration offering, with Google Docs, Sites and Video. Being a cloud-based service, Google strongly emphasize their security, support and reliability features. On the face of it, Google Apps may be a perfect entry-level alternative to SharePoint if you have a small business or are a one-person operation.

Of course cost savings come at a price. Google Apps doesn’t come close to the range of collaboration features that you get with SharePoint. With powerful workflows, reliable secondary functions like Information Rights Management and an application development platform. If you factor in how easily SharePoint integrates with an existing Office suite then it’s easy to see how Microsoft can waggle accusatory fingers at Google Apps for not being enterprise-ready.

For many organizations though the rich array of features offered by SharePoint will simply be overwhelming and what Google has to offer will be enough. Particularly for smaller organizations and those who are more “outward facing” – have more interaction with people outside, rather than inside, of the organization, the sheer intuitive simplicity of the Google Aps solution, plus the ease of collaboration with the “outside world” may give Apps the edge over SharePoint.

There are limits to some functionality if you opt for SharePoint Online (see our post on SharePoint In House Vs Cloud for more on this), but even if you choose Microsoft’s cloud offering, the range of features outweighs Google Apps and costs start at $120 per user per year for a minimum of five users. However, Google Apps does have open API’s for developers which allows for some customization if you need it.

Google Apps is a great solution for a small enterprise and it can easily work alongside other more powerful software. Sure cloud based solutions lack the power of SharePoint, but if you’re in a small company, you probably don’t need these advanced capabilities anyway. When it comes to collaboration, Google Apps can also compete in terms of cost, speed and the ability to engage users. However, with no integration with Microsoft Office applications, a limited development platform and limited collaboration features, Google Apps often struggles to be a comprehensive business solution when compared to SharePoint.

Are you using Google Apps and SharePoint? How do you think the two solutions measure up?

Further reading:

1. SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 web apps better than Google Apps?

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/document-management/sharepoint-2010-and-office-2010-web-apps-better-than-google-apps-007049.php

2. Google Vs SharePoint can be apples vs oranges

http://www.realstorygroup.com/Blog/1773-Google-vs.-SharePoint-can-be-Apples-vs.-Oranges

3. The Big Switch: From SharePoint to Google Apps

http://www.thevarguy.com/2010/01/29/the-big-switch-from-sharepoint-to-google-apps/

4. Review: Microsoft Office Web Apps vs Google Apps

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225200312

5. SharePoint and Office Web Apps

http://www.joiningdots.com/blog/2010/07/sharepoint-and-office-web-apps/