Author Archive

SharePoint Reminder Webpart – version 1.7.8 now available

Date:June 14th, 2010 Author: Tags: , , ,
Category: General, SharePoint Reminder, SharePoint webparts Comments:0 ;

How annoying is it when you get reminded about something you have already done?  A little email saying:

“Can you please submit your expenses claim form by 12.00 noon today”

is just sooo annoying when actually you have been a good girl and done your expenses yesterday.

We get lots of support calls from SharePoint Reminder webpart users who have annoyed their team members in just this way – by sending our Reminder emails for tasks that have already been completed.

This is easy enough to do.  Reminder will look at the whole of a list unless you tell it to do something else.  So if you ask Reminder to send out an email for everyone who is tasked to complete their expenses claim form by 12.00 today that is exactly what it will do, regardless of whether the status of that task is “Active” or “Completed”.

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SharePoint 2010 Resources

Date:May 27th, 2010 Author: Tags:
Category: General, Training Comments:0 ;

Last week we had an email from a customer who was confused about his options for SharePoint 2010.

He was planning to move his 5 WSS site across to SharePoint 2010 Foundation – but had found this document from Microsoft:

SharePoint 2010Resources

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Licensing-Details.aspx

which seems to suggest that sites and Workspaces were not available in Foundation, only in SharePoint 2010 standard edition or above.  Well we knew this wasn’t right;  but that wasn’t what the info from Microsoft seemed to be saying.

This gave us a reminder of just how confusing our friends at Microsoft can make things.  So we thought we would gather together some handy resources for all of you who may be thinking of moving over to SharePoint 2010. As always we have focussed mainly on users and administrators.  I hope you find it useful.

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The Truth about Tech Support

Date:May 24th, 2010 Author: Tags: ,
Category: General Comments:2 ;

You know how satisfying it is when you read something, instinctively know it’s right, then have something happen that gives you concrete proof?  Well we had one of those moments this week – and I wanted to share.

We read quite a few business blogs and for down to earth, quality advice Jason Cohen is our man – Joel Spolsky sometimes comes up with the goods, but he can be a bit full of himself, we don’t get Seth Godin at all – seems to have made a great career out of stating the blindingly obvious – but Jason; on the money, pretty much every time.

So this week’s post from Jason was on the importance of good tech support – and the prevalence of tech support which is anything but good.  Done right, Jason says, tech support is sales. We read the post, nodding sagely in agreement.

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SharePoint 2010 gets into the Groove

Date:May 17th, 2010 Author: Tags:
Category: General, SharePoint Ideas Comments:0 ;

With all the furore surrounding the business release of SharePoint 2010 it would have been easy to miss the launch (or relaunch) of another little Microsoft product in the SharePoint space which quite neatly addresses some of my personal SharePoint bug bears.

Wonderful though SharePoint is there are always a few things we wish it would do better.  Personally I have always been a little frustrated by the limitations on sharing with people outside of your own organization, the difficulties around working off-line and with the difficulties of moving documents from your PC and other applications, into, and out of SharePoint. Sharepoint 2010 groove

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SharePoint 2010 gets into the Groove

Date:May 17th, 2010 Author: Tags:
Category: General, SharePoint Ideas Comments:2 ;

With all the furore surrounding the business release of SharePoint 2010 it would have been easy to miss the launch (or relaunch) of another little Microsoft product in the SharePoint space which quite neatly addresses some of my personal SharePoint bug bears.

Wonderful though SharePoint is there are always a few things we wish it would do better.  Personally I have always been a little frustrated by the limitations on sharing with people outside of your own organization, the difficulties around working off-line and with the difficulties of moving documents from your PC and other applications, into, and out of SharePoint. Sharepoint 2010 groove

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SharePoint 2010 Ready – PHEW!

Date:May 4th, 2010 Author: Tags: , , ,
Category: General, SharePoint webparts Comments:1 ;

Well, OK so it probably hasn’t been quite as much effort as climbing Everest – but sometimes it’s felt that way!

Last week Microsoft made the “final” release version of SharePoint 2010 available to developers and large corporates.  So we have been able to get on with our “final” set of compatibility tests and we can now announce that all of our products are SharePoint 2010 Compatible.

sp2010

When you make software that works on a particular platform – whether it’s Windows, SharePoint, or the iPhone – the introduction of a major new version is really exciting, but it can also be very stressful. The introduction of a new feature might open up lots of new possibilities, but it could equally well present new problems for the way your own software works with the platform, or even make your application completely redundant.

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SharePoint Site Templates: KISS guide to creating, saving and using

Date:April 27th, 2010 Author: Tags: ,
Category: General, SharePoint Ideas, Training Comments:2 ;

A site is the key place within SharePoint to bring together all the people, content and activities associated with a particular process, project or group.  And if the process or project is regularly repeated within your organization having a site template for it saves a lot of time and helps to ensure consistency and facilitate continuous improvement.

There are any number of scenarios where you might use a SharePoint site template, for this example we are using a recruitment process, but you could equally well set one up for any regularly repeated process or project you manage: training courses, audits, conferences and sales exhibitions, product testing, office moves, procurement, risk assessment, staff appraisals – the list goes on.

SharePoint comes with some Out of the Box Templates, there are other available on-line, free or to purchase.  But all of these are “off the peg” options: great if you are short on time, but they’re not going to be a perfect fit for your business processes.

To get a SharePoint template that fits your processes perfectly you are going to have to make your own – and thankfully it’s exceptionally easy to do – so here’s how.

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Use SharePoint Filtered Views to Stop Sending Alerts to Yourself

Date:April 19th, 2010 Author: Tags: , , , ,
Category: Filter, General, SharePoint Alert, SharePoint Ideas Comments:0 ;

How annoying is it when you have just created or amended an item in SharePoint, and you immediately get an Alert email about it?

You know the kind of situation: you might be working in a team list, you have the list set up to alert you when an item assigned to you is added or amended, so as soon as you add or amend an item yourself an alert email pings through to your inbox. Completely unnecessary inbox clutter.

So, lets switch off those annoying “alerts to myself” – has to be an easy one click operation, right?

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New SharePoint Partnership – Pentalogic and LookOut Software

Date:April 9th, 2010 Author: Tags: , , , ,
Category: General, Partners Comments:0 ;
We are really pleased to let you know about our latest Strategic Partnership with a SharePoint relationship management development company, LookOut Software of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Lookout_logo_sml

 

LookOut has been in the CRM software business since 1994.  In 2007 they were introduced to SharePoint and made the decision to change development platforms and haven’t looked back since.

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SharePoint Partner Perspective: Veronique Palmer

Date:April 1st, 2010 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: General, Partners, Training Comments:1 ;

This is the first in a series of interviews with our partners  – giving insights into what’s happening in their part of the world and in their part of the world of SharePoint.

And our first interviewee is Veronique Palmer.

We first met Veronique in discussions on the SharePoint Experts Group on LinkedIn, which she co-manages and moderates.  Veronique is based in Johannesburg, South Africa and is owner and founder of Lets Collaborate.

veronique

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