We’ve just released a new version (v1.1.3) of our FilterPoint web part for SharePoint. We have had plenty of user feedback over the past few weeks and this new version has some added features and functionality that we hope you will all find useful.

As you know, FilterPoint already gives you the ability to set default values globally, to help get users to the most relevant information quickly.

And now new functionality in v1.1.3 will help each user get to their own individual information more quickly too.

There are 2 ways FilterPoint does this.  First by re-loading the last used filter values when you revisit a page.  And secondly by looking for FilterPoints on different pages that filter on the same fields, and getting them to fetch records with the same values.

So how could this help you?

Well, let’s take the example of 2 national sales account managers.  Freda’s biggest client is Big Corp and Sophie’s most important customer is Enormous Inc.  They each want to know what is going on with their key accounts on a daily basis.

So Freda and Sophie both look at dashboards that show sales activity, financial account status, cases and help tickets etc.  Freda always filters to see the stuff on Big Corp and Sophie always filters to see what’s happening with Enormous Inc.

Because FilterPoint will now save filter values between visits to a page each account manager will see information on her main client account as soon as she opens a page – so long as that was the last thing she looked at when she last visited the page.

Even better, once one FilterPoint is set up to filter for “Client = Big Corp” by Sophie, all other FilterPoints on the site will also look for information on “Client = Big Corp” and display this for Sophie, so long as this field and value exist in the lists and web parts they have been applied to.

These two new features should be a real time saver for many users.

In addition, there are other new features in FilterPoint v1.1.3:

• Allow you to send multiple filter options to list view web parts when using multi-choice fields.
• Allows you to use vertical as well as horizontal orientation and
• Adds better error handling for situations where a List, Field or View that FilterPoint is using is later deleted.

If you’re an existing customer or trial user you can download and upgrade to the latest version.

And if you haven’t yet tried FilterPoint why not download a 30 day free trial now?

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.

After many months of work we are delighted to announce that FilterPoint is now available to purchase.

Filtering is one of the things that any serious SharePoint user is going to need to do at some point. As you put more data into SharePoint lists become longer and you will need a quick and easy way to get to the items you are looking for.

When you create applications and dashboards, bringing together information from different data sources and displaying it in different ways with Web Parts adding filters will make your applications and dashboards dynamic – giving users the information they need, when they need it.

But when you start filtering you are going to quickly come across things that you wish you could do with SharePoint’s built in filters, but frustratingly just can’t.

So in the same way that we built Reminder to improve on the functionality of SharePoint Alerts, and Planner to improve on Gantt charts and calendars, we have built FilterPoint to give a little more power to your SharePoint filtering.

If you are working with SharePoint 2010 Foundation or WSS your filtering options are limited to static filtered views. Filtered views are great for getting at data sets that you want to see regularly – like “this month’s sales” for example. Set the view up once and it’s there whenever you need it.

But what if you have 100 clients and want to be able to look at “this client’s sales” for any of them? Setting up a filtered view for each client, and navigating to it is going to be quite a drag.

With FilterPoint your filter can be set up in seconds, allowing users to flip between the different data sets they need with just a couple of clicks.

With MOSS and 2010 Enterprise you get more filter power. But we still felt there were some things missing. So for example even with MOSS filters you can’t:

• Set up several Filters within one filter web part
• In 2007, send many filters to one filter consumer list or Web Part (e.g. filter on both customer and product).
• Use different styles of filter, like Free Text, drop down lists or Radio Buttons
• Clear filters with a single click.

So even though MOSS offers more filtering options, there are still some significant gaps and we believe that FilterPoint goes a long way towards filling these.

Of course FilterPoint isn’t the only 3^rd party filtering web part on the market and you can see how we match up to the competition by taking a look at our comparison chart here.

When we were looking at the competition one thing we noticed was that some of the most useful filter Web Parts – the ones offering the most functionality – were incredibly complex to set up. You would need the patience of a saint and a PhD in SharePoint (if such a thing existed!) So we have worked very hard to keep the setup of FilterPoint quick and simple. Take a look at our short on-line demo here, and let us know whether we have succeeded.

We’ve also tried to keep the prices competitive. Our Single Server License is $595.

And of course, like all of our products FilterPoint comes with a 30 day free trial and a no quibble money back guarantee.

And for existing customers we are offering a 25% discount for purchases made by 31st March 2011.  Email [email protected] for your discount code.

So why not give it a try today?

As FilterPoint is our new baby we are very keen to know what you think of it – so please let us have your comments and feedback.

Our Reminder Web Part – which adds advanced email alerting features to SharePoint – has recently been updated.

The main new feature in version 1.7.9 is support for host-named site collections (aka host header based site collections).

A host header is the main part of a url – such as www.pentalogic.net or sharepoint.yourcompany.com

Normally SharePoint uses separate Web Applications for different host headers and whilst you can use Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) to map two different urls to the same site (e.g. sharepoint for internal access  and http://sharepoint.yourcompany.com for external access to the same site) you can’t have entirely different sites served by the same web application on different urls.

Why does this matter to you?

Well, for the vast majority of you it doesn’t! In fact you can’t create host header site collections using SharePoints Central admin tool – you’ve got to break out the command line STSADM or powershell.

For most installations you’re likely to have a scheme such as sharepoint.yourcomapny.com/sites/HR and sharepoint.yourcomapny.com/sites/Finance etc  and you may perhaps use Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) to give alternate urls for the same content. e.g. a shortcut of sharepoint/sites/HR and sharepoint/sites/Finance.

However, you can’t use AAM to serve different content from different host headers using the web application. So if you want to have customer specific sites such as CustomerA.yourcompany.com and CustomerB.yourcomany.com (a very common requirement for hosting companies) then you have to create separate web applications for each host header.

The problem is that this doesn’t scale very well above approximately 20 web applications and instead you’re advised to use host header site collections.

• Host-named site collections – 2010, 2007
• Shared Hosting solutions on WSS 3.0 (Word)

In addition we’ve also included corrections to errors caused by mixing field names and formatting in the Rich Text Editor and separating multiple email addresses in rich text fields with new line characters were also included in this new version.

You can download the latest version and update without loosing any settings – upgrade instructions are included in the manual.

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.

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We have spent a lot of time over the past month working on the beta version of FilterPoint. Our team of professional testers have been working hard to check for compatibility with all versions of SharePoint 2007 and 2010 and a wide range of browsers, as well as looking for bugs and challenging us on some aspects of the usability of the UI.

And we also owe a huge vote of thanks to our beta volunteers who have been testing out the product in the real world.  Our volunteers and not only uncovered some bugs, but also come up with suggestions for additional things that we could include in the first release.  Some of these we have already added and they include:

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One of the top questions you’ll ask if you’re looking at deploying a SharePoint solution for your organization is – how much is this going to cost us? While the exact answer depends on the size of your business and what you want from SharePoint, this post will look at the cost of entering the SharePoint sphere.

There are many options available and many variables that may come into play here – so the figures we are giving are not designed to cost a solution down to the last cent – rather to give you a “ball park” idea of what each level of the SharePoint solution is likely to cost, and perhaps more importantly the size of the steps between each level.

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The one thing in SharePoint which is sure to create new frown lines on the troubled brow of any SharePoint Newbie is Permissions.

When I first started with SharePoint my first thought on digging in to the whole permissions issue was “What the holy heck is this all about then?”

Permissions – well surely we just decide what we want a user to be able to do and then – give them permission to do it, right?

Wrong!

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