I’m finding that a Gantt Chart is becoming one of my favorite views to use in SharePoint. Despite its flaws, I’m enjoying and finding creative uses for the graphical display of information, especially in situations where you really just need a snapshot estimate of what you are looking at. Why aren’t you using Gantt charts already? Continue reading
I hear this question all the time. Sometimes it is phrased a little differently but the biggest hurdle to users engaging SharePoint is being unaware of what is possible. What can SharePoint do for me? Continue reading
I recently spoke with an organization that is migrating to Office 365. There are multiple reasons why this happened but surprisingly none of the reasons were for end-user features. In fact, the organization worked well already and the reasons to switch had more to do with the technicalities of providing services rather than that business processes needed improvements.
So why is this important? Continue reading
Microsoft SharePoint is a very popular system for building collaborative intranets in organizations large and small. It is a very flexible platform, and it’s relatively easy to build a site with lots of features such as document libraries, task lists, calendars, and the like. Many organizations, however, jump right in without understanding the ins and outs, and without understanding how existing process might need to change to make their SharePoint site all it could be. Without that understanding and effort, you might end up with a bad SharePoint implementation.
It’s a truism in life that people don’t like change. If they see no advantage to SharePoint, they will drag their feet in using it. If it’s difficult to use, they won’t use it. The key to having a successful – and helpful – SharePoint implementation is Continue reading
I’ve heard a lot recently about ‘What is Office 365?’ and I’m actually on my way in about an hour to talk with a group about how Office 365 can benefit their organization.
Generally speaking, Office 365 is big business IT hosted by
Microsoft but priced so that small businesses can benefit from it as well. I talked about something similar with some friends back around 2009 and how there would be a market for this in the future. I’m very excited to see Microsoft working on this in a realistic capacity in 2013! In fact, my son just got his own Office 365 account through the school that he attends.
When we talk about Microsoft hosted services, there are multiple tiers and capabilities out there. Hosted services in “the cloud” have become big business mostly due to the access anywhere capabilities of our always on internet connections through mobile devices. This cloud capability unhooks businesses from HAVING to have their own internal IT department. While it’s always good to have technology savvy employees, without a dedicated IT staff the technology is usually on the backburner.
Office 365 sets you up with Exchange (e-mail server), Lync (Skype-like communication platform), and SharePoint Online (document collaboration platform). All of these Enterprise level services become reasonably priced at around $5-25 per user per month. There are multiple tiers for different needs and you’ll have to see which one works best for you.
The best news about Office 365 is that it’s all based on Microsoft technology so it is very similar to products that you are probably already using. Other than some setup the first time, business continues as usual. In addition, generally classes and training that apply to Microsoft products are usually directly pertinent to your Office 365.
Our PremierPoint Solutions SharePoint 2013 Classes are 99% applicable to Microsoft’s SharePoint Online which generally comes with Office 365 or can be purchased as a stand-alone subscription. In addition, this course is available as a self-paced SharePoint eLearning course through our online learning management system. These incredible tools give back so much more than they take so what are you waiting for?
A question came up this week in my SharePoint 2013 Training class: “What happens when you try to use a share button in SharePoint 2013, but you don’t actually have permissions to change the security on that object?”
This is a good question and I hadn’t really thought about it much. In SharePoint 2013, there are little buttons all over the place to “Share” items. This is part of SharePoint’s improved availability of information; that users can quickly share information with other users. Now, what is it really doing? Continue reading
SharePoint Basics and Beyond 