Providing a starting point for the developers and the partner who look forward to build deeper solutions based on SharePoint hosting, the SharePoint Templates caters to the different business process needs in organization (irrespective of the size of the organizations). Fully compatible with the Microsoft office SharePoint designer 2007, the SharePoint Templates can actually be divided into two separate groups namely server admin templates and site admin templates. Providing out-of-the-box custom scenarios, the SharePoint Templates in SharePoint WSS 3.0 hosting can be applied in certain business tasks like sales campaign tracking or managing the helpdesk. Site admin templates are custom SharePoint Templates which can be easily installed into the template gallery by a SharePoint site administrator without requiring access to server administration. Server admin SharePoint Templates are site definitions. They enable tighter integration and increased functionality within Windows SharePoint Services platform. As against the Site admin templates their installation requires a server administrator.
The Application Templates which are out-of-the-box options and are pre-created can help you to start with your hosted SharePoint web site, or pages inside SharePoint Hosting Site. Easily applicable to the new pages, the SharePoint Templates and can be easily manipulated and changed, just like you do while building a SharePoint page from right from the scratch. The application templates also help to create web based applications which are capable of increasing the overall efficiency.
There are in total 40 SharePoint Templates created by Microsoft. These templates do not only save time but also increases the overall efficiency and also helps in the manipulation of the web parts (which are used to construct the SharePoint pages). The SharePoint templates are added or removed or can be edited according to your needs. All that you need to do is to identify your needs… You have a solution to your problem!
Source:- hostreview.com/
Showing posts with label Share point. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Share point. Show all posts
Monday, December 8, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Microsoft Launches Online Exchange, SharePoint
Microsoft on Monday officially launched hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint, two of its biggest on-premise cash cows, and continued to drive home the message that channel partners have nothing to fear from Microsoft's plan to move all its enterprise apps to the cloud.
Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are part of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which also includes Live Meeting and Office Communications Server, although the latter is still in beta and won't be available until next spring.
At a launch event in San Francisco, Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, said companies can reap cost savings of between 10 and 50 percent by moving to Microsoft-hosted SharePoint and Exchange services.
Microsoft's launch last month of the Windows Azure cloud-based development platform marked a significant step forward for Microsoft's Software Plus Services strategy, which blends on-premise software with Microsoft-hosted apps delivered over the Web from Microsoft's data centers, Elop said.
Microsoft has already sold more that 500,000 seats of Exchange Online since making it available to enterprises last year, but has also seen "a tremendous amount of interest" in BPOS from companies of all sizes, Elop said. More than 1500 companies have signed up for the Microsoft Partner Program for Microsoft Online Services since its launch in July, he added.
In July at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, some solution providers were upset by the commission structure for BPOS as well as by Microsoft's revelation that it would take over control of billing customers.
Exchange Online is priced at $10 per user/month, SharePoint Online per user/month is $7.25. Office Communications Server Online will be $2.50 per user/month, and LiveMeeting will be $4.50 per user/month. Microsoft will offer these services in one-year automatically renewing agreements.
At the Monday launch event, Elop insisted that Microsoft has maintained "a deliberate dependence" on its partner ecosystem by offering VARs the chance to develop recurring revenue streams.
To illustrate what Elop described as the "absolutely overwhelming" channel response to Exchange and SharePoint Online, Microsoft had several partners on hand to discuss deployment scenarios. These case studies helped underscore Microsoft's mantra that VARs can adapt their business models by focusing on value-added migration and customization services.
"The whole world is changing. It requires change, but it's representative of what's going on in the market today," said Elop.
Adam Smith, director of marketing at Phase 2 International, a Honolulu, Hawaii-based solution provider, says in the current economic environment, his customers are finding it easier to pay a monthly subscription as opposed to a major one-time capital expenditure.
Smith admits that the Microsoft's WPC announcement was initially ominous for Microsoft hosting partners, but said the practical realities of deploying on-premise Microsoft apps quickly dissolved those fears.
"We've never had a customer who was satisfied with an out-of-the-box, Microsoft application," Smith said. "Every customer, without exception, has required some level of support, training, integration, or customization."
Source:- crn.com/
Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are part of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which also includes Live Meeting and Office Communications Server, although the latter is still in beta and won't be available until next spring.
At a launch event in San Francisco, Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, said companies can reap cost savings of between 10 and 50 percent by moving to Microsoft-hosted SharePoint and Exchange services.
Microsoft's launch last month of the Windows Azure cloud-based development platform marked a significant step forward for Microsoft's Software Plus Services strategy, which blends on-premise software with Microsoft-hosted apps delivered over the Web from Microsoft's data centers, Elop said.
Microsoft has already sold more that 500,000 seats of Exchange Online since making it available to enterprises last year, but has also seen "a tremendous amount of interest" in BPOS from companies of all sizes, Elop said. More than 1500 companies have signed up for the Microsoft Partner Program for Microsoft Online Services since its launch in July, he added.
In July at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, some solution providers were upset by the commission structure for BPOS as well as by Microsoft's revelation that it would take over control of billing customers.
Exchange Online is priced at $10 per user/month, SharePoint Online per user/month is $7.25. Office Communications Server Online will be $2.50 per user/month, and LiveMeeting will be $4.50 per user/month. Microsoft will offer these services in one-year automatically renewing agreements.
At the Monday launch event, Elop insisted that Microsoft has maintained "a deliberate dependence" on its partner ecosystem by offering VARs the chance to develop recurring revenue streams.
To illustrate what Elop described as the "absolutely overwhelming" channel response to Exchange and SharePoint Online, Microsoft had several partners on hand to discuss deployment scenarios. These case studies helped underscore Microsoft's mantra that VARs can adapt their business models by focusing on value-added migration and customization services.
"The whole world is changing. It requires change, but it's representative of what's going on in the market today," said Elop.
Adam Smith, director of marketing at Phase 2 International, a Honolulu, Hawaii-based solution provider, says in the current economic environment, his customers are finding it easier to pay a monthly subscription as opposed to a major one-time capital expenditure.
Smith admits that the Microsoft's WPC announcement was initially ominous for Microsoft hosting partners, but said the practical realities of deploying on-premise Microsoft apps quickly dissolved those fears.
"We've never had a customer who was satisfied with an out-of-the-box, Microsoft application," Smith said. "Every customer, without exception, has required some level of support, training, integration, or customization."
Source:- crn.com/
The SharePoint Upgrade Trap
SharePoint 2007 migrations are simple enough, but beware of hidden dangers. Here's a look at some of the more common upgrade and migration problems.
When I think about the process of migrating from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007, the phrase "deceptively simple" comes to mind. Microsoft gives you the option of either performing an in-place upgrade or a migration. If you choose the in-place upgrade option, all you have to do is insert an installation disk, answer a basic question or two, click Next a few times, and you're good to go.
The first thing that you need to know about the upgrade process is that not every version of SharePoint can be directly upgraded. SharePoint 2007 supports in-place upgrades from SharePoint 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
When I think about the process of migrating from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007, the phrase "deceptively simple" comes to mind. Microsoft gives you the option of either performing an in-place upgrade or a migration. If you choose the in-place upgrade option, all you have to do is insert an installation disk, answer a basic question or two, click Next a few times, and you're good to go.
Simple, right? So why qualify the process as deceptively simple? Well, there's a lot that can go wrong. Let's look a bit more closely at some of the caveats to the upgrade or migration process and what you can do to avoid some common problems.
Upgrade PathsThe first thing that you need to know about the upgrade process is that not every version of SharePoint can be directly upgraded. SharePoint 2007 supports in-place upgrades from SharePoint 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
If you are running Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, then the easiest way to upgrade is to upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and then to SharePoint 2007. Microsoft offers a full upgrade toolkit that can help you to upgrade from Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to 3.0. You can download this toolkit here.
If you happen to be running Microsoft Content Management Server 2002, then you will not be able to do an in-place upgrade, but you can migrate the server's content.
What Could Go Wrong?
So if an upgrade or migration is so easy, what could possibly go wrong? Even though Microsoft has thoroughly tested the upgrade and migration features, they have no way of knowing about any custom code that you might be running. The migration or upgrade process works really well if you are using only stock Web parts, but things become a bit sketchy when you start introducing customizations.
One classic example of this is that if you use a tool such as Microsoft FrontPage to customize a SharePoint site, that site is said to be unghosted. What this means is that when the migration completes, the site will still retain some of the look and feel of the SharePoint 2003 site, because Setup doesn't know how to convert Web parts that do not comply with some default parameters. Fortunately, Microsoft does provide administrators with a way to return a site to a ghosted status once the migration is complete.
Path of Most Resistance
As you can see, the upgrade or migration process is not always as easy as you might at first be lead to believe. That being the case, I strongly recommend performing a trial upgrade or a trial migration. That way, you can find out about any potential issues ahead of time, without affecting your production servers.
The easiest way of performing a trial upgrade or a trial migration is to get a couple of high-end PCs that you can temporarily configure as servers. Once you have these PCs in place, you can place them on an isolated network and then restore your SharePoint backups to them.
Using an isolated network is important -- you don't want your trial migration to impact your production network in any way. The down side to using an isolated network segment is that you will need to set up at least one domain controller and at least one DNS server on it.
One of the easiest ways to bring an infrastructure server onto your isolated network segment is to install a trial version of Windows Server onto a PC and then use DCPROMO to promote it to a domain controller. Once you have done that, then you can physically remove the new domain controller from your production network, and then attach it to your isolated segment. You will then need to seize the operations master roles and configure the domain controller to act as a DNS server.
Keep in mind that because you have seized the operations master roles, you won't be able to plug the domain controller back into your production network. That being the case, you will need to use the Active Directory Users and Computers console to remove the references to your new domain controller from your Active Directory.
It's a lot of work to get the SharePoint server and the domain controller in place for a trial migration or upgrade. The nice thing about using this method though, is that it allows you to get an accurate feel for how the transitioning process will go when you eventually try it on your production network.
Keep in mind that even if it appears that your trial migration or upgrade was successful, you need to have some of your power users log into your isolated network and interact with your SharePoint site in the same way that they do on the production network. Having experienced users to thoroughly test the post-migration lab network is the only way that you will be able to tell for sure whether or not there were problems with the migration process.
A Simple Plan
Unfortunately, if you have created any custom Web parts, made customizations to existing Web parts, or purchased any third party SharePoint add-ons, then there is no way of knowing exactly what is going to happen during the upgrade or migration process. That's why it is so important to thoroughly test your migration plan before you attempt to upgrade or migrate your production servers.
Source:- rcpmag.com/
Monday, August 4, 2008
Report: Beware of 'chaos' SharePoint Can Create
A report from Forrester is warning customers to consider carefully how they plan to use Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server product, which they say can wreak havoc in an IT organization when used as a custom application development platform.
The recently published report, "Now Is The Time To Determine SharePoint's Place In Your Application Development Strategy," outlines how, while SharePoint can be extremely useful for creating company intranets, companies should be careful when using it to create custom applications because the product lacks features -- such as in application lifecycle management (ALM) and enterprise application integration (EAI) -- that other, more proven development platforms have.
Also, SharePoint is misunderstood in general, and while it allows users to create their own applications and customize SharePoint intranet sites quite easily, this can turn into a quagmire of complexity for the organization when it comes to managing and supporting those applications, the report said.
This complexity causes IT teams to become busy trying to "fill the product's gaps in application life-cycle management and enterprise integration as they create policies to prevent a new chaos of user-generated applications," according to the report, written by Forrester analysts John Rymer and Rob Koplowitz.
The problem becomes further complicated by the lack of people who have advanced development skills for SharePoint, they said.
In the report they outline several customer scenarios in which custom development on SharePoint got out of hand and became more than a company's IT staff could handle.
In one, a so-called SharePoint "power user" inspired "a reshuffling of IT," analysts wrote. The user built several popular custom applications using SharePoint, assuming that the development and operational organizations could support them. However, they couldn't because it required "specialized skills that neither organization possessed," according to the report.
The firm had to hire a new IT specialist to fill in the gap and expand SharePoint's role in the company's application-development strategy, according to a report.
Microsoft originally conceived SharePoint as a portal product on which companies could build Web sites. But with its release as part of the 2007 Office System, Microsoft has expanded the product to become a hub for collaboration, document-management and business intelligence, not to mention a development platform for building custom intranet sites and other applications.
SharePoint adoption has grown faster than even Microsoft could anticipate, which could have something to do with the lack of people with the skillset to deal with the product. The quick uptake also could have pushed SharePoint into uses that Microsoft hadn't yet prepared the product to deal with.
"I don't think that even Microsoft could predict the adoption rates that SharePoint is seeing," said Andrew Brust, chief, new technology of IT consulting firm twentysix New York.
Indeed, in their report, Rymer and Koplowitz note that Forrester's clients said SharePoint's growth "has caught many application development managers by surprise." They compare the headaches SharePoint sites create for IT managers to how Lotus Notes databases were in the 1990s. Both products allow for the explosion of custom sites and applications that IT departments can have a hard time managing.
In Microsoft's defense, Brust said the company recognizes that SharePoint has some technology gaps and is working hard to fill them, noting that solving the problem of SharePoint's limited ALM capability in particular is the sort of thing "Microsoft lives for."
He also noted that other Microsoft products -- such as BizTalk for EAI and Visual Studio Team System for ALM -- can help IT departments work with SharePoint in the meantime.
In their report, Rymer and Koplowitz noted that while Microsoft is working to fill the gaps in the product, organizations should carefully consider before deployment how they will use SharePoint, if at all, in their organizations.
They suggested companies choose one of three scenarios for SharePoint to make the product work as effectively as possible.
One is to use the product as merely an application for collaboration and sharing information and not as a development platform at all, they said. The second scenario is as both an application and an intranet platform for which the company fills in product gaps -- which in addition to ALM and EAI include issues surrounding the reliability, availability and scalability of the product.
The third and most complicated scenario for an organization would be to use SharePoint as both an application and an enterprise portal at the core of a company's application-development strategy, analysts said. However, organizations must choose this option knowing it will require heavy lifting on the part of the IT team, and also eventually require a transition away from other portal or intranet software that may currently exist in the organization, according to the report.
source:- pcworld.com/
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