Saturday 18 December 2010

1.5 SharePoint Features

1.5 SharePoint 2010 Features

As mentioned earlier, SharePoint product family contains many products & evolution of these products started long back. It contains various features related to CMS, DMS, RMS. The key versions, which made SharePoint Popular, are Moss 2007 and SharePoint 2010.
SharePoint 2010 crosses the boundaries of browser and reach at mobile desktop, to enhance the employee’s productivity while they are away from the office. With the enhanced mobility access, employees can access information, share and edit the presentation or documents instantly.
Microsoft has labeled SharePoint 2010 as a business collaboration platform for enterprises and the web because it opens up new domains for managing a number of activities from the workplace like:
·         Document management
·         Web content management
·         Workplace collaboration
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 revolves around six pillars, which covers the whole functionality. These six pillars are:
Sites: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 uses different sites, which help users in getting relevant information quicker. These sites can be used through internet, intranet or extranet. It enables users to share information, data and expertise across organizations. Organizations can take advantage of personalization, content management, and social networking and collaboration activities through any type of site.
Communities: the new version of SharePoint allows users to work together in different ways. Microsoft has enhanced the social feature of SharePoint 2007 in SharePoint 2010 and has made it look better. Communities allow people to collaborate in groups, share knowledge, and find information on various topics easily.
Content: SharePoint content shifts SharePoint 2010 from a departmental solution to an enterprise solution. There has been massive improvement in content wherein users can add a significant number of documents to SharePoint. They can even use external data storage options to store more data.
Search: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has acquired FAST search server, which improves the search tremendously. Now, users not only can search for content, but also people. They can opt for better language options with thumbnails and previews. They can even sort out the search queries and study similar search to get relevant search results.
Insights: with the help of SharePoint insights, users can access information through different data sources like dashboards, scorecards, reports and more. To help users, Microsoft has introduced performance point server to the SharePoint platform. It is also known as Performance point services for SharePoint. It helps users discover right people and expertise to make better business decisions.
Composites: SharePoint being a complete platform helps users in creating their code solution on premises or in the cloud. Complex application can be developed with the help of well-known tools like:
·         InfoPath
·         SharePoint designer 2010
·         Visio 2010
 Above mentioned six pillars contians various features of SharePoint 2010.

Feel free to ping at vguptadelhi@gmail.com in case of any queries.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Go Green Paperless Office” [21-25]

Hi Friends,

Being an Indian is a great pride to me, recently India hosted common wealth games and all are aware about how fantastically they are being managed. Whenever such a kind of huge event occurs, past the event Record management and document management becomes key. My post jots down few key features of Sharepoint 2010 related to Document and Record management.

21. Document Set: It quiet frequent in offices, to store the related set of document in document library  or in set of folders. The new feature in SharePoint 2010, allows to create DOCUMENT SETS .You can group related documents together. These documents can share same metadata common homepage, workflow and archival process.

22. Structured Taxonomies: These are set of structured keywords used to create searching process easier. A project management organization can classify contents/documents on the basis of Project Type, Methodology and Project Phases.

23. Lightweight Folksonomies (free tagging): In organizations there are few keywords which are unstructured according to industry but used in day to day work culture. These keyword can be name as folksonomies. These keywords are user defined and easy to create and use.

24. Document ID: Whenever any document is created or stored SharePoint provides an ID, till SharePoint 2007 this feature needs to be added as columns by clicking it in list. It creates an incremental number but in every document library it starts from number “1”. In real time scenarios it becomes difficult to identify document on the basis of this number. In SharePoint 2010, any document being stored in any document library will be provided a unique document id.The unique document id is provided a “PERMALINK” using which the document can be accessed directly without even going to Document library or document set.

25 Document Size: SharePoint provides lots of flexibility in terms of document management but have few limitations like the document size of maximum 2GB can be stored and accessed .

The above mentioned various features related to document management enables SharePoint 2010 to make end user feel the document management on tips and documents in few clicks away.

In case of any queries, feel free to post me at vguptadelhi@gmail.com.














Sunday 12 September 2010

Go Green Paperless Office” [16-20]

Hi Friends,


Today, I am writing this Post while travelling to my office at Hammersmith in Tube and viewing the green natural resources across the way. This gave me a strong belief, about my thought process of “Go Green Paperless Office”.

The majority of the paper is used during office works; if we are able to automate the office in quick, easy and innovative manner then I am sure we will achieve “Paperless Office” very soon.
As, I have mentioned in my previous posts regarding various ways to search information, this post revolves around the “Creation & Storage of Documents”.

16.Document Library: Office users store official documents on their desktop in various folders and when required they keeps on searching .SharePoint provides feature of document library creation, create a Folder on server to store the documents of various formats like .doc,.xls,.pdf,.ppt etc. For e.g. a folder “Organizational Policies” is created.
17. User Access: The documents stored in the document libraries, can be provided access rights on the basis of user access type. The folder “Organizational Policies” can be viewed by all the employees but can be modified by HR team only.
18. Version Maintenance: Whenever there is change in the documents and version of documents needs to be maintained, SharePoint provides feature called major and minor version .User can define policy to provide major and minor version.
19. Metatags: Now days there are times when user wish to store specific set of properties to the document at the time of creation of the document, user can associate Meta tags to the documents. The documents in “Organizational Policies are created by HR Team and reviewed by HR Manager, so the metatag HR Manager can be set to store the name of HR Manager automatically and get associated with the document.
20. Size Limit: Aministrator can define the size limit for e.g. 5 Mb in this scenario any user who wish to uploads the document more than 5Mb cannot do so.


Document Library enables to create Files/Documents and even Folders, which is the key element in any office day to day activity.


In case of any queries, feel free to post me at vguptadelhi@gmail.com.


I am sure till now all my friends got convinced about the way to use SharePoint as a tool in their offices and take a pledge to save at least “ONE PAPER” daily.

Wednesday 8 September 2010

“Go Green Paperless Office” [11-15]

Hi ALL,

While sleeping today a dream comes to me, and “ god” asked “Vishal” I want to give you a “Wish” today, what you want?

I said “god” you have given us all the good natural resources but as human beings we have not utilized them properly and hence feeling the pain. But now my wish is to “Go Green Paperless Office”, kindly enable us to do so. god said I am with you all.

In continuation to series of Paperless office, the most critical thing everybody faces is “very difficult to find the information”. So this post is revolves around Search:

11. Query Formation: Think in an organization, project manager want to see all the documents being created by Ram and Tony. Project manager can easily search for this. Project manager can use any operators like “AND, OR, NOT”. These operators can be used to find the desired result in combination.[Ram AND Tony, Ram Or Tony, Ram not Tony]
12. Wild Card [*,?]: Lots of time its being required to search all the documents starting with letter “A” etc. In SharePoint 2010 jut type A* it will provide all the documents having A as stat letter with any characters in end. Wild card only works at the end of the string. [*A will not fetch useful result, but A* will displays all documents starting with letter A].
13. Suggestion while Typing: Now days in fast life, our expectations from this gadget are increasing many folds, we want everything to be done automatically; hence Microsoft provided a feature of “providing suggestions “while you start typing in search box the suggestion related to words are provided. You start typing “Sh” it will give you suggestions “Share, Shine” etc. So that you can just select and “GO”.
14.DID you mean Suggestion : It not only provide the suggestions at the time you are writing the key words , but once you pressed “GO”, then also it say “Did you mean SharePoint” or any keyword which is best suitable for the keyword you initiated the search for.
15. Federated Result: To provide a search from remote location servers when data is huge the feature called federated result can be used.
The user will initiate a query and result will be displayed from SharePoint index server as well as remote index server associated.
For e.g. remote index server “Bing.com” is associated the search query or “India” will search all the result from bing.com as well as local search server.

So friends, SharePoint search provides features [tag cloud, faceted search, search on properties, search using operators, Federated result, Search suggestions etc.].Starts using all these features and enable organization to provide fast easy and quick information.

In case of any queries, feel free to post me at vguptadelhi@gmail.com.

Please provide you support in genuine cause of saving environment and making paperless office as now “ god is also with us “.

Monday 6 September 2010

100 Ways to Go Green Paperless Office

“Go Green Paperless Office”[6-10]

Hi Friends,

In continuation to series of Paperless office, the most critical thing everybody faces is “very difficult to find the information”. So this post is revolves around Search:

6. Colleague Tracker : In wide spreader geographical environment it becomes difficult to find who is present in office , lots of offices gave access to messengers[which puts IT Policy on Toss, but no choice].SharePoint provide Colleague search web part to easily find who is online and to message them in close environment.
7. Tag Cloud: The same information is available at various places, but it takes lots of time to find it and retrieve it. Now a day’s people wants to see only valuable information or such information which lots of other people are searching and viewing.[Tag Cloud- highlights these valuable key words and makes them bold so that user can click them and go straight to information].
8. Faceted Search: This is the interesting feature it allows to aggregate the contents on basis of categories and also displays the number of the contents available for those contents.
9. Best Bet: In an office varied people tends to seek same information but search with different name, for e.g.: to seek Leave policy few employees will search for “Leave Policy”, few will search for “Employee Leave Policy”, few might search with some other name but as a manager you wish to show all the same result which is easily possible thru Best Bet.
10. Search on properties (document, content, picture): It becomes so easy to search like enter the name of the person who created document, when is document going to expire, on the size of the document etc. etc anything you think of just create the property and you can get the desired result.

The best part is it does the search in seconds and also displays how much time is taken to do so. Most of the features till now described in the post are Sahrepoint builtin features.

In case of any queries, feel free to post me at vguptadelhi@gmail.com.

Please provide you support in genuine cause of saving environment and making paperless office.

Thursday 2 September 2010

100 Ways to Go Green Paperless Office

“Go Green Paperless Office”


I am starting this post as social responsibility toward making environment clean and green using Paperless Office. During coming 20 posts I will briefly describe 5 ways in every post to make your office green and paperless.

In the era of technology, when all the brains are working towards saving natural resources then also trees are being cut and land is being made barren.

 Today let’s take a Pledge to save the natural resources, and it starts from Our Offices where we spend most time of the day.

Now days, through technology [Microsoft “SharePoint 2010"] it is possible to create paperless office in few clicks and also to become contributor to our social responsibility "Save Environment".

A Few features of SharePoint 2010 which can be implemented in Organization easily are:


1. Meeting Room Booking - Booking a meeting room is the daily activity in an organization, instead of using paper pen one can go to intranet portal [created in SharePoint 2010] and do it in a few clicks.

2. Business Card Printing Request - Every day new employees join an organization, they send a request to get business card printed which can easily be achieved in just a few clicks [SharePoint 2010].

3. Taxi Booking Request - Whenever employee has to go outside office for official purpose, taxi needs to be booked and approved by the manager. On the Intranet Portal [SharePoint 2010] employee can easily logs in even from home and do this in seconds.

4. Stationary Request - Employees need stationary on and off, but administration department say enter here sign here (paper used).Intranet Portal [SharePoint 2010] enable to do this without using any paper.

5. Leave Approval - Employees take leave, either employee send an email to manager or sometime does on phone or sms or on paper which all becomes unable to track. [SharePoint 2010] enables to do so in hassle free click ticks.

Ultimate aim is to save paper & to create paperless office.


In case of any queries feel free to send email at [vguptadelhi@gmail.com]

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Maximize Business Profits thru SharePoint 2010

Any Business whether its small, medium or large enterprise revolves around three critical areas.

1.Incoming
2.Outgoing
3.Process to rotate the above two
Incoming and outgoing as a substance have various components related to it, Like [products, substance, material, Manpower, vendors, finance [Blood to run the business] etc].

To make it simple I am listing below a few examples:
1. IT Company: Companies which works, in Outsource model scenario Outsourcing manager request a resource and HR sends a resume of a person who has already resigned. Result-BUSINESS LOSS
2. Product Manufacturing Company- Daily new stock is being added without the information whether the old stock has been sold or not. Result-[useless expenses without need] - Resources LOSS
Now think of a company:
1. Company has implemented consolidated intranet portal using SharePoint 2010 Few listed below are the advantages the company enjoys:
1. All the employees have single platform and URL to remember for all the organizational processes.[One Platform with integration of All Internal & External Systems]
2. All the employees do their attendance, Leaves, which is integrated to payroll from this itself[Outgoing Controlled in terms of man power]
3. All the vendors registration, with the approval lifecycle process being governed from here and mail with alerts for events being initiated.[ Outgoing Controlled in terms of external , internal vendors]
4. All the orders, request, proposals with the current status displayed on dashboard according to roles and rights access. [ Outgoing Controlled in terms of what needs to be developed what needs to be worked on and when, Clear visibility of Incoming – when and how]
5. All the processes being streamlined implemented and accessible to all at single platform.
6. Organizations having Block the internet sites, can create RSS feeds web parts to provide access to various topic of interest to employees.


In nutshell I summarized how SharePoint 2010 can be of use to all, for any specific queries send an email to vguptadelhi@gmail.com.