At Australian Tech.Ed 2009 last week on the Gold Coast, I had the opportunity to have a discussion with Kristian Kalsing (@kalsing) from Extend Technologies to talk about Office Business Applications (OBAs). We recorded the 13 minute video, and it is now published at the Tech.Ed Online site.
“OBAs: A strategy for unlocking the value in your ERP investment” at Tech·Ed Online:http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=b39a65e8-e8cd-4cae-aa96-784990299774
Extend is from one of the premier SAP partners in Australia. However, they do also have a 
Microsoft practice very skilled in Office and SharePoint development as well. They have done a great job in proposing to their enterprise customers the value of using Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Windows Mobile to be the interface to SAP data and processes.
The Productivity Hub is now live!
What is the Productivity Hub?
The Productivity Hub is a SharePoint Server 2007 site collection. It comes packed with over 300* pieces of content, including videos, documents and PowerPoint slides. This gives you a great start at building a learning community behind your firewall.
Microsoft has developed the Productivity Hub to help you optimize your Microsoft end user training plans, and is provided at no cost.
The Hub centralizes Microsoft’s end user training content while providing a great use case for using SharePoint Server throughout your organization. It removes the need for you to have to find, centralize and publish Microsoft’s free end user training to an internal site; we have done the work for you. You can customize the Hub to fit your branding and needs. The flexibility and rich feature set of SharePoint Server 2007 allows you to add web parts, remove web parts, and add your own content to the Hub.
The Hub highlights the best features of SharePoint Server 2007, while providing you with end user training for the newest versions of Office, SharePoint, and Windows.
The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking features to engage end users. It also offers training for “coaches” or power users internal to each customer. Coaches can help reduce the burden on training and helpdesk staff by adding another level of support.
The Productivity blog is another way to give your end users ongoing Tips and Tricks – and the blog is where you will find out about new content for the Hub. You can either keep the RSS feed on your Hub home page, or put it on a hidden page and reuse the blog content in your own internal SharePoint blog.
Benefits to you:
•Helps reduce costs: Streamlines training and helps reduce training overhead. Acts as a tool for training departments and IT.
•Multiple learning paths: Includes learning roadmaps, coaches, forums, searchable content and more.
•Helps increase productivity: Accelerates 2007 Office system use through a learning community.
•Drives adoption: Ongoing access to training enables deeper use and helps create new power users.
•Ignites collaboration: Encourages self-help through the coach program.
•Proof of concept: Provides a vision for collaborative learning – leading to collaborative work.
Quarterly Content Updates
We will provide quarterly content updates for your Hub beginning August 2009. You can learn about the updates on the Productivity blog. The following is an approximate delivery schedule (subject to change).
| Update | Month |
| First quarterly update | August 2009 |
| Second quarterly update | November 2009 |
| Third quarterly update | February 2010 |
| Fourth quarterly update | May 2010 |
2010 Office Content
We will provide content updates for 2010 Office when it becomes available. We are also planning an upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010 and will have a migration path for customers currently using the SharePoint Server 2007 Hub.
Hub Download link
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=277fefca-d62f-41bc-943d-79002254cfee
*Content updates are available for the Hub, adding over 200 documents. Follow the instructions in the customization guide to add new products to your Hub.
In my role as an Enterprise Productivity Specialist, I spend a lot of my time talking to customers about Office System, and how the Office Server (SharePoint) enables people and teams to work better together. I usually talk to CIO’s and Senior IT Managers about this – and have presented “What is SharePoint” approximately 500 times in the past 3 years from an IT point of view.
However, I’ve never had to explain it to my Mum. If I had to – I would show her this 3 minute video called SharePoint in Plain English.
SharePoint in Plain English
SharePoint consultant Jeremy Thake from Readify is conducting some research into SharePoint Content and Application Lifecycle Management. His effort is to create a whitepaper on this topic, and use as much real life experience from SharePoint implementations as possible.
He has published an online and anonymous survey to capture real life experience from SharePoint users.
Go ahead – help out the SharePoint community and fill in the quick survey at:http://wss.made4the.net/archive/2009/07/29/sharepoint-applicationcontent-lifecyle-management-anonymous-survey.aspx
…and you’ll be helping shape material presented at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas. By the way, if you are interested in learning more about how to effectively operate and use SharePoint 2007, or are interested in learning deeply about SharePoint 2010 you should consider going to the SharePoint Conference.
There is 220 sessions available for Technical Decision Makers, Admins, Architects and Business Analysts. http://www.mssharepointconference.com
I’ve been travelling overseas this week to a global Microsoft conference in the US. I sit here in the Airport departure lounge (offline) reflecting on my week.
A couple of events happened – and both are real life stories of the value of Microsoft’s Software + Services (S+S) strategy.
1) The hotel I stayed in was filled with Microsoft employees – who are all digitally connected to our work and live in email during all waking hours. We saturated the network and had a very slow internet connection. Browsing the web and synchronising email took a long time – It took hours for a couple of MB of email to synchronise.
2) While the Internet connection was slow, it eventually failed for about a day. I received the following letter from the President of North America Sales for the hotel chain:
“Due to a physical malfunction in routing equipment and the unexpected failure of backup systems, the internet access for the property was reported ‘offline’ by our Network Operation Center. After a number of attempts to get the network back online were unsuccessful, a Senior Engineer was dispatched from our headquarters to the property to join the other members of our team and replace the faulty equipment. Internet access was restored at approximately 2:45 today.”
While I did not have access to any internet functionality, I was still able to work on my presentation that I had to give at the conference and also read/triage my email inbox all while Offline.
The point is that if I did not have powerful software on my desktop and relied solely on services in the cloud I would have had no options for getting my presentation and work done. I know that Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors will say to customers “really – how often are you actually offline” - a situation like what happened above would stopped my productivity. This would affect any user that relies on software in the cloud – whether it is from MS Online Services or other vendors.
So while I’m not offline very often S+S gave me the choice to work as I needed to – for the entire week of a slow/missing Internet connection.
I’m particularly excited about Office 2010 and the Web Applications for OneNote, Word, PowerPoint and Excel. This next release of Office will give me, the user, the choice of how I want to work on my PC, in my Browser or on my Windows Phone.
If you were looking for one more good reason to get to 2009 Australian Tech.Ed on the Gold Coast this year, we’ve just announced that attendees will receive a complimentary HP Mini 2140 NetBook PC.
Full details including Terms and Conditions around this offer are found on the Tech.Ed site here http://www.msteched.com/australia/Public/windows-7-experience.aspx
Be sure to bring a sticker or name tag for yours… there be a lot of mix ups at the event with a couple of thousand people having the same model Netbook!
I see on the SharePoint Team blog that they have announced some changes to the 
SharePoint home page on Microsoft.com.
While there is many SharePoint sites I can show you, plus some that Microsoft runs publicly, it good to see such a mainstream site using the Web Content Management features of SharePoint for it’s publishing. http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint is the place to check it out….
Here are some more examples of Microsoft Sites running MOSS:
Also take a look at my mate Ian Morrish’s site out of New Zealand for over 500 references to MOSS public websites:
Last year we had over 50 unsolicited requests to be a speaker with 142 session ideas for the Office System track at Tech.Ed Australia.
This year we have a new tool to manage submissions and provide transparency of the progress and status of your submissions in the Tech.Ed Call for Content tool.
Alistair Speirs has written a nice summary for what we are looking for, and how to submit your nomination.
http://blogs.msdn.com/alspeirs/archive/2009/05/07/guidance-for-potential-office-system-track-speakers-at-tech-ed-australia.aspx
For those of you who have heard me talk about the reasons Microsoft continues to innovate and build evolutions of the Microsoft Office Suite is about providing capabilities to organisations for the workplace that is still emerging.
One of the tenets that I like to reference is the concept of Managing a Dynamic Business. Microsoft’s Director of Business Insight, Dan Rasmus, does scenario based planning around the future of business. In his exploration of how a business needs to operate in a Dynamic Environment Dan discusses how many external forces are applied to a business that it can’t control – such as changing demographic of a population, disintermediation, and disease.
It’s topical now that disease, in the case of Swine Flu, is getting hyped in the media and spread extremely fast through networks such as Twitter which amplify the conversations happening on a topic.
Consider this though. If your HR team looked at the risk, and said - “OK – all employees need to work from home until further notice” would your business be able to cope with this? Are you setup in a dynamic way to allow this to happen at a moments notice?
Dan has published a 16 page whitepaper on Managing a Dynamic Business. Read this with Swine Flu in mind as you absorb his thoughts around managing things you can’t control. http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/en-us/?ng=insights#&&ng=insights&ct=articles&id=4
Check out more from Dan at his Listening to the Future site: http://www.listeningtothefuture.com/
I’ve spent the last few working days briefing Government Agencies about how Microsoft approaches a new release of Office and decide on the investments in new features to give our customers new capabilities to support the emerging world of work.
I highlight activities that provide insight to us for what the workplace will look like in the future such as:
For those of you that have heard me talk about Microsoft Office, I am passionate about creating a workplace that attracts and retains young workers. But it’s more than that – it’s about creating an environment that gives your workforce a capacity that allows high performance and use technology to their advantage if a person chooses to. More and more over time high performing people are leveraging technology, in fact rely on technology, to be a high performer.
Consider this now obvious case – if a smart young MBA straight out of University joins an organisation that does not use Email. An MBA won’t be able to work in a style that they are accustomed to. While email is ubiquitous to most workers these days, we analyse the emerging capabilities that people will “need” to get the job done – Blogs, Instant Messaging, Social Networking with Colleagues as some possible examples.
However I’m waking up to a new reality that extends these concepts. With a troubled economy and a workforce of people that are close to retiring age have recently lost a large % of their superannuation and retirement savings. These people are now going to be working longer and demanding more flexibility in their work arrangements with concessions such as part time, work from home etc while they delay their retirement.
Today in The Australian Newspaper there is an article by Bernard Salt – Demographer and Analyst with KPMG that outlines this situation nicely that organisations, in particular Government, better get ready for a generation of demanding retirees. In the article http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25361112-5000117,00.html Bernard closes with:
“Work will be, in fact must be, a large part of this new narrative for life beyond 60. The challenge for all levels of government will be to co-ordinate and to facilitate this lifestyle for the first generation of over-60s who will be educated, opinionated, articulate and, perhaps most confronting, well organised.
Stand by for a new generation of demanding retirees. Demanding of work, of their families and especially of government”
Alistair Speirs has written a great entry on his view of Electronic forms. His description of the spectrum of approaches and calling out lots of overlap in possible solutions/technologies is right on.
Check out the full detail at http://blogs.msdn.com/alspeirs/archive/2009/03/09/should-i-use-infopath-for-my-electronic-forms.aspx
I’ve been spending some time lately talking with customers around the use of SharePoint to support the Learning and Development activities for the organisation – including User Readiness for Office 2007 deployments.
The 40,000 employee National Australia Bank (NAB) has just released a nice case study on how they use SharePoint and Office Communications Server to create a collaboration portal called The Academy for their learning activities, centred around an online profile of each employee called My Profile (which is a rebrand of the SharePoint MySite).
Check out the entire case study at http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003904
As I mentioned in my email approach PIFEM one of the rules I have turned on in Outlook is to delay sending email by 1 minute.
This allows me to catch any emails I didn’t mean to send just yet, or more commonly, I remember to add something else just after I press send, such as another recipient, more text or an attachment.
This rule I have is called “Delay sending by 1 minute” is really handy sometimes – shown below in my Rules and Alerts dialog of Outlook. You might want to consider adding this if you write a lot of emails or if you frequently forget attachments.
Interestingly, I see Google has added a similar feature to delay sending by 5 seconds to Gmail http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/gmail-panic-button/2009/03/22/1237656745000.html I can’t foresee how delaying by 5 seconds gives people enough time to catch it. I know that I’d rarely be able to catch it that fast.
Maybe I’ll rename my Office Outlook rule to be “The Panic Button”.
A colleague of mine, Ketan, mentioned these free Screen-cast videos for SharePoint – provided by the crew at SharePoint e-Learning.com. Asif and Wendy have put together a great set of audio narrated videos showing how to leverage a bunch of capabilities from Office and SharePoint. Check them out as an option if you are looking for some e-Learning for SharePoint.
http://www.sharepoint-screencasts.com/
Experience Level: 1_Beginner
What is SharePoint?
An overview of SharePoint Products and Technologies. Why would you want to use it...
8:14
Overview
What's new in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
An overview of what is new in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as opposed to the older version SharePoint Portal Server 2003
10:54
Overview
Creating a SharePoint Site
SharePoint comes with multiple site templates. This video shows how to create a SharePoint site using those templates
6:54
Admin, End User
Adding Users to a Site
Security in SharePoint is a necessity. Learn how to add users to SharePoint sites
9:48
Admin
Adding Web Parts to a Site
Web Parts are essential to providing componentize functionality in SharePoint. Watch this video to learn how to add web parts to a SharePoint site
5:09
Admin, End User
Introducing Document Management
Document Management is a robust feature in SharePoint. Learn the various capabilities that are offered out of the box by the document mangement features.
9:09
Admin, End User
Using the Recycle Bin
Learn how the two tier Recycle Bin works in SharePoint
6:20
Admin, End User
Alerts
Alerts can be setup on SharePoint lists, libraries or individual items to send out an email notification when a condition becomes true (ex: a document is created, uploaded, modified etc). Also, watch this video to learn how to subscribe others to alerts as well
11:57
Admin, End User
Subscribing to List or Library RSS feeds
RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is very prevalant throughout SharePoint. Learn how to use RSS in SharePoint lists and libraries
7:45
End User
Experience Level: 2_Intermediate
Target Web Part to an Audience
Learn how to target web parts in SharePoint Server (MOSS) to a particular audience. Audience can be a SharePoint Group, Active Directory Group or a Global Audience defined within SharePoint.
7:34
Admin
Delete a SharePoint Site using SharePoint Designer
This screencast shows how you can delete a SharePoint site within SharePoint Designer. It also points out some limitations and the type of sites you cannot delete with SharePoint Designer.
3:12
Admin
Check In Multiple Documents at once in MOSS
The process to check in multiple documents at once in a document library - MOSS only feature
5:59
Admin
Publish Web Parts to the Web Part Gallery
Web Parts can be uploaded to the Web Part Gallery to make them available throughout the site collection. This screencast shows how you can take a Web Part file and publish it to the Web Part Gallery.
9:33
Admin
Convert Word Forms to InfoPath
Conversion of Word based forms to InfoPath forms using built in converters in InfoPath
11:03
Admin, End User
Creating Lists in Sites
Lists are used in SharePoint to manage and present like data. Learn how to create various lists in SharePoint sites
9:05
Admin, End User
Enhanced Survey Functionality
Implement Surveys within any SharePoint. You will also see how to use branching logic within the surveys
11:42
Admin, End User
Using a Picture Library and Image Web Part together
Host your images in a Picture Library and show them using the Image web part
7:15
End User
Customizing Current Navigation in WSS
Learn how to customize the Quick Launch navigation in Windows SharePoint Services
12:52
Admin
Create Custom Lists
Create Custom Lists in SharePoint if you want to create a list from scratch. Define your own custom columns and the type of data that you wish to store in each column
11:32
Admin, End User
Adding Columns and Data to a Custom List
Learn how to create columns and add data to the custom list
12:42
Admin, End User
Copying Lists between sites
Copying/Moving/Backing up lists. With or without data
8:38
Admin
Exploring built-in MOSS Workflows
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server comes with many pre-built workflows out of the box. Learn how you can utilize those workflows and create additional ones directly from the browser
11:55
End User
Introducing Search Center
Use the Search Center capability to search Enterprise data in your environment
11:08
Admin, End User
Security Overview
There are various levels of security that can be implemented in a SharePoint deployment. Content can be secured at the site, list, library, folder or at the item level.
11:29
Overview, Admin
Understanding and using the new Features concept
The Features feature in SharePoint allows the site administrator to add/take away functionailty to the site
6:02
Admin, Developer
Introducing Meeting Workspaces
Meeting workspaces are similar to sites in SharePoint, but provide additional functionality such as a strong tie-in to Outlook and the ability to create and link meetings to SharePoint events list. Learn about these things and more by watching this video
12:26
Admin, End User
Understanding Master Pages
Master Pages are used to create a consistent layout of pages on a SharePoint site. Watch this video to better understand how they are used and where they are stored on a site
10:37
Admin
Get to know My Sites
The My Site feature in SharePoint helps to greatly enhance the user experience by providing them with a Personal site that they can use to share documents, links, pictures, their profile information and more. This video explores the My Sites capability in SharePoint
12:04
Admin, End User
Experience Level: 3_Advanced
Using the Disposition Approval Workflow
This Video demos the Expiration Policy feature of the Records Management functionality in SharePoint Server 2007. In particular, the Disposition Approval Workflow is implemented as part of the Information Management Policy to properly dispose of the document once its specified retention period has been reached.
11:11
Admin
Site Delete Capture - Recycle Bin for deleted sites
SharePoint out of the box does not contain the functionality to archive deleted sites. Use the Site Delete Capture feature made by available by Microsoft IT on CodePlex to implement the site delete capture functionality
18:55
Understanding and using Site Columns
Use Site Columns in SharePoint to create list column templates
10:06
Admin
Creating and using Blog Sites in SharePoint
Creating a Blogging site in SharePoint is now possible. Use this type of site to host internal or external blogs
14:06
Admin, End User
Use Wikis in SharePoint to Whiteboard your Thoughts
Create a knowledge base using the Wiki capability in SharePoint
11:44
Admin, End User
Understanding and using Content Types
Content Types are used to store multiple template types and associated meta data. Learn how to use Content Types by watching this video
10:18
Admin
Exploring SharePoint's Central Administration
Central Administration in SharePoint is where all the magic happens. This video will explore the various functionality that is accessible to the SharePoint Admin through the Central Administration site
10:24
Admin
Importing Profiles from Active Directory into SharePoint
Import user profiles from your Active Directory directly into SharePoint. This allows for audience targeting features and people search
13:55
Admin
Backing up Sites with STSADM utility
The STSADM utility is a very powerful friend of a SharePoint admin. Watch this video to learn how you can use this utility to back up SharePoint sites
12:38
Admin
I’m in the middle of working with a customer who is planning their Office 2007 deployment to their 10’s of Thousands of end users. They felt there was a need for user training and readiness for most of their users. Because of the large number of users, they wanted a way to provide training at low cost, on demand, and preferably through a computer.
The final solution was to use software, and training courses they already owned or had access to without a licensing hurdle to overcome.
There are a few moving parts in the final solution, which are:
1) Microsoft Software Assurance (SA). SA is the comprehensive maintenance offering that
helps customers get the most out their software investments including things like phone support, partner services, in person training, Tools to help deploy and manage software, plus access to the latest version of software (upgrades). One of the benefits of the program is something called E-Learning.
E-Learning provides employees access to self paced, interactive training that is developed by training experts. Assessments, hands-on virtual labs, expert advice, and an interactive, nonlinear approach make E-learning an engaging and flexible experience for your users.
E-learning also eliminates time and location boundaries, so your staff can study when and where it's convenient with just an Internet Connection and a browser. The comprehensive course list is available online: Download the complete Software Assurance E-Learning course list (Portable Document Format file, 120 KB)
You can also download the entire course set, and run the courses internally on your own Learning Management System – allowing you to keep track of who has taken and passed the courses.
2) SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK). There is an open source project for a Learning Management System that runs on top of SharePoint. You can download the SLK from http://www.codeplex.com/slk and run it on your SharePoint server.
The SLK hosts courses using the same format as the E-Learning. This format is called 
SCORM and is a standard format of structuring and packaging online training courses. Other applications such as the LCDS and Camtasia create SCORM format files too allowing anybody to create a course if they want and upload it to the SLK.
That’s it! If you have WSS 3.0 or SharePoint 2007 running, and have Software Assurance go get the E-Learning courses and make them available to your users so they can get ready for an Office 2007 deployment, or learn advanced techniques to build upon their existing skills.
Note: The SharePoint product team also released their End User training for use with the SLK – which I have blogged about before here. My mate Ian Morrish in New Zealand is running the SLK on his public WSS site, and also has a Flash demo of what it looks like. Check it out at http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/SLK.htm
