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Microsoft Southwest Business Productivity Blog

By Babar Batla (Principal Business Productivity Specialist in Orange County, CA). It provides Microsoft enterprise customers latest information on SharePoint and Office suite.
Intro to Office 2010 Tech Preview

Microsoft has recently gone public with information on Office 2010 investment areas.  The site links below will give you a peak at what Offfice 2010 is about.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/

http://www.microsoft.com/officebusiness/office2010/

SharePoint Conference 2009

URL:  www.mssharepointconference.com

Keynote:  Steve Ballmer

Events:  Office Developer and BI Conference combined with SharePoint Conference 2009

Post Events:  SharePoint 2010 developer deep dive, SharePoint Server 2010 installation and upgrade workshop

Location:  Las Vegas, Oct 19 – 22, 2009

Cost:  $1,199 (USD)

SharePoint Conference 2009 Registration now open

Microsoft is delighted to announce SharePoint Conference 2009 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 19-22, 2009.  Don’t miss your chance to attend the premier worldwide conference dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies!

SharePoint Conference 2009 will be the conference to learn about SharePoint “14”.  Be the first to learn about the improvements we’ve made to the platform and how many of those investments can be quickly implemented to add value to your organization and businesses.

www.MSSharePointConference.com

SharePoint Architecture & Developer Guidance

This is the closest to Pattern & Practices information Microsoft has released for SharePoint environments.  Should be a great resource for Architects and Developer Leads.

SharePoint Guidance - November 2008

Brief Description

This guidance helps architects and developers design, build, test, deploy, and upgrade SharePoint intranet applications. A reference implementation demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development, and application lifecycle management challenges.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C3722DBA-6EE7-4E0E-82B5-FDAF3C5EC927&displaylang=en

FREE webcasts from the Ted Pattison Group

Introduction to SharePoint 2007 Development Using Features and Solution Packages
Instructor: Ted Pattison
Date: January 20, 2009
Time: 1 - 2 PM EST
Price: FREE!
In this one hour seminar, Ted Pattison will give you a jumpstart into the world of SharePoint development and explain how Features make it possible to design and implement reusable business solutions. Ted will also show you how to develop Features using a Visual Studio 2008 project as well as how to build a solution package which will enable you to deploy and to update your Features in a production environment using best practice techniques.
Register today!

Introduction to Using SharePoint 2007 as a Web Content Management Publishing Platform for Content Centric Sites
Instructor: Andrew Connell
Date: January 23, 2009
Time: 3 - 4 PM EST
Price: FREE!
Ever wanted to understand what capabilities Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 has for creating Internet-facing content-centric sites with a publishing infrastructure? Looking to use MOSS 2007 Web Content Management (WCM) for your next content-based site? In this webcast Andrew Connell will show you the basics of what WCM is all about, the opportunities for developers and site/content owners and explain what you can learn in his class: WCM401 - Developing Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management (also taught online).
Register today!

SharePoint Best Practices Conference is almost here

Put together by MindSharp, this conference will be in San Diego, CA from February 2-4, 2009

To learn more about the conference, please visit our event web site at www.sharepointbestpractices.com

At this conference you will learn to:
    • Make consistent, confident decisions at every level, across your enterprise.
    • Eliminate design, deployment, organizational and administrative confusion.
    • Apply effective SharePoint decision-making in any situation and in turn
       enhance enterprise communication, collaboration and efficiency – while
       significantly lowering cost.
    • Break the cycle of avoidance, disagreement and ignorance that leads to
       subpar results.
    • Replace disorder with clarity, direction, and confidence.

SharePoint Class for Designers

Ted Pattison group has a class scheduled for 3/30/09 in Irvine, CA that teaches students how to create business solutions without code.  Check it out and enroll if interested

SAB301: Building Enterprise Solutions with SharePoint Server 2007
http://www.tedpattison.com/Courses/SAB301.aspx

WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint

This is another chapter in the integration story of SharePoint.

The WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint provides sample code for producing WSRP conformant data from SharePoint lists and libraries. External portal platforms (e.g. BEA AquaLogic Portal, IBM WebSphere Portal, SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal etc.) can then render SharePoint data natively through their WSRP consumer portlets. The Toolkit is available now for download from the MSDN Code Gallery.

MindSharp Free SharePoint Sessions

One of the biggest challenge we run into is that customers who have purchase SharePoint are not aware of all it can offer their organization.  In the current economic situation, its even important you get the most juice out of your investment.  Training is a very inexpensive way of understanding how far your current investment can go.

MindSharp is one of our leading trainers for SharePoint.  Below is a link to the schedule of free sessions offered by them.  These sessions will give you examples of MindSharp content and you can decided if they are good fit in getting your team up to speed on SharePoint.

https://www.mindsharp.com/Default.aspx?top=TRAINING&left=FREE%20LIVE%20MEETINGS

Microsoft Online is HERE!!

We just launched our Online hosted offering for enterprise customers.  This offering lets our customers offer Email, Instant Messaging, Web conferencing, collaborative platform and enterprise portal to their organization.  Its all hosted at the Microsoft data center and a directory integration service is provided to make sure there is single sign-on.

Business Productivity Online Standard Suite
Starting from $15 per user per month
Suite includes: Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, Microsoft Office Communications Online

30 days trial available here https://mocp.microsoftonline.com/site/default.aspx

Gartner places Microsoft as THE leader for Information Access Technology

September Gartner magic quadrant for Information Access Technology placed Microsoft as the leader in the space. 

Microsoft Search technologies include SharePoint Search Express, SharePoint Search and Microsoft FAST Search and Transfer.

Below, you will find a couple of links from which you can access the Gartner MQ for free.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/itanalyst/docs/11062007forresterentsearch.pdf

http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol6/article4/article4.html

Integrating Enterprise Data into SharePoint

If you have needs around exposing corporate data from business systems into SharePoint, take a look at the following documents.  They describe the many ways SharePoint can be used for enterprise user interface and a composite application platform.

SharePoint: A platform for enterprise mashups
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3bfa11be-815a-414d-b69f-c2add07d8733&displaylang=en

Integrating LOB Systems with the Microsoft Office System
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb896607.aspx

Office Business Applications: Building Composite Applications Using the Microsoft Platform
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb220800.aspx

SharePoint integration with Documentum

If you already have a heavy investment in Documentum and need a better User Interface and accessibility to the data, take a look at using SharePoint as the front end.  It no only allows for direct access to data but also discoverability and an avenue of creating composite applications.  These tools allow you to leverage SharePoint for your enterprise portal and leverage Documentum investment for record management.

1. Wingspan DOCWAY  http://www.wingspan.com/default.asp?id=serv_sharepoint

2. EMC Content Services for SharePoint  http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software/content-services-sharepoint.htm

3. Vorsite Enterprise Productivity Suite for SharePoint http://www.vorsite.com/SharePointSuite.aspx

4. Microsoft Enterprise Search Indexing Connectors (formally known as Protocol Handlers) for EMC Documentum 5.3 (Service Pack 4) http://blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch/archive/2008/05/27/announcing-release-to-web-of-documentum-and-filenet-indexing-connectors.aspx

P.S.  If you are looking at making an investment into Documentum, please contact your Microsoft Account team to discuss your options.

eDiscovery add-in on CodePlex

Some simple but powerful eDiscovery tools are now available for download from CodePlex.  These are not officially supported but if you are looking for a solution to get started and don't have a large budget, this should get you there.

http://www.codeplex.com/eDiscovery

Looking for a multi format viewer for SharePoint?

Enterprise Content Management solutions require the management of many types of file formats.  SharePoint handles that just fine.  What it lacks is an out of box viewer of various file format.  This functionality that is bundled with some of the other pure play document management system is now available to SharePoint customers. 

Informative Graphics Corporation has a multi format viewer and markup tool that works with SharePoint.  This is the same viewer people are used to using with other document management systems.

Press Release from 2007

https://www.infograph.com/press/brava53sharepoint2007.htm

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