Welcome to the SharePoint Newsletter
This announcement contains, group news, tools, events and features. If you would like to suggest content to go into the next announcement, please send us an e-mail and we will do our best to include it.
We strive for this newsletter to be the latest and greatest about SharePoint from those involved with our 'SharePoint 2007 & 2010' LinkedIn group. If you want to suggest content for any of our sections, please email us at Newsletter@collaboris.co.uk and we will do our very best to include it.
To join in with the discussions, why not visit the group on LinkedIn now?
Current Edition
As the chance to view the Aurora Borealis/Northern Lights has me peering out of the windows like an excited child looking for Santa, I decided their appearance was a sign to issue another newsletter!
In this edition find we have featured 13 of the products you have added to the "do you know any SharePoint Add-ons, web parts, applications, templates or services" discussion we featured in the last edition. Find out if your nomination is included or whether you are 'in the spotlight' or our featured blogger. You can also check out some fabulous websites and links we've found from around the world.
Previous Editions
Happy New Year! Well, somehow Christmas has come and gone and a New Year is already underway. We hope you had a very peaceful and Happy Christmas holiday and we would also like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!
We recently welcomed our 17,000th member to the group. As luck would have it, he works for a wine making company and not only has he sent a biography for our 'InTheSpotlight' section, but also has provided wine tasting tips. Unfortunately we didn't get chance to include them in in a newsletter before Christmas, but we did follow his advice (once or twice over the festive period!) and can give our seal of approval!
Also in this edition, check out the most popular discussions on our group forums, find out what cool tool for the i-phone and i-pad is featured, follow the links to some great code samples and more!
With the Thanksgiving holidays fast approaching we thought it would be appropriate to feature people and items we are thankful for!
With that in mind, our heartfelt thanks go to:
- Everyone who submitted useful links to SharePoint learning resources on the LinkedIn group discussion. There are some great ideas and if you haven't already checked them out and benefited from the learning on offer, then we've shown them again this week in the featured discussion.
- Our fabulous Movember men whose hairy updates are keeping smiles on our faces! We know there are many more of you out there than we can feature and to all of you we say we think you're fan-tash-tic.
- Alexey Shcherbachev for letting us know about his great FREE product which we've included as this weeks 'Cool Tool' and Jason Firth who accepted our 'spotlight' focus.
- And finally - many thanks to all of you for taking an interest in our newsletter and for suggesting some great content, we try to feature as much as we can - keep the suggestions coming in!
Have a very happy holiday!
Hopefully you all had fun and enjoyed a happy and safe bonfire night. Our newsletter this week asks "What Is SharePoint Compliance?", if you can help why not join the LinkedIn discussion.
Does your Movember feature on our fan-'tash'-tic wall of fame? Do you agree with the Top 10 SharePoint features? Is your blog featured? Find out which group member is 'in the spotlight' this week.
Happy Halloween! Unbelievably in little over a month we've added 1,000 members to our group! Were you our 16,000th member? Is your blog featured? Are you man enough to grow a Movember? Have you visited SharePoint Marketplace?
If you know of any great "tricks or treats" that you want to nominate for our 'cool tool', 'best of blogs' or other features, keep sending them in - we love to hear from you and aim to include as much as we can! Must catch the next broomstick before I turn into a pumpkin......!
In this weeks edition, find out about the Survey Plus web part and read Gail Seymours Top 10 SharePoint Templates for Small Businesses. Find out who has been adding great comments to various discussions and is "In The Spotlight".
One interesting stat we picked up this week is that SharePoint has sold over 125 million licenses to over 65,000 customers. In addition to this - 80% of Fortune 500 companies use SharePoint!
While reading up on the SharePoint conference we also found a video of Huddles PR stunt performed 2 weeks ago : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Ntlu9wTJU&NR=1. (Huddle hired some cheerleaders to parade right outside the conference - awesome!).
Last but not least is that DocRead is now available! If you are interested in taking a look at how DocRead can help ensure that your SharePoint users 'read and acknowledge' your organisations most important documents - then head over to http://www.collaboris.co.uk/products/docread and click on the 'Download' link at the top right of the page.
Wow - what a conference! The courses were generally pretty top notch, the speakers delivered all that they promised and more! My personal favourite was "Architecting and Automating SharePoint Governance"; by Dan Holme which was truly awesome. Dan discussed how governance plays such an important role in defining how your SharePoint farm is designed. In addition to this, the "Step-by-step: Building Search Driven Applications That Matter" session by Scott Hillier was very easy to follow and made a very good case for using SharePoint Search to drive common application requests. For example, if you want to build a grid that shows all of a users tasks (across all sites in the farm), this is easy using the Keyword Query API.
In this weeks edition:
- Help our "LinkedIn The Spotlight" contributer Ronise Nepomuceno with her discussion query.
- Check out a new cool tool : the Birthdays Webpart from Vinewave.
- Read Joel Olesons 10 Takeaways from the conference.
- This weeks Editors choice is the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint.
Not that we want to brag - but we're at the SharePoint Conference in Anaheim! (Well technically right now we're working off the jet lag at Hermosa Beach but we'll be registering at the conference later today!) The session list looks awesome and we can't wait to get started. We'll include details from the conference in next weeks edition, but for now, why not:
- Join in with a discussion on linked in.
- Read Stephane Eyskens top 10 tests when testing custom SharePoint webparts.
- Our featured blogger is Mike Herrity : SharePoint in Education.
- This weeks Editors choice asks "What is Yammer?".
With one week to go until the SharePoint conference in Anaheim we're beginning our checklist - tickets, passport and the delicate decision as to whether the kids will require a Disney souvenir or whether they are now too old, and if so - what to get them instead! How much extra space will be needed in the case to squeeze in all the goodies for the return flight? Anyway - just checkout the session list - it's enormous! Whilst our deliberations continue, why not check out some comments from the latest popular discussion "Why there is a shortage of SharePoint experts", Denis Shorin is "In The Spotlight" and we have an update on Augusts most popular SharePoint books and videos from Safari books.
- Join in with our discussion : Why there is a shortage of SharePoint Experts.
- Our featured blogger is Andrew Wolfe.
- This weeks Editors choice highlights a Free Getting Started guide from the Microsoft Download Centre.
SharePoint Newsletter 37
This week includes a fantastic 'top 10 reasons why SharePoint projects fail' and also highlights a discussion about what the ideal length of a sprint (scrum) should be on a SharePoint project. We have also found a great resource on costings for SharePoint, plus a comparison chart highlighting the features that are available with all 3 SKU's of SharePoint. More and more of you are sending us content to feature in the Newsletter which is fantastic, so keep it coming! (details at the bottom of the Newsletter).
In this edition:
- Find out about SharePoint Manager.
- Join the Linkedin discussion : What's the ideal length of a sprint..
- Top 10 reasons why your SharePoint projects fail.
- Our featured blogger is Alpesh Nakar.
- This weeks Editors choice focuses on Vinewave Document Analytics.
This week saw our group reach a staggering 15,000 members! Judi Minnerly from Virginia became our 15,000th member this week and is featured in our "LinkedIn The Spotlight" section. This weeks Cool Tool is the SharePoint Learning Kit and we found a great article giving tips on how to make your SharePoint Search Shine! As it's been 'Back to School' week for many children, the 'Best of Blogs' section focusses on Dave Coleman and his SharePointEduTech blogs.
Quick Summary:
- Learn about the SharePoint Learning Kit and how you can use it for E-learning.
- Find out who became our 15,000th member.
- 10 Features that will make your SharePoint Search shine.
- Find out about Dave Coleman MVP.
- Meet 21apps a SharePoint consultancy operating out of the UK.
Packed into this weeks edition we have an informative discussion about how to Resolve User Permission issues, top ten tips for using SharePoint and an amazing Cool Tool allowing Word Document Templates to be used easily from a document library. Our group is just 43 away from the big 15,000 members, as a celebration we will feature the 15,000 member and ask them to do a quick bio. It's also worth mentioning that we are currently having our most popular discussion ever. "Can anyone tell me why SharePoint Admins are so rare?" has now reached a staggering 130 comments! In this edition :
- What is the easiest way to create documents based on a library of document templates?
- What software can you use to power forums in SharePoint?
- How many of these 50 interview questions could you answer?
- Which of our members has recently published his own SharePoint development book?
- Did you know the latest CU for SharePoint 2007 is ready?
Well it only seems like 5 minutes since we were publishing
Newsletter #33 - what a busy week this has been! Anyway, in this edition, we have changed the format around a little and given you more featured sites from around the web. We have also found a fantastic blog from one of the leading lights in SharePoint. On top of this, we get the low-down from Bill Ayres, who recently attended the arduous Microsoft Certificatied Masters programme (MCM) for SharePoint. We hope you enjoy this edition and as always let me know if you want to contribute - it's completely free. In this edition :
- Which of our members attended the MCM programme?
- What are the top 10 SharePoint sites around the world?
- What's the easiest way to set-up a development environment ?
- How can you make your Url's shorter?
- Who is offering a massive 50% discount if you join their early adopter programme?
As you can see this week, the Newsletter has had a big makeover so it is now easier to find the information you are interested in. From now on we will be announcing the Newsletter on the group but not copying the content into a LinkedIn discussion as it's very hard to make it look nice (due to a lack of serious HTML formatting options on LinkedIn). In this edition :
- Get a fabulous 15% discount from monthly subscription fees at Safari books online and also find out which are their most popular SharePoint books and videos.
- If you want to move data from SQL, MS CRM into a SharePoint list then check out this weeks 'cool tool' (no coding required)!
- Do you know which of our members created the FREE colour calendar web part? If you don't already use it, find out more 'In The Spotlight' and follow the link to get your copy.
Greetings group members and welcome to the first ever SharePoint Newsletter written entirely for the SharePoint 2007 & 2010 group on LinkedIn. We've been planning to do a weekly Newsletter for a while so thought it was about time we got on with it! If you would like to supply content for this Newsletter, then send over an e-mail to Newsletter@collaboris.co.uk specifying which section you want to be featured in. In this edition :
- Find out about a developer tool that was legendary for SharePoint 2007.
- Get involved in a very popular LinkedIn discussion that asks why it's so hard to recruit SharePoint Administrators.
- Learn how you can lay a deep foundation for your SharePoint Server 2010 Business Composites skills in a training course.