dinsdag 16 september 2008

SharePoint is so easy anyone can do it… not.

View more information on Case Studies in SharePoint DashboardsJust read a article and "trust me", it is true.

A lot of people look at SharePoint as software you can implement fast without thinking.

I found some Quotes that I also hear from my customers :

"Our executives think we can do it on our own and we DISAGREE."

"Microsoft has done too good a good job selling the idea of self maintaining environments."

 

Link to the article >>

EndUserSharePoint.com

SharePoint's "Big" Problems

Just received a mail with a very interessing article I want to share with you :

It's interesting to me to watch the maturation of a technology, and the market's use of technology. SharePoint (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007) is entering its "terrible twos" and, with that, more large enterprises are trying to put SharePoint to use. They're running into some big problems—problems with big lists, big libraries, and big contributing user bases.

Awhile back, Microsoft released the document, Plan for software boundaries. This document set forth limitations of scalability in SharePoint. Most of these limitations can be worked around with good architectural design. Some cannot, sadly illustrating the truism that no tool—not even SharePoint—is the silver bullet. One of the limitations that has been discussed in many places is the 2000 item per list or library limit. This is not (I repeat "not") a hard limit. In fact, in my "summer project," we were dealing actively with a list of 11,000 items. It's a limit related to views, which can be addressed through views and indexing.

A limit that has not received enough attention is limits that arise due to SharePoint's security implementation—limits related to the number of users and permissions in a site collection. Unfortunately, the document's lack of detail underplays limits that can be quite problematic in some scenarios. This week, a number of my colleagues were discussing real world encounters with these limitations. So in the event that this may save you headaches now or in the future, I'd like to summarize the limits and provide some example scenarios. My goal is to help you identify whether you are, or might become, a ‘victim' of these limits. Later in this article, I'll point you to the resources you need for more detail, and I'll propose some solutions for Microsoft to consider in Office 14.

1. 600 to 1000 unique list-item permissions. If you do a lot of "inheritance breaking" to create unique permissions within a list or library, this limit might hit you. A common scenario involves a list where a user can add an item, then a custom workflow is used to change permissions on that item to provide Edit Item permission to a "reviewer," while preventing other non-reviewers in the list from modifying that item. But if you end up with more than 600 to 1000 items with unique permissions in a list, it will start to be problematic.
2. 1500 to 2000 contributing users in a site collection. Yup, you read that right. You can't have more than 1500-2000 users contributing in a site. The limit is really 1500-2000 identities in the Site Collection User Info Gallery, aka the "SPWeb.SiteUsers." A user ends up in this list if you add them directly to the site collection user list; create a permission for an object assigned to a user who's not already in the list; or if the user is in a group that has permissions to the site and the user contributes to the site—is added to the Created By, Last Modified By, or Assigned To fields. The key here is those three fields. You can expose your site to millions of readers by using groups, or with anonymous access.
3. Approx. 2000 users or groups per SharePoint group. This is actually related to the 2000 item limit in list views.
4. Unique permissions (Access Control Entries or ACEs) per Access Control List (ACL). Behind the scenes, an ACL cannot be larger than 64KB. This translates to roughly 1000 users being individually assigned permissions on one object.
5. 1024 total (nested) Active Directory (AD) group memberships per user. This is a limit that affects other Windows technologies as well.

Are you likely to be "hit" by one of these limits? Some can be worked around through informed design. Others cannot. If these limits are in your present or future, then you must read Eli Robillard's detailed coverage of the limits at Eli's blog. Eli Robillard, also a SharePoint MVP, is a popular speaker, co-author of Professional SharePoint 2007 Development (Wrox), the founder of the Toronto SharePoint Users Group. The work he's done, and the great contributions of Todd Bleeker, Todd Klindt, Joel Oleson and Keith Ritchie deserve a huge "shout out." I know the details about these issues will evolve as more feedback is obtained from customers and as the SharePoint code and architecture is examined in more detail.

Indexing, search, the security-trimmed UI, and basic functionality are compromised when these limits are hit, and (as usual), the error messages that arise are not informative enough. There's no doubt that large collaborative sites won't be supported by SharePoint without major customization of security-related functionality. While site collection architecture can overcome some of these limits, some will be show-stoppers. Imagine trying to build a "forum" site with more than 2000 users. If each user is supposed to be able to add posts and modify (only their own) post, this would simply not work due to both #1 and #2 above. I know that Microsoft has to "draw the line" at some point, and release a finished product to market. What troubles me is that SharePoint is being sold as a silver bullet across six different scenarios, and these limits have real impact on several of them. They mean some significant coding of custom security interfaces or the choice of another product besides SharePoint.

My colleagues' discussion of these security related limits really came to a head last week, so there's a lot more to be learned. At this point, I'd like to propose the following (perhaps completely naïve) solutions to Microsoft for Office 14:

• Support true "contribute" role assignments, in which a user can add items and read items and modify only their own items. Windows Server 2008 now supports the "Owner Rights" identity which could be an approach, but there could be others. This would address a super-common security requirement that SharePoint just misses right now. It would prevent some implementations from running into #1.

• To further address #2, the SharePoint team should consider "template-izing" item permissions. Ask the Directory Services team how they managed to cut the size of NTDS.DIT in Windows Server 2003 by doing so. My guess is there is guidance, if not answers, in that team's work.

• #2 will just have to be fixed. Period.

• In my naïve world, I'd want the option to offload the entire account management to Active Directory, as Microsoft did with Exchange 2000 (for those of you young kids, previous versions of Exchange had an independent directory) . SharePoint's group management is great for two major reasons: it supports mixed environments with AD and other authentication providers; and it provides a group management interface to users so non-technical users can manage group membership. The latter functionality should have been put in AD--oh, about 9 years ago. Maybe SharePoint's functionality and user interface can be a layer over AD. I know that'd be complicated, particularly when it came time to support forms-based authentication (FBA) and such, but it would be great.

• Much clearer communication about SharePoint's limits—security and otherwise. Not just one line in one paper on TechNet, but real "call outs", including scenario-based examples, of where SharePoint will fail out-of-the-box.

Knowing Microsoft's history, I've got to think the company will be investing heavily in Office 14 in areas that improve scalability, in solutions for enterprises, and in modifying SharePoint to better support Software-Plus-Services. So I'm hopeful that some of these limitations, which clearly affect scalability, will in fact be addressed.

And here are some open questions to you, the community:

• What security related limits have you run into in your environments? What scenarios have you found difficult or impossible to support?

• Has anyone really "beat up" (tested) how the new OWNER RIGHTS identity on NTFS works with SharePoint indexing and security-trimmed results? After some meditation, I can imagine some configurations that could be very difficult to "reflect" correctly in indexing. I haven't dug into this yet. Have you? (BTW, if you don't know about OWNER RIGHTS, it's the best security addition to Windows file servers since NTFS itself. Check it out if you manage file servers.)

I'll close this discussion with my "bottom line" with SharePoint: It's an awesome product. It's innovative, it's effective in many many scenarios, and (best of all) it has great potential for user adoption thanks to its UI and tight integration with well-known tools (i.e. the Office clients). I'm a huge believer that with the insane growth of SharePoint utilization in enterprises large and small, and the resources Microsoft is pouring into the product, we have the unique opportunity and responsibility to help Microsoft better understand what we're needing the product to do, and where it's failing to deliver. Microsoft is really trying to listen to customers and community but (believe it or not) even Microsoft's resources are limited. We need to help that listening happen, request clarity about this incredible product's strengths and weaknesses, and be patient as Microsoft addresses the weaknesses we all discover as the product evolves.

Until next week, all the best!

Dan Holme
danh at intelliem dot (top level commercial domain)

maandag 28 juli 2008

Clever Workarounds - "It's not rocket science"

Via een bericht in m'n mail terechtgekomen op een site vol met MOSS-stuff om in te grasduinen. Ik herken in ieder geval al vele zaken terug, dus neem even de tijd en bekijk de site.

CleverWorkAround

http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/

woensdag 16 juli 2008

Het Collaboration Model

Tijdens het rondsurfen naar algemene informatie over "Collaboration" ben ik beland bij een blog die gelinked is aan http://www.betersamenwerken.be van Microsoft. Hier beschrijft Yves Kerwyn het "Collaboration Model". Zeer interessante informatie om te kijken waar een organisatie staat met betrekking tot de hulpmiddelen om efficiënt samen te werken en welke richting de organisatie kan uitgaan in de toekomst.

Bedankt Yves.

Link naar Blog >>

 

 

 

Trouwens op de site www.betersamenwerken.be staan er 3 cases waar ik aan de basis en oplevering heb gestaan.

dinsdag 24 juni 2008

Meer MOSS 2007 info ?

How Do I... in SharePoint Server 2007

Find answers to your most frequent programming questions.

SharePoint Server 2007 Product Guide

Get an overview and a product tour with an emphasis on new and improved capabilities.

SharePoint Server 2007 Products Comparison

Compare the features of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007, and the different SharePoint Server 2007 editions. See what is new and what has been improved from Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

Microsoft Office and SharePoint Products and Technologies integration - Fair, good, better, best
This white paper describes how different versions of Microsoft Office programs work together with the 2003 and 2007 versions of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies.

Transform your business with SharePoint Products and Technologies
This document explores how SharePoint Products and Technologies can help organizations more easily leverage their knowledge capital of enterprise data, human expertise, process knowledge, and content to operate with greater agility in a dynamic and complex world.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Evaluation Guide
This Evaluation Guide is designed to give you a solid understanding of the design goals and feature set for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and a familiarity with the implementation of this technology in Windows Server 2003.

 

SharePoint Server 2007 Developer Information Centers


Find articles, videos, references, code samples, downloads, and blogs about:

Business Data Catalog

Excel Services

Web Content Management

Wat is er gebeurd met Microsoft FrontPage ?

New Web authoring tools

  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007: Automate your business processes and build efficient applications on top of the SharePoint platform, and tailor your SharePoint site to your needs in an IT-managed environment.
  •  

  • Microsoft Expression Web: Take advantage of the best of dynamic Web site design, enabling you to design, develop, and maintain exceptional standards-based Web sites.
  • vrijdag 11 april 2008

    Stixy.com

     Stixy.com kunt u gerust beschouwen als de digitale tegenhanger van het prikbord op kantoor of in uw keuken. Het handige van dit virtuele bord is dat het niet uitmaakt waar u zich bevindt: u kunt er te allen tijde informatie op ‘prikken’ en de kattebelletjes bovendien moeiteloos delen met collega's of familie aan de andere kant van de wereld. (Source: T-Zine - De Tijd)

     

    Stixy

    Een prikbord bij Stixy.com heet een Stixyboard. Het bestaat uit een wit vlak dat u kunt vullen met de vier verschillende widgets die de site aanbiedt: de bekende gele kleefbriefjes, to-do-lijstjes, foto’s en documenten. U sleept deze widgets simpelweg vanuit de balk onderaan op het prikbord. De widgets zijn bijzonder flexibel; u kunt ze verplaatsen, vergroten of verkleinen en zelfs over elkaar heen leggen. Wanneer u op een widget klikt verschijnen rechts in beeld de bijbehorende opties. Zo kunt u bij een kleefbriefje onder meer de kleur en het lettertype veranderen, en bij een to-do aangeven wie er per e-mail een reminder moet krijgen (en wanneer). Alleen bij documenten verschijnen er nauwelijks opties. Zo is het bijvoorbeeld niet mogelijk om een Word-file online te bewerken – een feature die op een site als Huddle bijvoorbeeld wel aanwezig is.

    maandag 31 maart 2008

    Huddle

    Huddle combines group collaboration, project management and document sharing using social networking principles.

    Zo staat het beschreven op de site van http://www.huddle.net/

    Nog een online platform in de collaboration stal. Op het eerste zicht een veelbelovend pakket dat verschillende mogelijkheden heeft dat ook in andere pakketten, zoals Microsoft WorkSpace, worden aangeboden. Huddle bied verschillende versies aan, namelijk Free / essential / Plus / Premium.

    Huddle welcome page

    Enkele features

    • Personal Dashboard
      Manage your network of Huddle workspaces, email & RSS alerts, and personal file storage area
    • Control & Security
      Permission control on document folders, automatic file versioning, audit trails of all user activity, commenting and reminders
    • Unlimited Whiteboards
      Perfect for sharing ideas, working on copy, leaving notices
    • Multi-language support
      Huddle in English, French & German. More languages coming soon! Comprehensive online support system
    • Access to our developer API
      Developers can build their own tools on top of Huddle

    Learn more about Huddle's great features - take the tour!

    Artikels

     

    http://tijdblogs.typepad.com/tzine/2008/03/waar-gaat-u-onl.html

    zondag 16 maart 2008

    Microsoft interactive Media Manager

    Microsoft interactive Media Manager, kortweg IMM genoemd, zorgt ervoor dat via SharePoint Multimedia kan getoond en geindexeerd worden. Dit allemaal met de andere features die SharePoint heeft.

    Momenteel nog maar enkel via Microsoft services te bekomen.

    Interactive Media Manager Case Study - Starz Entertainment - click to play (300k .wmv file)

    See the movie

     

     

     

    Screenshot

    Media & Entertainment Interactive Media Manager - SharePoint Player console

    Interactive Media Manager Web Part

    Media Library

    Serves as a front end for media content in the digital asset management system. Media assets are displayed as thumbnails and many tasks can be applied to an asset or group of assets. These tasks include viewing, annotating, and editing metadata, and custom processes that meet the organization’s specific needs.

    Media Viewer

    Supports multiple browser platforms and media file types; displays information such as annotations and time codes in Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers format; and offers sophisticated built-in playback controls, with an extensibility layer for adding custom controls.

    Media Annotator

    Makes it possible for groups of people to collaborate on media assets through video annotations, digital inking, and discussions.

    Media Import

    Facilitates the upload of media files and automatically launches associated workflows, such as information-gathering processes. Offers out-of-the-box support for Aspera Enterprise Server to allow for fast, reliable uploads without file-size restrictions. Integration with other upload controls is supported as well.

    Media Cart

    Provides an individualized area for storing media assets that people want to edit themselves or push out to appropriate editors.

    More info

    Website IMM

    zondag 9 maart 2008

    Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta

    Office Live Workspace logoHet zat er aan te komen, naast Skydrive, nu ook een online collaboratie platform voor iedereen.

    Is het nu voor op werk, school of gewoonweg thuis, je opent een online werkruimte waar je dokumenten, links, lijsten,... kan delen met je vrienden, familie, collega's,...

    Heb je Office 2007, dan heb je de mogelijkheid om rechtstreeks je dokumenten in je werkruimte te bewaren. Dit heeft veel weg van SharePoint.

     

    Meer info

    Anywhere access with Office Live Workspace

    Anywhere Access

    • Save 1000+ Microsoft Office documents in one place
    • Access them from almost any computer with a Web browser
    • No more flash drives or sending yourself documents via e-mail

    Share with Others

    • Invite people to your workspace
    • You control who can view, comment, and edit your documents
    • Stop manually merging versions from multiple people

    Extend the Microsoft Office Experience

    • Open and save files directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
    • Synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook
    • No need to learn a new program

    Ga naar Office Live Workspace >>

    dinsdag 4 maart 2008

    Let's Groove

    Microsoft Office Groove (c) MicrosoftHet heeft even geduurd vooraleer ik het produkt ben gaan gebruiken, maar nu is de tijd aangebroken, "Let's Groove".

    Als Solution Consultant ga ik produkten bekijken, testen, laten doordringen, nog eens testen.

    Dit doe ik om de klanten en m'n collega's voort te helpen in de wondere wereld van Collaboration.

    Ondertussen komt tijdens m'n SharePoint verhalen het "Groove 2007"-verhaal meer en meer naar voor. Het andere produkt "Colligo", mogen we niet uit het oog verliezen, maar je moet wel eerst onderzoeken waarvoor je dit ga gebruiken.

    Groove interessant ?

    Wat mij betreft wel. Bij het bekijken van het produkt ben ik op een interessante pagina terecht gekomen.

    Groove en SharePoint zijn anders, maar werken prima samen

    Om even hun samenvatting over te nemen.

    • Office Groove is het meest geschikt voor kleine virtuele teams en kortlopende projecten.

    • Office SharePoint Server is het meest geschikt als u voortdurend informatie publiceert en die onder een breed publiek verspreidt.

    • U kunt Office Groove en Office SharePoint Server samen gebruiken om inhoud van een intranet offline te verzamelen of die inhoud extern beschikbaar te stellen.

    De toekomst van Groove ?

    Als je in de wandelgangen van Microsoft luistert, zal de volgende versie van Groove zich meer gaan profileren als een Offline Client van SharePoint en ze hebben gelijk ook, want dit is een veelgevraagd tijdens de voorstudies van SharePoint projecten. Het zal het platform mee verder helpen naar een volgende level.

    Go for it

    Wil je het produkt ook eens proberen ?

    maandag 3 maart 2008

    Share It

    Ok, meestal blog ik gedurende mijn reizen, maar de drang om ook te bloggen over hetgene waar ik dagdagelijks mee bezig is ook groot geworden.

    Collaboration, communication, Portals

    Je kan er niet meer naast kijken of lezen. Ze zijn nodig, op alle lagen van een organisatie. Vele bedrijven hebben het nog niet door, maar dat komt nog op termijn.

    Nieuwkomers

    De voorbije week een nieuwkomer op het web tegengekomen ivm Collaboratie (Bedankt YR ;-) ), namelijk "Google Sites", lijkt verdacht veel op Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

    http://sites.google.com/

    image

    De discussies zijn al losgebarsten op http://news.zdnet.com

    Hier enkele interessante artikelen:

    Google Sites is not a Sharepoint anything

    Google takes on Microsoft SharePoint with Google Sites

    Google Sites: A Sharepoint Killer?

    Google Sites: evaluate first and don’t believe the hype

    The lock-in battle shifts to Sharepoint

    SharePoint: Microsoft’s Web 2.0 hub