Document Compliance Management & Automation in SharePoint

Last month, I had the pleasure to attend a collaborative event, Document Compliance, Management, and Automation in SharePoint organized by Microsoft, K2, Adlib Software, and New Horizons. I have to say I was very impressed by this event. I encourage anyone who is looking for well rounded, general SharePoint information to attend similar Microsoft Partner events.  Usually you are able to view the possibilities various third-party solutions can provide when used in conjunction with SharePoint. 

Not only was I able to gain knowledge about Document Compliance and how SharePoint can help to make your efforts in this area a success, but I could view how Adlib and K2 solutions enhance the SharePoint's Out of the Box tools.


Quite simply, K2 & Adlib have teamed up to create a seamless tool built on smart automated workflows that allows your documentation to excel throughout the collaborative process.  This attribute might not seem very impressive when talking about regular word documents, excel spreadsheets, etc., but when you are referring to PDFs this is where the
K2 and Adlib collaboration really shines.

According to industry regulatory requirements, in many instances, the PDF format is vital for organizations to remain compliant. I doubt if I am the only one that has come across the following frustrations and questions when dealing with PDFs.  Can I search throughout the PDF, can I duplicate it, can I edit the PDF, how about add a watermark? During the joint Adlib and K2 demonstration, I happily watched all my concerns disappear right before my eyes. 

The K2/Adlib solution allows an organization full editable rights, searchable content, signature and watermark abilities all while extending an organization the ability to implement these processes in a living workflow.  For anyone using PDFs and SharePoint, learning about all of these attributes in action might make you just as excited as it did for me. K2 and Adlib solutions can take a stagnant PDF and convert it into a source that is flexible and more tangible as smart content.

I wanted to spread the word, so I invited K2 and Adlib to SharePointShopTalk to demo their solutions.  They have agreed to a two-part series, the first taking place on 4.12.12: Automate PDF Transformation in SharePoint Using Adlib. Visit www.SharePointShopTalk.com.

Learn more about Adlib SharePoint Solutions
Learn more about K2 Form Solutions






A Quick Note about New Horizon
I did want to mention one interesting fact I learned about New Horizon during this session.  A very key difference in their training services versus some of their competitors,  is that they directly line up their courses with Microsoft Testing.  If you are training for a certification, New Horizon almost guarantees to cover the material needed to be successful.

How Do You Apply SharePoint IT Strategies?...

Once again, I joined the New Jersey SPUDD (SharePoint Users, Designers, and Developers) User Group, this time to hear Peter Ward speak about Applying SharePoint IT Strategy.  Per usual, I would like to talk a bit about the speaker.  Peter's sense of humour, was very similar to that of a Geico commercial, no, not because of his accent... because he could make you laugh in spite of yourself.
 

Peter Ward, Listening to a Question

Peter was not there, to talk about his contribution to three books, Professional Workflow in SharePoint 2010, Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Business Performance Enhancement, or the upcoming Microsoft SharePoint for Business Executives: Q&A Handbook.   He was there to inform the group about how to apply working SharePoint Strategies to their organizations.

His approach was to explain Why You Need It, then he supplied the Strategy Tools and Strategy Musts, Signs It's All Going Wrong, and lastly What It Takes For It To Succeed.  His key points were that SharePoint is constantly underused, uploading documents is the common, unfortunate end of collaboration.  Put simply, the power of SharePoint is frequently not realized.


One main reason, is the difficulty in getting C-Level executives to buy into SharePoint initiatives. What is the solution? Understanding how to communicate with them, by speaking their language, alleviate all SharePoint terminology and explain the benefits and the business value. This might prove to be difficult without a solid plan, because the business impact can be hard to define. One good suggestion, was to create a list of up to 15 foreseable problems within an organization, and ask, the question, "What are the top three you would like to talk about?" Now, you can plan from there.

One statement, I haven't heard too often was when Peter proclaimed, "The key is adoption NOT under budget delivery." Under budget, delivery usually doesn't give business value. The focus should be to increase productivity, while always remembering you have to invest in order to save money. Well said Peter.

So how do you this? You have to declare the future. When you declare the future, you have a good chance of getting there. You have to develop a roadmap. And this I believe, was one of the most helpful tools Peter provided.  A visual RoadMap to use as a template for your own business case.

SharePoint IT Strategy RoadMap

A couple of other key takeaways:

1. Include a SharePoint Role responsible for continuous SharePoint Improvement in your list of titles of who will support your SharePoint platform. 
2. Acknowledge failures versus spending months and months trying to fix something that should just be stopped in its tracks.
3. SharePoint may not always be the right choice for all of your processes, but it doesn't hurt to explore the possibility. 
4. Ask and answer the question,  Build vs. Buy?
5. Don't forget to ask a question that many organizations do not ask, "How do we support this initiative?"

There were some, who felt that it is too difficult to implement SharePoint strategies from the top levels down to lower levels, and have found the grassroots approach tends to provide more user adoption.  However, this approach though great because users are making use of the platform, usually lacks in strategy and consistency.  I do believe, that if you think, plan, strategize and present a RoadMap similar to Peter's example, it can make it that much easier to create a buy in, keep the progression  moving, as well as capture results.

Thanks Peter, I believe you helped those who are willing, take a step in the right direction in realizing the true power of the SharePoint platform.  View, Peter's Blog and Applying a SharePoint IT Strategy  Presentation Slides.

End of Peter's Talk, Still Answering Questions!

Governance, everyone is talking about it...

Governance, everyone is talking about it...but what I found out at the NJ SharePoint Users Designers and Developers User Group (NJ SPUDD) is that most aren't doing it.

Someone in the crowd said, "That looks simple enough." :)

NJ SPUDD invited Jason Gallicchio, Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft to talk about SharePoint Governance during their February meeting. Throughout Jason's talk, I thought one of the most telling moments was when he asked who was working for an organization that actively practiced SharePoint Governance. At that moment, we heard the birds living on the Seton Hall Campus begin to chirp.

No one could definitively say that they were practicing the tried and true definition of Governance.  This was a great introduction to Jason' s talk.

He took the opportunity to define Governance before taking a deeper look at SharePoint Governance. Governance is the Policies, Procedures, Roles/Responsibilities and Processes of your Information Architecture (Site Structure & Permission), IT Services (Hardwares, Search Management), Applications Management: Customizations, Branding, and Training.

He then made a key point, stating that Governance is Organic, it should live within your organization and cultivate as your organization develops and grows. So not only should you practice Governance at the beginning of your SharePoint projects, but it must be an ongoing attempt.  So how do you make this happen?

Mr. Cool Presented like an Old Pro

Every organization should have a Governance Committee consisting of Executive and Finance Stakeholders, IT Leaders, Business Leaders and Compliance Directors along with Users and Trainers.

Then Jason informed the group that Governance is measurable. I thought that was great news, from my own experience, I have learned it is much easier to create a buy-in and foster improvements when you can measure the results.



Jason asked a final question that triggered thought processes in the right direction. He asked, "Do you know what you're going to do with SharePoint in the next months, how about a year or two?" This question was once again received with an answer of silence.  This thought alone was well worth Jason's talk, there should be constant development around your SharePoint environment. Jason defined it as Keep It Clean/Keep Your Governance Policy Going with set quotas. He also mentioned some quick suggestions like having 3-4 environments, code reviews and code documentations.

The front podium didn't hold Jason back as he worked the room.

The audience wanted examples around Governance and how to make it a success within one's organization, and Jason was able to deliver.  However, I thought Jason's thought-provoking questions were the most effective part of his presentation.  It seems to me that Governanance is all about asking the right questions. As Jason shared, "SharePoint is just a tool, and you must ask how does it fit in with our business objectives?"  

Your Very First Speaking Engagement...

This Wednesday, I had the pleasure to join the NY Office 365 User Group.  We were a small group this time, but the enthusiasm and community feel wasn't lacking. Gwen Bonaparte, the speaker arrived bright and early to greet everyone while she set up. She was there to talk about Automating Business Processes Without Code in Office 365. We learned quite a bit about Gwen, before the event began which made the intimate feel seem right. This was Gwen's first talk after all.

Unfortunately Gwen's  hard drive died prior to the presentation, which took away from her prepared talk.  But what the hard drive took away produced a very lively discussion around Office 365, SharePoint Online and InfoPath.  Gwen had excellent skills involving the audience, and getting us to ask questions from the basic to the advanced.

After Gwen demontrated a couple of timesheet workflows using InfoPath, she wanted to find out what we were doing.  Most were just beginning their adventure into the cloud.  InfoPath was glorified as a must have tool.  A very key misconception was also discovered and corrected.  InfoPath and all its heavy files do NOT have to live on every users computer in order for them to be able to use the handy forms. This made quite a few very happy campers.

Comparisons were also made about the different versions of Office and Outlook. Everyone was pleased with the progression. All in all, Gwen became the leader of a discussion based User Group where everyone including myself became involved. What we learned was that most of us were there for the very same reason, to learn what others were doing with Office 365, and to begin to venture off into a world of testing it's capabilities.

I want to add one final statement, I give credit to anyone who decides to speak at a User Group or any other event for the very first time. It's not easy, you really don't know what to expect. A million things can go wrong and for some reason they always do. But guess what, you are lucky to learn so much from that one experience. Gwen, through functionality hiccups, represented a person who actively used Office 365 and InfoPath and she created an overall enthusiasm for others to do the same.  Great job Gwen, keep going!

Want to begin speaking? Confessions of a Public Speaker is great book to get control of the jitters and gain confidence.

Have aspirations  to present a topic around SharePoint or share a SharePoint story? Contact me at jamees.wright@arcovis.com

You Took My Search Out of Context!

During February's NY Enterprise Search User Group, Michael Himelstein presented: Using Search to Create a Unified View of Information - The Roadmap to Creating Search Based Applications. Michael is the Director of Search Consulting for BA Insight, and he provided valuable information on how we should all think about Search.

In his abstract, he described the misconception of search as, A Search Box, A Search Button...and 10 Blue Links. However my great take away from his talk were the Search visuals that we don't think about. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, let's first talk about how we view Search today.

Mike H. referenced Eric Schmidt's famous quote, "Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003." That’s something like five exabytes of data, he says. But what does this really mean? A host of of unstructured data, terabytes of information that is unclassified, information that lives in totally different silos. And this growing number is increasing exponentially because new sources of information are added daily.

This is where Search comes to play.  Search is when you realize the need to find a platform to bring all this information together in a unified view.  However what is usually missing when you think of Search as bringing necessary information together?  Context. When you bring a large source of information together without context, the obvious description would be "Information Overload."

So to avoid this and to add value to search means to find your company's individual context, understand the context that is important to your users and develop a solution based on your findings.  The great example Mike used was Zagat Survey, this site successfully took their selected topic of  Restaurants & Dining and built a contexual view around different pieces of relevant information.

With Search you can build significant applications today, the trick is to place your relevant information in one structured unified view, utilizing the power that is context.  Great job Mike, thank you for bringing your talk to the New York Enterprise Search User Group! Join us for our next meeting: Adding *Your* Business Value With FAST Search for SharePoint Pipeline Extensibility.

Searching for Search Speakers...

The NY Enterprise Search User Group (NYESUG) Members have spoken! Last week, we asked the group what Search topics they would love to see presented at The NYESUG. So we would love to see their requests answered! A list of the suggested topics is below for your review. 

Join the NY Enterprise Search User Group.

Requested Search Topics

Best Practices for Indexing Optimization of Performance

Case Study of Enterprise Search for a Law Firm or Patent Search

Cloud Computing

Contextualization atypical Behavior of a Profiled User

FAST and other Repositories

Handling Huge (BIG (Data) 100 Million to 740 Tb/ Efficient Storage

How to Architect a Search Infrastructure for Sources/Apps

Internet Search

Latest Developments in Search

Managing Search Solutions

MAP Reduce

RESTful Web Services

Search Implementation in a Finance Industry

Search Trends

Search Virtualization

Search vs Business Intelligence

Security

SOA

Social Media Incorporation (Twitter, FB, Feeds)

Taxonomy & Search

Understanding Search Driven Apps

A Review of SharePoint Saturday Philly

I've been to two SharePoint Saturdays in New York.  This year however, I decided to branch out for the first time and take the trip to Philly for their SharePoint Saturday. I must say that the trip was well worth it. Yes, I saw a lot of familiar faces, many who I've met in New York.  But I was able to meet new faces, and even met Sandy Ussia, long time supporter of SharePoint ShopTalk for the first time.   She traveled even further than I did, though living in Pennsylvania.

SharePoint Saturday Philly took place at Devry University.  This was a great option for the event location.  The space provided an intimate feel, and the classroom's and the school for that matter had updated technogy, which allowed for smooth presentations.

Ellis Luboff

Edmond Avanesian

I was able to drop in on a couple of presentations at 9:00am.  Ellis Luboff gave out some awesome tips for Administrators. However, his session ended a bit early so I made my way to Edmond Avanesian's talk: So you want to implement SharePoint in your organization. Now what? 

Edmond outlined key tips on the next steps for an organization.   The thought Edmond wanted to leave in everyone's head is "You can't treat SharePoint like any other project" and the importance of communication throughtout and after the project is completed.

A slide, I found very useful was a basic list of IT Skills that are needed when implementing SharePoint:

1. Network Admin (Infrastructure)
2. System Admin (Windows OS)
3. Database Admin (SQL Server)
4. SP Architect
5. SP Admin (Farm/Central Admin)
6. SP Developer
1. Workflow
2. Custom Web Parts
7. SP Branding/Graphics
8. SP      Site Owner Admin
9. SP Content Migration (if applicable) 

Next up, I took a seat in Marcy Kellar's session: SharePoint User Experience, What Can it Do for Adoption? This was a very interactive session, as Marcy gave out neat gifts for those who participated and utilized some pictures to make you laugh and think while getting her point across. She quoted, Jeff Croft "Design by definition is the act of solving a problems. In order for anything to be designed well, we must first identify the problems we are trying to solve and the goals we are trying to reach." And stated The User Experience is the sum of all parts and it is tied to adoption by emotion, efficiency and engagement.

To my surprise, it wasn't the last time I was able to see Marcy, because she joined the panel on the first session after lunch, Women in SharePoint.  This session was a lot of fun.  These weren't women who bashed men and held up picket signs chanting.  No, these were women who loved SharePoint, who had valid experiences to share and who encourage other women to jump on board the SharePoint train. They expressed women are not necessarily emotional but passionate and that it is easy to be passionate about SharePoint because of the vast room for creativity.

Women in SharePoint

Women in SharePoint 2

Some of the attributes the panel found women usually brought to a team were, the ability to understand the end user, sharapy (sharing & therapy), teamwork, mentorship and  the ability to multitask. When leading a team, most women present themselves as approachable, patient and have the tendacy to express care.  Michelle, also known as @cyberslate shared two books she feels that women would benefit from reading: Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office and Leading from the Front.

After this session, I perused the vendor's booths. At this late hour, the representatives maintained excitement and shared their products and services with me. I met some new people and reminisced with some friends. Then, I went to see how my colleagues Paul Olenick and Natalya Voskresenskaya were doing as they prepared to set up for their talk: Migrating from 2007 to SharePoint 2010 - How to do it "Search First".

Paul & Natalya

On to the final session of the day. To my happiness it was lead by Stacy Deere and Stephanie Donahue as they discussed: Managed Metadata A to Z - Plan, Implement, Make it a Success. Talk about a session that was filled with information  that was clearly wanted and well received.  Stacy and Stephanie are a great team and they clearly understand how to get the most out of Managed Metadata. They highlighted the new functionalities of SharePoint 2010 Standard, Enterprise and Online editions which simplifies the task of assigning metadata.  During this session, questions were asked consistently throughout, and Stephanie and Stacy delivered. Review their blog: Not Just SharePoint.

Last, but certainly not least were the cool prizes given away and the after social at Brick House. Though, I didn't win anything post event, I did win a cool book, during the Women in SharePoint Session: The SharePoint 2010 Handbook.  I look forward to the read. I also looked forward to the after social, which I conclude as a another SharePoint Saturday Philly Success.  It was a great cap to the event, the community enthusiasm and love of social participation lived throughout the event and of course during the after social.  Good times.

Good Times...