sharepoint 2013

When is Visual Studio the Preferred Tool for Building Workflows for SharePoint 2013?

Readers may not be aware of the special cases where Visual Studio 2012, rather than SharePoint Designer, 2013, is the best tool for building workflows for SharePoint 2013. Microsoft® provides some of this information in an entry to the MSDN Library titled Develop SharePoint 2013 workflows using Visual Studio. The version of Visual Studio, which is the subject of this entry, is Visual Studio 2012. The entry states: “what differs from previous versions [of Visual Studio] is that using Visual Studio no longer provides a code-based authoring strategy. Instead, both SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio provide a fully declarative, no-code…
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A Realistic Approach to Content Governance with SharePoint 2013

In a post to AIIM’s Expert Blogs titled Enterprise Content Governance 2014: A SharePoint Point of View, Mike Alsup, Senior Vice President at Gimmal Group draws a quick sketch of what I would characterize as a realistic view of the components of a truly useful content governance plan for an ECM effort for a larger community of SharePoint users. Here is a list of some of the important takeaways, as I see it, from Mr. Alsup’s post: SharePoint is now clearly the leading option for most larger user communities with a need for a method of managing a very wide…
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Implementing SharePoint 2013, On Premises, for Enterprise Document Management

SharePoint® 2013, on premises, is, perhaps, a less expensive option for organizations to implement than most dedicated Enterprise Document Management (EDM) applications. SharePoint-Videos.com offers a lot of video training content on the topic, including a set compiled from an online course we held recently, which was led by Chris McNulty, a widely recognized subject matter expert on Managed Metadata Services (MMS), Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and a published author. Opting to implement SharePoint Server 2013 on premises, rather than exclusively in the cloud, makes sense for two reasons, which may be important, and worth consideration: The total life cycle cost,…
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Implementing Workflows, and Document Imaging, as Policies, May Lead to Substantial Reductions in Paper Dependence for Regulated Businesses

In a case study titled Bank Innovates Work Environment, Boosts Performance with Social Collaboration, Microsoft® reports on the ambitious plan of a New Zealand bank, ASB Bank, to use SharePoint 2013 workflows in conjunction with Document Imaging (and what looks to be a formal records management procedure), to reduce paper dependence. As this case study notes, this ambitious plan is targeting a 40% reduction in “paper dependence” (a combination of printing, and document retention policies for hard copies, etc) within three years of its implementation date in the late fall of 2012. The plan also calls for a drastic reduction…
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SharePoint 2013 Workflows Simplify Calls to Web Services for Developers

A familiar challenge facing lots of large organizations is how best to integrate custom software for Line of Business (LoB) requirements with enterprise applications, including SharePoint. With SharePoint 2013 workflow, no code developers can call web services. Better yet, LoB application developers needn’t know anything about SharePoint, they can also just simply call a web service. Chris Beckett, one of the authors of “Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Plain and Simple”, and the author of our video tutorial set, SharePoint 2013: Workflow presents the new web services features in the fifth video in the set, titled “Call HTTP web service action and…
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SharePoint 2013 Workflows Resemble State Machine Workflows — to the Benefit of Stakeholders

Computer software, regardless of whether it’s hard coded, or produced with no code methods, must be useful if it is to deliver on a value proposition. Workflows in SharePoint 2013 are better equipped to be truly useful as the result of a closer resemblance to state machine workflows. “Useful”, of course, is an abstraction requiring further definition. Perhaps it will be helpful if I provide an illustration of a process, I believe most readers will judge to be something less than “useful”. Chris Beckett includes this illustration in one of the video tutorials in SharePoint-Videos.com’s set, SharePoint 2013: Workflows: “Let’s…
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Reduce SharePoint Development Costs with No Code Reusable Workflows

The biggest return on an investment in developing custom solutions can be found in the combined benefits of enterprise wide accessibility and utility. For SharePoint, reusable workflows are a great example of a method of delivering this high value benefit. In a video tutorial titled Intro to Workflow types, models, stages and app step usage scenarios, Chris Beckett presents the notion of reusable workflows: “Reusable workflows allow us to publish a workflow to a content type, instead of a specific list. Now the advantage of a reusable workflow is that anywhere that we use that content type we can also…
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A Business Case for Including a Security Plan for SharePoint 2013

No review of the business case for correctly planning for the administration of SharePoint 2013, on premises, would be complete without a look at security. In a video tutorial, nearly 9 minutes in length, titled SharePoint 2013 Security, Michael Noel makes a case for including security in an implementation plan for the computing platform. Noel organizes security administration for SharePoint 2013 into four containers: Infrastructure Data Transport and Rights Management These four containers should work equally well for stakeholders considering a business case for SharePoint. 1) Infrastructure Stakeholders should be aware that every service added to SharePoint includes an account….
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Microsoft Focuses on SharePoint Online

A recent video interview with John Thompson, Microsoft’s new Chairman on Bloomberg TV, captures Mr. Thompson’s sharp attention to Office 365 as “one of the most successful new products in Microsoft’s history” (quoted from the interview). Mia Saini, who led the interview, set the stage for Mr. Thompson’s comment when she noted the explosive sales growth of cloud solutions. SharePoint Online is one of the components of Microsoft’s Office 365 offer. SharePoint-Videos.com offers a video training set specifically optimized for SharePoint 2013 end users, which can be successfully used to support communities opting for SharePoint Online, via Office 365. One…
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