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Springhouse Education and Consulting Services to Deliver Microsoft SharePoint Deployment Planning Services
By Jeff Tincher
8/15/2008 – Exton, PA: Springhouse Education and Consulting Services (http://www.springhouse.com), a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Learning Solutions, has announced that it has been certified by Microsoft to provide SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) to its customers.
Springhouse’s SDPS accreditation means that it can help its customers to appreciate the benefits of this solution, running workshops on behalf of Microsoft to show users Best Practices on how they can maximize the collaborative technology to get the most from their staff and business. In addition to this, Springhouse can also assist with SharePoint deployment if required.
As a certified partner, Springhouse will deliver pre-packaged SDPS engagements to Microsoft customers. These engagements vary in length and services, ranging from 1 to 15 days depending upon the value of the enterprise agreement (Software Assurance Licensing) between Microsoft and the customer.
“Being a certified Microsoft partner for SDPS engagements strengthens our business and increases our value and offerings for our current customer base as well as any new customer,” said Neall Alcott, VP of Technology Services at Springhouse. “SDPS is structured in a way that benefits both Springhouse and our customers, allowing them to operate their business more effectively and efficiently through the collaboration of SharePoint.” Neall Alcott was a member of the SDPS beta team in Redmond, WA , he also has over 20 years of IT experience and is a MCT and MSCE.
Springhouse has completed one SDPS engagement with a global communications technology company and the client is currently using the SDPS deliverables as a roadmap for deployment of their SharePoint environment.
The Microsoft SDPS web page states: “As organizations of all sizes around the world deploy Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server, they are engaging with trusted partners to assist with the planning of this critical IT responsibility. SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) is designed to help organizations plan an effective deployment of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server by partnering them with a qualified Microsoft SDPS provider and offering a broad range of planning tools and services that help optimize the effectiveness of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server’s core capabilities, lower the cost of deployment, and improve organizational productivity. Service areas include collaboration, portals, enterprise search, as well as web and portal content management.”
About Springhouse Education and Consulting Services
Springhouse Education and Consulting Services located in Exton, Pennsylvania, delivers Instructor-Led Training, E-Learning and Distance Learning to area businesses and individuals, as well as IT consulting services to the Greater Philadelphia market as well as Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Visit our web site at www.springhouse.com or our blog at blog.springhouse.com.
Filed Under SharePoint |
I just received word that the SharePoint team has announced a new program called SharePoint Deployment Planning Services today. I quickly jumped over to that post on blogs.msdn.com to learn more about this new and exciting service:
If you’re involved with SharePoint in some way, either as a customer or partner, I think that you’ll be excited to learn about a new program we’re announcing today called SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS). SDPS is a partner and Microsoft Consulting Services delivered offering designed to help our Software Assurance (SA) customers successfully plan and deploy SharePoint. Using field proven business and technical guidance, the program provides best practices and well defined results through 1, 3, 5, 10 or 15 day deployment planning sessions. The number of Packaged Service days that a customer can receive is determined by a combination of the number of qualifying Office licenses and the number of Core CAL (Client Access License) Suites and Enterprise CAL Suites. So, no additional investment is needed by the customer to take advantage of this tremendous program.
You can jump to the full post here > Microsoft SharePoint Proucts and Technologies Team Blog : Announcing SharePoint Deployment Planning Services SDPS
Catch up on some other SharePoint posts on our blog:
SharePoint Designer Governance - Robert Bogue (MVP)
Benchmark SharePoint Performace
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Filed Under SharePoint | 2 Comments
SharePoint Designer Governance - Robert Bogue (MVP)
By Jeff Tincher
Here is a great post I ran across on Robert Bogue, a SharePoint MVP, blog site. Robert discusses the need for governance with SharePoint Designer, a great tool for certain users, a dangerous weapon for others. Robert goes on to write:
I talked about what good users for SPD are and what bad uses for SPD are – but I never came right out and made any recommendations for how to put a governance framework around SPD in your organization.
….
The primary challenge when looking at SPD roll outs and governance, in my experience, has been a misunderstanding of what the tool does. It’s a data view web part creator, a workflow creator, and an HTML/CSS editor.
The full article can be read here on ThorProjects.com
Filed Under SharePoint |
How to Skin Your Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Site
By Jeff Tincher
I found this article posted on Michael Gannotti’s SharePoint blog. It’s very useful for those looking to skin and customize Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site.
Read his post here:
Filed Under SharePoint |
Ontolica Solves Wildcard Search in MOSS 2007
By Jeff Tincher
Source: FotoliaOk, how many of you out there have created a MOSS Search Center Site to find out that when you are done you AND your users cannot search using wildcards or partial names? I know I was one of them! I am working on a solution right now with one of our customers to migrate their old Company Phone Directory and use SharePoint Search features to find the employees information. The original phone directory was difficult to manage and update, the new solution was to build Custom SharePoint Lists for each department and populate those lists with required information such as, first name, last name, email, work phone, mobile phone, department, title, and a few others.
Take One
The first take on this project I set up a Search Center and had everything working, someone would search for an employee by name, title or department and BANG up comes the information. Well….sort of. The downside was what is the user searching for someone didn’t know how to fully spell a last name, like Koeningsberg for example. If they tried to do, ‘Koen’ nothing showed in the results. Hmm, why is that? Well there is no out-of-the-box wildcard search for MOSS. Not good.
Of course I searched on different solutions for searching on partial names in the search field. One potential solution was to create our own custom webpart that would interact with the internals of SharePoint. Nope. Not going to mess with that, especially after all the blog articles said, “It’s best not to mess with your own webpart and screw up your MOSS install”.
Filed Under SharePoint, search |
For those of you using SharePoint, here is a link over to what I find very interesting and could be helpful for some organizations. With social web sites become more popular and people looking at user ratings and tags this solution created by two interns at Tam Tam has great potential in your SharePoint environment. Sure, SharePoint can tag posts, documents and what else you want, but here is the perks of Tam Tam’s new solution…
This solution however offers a rich user experience of those mechanisms, personalized (this is very cool) and full integration with SharePoint search and Ontolica search!
Here are a couple of screenshots from the original blog post.
As of this post, there is no release of this add-on. Please check back on our blog and I’ll report any news about this solution.
Filed Under SharePoint, search |
Springhouse Partners with CorasWorks
By Jeff Tincher
We are happy to announce our new partnership with CorasWorks®.
CorasWorks® is the leading worldwide provider of workplace application software on the Microsoft® SharePoint® platform. CorasWorks products are used every day by more than 1,000 customers and 700,000 users. Our customers include corporations, government agencies, academic institutions, and small-and mid-sized businesses in more than 20 countries worldwide.
With this partnership we plan to grow our consulting services in the SharePoint market and allow for MOSS customization projects for current and new clients.
For more information about CorasWorks and the CorasWorks Suite please go to their web site at www.corasworks.net
Filed Under General, SharePoint |
SharePoint 2007 Executive Briefings at Springhouse
By Jeff Tincher
Learn how SharePoint 2007 can help your organization increase efficiency and productivity!
Springhouse will be running four SharePoint events this December. SharePoint 2007 is very powerful. However, in order to fulfill your organization’s unique business needs, it requires configuration and customization as well as training for your end users, administrators, and developers.
During this session, our SharePoint Architects will demonstrate the following SharePoint features and functions:
- Business Process / Workflow
- Enterprise Content Management
- Search
- Records Management
- Team Collaboration
See Microsoft SharePoint 2007 in action.
Springhouse SharePoint Architects will be on hand, as well as SharePoint Trainers to address specific business and technical questions. We will also discuss recommended training paths that will maximize the business value of SharePoint within your organization.
See how Springhouse can help you!
To register for one of our upcoming events please visit our Events page at www.springhouse.com/events
Filed Under General, SharePoint |
Benchmark SharePoint Performance
By Mike G
The Microsoft SharePoint team just released a tool they had been using internally for measuring and benchmarking SharePoint performance. Called “CopyTimer”, it simply uploads and downloads three different files, and records the stats to a list.
Download the tool (and/or the source code!) from its’ CodePlex site:
http://www.codeplex.com/sptoolbox/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=8366
There is a config file that needs to be set up, but there’s not much to do other than to specify the address of the SP Site and document library. Personally, I was viewing initial test results within five minutes of downloading the tool:
Of course, like any benchmarking tool, it doesn’t help to only run it once. So either run it at intervals thoughout the day, or copy the tool (and the config file that you’ve already set up) to other machines to get a picture of performance from different network locations.
Filed Under SharePoint |
More Facebook / SharePoint Talk
By Neall A
Here is some more talk about Microsoft’s investment in Facebook I mentioned earlier:
Microsoft puts money down on Web 2.0 trendAnalysts point out that the deal could be the start of something even bigger. They say if Microsoft and Facebook can collaborate on advertising, there’s no reason to believe they couldn’t incorporate a Facebook-like application into SharePoint, Microsoft’s portal-based server that allows companies to manage shared documents and run collaborative technologies such as a blog or a wiki. The future result could be more robust Web 2.0 offerings that corporate IT departments offer under the comfort and familiarity of a Microsoft environment.
“Right now, the Facebook deal is really motivated by the consumer and marketing side of things, and to really get [Microsoft's] ad platform up and running” in the social network space, says Oliver Young, an analyst at Forrester who researches Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. “But if that relationship goes well and continues to deepen, I think we could see some cross-pollination between Facebook and SharePoint.”
Young’s assessment can be backed up by two announcements this week that flew under the radar because of the Facebook announcement. At the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco this week, Microsoft announced that it would help Atlassian, a provider of enterprise-grade wikis, and NewsGator, a popular RSS tool, integrate their applications with SharePoint. For Microsoft, the announcements show they’re willing to incorporate best-of-breed Web 2.0 technologies rather than only provide their own applications atop the SharePoint server, which Young says have been adequate but not exceptional.
Filed Under SharePoint, Technology |
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