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Monday, July 14, 2014

Future for Microsoft SharePoint?

Microsoft is facing important pressures from market and technology forces, which will force it to make fundamental changes to SharePoint's architecture and future development plans. Gartner analysts said SharePoint Online will evolve relatively quickly by integrating with Yammer, Exchange Online and Lync Online, to the extent that the lines between the various elements of the overall Office 365 suite will seem to disappear, although it remains possible to buy them separately. On premises SharePoint Server will follow a different path with slower updates.
Jeffrey Mann, research vice president at Gartner, examined the future of SharePoint today during his Maverick presentation at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando titled, “Should Microsoft Kill SharePoint?”
Gartner’s Maverick research is designed to spark new, unconventional insights. Maverick research is unconstrained by Gartner’s typical broad consensus-formation process to deliver breakthrough, innovative and disruptive ideas from the company’s research incubator to help organizations get ahead of the mainstream and take advantage of trends and insights that could impact IT strategy and the wider organization.
We asked Mr. Mann to share his views on the outlook for SharePoint.
Q: Where is SharePoint now?
Jeffrey: SharePoint has proven to be a highly successful product, bringing billions of dollars of annual revenue to Microsoft. It is used, in some form, at a majority of Gartner's clients. SharePoint does not excel in any particular area when compared with best-of-breed, single-purpose products. Instead, it provides "good enough" features across a variety of integrated capabilities. A large part of its success comes from providing reasonable support for most of the things, most people, need most of the time. Together with support from the third-party developer ecosystem, this brand promise has made SharePoint widely deployed. However, few end users really love using it. It remains a tool that people are required to use, not one they want to use.
Q: What dilemmas is Microsoft facing regarding SharePoint?
Jeffrey: Microsoft faces two important dilemmas regarding SharePoint, which are also important for SharePoint users:
  • SharePoint needs to go to the cloud, but some customers can't or won't —Microsoft needs to move SharePoint to the cloud for its own interests, as well as the interests of its customers. However, many organizations using SharePoint cannot go to the cloud because they have regulatory restrictions or complex, customized implementations that prevent adopting SharePoint Online. Some third-party add-ons they depend on are not available for the cloud version. Others do not trust the cloud or see no reason to change, so they won't make the move.
  • Users want improvements, but IT doesn't want to upgrade — We regularly hear end users and administrators complain about features or user-experience improvements that they would like to see in SharePoint. Although they want new functionality, they are less keen to have more upgrades, which are seen as expensive, disruptive and time-consuming. It is difficult to see how users can expect to get changes without implementing new versions. If upgrades were easier, they might be less reticent to install new versions. This is a move Microsoft is trying to address with the app model introduced in SharePoint 2013.
Q: How should users handle the overlapping functionality between Yammer and SharePoint?
Jeffrey: Microsoft has recommended that users adopt the Yammer activity stream rather than the SharePoint newsfeed, and provided tools to do so. Customers who don't want to or cannot use Yammer (because it is cloud-based, for example) can continue to use the SharePoint newsfeed, although new developments will concentrate on the Yammer activity stream. Capabilities such as "following" documents are provided by SharePoint 2013's native interface, but do not support Yammer's activity stream.
Aside from this recommendation about the Yammer activity stream versus the SharePoint newsfeed, there is little guidance on how to handle the overlaps. Organizations must decide whether to use Yammer or SharePoint for groups, discussions, Q&A, blogs, wikis and file storage. Without guidance, users are unsure which way to go to avoid future difficulties.
Q: Will Microsoft Kill SharePoint?
Jeffrey: In a word, "No." Gartner expects that the SharePoint product franchise will continue for quite some time, with new releases for both the on-premises and the cloud product. In one way, nothing has changed: SharePoint Server continues to be supported and developed, with new versions expected at pretty much the same schedule as with earlier versions.
However, this argument ignores the monumental efforts Microsoft is devoting to SharePoint Online and Yammer. It is disingenuous to expect that these cloud efforts will not affect the on-premises products, which would simply go on as before. Given how Microsoft is shifting focus to the cloud, and with differences emerging between SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server, it will become increasingly difficult to consider them the same product, especially as Microsoft integrates SharePoint Online ever more closely with Yammer, Lync Online and Exchange Online.
Q: What should organizations with complex, on-premises SharePoint installations do?
Jeffrey: The implications I’ve mentioned will unfold slowly over several years — there is no need to take panicky, immediate action. SharePoint Server 2013 will be a viable platform for doing what it does now, at least until 2018 (when mainstream support ends). However, it is not too early to start planning for a post-SharePoint world.
While Microsoft will not walk away from this product line, there are strong arguments that the changes coming will split the on-premises and online versions of SharePoint sufficiently, and that Microsoft should acknowledge that they cannot remain as one product, and help customers plan accordingly.

Reference to http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2605118 

Monday, June 21, 2010

SharePoint Application Template Error

Action: when user trying to create new site using sharepoint Application template

Error:
Feature '75a0fea7-c54f-46b9-86b1-2e103a8fedba' is not installed in thisfarm, and can not be added to this scope.

Solution:
Did you install the Application Template Core prior to installing the ProjectTracking Workspace?

If not, you would have to do that first, and then re-install the ProjectTracking Workspace.

step1: First install ApplicationTemplateCore
  • stsadm -o addsolution -filename "C:\ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp"
  • stsadm -o deploysolution -name "ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp" -allowgacdeployment -immediate -force
  • stsadm -o copyappbincontent

step2:Install your selected Application template
  • stsadm -o addsolution -filename "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\WSP\ProjectTrackingWorkspace.wsp"
  • stsadm -o deploysolution -name "ProjectTrackingWorkspace.wsp" -allowgacdeployment -immediate -force
  • stsadm -o copyappbincontent

Friday, March 12, 2010

February 2010 cumulative update for WSS V3 and MOSS 2007

Windows SharePoint Services V3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 are now be able to get updated to the latest available bits with February CU.

WSS:
978396 The full server package for WSS
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;978396

MOSS:
978395 The full server package for MOSS
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;978395

Download and installation information:
Install SP2 for WSS and MOSS SP2 and Language Packs if not yet happened. With the next CU in April 2010 SP2 will be a real mandatory step!
Install the full server package for WSS
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=978396&kbln=en-us
Install the full server package for MOSS
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=978395&kbln=en-us
After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.


reference from Click

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Download the SharePoint 2010 VHD

The SharePoint team just released a fully installed SharePoint 2010 VHD file. This will same you a ton of time when you are setting up your development environment.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c51819b-3d40-435c-a103-a5481fe0a0d2&displaylang=en

The download contains 2 VHDs, 1 for SharePoint 2010 (and Office 2010) and 1 for Exchange 2010. Running both virtual machines will allow you to test out workflow and email scenarios with SharePoint and Office.

This is the same VHD that is used to complete the Hands On Labs in our SharePoint 2010 online training course.

http://blogs.msdn.com/pstubbs/archive/2009/12/15/updated-sharepoint-2010-training-kit-with-offline-and-hands-on-labs.aspx

Monday, November 23, 2009

SharePoint - IE Crashes when opening Office documents

You cannot create a new document, Open document, or check out an existing document in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document library when you have multiple versions of Office installed

The problem happens when you have, or had, two versions of office installed. You have to go into your program files directory and delete the version of owssupp.dll you're not using (for example if you upgraded to office 2007 and then downgraded back to office 2003 you delete owssupp.dll in the office12 directory). IE 7's manage addons you can see two versions of the owssupp dll registered so IE gets confused and you have to forcefully remove the version you're not using anymore.

To resolve this problem, install hotfix 938888. For more information about hotfix 938888, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
938888 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938888/ )

Monday, October 19, 2009

SharePoint Document Library: Require Check Out

Today's best practices recommendation, why you should require check out in your document libraries, and how to go about doing so.

The reason that it's recommended that you require check out on the documents in your library is that, unless you do so, multiple users will be able to check out and edit a single document at the same time*, and without any indication that another user is already editing the same document. What do you think happens if two people are making changes to the same document at the same time? If you said, "whoever saves first wins," give yourself a gold star.

Such headaches can be avoided by requiring that users check out a document from a library before making changes. Don't worry, if someone has checked out a given document and is in the process of making changes, a read-only version can still be accessed by other users.

Is it a complicated or laborious process to set up a document library to require check out? Not at all. In fact, setting up a document library to require check out is as simple as selecting a single radio button in the library settings:


To navigate to the above setting, from within the library itself,

  • first select Document Library Settings from the Settings dropdown,
  • then select the Versioning Settings hyperlink under the General Settings header.
  • From there, you'll be presented with the setting options page for the library, and you'll notice that the last option is Require Check Out. Once you're here, all you need to do is switch the defaulted Require Check Out radio button selection from No to Yes (as pictured above),
  • click OK at the bottom of the page, and you're all set.