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I've been given a project at my job involving SharePoint. I'm eventually supposed to replace our current Intranet site and and website using SharePoint.
I've never used SharePoint before and was wondering where a good place to start would be. I also have little knowledge of website design in the first place. Can anyone reccomend a book or a detailed site that will explain things to me like I'm an idiot?
It's always hard suggesting beginner's books because you never know where to start.
Sharepoint, as with all software, is best learned by playing with it. You said you are supposed to replace your current intranet site with Sharepoint. The best thing you can do right now is set up a little test environment with Sharepoint. I say "a little" because in the end it is not that hard, but looking at the documentation from Microsoft: Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008, it is hard ;-)
Microsoft also offers the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM) - a whopping 3GB download (you only need 2010-7a). Mind you: this Virtual machine only runs under Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V activated, so not on your standard issue Windows XP.
Talking of which: Sharepoint 2010 needs a 64 Bit System (go with Windows Server 2008 to make yourself happy) and at least 8GB of RAM.
That being said of some test system you can play with (create some document libraries, look at workflows, get yourself accustomed to master pages etc.) there are of course some theoretical books. You asked about explain things to me like I'm an idiot?, lucky you: Amazon's choice of Sharepoint 2010 for Dummies books. If you know the "for Dummies" series - the books are not very in depth, but they are o.k. at giving a general picture.
If you want more professional books, there is SharePoint 2010 User's Guide: Learning Microsoft's Business Collaboration Platform or Beginning SharePoint 2010 Development (Wrox Beginning Guides).
Btw: The best tool to start your customization efforts, once you have your test environment is Microsoft's Sharepoint Designer 2010. It's a breeze creating custom master pages or changing some CSS quickly.
The first tasks I would set for myself after understanding a bit of Sharepoint: Customize a standard Sharepoint Site (Team Site, Publishing, ...) to match my companies appearance. Some hints: Look at Themes, Master Pages, Layouts.
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I am a Asp.Net developer, currently working on Webforms in 3.5. I do C# now, used to do VB.Net. I am also a middle tier developer (business layer and data layer) working on refactoring the current code base to use the Service-Repository pattern.
My boss asked me if I would like to start doing Sharepoint development (company is currently upgrading to 2010, so I would assume I would be doing 2010).
I have read on here that it takes a long time to get up to speed with Sharepoint development, and I don't want to be thrown into the fire while still learning and not knowing what I am doing.
Also, any good places to start learning? I told my boss I would look into it for about a week and get back to them.
Some good links:
Get Started on developing on
SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 Advanced Developer
Training
SharePoint Hands on lab
SharePoint Developer Center
SharePoint Foundation Development in
Depth
Good luck to you
I'd recommend finding out what they anticipate the company's needs are and whether they anticipate that this will become your primary role. Ask about what projects they have in mind. (Of course they're going to say a small percentage, and no, you'll be expected to continue with your regular duties...)
It may be helpful to schedule a 'state of the union' meeting a couple months out to realistically assess how much of your life Sharepoint has taken over, and whether someone else should be brought in to help (or take over).
It certainly can't hurt to get another set of skills under your belt. Having the background that you do will certainly help you be competitive. If you don't like the work, there's nothing saying that you have to include it in future resumes...
Don't be scared to learn SharePoint. It may seem like a difficult task at first, but if you take it one step at a time you should be ok. In fact, SharePoint is just a (really big) asp.net web application, so all your existing skills come in handy.
Also the fact that MS finally put some good quality project templates for SharePoint development in Visual Studio 2010 makes the learning curve less steep.
There are also some good books available to get you started. If the company wants you to learn SharePoint, I suppose they would be happy to pay the bill for those. :-)
Yes, SharePoint development has a steam learning curve, but from what you already do, you're half way there.
The best place to start is here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/SharePoint2010Developer/
I agree with the answers above. Only thing I would add is, if you had to learn SharePoint, starting with the 2010 version such an advantage over 2007. Especially when you add in Visual Studio 2010...
Regarding where to start, can't hurt learning from the horse's mouth (i.e Microsoft's MSDN sites). Also, be sure to request that your company get you adequate hands-on developer training.
It might be helpful to know that SharePoint.SE is dedicated to only SharePoint questions. If you have a non-programming related SharePoint question, or even a programming one, that is a good site to use.
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We have been looking to implement Agile methodology within our geographically distributed development team, so i need suggestions on any free on-line application that you have used and find useful.
Right now we are using paper cards and wall to manage this :), but we want to shift to an on-line version preferably free.
I have used TargetProcess at my previous job!
My Core requirements are:
Business Analyst can add user stories
We can assign, prioritize different user stories to developers.
QA team can add test cases around different user stories.
Project Manager can track the time of all the resources and can pull reports for upper management
I've been using Pivotal Tracker which is a free agile project management tool and covers the following agile concepts:
Velocity tracking and emergent iterations
Story-based iterative planning
Real-time collaboration
Would certainly recommend you try this before paying for an alternative.
Also, as mentioned, Basecamp is a great tool for maintaining documentation, to-do lists and the rest. There is a barely promoted free option for single project use that you will find on the signup page below the Max and Premium options.
Possibly not an agile tool as such (depends on your definition) but the free Team City continuous integration and build server is the kind of software that you don't believe you could live without once you've used it. Basically a commit to SVN by any developer triggers a build to your staging server about 30 seconds later meaning the latest build is very agile!
Timetracking: slimtimer.com.
This is one of the best time trackers I've seen (and I've seen many)
Mercurial code hosting: list available here.
I've only used the service provided by sourceforge.net and was satisfied with it.
Web conferencing, desktop and whiteboard sharing: Dimdim.
I haven't had much luck with it, but I believe it might perform much better on a Windows machine.
All sorts of version control, wiki, RSS feeds: sourceforge.net.
It's only for FOSS projects, though, but it really ofers a lot of services.
Other than that, basecamp should fit right in an agile process (although I haven't used it much) with a reasonable price ($50/month...)
Try using http://www.icescrum.org/en/. This is open source tool and free platform for Agile developments. You can read its feature on Features tab on website.
Also, Visit http://www.openlogic.com/wazi/bid/188152/Comparing-Open-Source-Agile-Project-Management-Tools. This article compares the most compelling open source options.
At work we use a product called Skinnyboard. It has a ton of great features, like:
Support for Sprints and Product Backlogs
Sprint tracking via stories/tasks
Individual task history
Sprint/Product Backlog burndown, to see projected finish dates, etc.
It's free to try, which gives you (I believe) one board. After that you have to pay though, but it's a great product and definitely worth it.
It's simple, visually appealing, and only has what you need. In my opinion, it's like the Basecamp of SCRUM tools.
They say it better than I ever could,
AgileFant is an open source tool
for managing agile software
development activities, such as:
projects, products, releases,
iterations and backlogs. It brings
together the perspectives of long-term
product and release planning and
project portfolio management.
Another one that's recently sparked some interest and seems potentially useful (I'm in beta, easy to get in afaik) is Flowdock which is basically a mish-mash of email alerts, RSS feeds, ticketing systems and plain ol' realtime chat with status messages et al. Think of it as Google Wave that doesn't suck and check out the intro video from the front page.
Try out Flying Donut. It is a new online product inspired by scrum. You may host public or private projects.
Disclaimer: I have been using it for many months, since I helped building it, and I love it.
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We looking for a simple, open source, web based document management system for Linux. With document management I mean the ability to store a set of files (minimally doc, xls and pdf) as a document. Associate meta data with the document like owner and version. Update and delete documents. Ability to index and search content. Authentication and the ability to authorize at least read, and possible write. If possible I would like to avoid implementations in Java or PHP, and as we use MySQL already that would work especially well for meta-data storage.
We have used Google Applications in the past but the lack of support for PDF makes it a poor fit. Other downsides include their service losing some of our spreadsheets, no concept of company owning information opposed to individual accounts, and some of our information is sensitive and we prefer keeping it in-house (passwords, contracts etc).
MediaWiki was not a good fit either as our documents is really a set opposed to be structured content (i.e. not looking for a content management system), and at least the version we had installed did not deal well with attachments.
Based on review of past questions I plan on looking into KnowledgeTree. Any other projects that we should consider?
I've been using KnowledgeTree now for a few months developing an ASP.Net application and I only have good things to say about it. Our product uses it for PDF storage/retrieval and it really couldn't be easier to deal with. The basic install gives you a simple environment with almost endless amounts of configuration for meta-data, document groups, and various security options. Also, the KnowledgeTree staff have been very helpful and have provided us with sample code when we have run into 'how are we going to do that?' moments.
I'll second the recommendation for KnowledgeTree. Have been using it for a couple years and have roughly 1K documents indexed. Sometime last year, I wrote a short script which monitors KT's transaction table (in MySQL) and notifies users of new or updated documents via Twitter, Identica, and/or Jabber. The Twitter/Identica feeds can then be monitored with a RSS reader.
Look for something that will index all your document formats and keep them searchable.
I solved this in my office using Coldfusion. It has verity search engine built in. This indexes files on your network (doc/xls/pdf, etc) to make the text in them searchable (like google).
An instant search engine for all my files, for upto 150,000 or so is built in for free with Coldfusion so it suits my purpose.. Something like this would allow you to save your files on a network how/wherever and you'd be able to extract the rest of the information about owners, modification dates through libraries available in java / .net.
I am sure you could replicate this with another language, but probably a bit more effort. I am presently wishing I could use the Google Docs API as a wysiwyg editor in my own wiki in-house.. that would solve most of my problems then because everything would be intranet based.
Try https://www.mayan-edms.com, written on Django, db agnostic
You can consider GroupDocs as they have got storage, conversion and few more features.
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Currently all our files are stored on a Windows network drive and with 15 members of staff and 3 external workers, file control is beginning to become a bit of a nightmare. Even though we have a policy in place, people still seem to save file to their PCs, make changes, and copy them back without notifying anyone, send files via email instead of its location, and create folders/structures which only make sense to them.
Consequently on a recent project we found that 3 members of staff were using different versions of the same document and when those 3 people are editors and proof readers, you can probably imagine the problem that ensued in the end.
So we are looking for some nice simple file management apps. MS Sharepoint has been mentioned but we are looking to get away from being tied to a Windows machine, and the cost of setup etc. seems expensive particularly for a non-profit company. Also it seems Sharepoint may be a little over-the-top for our needs.
All we need is something that can fulfill the following:
can be used to store and control files
allow different user access
provide basic versioning
hopefully accessible through a web-browser so our remote workers can access it
We are not keen on SAAS solutions because of the nature of our confidentiality and also because we use these files all day everyday and the internet connection does go down from time to time. We want to be able to install in-house.
Ideally the solution will be FOSS, although we will consider buying software if it meets our needs.
You can try Alfresco:
Alfresco is the Open Source
Alternative for Enterprise Content
Management (ECM) led by John Newton,
founder of Documentum, and John
Powell, former COO of Business
Objects, and is backed by Accel
Partners, Mayfield Fund and SAP
Ventures.
Here has a good howto install it on linux.
The first question you probably need to ask is why the existing Windows file shares aren't working, and people are still saving files to their own computers.
For example, if they're often working outside of the office and can't access the file shares or they need to maintain a working copy, these are problems that can be fixed with SharePoint or other version control/file management software.
However, if they're just not following policy, then it's not going to matter what software you put in its place. Figuring out what problems the users have is going to help you choose the right solution.
Not sure this is the best place for such a question (its a discussio with no write/wrong answer) but anyway
Google apps for business?
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
Totally easy, low TOC (OSS is not free in a time sense).
You can share docs (read/write or read only) with external people or just do the old fashioned copy/paste the detail into OpenOffice/Word/iLife whatever and send a copy to them
Wouldn't something like a source control system be useful? SVN for example? admittedly binary files are a problem here, but if you're using a basic format you could convert to rtf or the new document standards used by Office 2007\OpenOffice.
It's worth noting that SharePoint and other variants are used widely for a reason; they do what you need.
Are you trying to avoid Windows Server completely, or just avoid buying Microsoft SharePoint Server?
If you are willing to purchase a Windows Server license you will get a basic version of SharePoint Server called SharePoint Services as part of the package. SharPoint Services allows you to have a powerful document management and collaboration system without having to buy an additional software package. It does include a version control system and you can integrate it with other applications. You can find more information here: Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Overview.
Another MS provided solution that can handle file management and version control is Microsoft Groove. You can find more information on it here: Microsoft Groove. A great feature of Groove is that it can act as a front-end for Sharepoint (and most likely SharePoint Services) to allow users to more easily interact with the file storage mechanism.
A third option but will be less powerful would be to use your existing network file shares (through Windows or Samba), map the shares to local drives and/or reconfigure their My Documents to point to the network, and turn on Offline Storage. This will allow the users to interact with their documents as if they were local files even when they are offline. There will be a few small issues that you will experience with this route but it would break you from having to use a pure Microsoft solution.
In answer to some of the above questions.
The main reason its not working is because. One person will open a document from the shared drive and save a copy to their pc, which they work on. The changes they make are then not on the shared drive, when they copy it back, which everyone does the changes they have made overwrite any anyone else has done, they also dont inform anyone so if someone is working from that document they are now working on an old document. It is a case of getting users into a better frame of mind! But we feel software may help that, plus our external workers do not have access to the internal drive at present.
We have a number of servers, only one is windows and so we want to get away from using that windows server and have all linux servers for ease of management. Any MS product will require we run a dedicated MS machine!!
Local drives mapped is not really a good option as many people work out of the office and so wont be on the network to contribute, plus the file structure would probably not allow it.
It does seem that a MS solution might be the only one, i was just hoping there were some good alternatives available which were also a little simpler.
thnkx
A standard sharepoint document library, with versioning turned on, and checkin/checkout required, would meet your needs. Like previously posted, WSS comes free with Windows Server.
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Have any of you ever tried to run from sharepoint? I've worked with sharepoint enough to know that it is not something that interests me. My interests are more along the lines of APIs / backend / distributed development. Have any of you found ways, as consultants, to move away from sharepoint and keep learning other things of interest? I'm currently in a position where sharepoint is in huge demand and I can't quite find a way to simply step aside from it. any suggestions ?
If I infer correctly that you work for a consulting firm then find out what other kinds of things your firm works on. Learn those technologies better that the people who currently work on them for your firm, involve yourself in those projects, even if just in a hallway conversation manner, and come up with better (faster, cheaper) solutions for the problems your firm is solving.
Your options are really seem to be 3-fold
convince your boss your talents
would be better used elsewhere
convince your co-workers they want
you on those other teams
convince your company's clients that
they want you, specifically.
Learn Java, or Ruby.
The Microsoft sales model of "attach" whereby they sell a solution comprised of multiple technologies and then sell the next solution on the basis of "well you have already invested in SharePoint so you already have the skills in place and the infrastructure for this new bit of technology we have" is here to stay... it's very successful.
SharePoint is cloud computing for business who have MS shops... you avoid it by not doing C#. If you're doing C# then given enough time, your apps will need to run in the corporate cloud and you should be looking after your career by embracing it.
Just my 2p. Sorry if it's not quite the answer you wanted.
I know exactly what you mean. I think you don't mind the idea behind a product like SharePoint, but really hate the way its been implemented and how problematic it is. I know its a nightmare to work with.
As a C# developer, I cringe when I hear the SharePoint word, SharePoint is Lord Voldemort. But unfortunately it comes with the job of being a senior C# / Microsoft developer.
I say unfortunately because its likely if you're working in a corporate structure sooner or later you will end up having SharePoint in your solution. Not because its good, but because as others have said - MS use SharePoint as a Trojan horse to get and keep business.
There might be some hope with the new version of SharePoint coming out (2010). Maybe this will finally include a better programming / implementation model.
Otherwise either work for smaller companies (usually less pay, but not always), or try to play down your skills as a MOSS developer if possible. Never actively market them unless your salary depends on it. Remove the skill from your skill matrix, and turn down jobs that completely focus on MOSS. Some MOSS integration here and there you can live with. An entire solution focused on MOSS will drive you insane.
If all else fails, learn other non Microsoft languages, and within a year or 2, SharePoint will be but a faded memory.
I know lots of developers who are thinking about quitting IT because of SharePoint. I would say don't let it be the end of your career.
And finally bitch and moan, and inform managers on a weekly / daily basis, as to why you are battling in SharePoint. Let them know, and constantly remind them how bad a technology it is.
When life deals you lemons. Make Lemonade.
Seriously, if you are seeing SharePoint in such high demand, maybe working with the beast is the best idea. SharePoint is really just middle-ware. SharePoint can simply be a distribution point for your solutions (i.e., a user interface such as a web application can be hosted on SharePoint through a Web Content part). If you look at it, SharePoint may even prove useful as a document respository or small scale data store, in the form of lists.
Maybe you should turn down SharePoint contracts and accept contracts that interest you.
Depending on the market you are in you can simply tell your boss at the consulting company you work for that your not interested in doing Sharepoint projects anymore and that you'll be forced to look elsewhere if they continue putting you on Sharepoint projects. That would work around West Michigan where the developer demand is high and the supply is sub-par.
I'm, on the other hand, just starting to use SharePoint to enreach my currently boring C#-only projects. I'm starting to use it as a front-end to the distributed and complicated systems: simple configuration and customization, reporting, management, system control - looks like all this is available in this package it it's easy to make is usable by non-techies and by beginners.
I personally don't want to work with SharePoint anymore. I've worked on developing a solution for it and even went full charge with a web integration of it. I hated it.
First you have to master the awful programming model then handle all the deployments and it's not even the beginning. If you are developing a product for SharePoint, you have to debug the software itself which is a feat on it's own.
My solution to this is to be very upfront about it. I don't mind doing knowledge transfer and helping out people but I don't want to be developing/deploying SharePoint applications.
My boss get it, my friends get it.
Our latest joke come from someone who said a few months ago that it was "easy and fast to deploy application with SharePoint". The joke? "Did he just put easy/fast in the same sentence as SharePoint?"
So unless you salary would be lower because of it... downplay your skills on it and be upfront to your boss. :)
Have you ever looked at Alfresco (http://alfresco.com)?
It serves many of the same purposes as SharePoint, but does it from an Open Source J2EE application. It will leverage your existing collaboration / content management experience and expose you to a whole bunch of open source technologies.
Full disclosure: I work for Alfresco.
I've already given this suggestion to another guy...Running from SharePoint won't be difficult because technologies are similar to each other according to their structure. SharePoint is not the worst technology to be used, although it is limited in some way... Fortunately, software sphere is too wide to be afraid of not finding anything you can be interested in.