Well, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product team is working on the “CRM Q2 2012 Service Update” which will include massive improvements and capabilities around mobility and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  I wanted to share some of the information regarding “CRM Anywhere” which is the model Microsoft is trying to achieve as part of this service update.  Microsoft is making a major investment to develop a groundbreaking mobile solution that will support a wider variety of browsers.  The update will include a new cloud-based, cross-platform native mobile client for Windows Phone 7.5, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices called Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile.  This new release will also host the mobile configuration, administration, and security in the cloud to provide zero touch upgrades once the initial installation is complete.

Functionality will include the full breadth of features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM including dashboards.  This is great so you don’t have to install multiple apps to see all the different slices of your data on your device.  Another cool feature is that everything is administered centrally, so you publish once, no matter the number of different platforms may be being used in the field.  This is great!

The catch – isn’t there always one?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile is going to be provided to customers on a per user, per month basis similar to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription model.  Microsoft has slated initial pricing at approximately $30.00US.   Not too expensive for the benefit of a field force.  Close one deal in the airport and it will more than cover the costs for the year!

Please check back on the Perficient Microsoft Blog site for additional information and features that will be in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Q2 2012 Service Update. 

Indeed, the most likely occurrence, and where I discovered this problem, is when you want to display all items in a list even if the current user doesn’t have permissions to edit or view the item.  My specific situation was for an editor that needs to know a particular topic exists but doesn’t have the permission to see or edit the topic.

Displaying content from a secure source on a site must be done after the user has logged in or (more likely) via SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges.  This was the only solution in my case.

Once inside the RunWithElevatedPrivileges security delegate, it’s well known that you must recreate any object that you need to access with full permissions.  This is because previously created objects maintain their security context once inside the security delegate.  So an SPSite created outside of the delegate will have the same permissions as it does inside the delegate.  Although not necessarily straightforward, it’s intuitive that permissions would not get remapped within the delegate.

Slightly less intuitive, and poorly documented, is the fact that the security context for objects created within the security delegate is maintained once you leave the delegate.  So if you get a reference to an SPListItem within the security delegate and pass it outside of the delegate, you will still have full control on the item because it was referenced from within the security delegate!

This behavior can lead to some interesting ramifications.  In my case, the use of the DoesUserHavePermissions method on the SPListItem class was acting strangely.  Calling this method on the item I got out of a security delegate always returned true because the security context followed the object.  To avoid this unfortunate situation, I had to get a reference to the item outside of the security delegate to get the correct permissions for the object.

In general, treat SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges as a separate context entirely and don’t reuse objects across the context boundary for items with permissions.

Oh, and if you’re not using Social Sites to make SharePoint more social, you probably should be.  There’s a lot of knowledge out there to be managed that winds up slipping through your fingers if you don’t bring those conversations online and take advantage of crowdsourcing!

That link again in cut-and-paste format: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtzumRCYsEU&feature=digest_mon

Enjoy!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2012/05/04/changing-your-mx-record-to-fope-in-an-exchange-hybrid-configuration-created-from-exchange-2010-sp2.aspx

In his latest post, he studies the need for organizations to balance quantitative and qualitative approaches, and cites the swinging of the pendulum back-and-forth between these worldviews vis-a-vis trends in the tech space.

This is something that has particular value to consider from our SharePoint-specific corner of the universe.  Many of the projects I get engaged with (whether through the envisioning, or the actual solution design and implementation) start out with a qualitative driver.  Companies want to make certain work functions easier and more enjoyable for their employees, with the understanding that this will lead to efficiencies.  If not up front, however, then down the road this vision is usually trumped by the qualitative– aligning with business processes to somehow prove return on investment (ROI) in hard dollars.

As we all know, proving ROI for collaboration tools has always been tricky.  It’s only become tougher with the trend towards social computing in the workplace.  I really don’t think you can do it, successfully, but these projects still get funded.  Why?

They get funded because at some level, the stakeholders understand the qualitative value of this stuff.  The problem we run into is when that argument gets outweighed by quantitative factors.  There’s always someone looking at the bottom line and wondering whether this solution is worth the cost.

This is where a company like ours comes in; I see it as the duty of the third-party consultant to push for the qualitative, because sometimes clients are myopically focused on the quantitative.  As Mr. Fishman says, “user happiness” is what drives engagement.  Giving users solutions that work for them will bring them in and get them going with other, related tools.

In a SharePoint world, that means lunch menus, social communities for the flag football team, community events and user spotlights.  Users who come in to engage with these are more likely to stay and fill out the form, review the document, or kick off the workflow that gives that quantifiable business value.

It really comes down to balancing the happiness factor (which drives engagement) with and against the business value (which drives budget). In my experience, projects and systems that lean too far towards one or the other inevitably fail to some degree.  Use the qualitative to drive for the quantitative.  Do your user research (as much of it as you can get in the budget!) and know your audiences.  Understand and document how they work, how they think, how they’d like to work, and what motivates them.

Then, when you have to make a case to the man in the suit with the checkbook, present it in a language he’ll appreciate.  A quantitative language.  Hit him with the facts and figures.  Let him know what his users want, and build them THAT solution, not a shoestring-budget naked SharePoint site with a nice taxonomy.

If you are Small Business to an Enterprise and are planning to integrate and migrate to Office 365, then this book is for you. Loryan and I approached this book in four parts. The first part covers general setup of Office 365. The second part really focuses on how to plan, prepare, and migrate a Small Business to Office 365, using various supported approaches by Microsoft. The third part covers how to plan, prepare, and setup ADFS, Directory Synchronization and Exchange Hybrid in a Mid- to Enterprise environment, followed by migrations to 365. We finally close with various cleanup and references to other helpful reading materials on Office 365.

Since Office 365 will continuously be updated over time and newer versions of Exchange will be available, I would expect that this content is updated through upcoming editions, etc. Thankfully, we were still updating the book when Small Business Server 2011 and Exchange SP2 were released. We great had an opportunity to keep this book up to date throughout the whole process. Keep your eyes open for it or pre-order it now. We expect the book to be released in late May. http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-office-365-exchange-online-implementation-and-migration/book

Aaron Schmeerbauch of Cassidy Turley speaks at Gateway to Innovation 2012

Andrew Richards, Director of the Information Systems Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences at Washington University presented a new external website developed on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with the help of Perficient. Aaron Schmeerbauch, a project manager at Cassidy Turley, presented a SharePoint implementation designed to assist with internal collaboration as the firm grew. Here are the key points and highlights from their presentations, along with screenshots of the work performed with Perficient’s assistance and strategic guidance.

A New website for Washington University Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences

Richards began by addressing the needs he had identified with the old site. “We needed to connect worldwide with a good user experience for applicants.” The challenge: Applicants and alumni are scattered across the world.

Key Drivers/Challenges:

• Site design and impression
• Content organization and navigation
• Site performance and site maintenance
• University wide migration from Lotus Notes
• Social media
• Needed a Mobile-friendly piece

Additional Challenges:

• Until the redesign, the website had primarily focused on the applicants but not other users. This new site also needed to properly serve content up easily to faculty, students and alumni for their needs as well.
• Users complained about difficulty finding content, so a user experience review was imperative.
• Quick links on left hand side were limited in number so they had to be generic in description. If someone came on the site looking for something specific, the couldn’t find it.
• Not a good system for content management for the staff. Would have needed to go back to the provider to get the site expanded.

Perficient Came in to Engage:

• UX practice at Perficient was leveraged to study the site and weigh in on the proposed redesign.
• The team produced three different site layouts for the department to review and choose from.
• Perficient wanted to put Wash U in a better light by focusing on the high quality of education at lower cost

The new site for Washington Univeristy's Division of Biology: http://dbbs.wustl.edu

What Perficient Did:

• Refined user interface and information architecture
• Enhanced CMS with SharePoint 2010
• Expanded integration options with existing systems
• Integrated single identity for authentication across Wash U
• Provided out of the box mobile access

• Page views increased 2010 to 2011
• Time spent on site increased dramatically as well.

By utilizing Sharepoint, the new site has given us an efficient and smooth interface with many types of social networking, straightforward integration with existing database of information to broaden the reach of the division to our diverse audiences, and expanded ease of content management staff as well as constituents.

New Intranet Portal for Cassidy Turley

Next up was Aaron Schmeerbauch from Cassidy Turley. Their needs with a portal were different from Washington University’s in that they needed to integrate many systems from multiple firms using different intranets.

Cassidy Turley is a commercial real estate services provider, involved in leasing space, property management, corporate campus management, and more. It’s a large firm with 900 brokers and a total of over 3500 professionals. At the time that Cassidy Turley engaged with Perficient, they were dealing with six local commercial real estate firms combining to form Cassidy Turley, each of which had been operating with very small IT staffs.

Challenges:

• Needed to consolidate communications and web platforms
• Difficult to reinforce desired corp culture using existing tech platform
• Email as primary method of communication
• Existing intranet sites had limited functionality and visibility. Once the agencies combined, the maintenance and upkeep of these sites declined.
• Legacy firms maintained their own intranets in silos.

Solution:

• SharePoint 2010 intranet and extranet

Schmeerbauch added here that “one third of our associates are not on the same network domain as the rest of the company. They were affiliate firms and not just wholly owned firms. We wanted to be able to allow them to securely access the site and also just give them limited access.”

The New Portal for Cassidy Turley

Improvement opportunities:

• Provide quick and easy access to critical, relevant information
• Improve communication and collaboration
• Reinforce corporate culture
• Provide targeted content by major service line, corporate department, job, role
• Decentralized content creation and management

How Perficient Helped Them Get There:

• Client was dissatisfied with DNN platform – an open source solution that had significant down-times.
• Needed a solution that provided scalability and simple content administration
• Solution flexible enough to handle a rapidly growing organization and various user types, internal and external
• SharePoint 2010 has done a great job enhancing the content editing capabilities

The Broker Dashboard for Cassidy Turley

• Dual authentication to accommodate on network employees and off network affiliates
• Decentralized authorization mechanism to increase the number of content creation administtrators
• Integrated RSS feeds to drive company and industry news
• Designed a breaking news banner that highlights critical company news
• Successful consolidation of web platforms
• Branded as eCommunity to reinforce corporate culture and need to collaborate
• Reduced email traffic, increased collaboration through site tools
• Incorporated majority of legacy functionality into eCommunity
• Legacy firms decommissioning their intranet sites

In order to integrate all their business units, they needed a platform to organize and disseminate information across the organization and their existing platform was not serving their needs. By using Sharepoint 2010 they were able to create synergy within their organization across multiple divisions.

In Summary

Microsoft SharePoint® Portal Server enables enterprises to deploy an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects users, teams, and knowledge so that people can take advantage of relevant information across business processes to help them work more efficiently. Two great examples are Washington University in St. Louis’ division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences and Cassidy Turley.

 

Learn More about Perficient’s SharePoint Practice

Contact Perficient

 

Here is the presentation from this session at Gateway to Innovation:

From the article by Rick Whiting

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) was tops in this year’s Business Intelligence Software category, besting competitors SAP (NYSE:SAP), IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL). But Microsoft’s margin of victory this year was much narrower than in 2011.

The company has been steadily gaining market traction with its business intelligence offerings, including such BI tools as PowerPivot in its Excel spreadsheet, PerformancePoint in SharePoint Server, and the ReportingServices and Analysis Services to the SQL Server database.

Microsoft outscored its rivals in overall technical satisfaction, including such criteria as product configurability or customization tools. That doesn’t surprise Mike Burger, Microsoft senior solutions architect at Perficient, a St. Louis-based Microsoft partner.

“We really use the entire Microsoft BI stack to tailor our solutions for our clients’ specific needs,” he said. “SharePoint integration and the BI semantic model in the upcoming SQL Server 2012 “have really enhanced [the technology's] ability to deliver business intelligence across a spectrum of users.”

Microsoft expects its momentum to continue this year with a new Apache Hadoop-based service for the Windows Azure cloud platform that customers can use to pull “big data” from multiple sources and build predictive analytics applications, said Michael Kiselman, senior product marketing manager.

Microsoft also outscored competitors for overall support satisfaction and in financial factors–sweeping all criteria in the latter, in fact. “The price point is one of the key selling factors we always bring up with clients,” said Burger.

Burger also praised Microsoft’s partner training and support, including the multiday SQL Server 2012 “ranger training.” “What’s great about that is it gives partners some lead time to work with the new technology,” he said. Microsoft also helps Perficient cover the costs of developing proof-of-concept systems. “It’s a fantastic way for us to get our foot in the door and make the customer not only comfortable with the technology, but working with us as well.”

Perficient’s ONC Certified solution for Stage 2 Meaningful Use & ACO reporting – Health BI also received a mention in CRN’s article on Microsoft’s Collaboration Software win. From the article which you can read in full here

“SharePoint, Microsoft’s collaboration platform, has been one of the company’s biggest-selling products since it debuted in 2001. Offering a number of capabilities, including document and Web content management, the server is also the core of Microsoft’s collaboration and social networking offerings.

“Social is hot right now,” said Jared Spataro, senior director of SharePoint product management, citing a recent Harris Interactive survey that found that 59 percent of businesses believe it’s necessary to integrate social networking with corporate IT networks. And while implementing social networking technology is a growing business for solution providers, Spataro said the real opportunity is developing change management services to handle the cultural and business process shifts.

For example, Perficient, a leading Microsoft solution provider partner, relies on SharePoint for a number of collaboration and analytical solutions for the health-care industry. Perficient’s Health BI Solution combines SharePoint with Microsoft’s SQL Server database to create its Health BI software, an analytics system that helps hospitals and other health-care organizations track performance metrics.”

However, since SharePoint is built on a database, SPListItem.Copy can’t just do a copy like a file system can.  Instead, it must read and write the requisite data from/to the database.  As a result, validation takes place on the data that’s being written.  Specifically, user validation occurs again.  Normally, this isn’t a problem because users don’t change that often.

In the case of this client, though, one of their content editors had left her position and her Active Directory account was deleted.  As a result, the copy operation was failing because the user could not be found.  Fortunately, the simple fix was to recreate the user account in a disabled state.  That way SharePoint could find the user in AD and complete the copy operation, but the user could no longer log in.

The moral of the story is that SharePoint is sensitive to user accounts because it relies on AD (or some other identity management system) for validation.  Therefore, your best option is to disable a user account or change permissions instead of removing a user entirely.

(Recommended reading: Start with the first part of this rather lengthy post. You’ll be glad you did.  You wouldn’t haved wanted to start Games of Thrones with Season 2, now would you?  Well, maybe if you were a big Ned Stark fan, I’d get that, but… oh, right.)

Believe it or not, SharePoint is designed to be as user-friendly as possible.  According to legend (as well as my own experience browsing their employee directory), Microsoft has a significant investment in user experience designers hard at work on their software products.  If you doubt me, check out a Windows Phone—it’s a better UX than any Android phone I’ve seen, and arguably better than Apple’s.  (Why?  We’ll discuss that in a future post.)

That said, Microsoft is designing products that are meant to be versatile and adaptable.  SharePoint needs to work as well for the hometown insurance agency down the street as it does for multinational conglomerates.  Essentially, Microsoft accomplishes this by shipping SharePoint in what we can truthfully consider a template format.

It’s there from the moment you finish the install wizard—it’s got all of the functionality and features you need—but it’s blank, and just waiting to be filled in with your own specific information/branding/thinking/working.

The true SharePoint professional acknowledges this—admitting the UX limitations of “out of the box” or “naked” SharePoint—and accepts that any solution will need some configuration and development time to truly meet the needs of the audience (or more often, varied audiences).  At the same time, there are notable features native to SharePoint that truly enhance the experience of any user.  I’m personally partial to these three:

• The Ribbon interface.  Love it or hate it (and most people who hate it were just too used to Office XP), it provides a consistent UX for users of Office, which is even more widespread than SharePoint.  In its most basic form, if you can edit a Word doc, you can edit a SharePoint site.
• Integration with Lync Server. Wouldn’t it improve the user experience, you say, to see someone’s name attached to a document or article on your screen and, needing an answer or having a comment, you just call their phone up from your laptop?  Well, you can do that from SharePoint.  OOB, baby.
• SharePoint Search 2010.  SharePoint 2010 intranets provide specific, on-point search results that can be refined and filtered for even more flexibility.  I have better luck on a SharePoint intranet than I ever had doing internet searches with Google.com.  (Full disclosure: I use Bing now.)

As I said, these are just three of my own favorites, but there are others.  SharePoint has a lot of great tools that can be leveraged in building a solid User Experience.  You just need to (a) know they’re there, and (b) how to leverage them.

Navigating Around the Barriers

With all of that said, on both sides of the coin, still the biggest impediment to SharePoint usability is SharePoint itself.  This platform, as much as I love it, just does too many things and offers too many options for potential users to digest at once.  Apple may not have invented the concept of simplicity, but they’ve surely hammered home its importance as a fundamental principle of making technology useful and easy to understand.

When approaching SharePoint with the intent of providing a good user experience, it’s essential to accept that it will never be a simple, single-use application.  It can certainly be a collection of simple, useful apps bound together by a common framework.  That should be the goal of the User Experience Designer and the SharePoint Architect alike—creating a solution that works for everyone, easily, but provides specifically tailored services to many different personas and scenarios.

That’s a reasonable goal—as long as you understand both sides.

Tune in next week for what’s sure to become Hermione Granger’s favorite blog post, SharePoint UX: A History.