SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach

SharePoint 2013 brings an entirely new way to author and manage Workflows. This session will expose some of the new features of workflow authoring in SharePoint Designer 2013 that were previously only available as Visual Studio 2010 State Machine Workflows as well as how to Create Custom Actions in Visual Studio for consumption in SharePoint Designer

This session reviews the changes coming to SharePoint due to Microsoft’s plans for the Cloud, helping attendees to better understand the impact of the Cloud to their business. We’ll discuss the rise of the hybrid SharePoint environment, and whether this model makes sense for your business, as well as how moving to the Cloud will impact your SharePoint planning, and your ability to manage SharePoint across the enterprise.

This is a beginner's session explaining core aspects of SharePoint, e.g. document libraries and lists.

TBD

How to use the SharePoint 2010 Term Store

In this session we will go over what is the user profile service is and how it is used.   How to set it up, how to fix the most common problems, syncing the service with Active Directory,  Common Issues that occur and so much more.  Have you ever wanted to Master the UPA well we will attempt to give you the tools to accomplish this?

SharePoint Server 2010 introduced new content recovery options that provide the SharePoint administrators more granular content recovery options. Using Central Administration you can now export site collections, sites, libraries, and lists making it easier for us to backup, migrate, or archive content stored in SharePoint. SharePoint also provides the option of recovering site collections, sites, list and libraries from content databases that are no longer part of the SharePoint farm. Furthermore, you can now configure your content databases to take advantage of SQL Server mirroring providing a quick recovery of a database that has crashed. With more than 90% of the content accessed via SharePoint being stored in SQL Server it is imperative that you have an easy and efficient way to recover items or entire databases as quickly as possible. This discussion will introduce the Best Practices framework that will allow your SharePoint administrator to configure and utilize SharePoint for quick content recovery which minimizes the downtime and provides shorter yet achievable Service Level Agreements (SLA’s). 

This session takes off the gloves and delivers an open discussion of why some SharePoint projects fail - and how to successfully recover.  Better yet, we show you how to set yourself up for success from the start! So, whether you are contemplating launching a new project leveraging SharePoint, migrating to a new version of SharePoint, or need to recover from a problematic implementation... then this is a “can't miss” session.  The session includes 3 specific, real-world cases of failed projects - and how those projects were successfully turned around to deliver a successful project with broad user adoption.  The presenter will share the “7 Habits” for successful implementations and the "7 Deadly Sins" to be sure to avoid. He will also provide statistics on failed SharePoint projects including key reasons for project failures.  Most conferences and sessions focus on features and functionality and “Getting the most out of SharePoint.”  This session deals with the issue of project failure head-on and gives simple, practical, and proven techniques for preventing project failure and rescuing projects that are not performing or meeting objectives.

In this deep dive session, we will break down successful SharePoint IA strategy into 3 spheres of understanding. 1. Why SharePoint information systems usually fail – including the ‘silo affect’, ‘small picture thinking’ and other painful lessons we can learn from real world examples. 2. What makes an Information Architecture strategy REALLY work – We will identify what IA really is (not what IT has makes it), learn the core principals of a solid IA strategy, and explore the solid foundation that needs to be in place before the word ‘SharePoint’ is even mentions. How you can use SharePoint and solid IA practices to build a scalable information structure – Including interactive activities where we participate in IA exercises, develop an ideal IA for an organization (case study), and explore the SharePoint features that can support our newly defined foundation’s growth.

This session will provide clarity around the advantages and disadvantages of using InfoPath via forms libraries in comparison to using InfoPath to modify list items.  There are a number of differences and gotchas and this session will put the attendees in a position of strength in understanding when to use each technique.

Apps for SharePoint were introduced in SharePoint 2013 to maximize the level of capability and flexibility that developers can deliver without risking compromise to the farm. In this session, we will describe the SharePoint 2013 app model for developers, including the different types of apps and when to use each one. We will also use the Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 to create and deploy a real-world app for SharePoint.

Learn how to create SharePoint Designer workflows from the ground up.  This session is full of live demos designed to provide a solid foundation for creating workflows.  List workflows, reusable workflows and site workflows will all be discussed and created live.  Learn how easy it is to automate processes by using SharePoint Designer workflows.

Utilizing the Publishing Infrastructure can allow you to push your SharePoint sites beyond the mundane.  In this session we will focus on how to create Publishing areas of your company’s sites that will utilize all the extras.  By focusing on how to plan for content in these sites and how to brand these sites, you will start to see new horizons open up.

Curious as to what is worth looking into versus what is just marketing hype when it comes to features in SP2013?  In this session we will take a note from our financial friends and provide an in depth analysis of what you should be buying, selling or holding feature wise.  This will include demonstrations where applicable and our honest opinions.  We promise some surprises…

As a .Net developer I never took the plunge into SharePoint development.  In this session I will be discussing how a .Net developer can make the transition and the common pitfalls and differences between developing in the two different platforms.

Bring your SQL Server and SharePoint questions to this Microsoft team of experts!

While more and more organizations are embracing SharePoint as the primary platform for Collaboration, Document management and so on, many of the implementations end up in chaos due to the lack of proper governance. Especially with the rich feature capability of SharePoint 2010, there are incessant requests for new site collections, team sites, web parts, enhancements and so on. How do you keep track of all these requests, prioritize them and select the optimum projects that help the bottom line of the company?

An overview and demo of the new SharePoint 2013 social computing features and functionalities including the new My Sites, Micro Blogging, Activity Feeds, and Community Sites. The social computing and collaboration features in SharePoint Server 2013 offer an improved user experience and administration, in addition to new functionality for enterprise users to share and collaborate with others in their organization.  The introduction of Community Sites in SharePoint 2013 offers a first grade forum experience to categorize discussions around subject areas, and connect users who have knowledge or seek knowledge about subject areas.  Improvements to My Sites offer a more intuitive workflow for users to develop their personal profiles, store content, and keep up-to-date with activities of interest.

Have you ever wondered how to install SharePoint 2010 properly using PowerShell so as to avoid those random numbers that show up in your service application databases that end up showing up when you use the Configuration Wizard? Would you prefer to not just be a Principal Button Clicker that clicks “Next, Next, Next, Next, Next” to install SharePoint? Do you want to learn how to do things “the right way?”
Presenters: Dan Usher and Scott Hoag

In this session, you will learn how you can use SharePoint to provide a consistent framework for managing the diversity of projects in your organization.  I’ll show you how you can leverage SharePoint sites, lists, libraries, content types, approval workflows, surveys, and slide libraries to help your project managers be more efficient and effective.  You will see how project managers can have the flexibility they need to manage projects with differing methodologies, artifacts, and templates, while still ensuring a level of consistency across your organization.  We'll also discuss some tips for how IT and the Project Management Office (PMO) can work together to create a value proposition for the enterprise and how using pilot groups and a phased rollout can promote user adoption.

This discussion based session is targeted for architects, decision makers, and developers who are familiar with custom solution development with Visual Studio.  The new App Model for SharePoint 2013 is a major shift in how we develop certain kinds of solutions for SharePoint.  This session will talk about when to use it and when not to use it.  We will cover existing scenarios in SharePoint 2010 and how they map to SharePoint 2013 with the new App Model.  Let's break through the marketing and get the facts in an easy understand way.

Ever want to login to SharePoint 2013 (or 2010) with Twitter, or any other form of FBA authentication? This session provides a start to finish demonstration of all the concepts, code, and configuration needed to extend the out-of-the-box functionality of SharePoint Claims Based Authentication and classic FBA to support custom authentication. Real examples will include authenticating users using the Twitter API and multiple login strategies, including injecting custom login logic and workflow into the login process (like confidentiality agreements and approvals).  Twitter API uses OAuth which coincides nicely with the new App paradigm of SharePoint 2013.  Less slides, more demo, with a lighter atmosphere even if we are talking about authentication and authorization.

For many, User Profile Services creates a feeling of both excitement and fear. The force behind SharePoint’s user profiles, audiences, MySites, social tags, and more—User Profile Services is both complicated to setup and historically unforgiving when configuration mistakes are made. In this session we’ll discuss system requirements for User Profile Services, important changes between SharePoint 2010 and 2013, perform a bulk import of user photos into Active Directory, and provision User Profile Services with Active Directory Import using SharePoint 2013. Additionally, we’ll cover requirements and configuration for SharePoint Search, to ensure user profiles are correctly crawled, indexed, and available through SharePoint’s search capabilities.

In this session, you will learn how to augment your User Profiles in SharePoint 2010 with data from other systems.  We will go through several features of SharePoint including UPS and BCS, and even troubleshooting. This session will highlight solutions for both SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server. 

2010 performance point services configuration and advanced troubleshooting

 

Microsoft PFEs Terry Moore and Geoff DeFillipi co-present

With the introduction of the Managed Metadata service there are a lot of questions around how this is different from MOSS 2007 and site collection level content types and metadata. In this session we will explore how the managed metadata service is to be used, how it will connect your enterprises data together and what you can do with it once the connections have been established.

Don’t be embarrassed. You’re not alone. Many people face this dilemma every day as organizations move to building internal sites on SharePoint and then pushing them out for use.  It’s not just a site.  It’s an entire change to all that you ever knew about doing your day-to-day job.  Don’t look at it as a chore.  Come and learn how to view this new challenge in a positive way by learning the basics about your site—lists, libraries, web parts, navigation, and more.

In this session you will learn about how to plan and leverage the SharePoint 2010/2007 platform needed to build applications. Application planning will cover data structures (List Design), UI (Site Design), Security, and Governance (Management). This will help you understand when you will need to develop technology, when you will need to integrate external systems, and when you should consider the MOSS/SharePoint Server 2010. We will also cover need to know items for going from 2007 to 2010 when building your applications. With this proper planning you will be able intercept any of the issues that normally would stop projects in their tracks and instead build successful applications.

Do you have SharePoint? Have you built one of those Composite Applications you hear so much about? Perhaps you have a great SharePoint Application like CorasWorks PPM, EPM Live, or SharePoint Service Request from Crow Canyon? Whatever application you may have you probably aren’t taking advantage of the Client Platform that each of your users have. Do you have Access, Excel, Word, SharePoint Workspace, or any others? Perhaps the issue is user training and support. Let’s answer some simple questions, what can we do, what does it give us, and is it valuable enough to warrant the support. Better yet, how can we get users to support themselves. We’ll learn how to connect Outlook to our applications, not just the data but the views too. We’ll learn how to use Access to interact in a way that is familiar to our users. What about leveraging Excel to Report on our data or even manipulate it. How can we use SharePoint Workspace to take it offline and viably manage multiple applications at once. Finally we’ll look at how we can leverage a Knowledge Base to help users help themselves. In the end you have a Server and you have Client, why not get the maximum ROI by doing something with both instead of limiting one or the other.

Let’s take a trip down 2010 lane straight down to Visual Web Part way and delve into the simplicity that is, SharePoint Development. We will develop a new web part from scratch and touch on Features, ASP.NET Controls, SharePoint Controls, AJAX using a 3rd Party, Resources, Previews, Designer Integration, Ribbon Integration, Debugging, Deployment, and the Developer Dashboard. How awesome the session will be, even I can’t wait and I’m giving it.

How to build a business process into a web browser enabled form in InfoPath 2010 and integrate it into SharePoint 2010 with the new InfoPath web part.  You will learn general form layout, form settings and options, data source integration, web service integration, working with the various types of fields, views, how to use submit and other button options, integration of code into the form, and ultimately how to publish the form so it is ready for integration into SharePoint as a browser enabled form.

What does your SharePoint site look like on a three-inch screen? With a mobile web that’s attracting more website visitors than ever, ensuring that your content is both elegant and accessible on the mobile platform is an imperative element of success you should not overlook. Creating mobile content on the SharePoint platform can be as challenging as it is rewarding. See case studies, learn best practices, and get a roadmap to success for taking your website content to the tiniest of screens.

Many SharePoint users and developers have not been exposed to the various ways that information can be exposed in SharePoint.  Whether the data is stored in lists, or is from a Line of Business application (LOB), or data warehouse, SharePoint gives you several options for displaying reports, graphs, scorecards, strategy maps and other valuable information insight.  We will also cover the basics of good dashboard design.
This session will walk thru:
• Dashboard Types and Information Sources
• Good Dashboard Design
• Creating SharePoint Dashboards
• Configuring Excel Services
• Configuring Reporting Services integration
• Configuring PerformancePoint Services including SecureStore
• Using Excel Services web parts and the Reporting Services report viewer web part
• Whirlwind overview of PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer
• Deploying PerformancePoint Dashboards
• Using PerformancePoint web parts
• Bring it all together
• Best Practices

In this session, we will explore the world of the Service Application. We will go into the architecture, cross farm services, how to scale them out and what to do about Disaster Recovery.

Lists are the data store in SharePoint so it should be no surprise that there are several data access options available to developers. Traditional techniques include the use of the object model to iterate list items or using CAML to query them. SharePoint 2010 adds features that make data access easier and more powerful - chief among these are the addition of joins to the CAML query syntax, LINQ to SharePoint and the REST APIs (oData). LINQ to SharePoint allows developers to use the power of LINQ on entities generated from list schema while the oData interface exposes list data to the enterprise via a REST-based service. In this session we'll explore each of these options, see how they work, and discuss where they may fit into your SharePoint applications.

Learn something about HTML5 and take advantage of it within SharePoint sites. This session will go over some HTML5 background, highlighting the major new features of HTML5 and reasons for adding it to a SharePoint site. We will then walk through the process of maximizing support for HTML5 in SharePoint by creating a HTML5-friendly master page as well as several HTML5 based SharePoint enhancements that can be made by end users with jQuery and developers using C#. Among other things, these enhancements will take advantage of video, geolocation, local storage, and a few of the new control types that HTML5 offers up.

Content Management has been a rising challenge for the organization; from the time the content is created, routed for approvals and to the time it is archived, it becomes a challenge for the organization to maintain the integrity of the document. SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Content Management features can help the company throughout the entire life cycle of the document.   It has become not just a collaboration tool but a full-blown document and record management system. With the new and enhanced features such us Managed Metadata, In-Place Records Management, Document Sets, Document Id, and Content Organizer, it is equipped to address the challenges that the company faces for managing its information. This session will cover the new and enhanced features of SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Content Management and how these features can be applied in order to effectively manage and preserve the integrity of the company’s information

Key Lessons      
1. The SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Content Management feature supports the complete life-cycle of documents in your organization.
2. The proper use of Metadata is your key to successful content management.
3. An Effective Content management system should reflect the objectives of the organization.

Setting up the Content Syndication Hub to use the Term Store and Managed Metadata to create custom content types that can be used across Document Centers and Records Centers for Records Management

This session will cover a series of techniques on how to increase overall reuse within your SharePoint Workflow projects as well as provide an overview of how to create custom Workflow Activities in Visual Studio 2010 that can be leveraged in your SharePoint Workflows to connect to system services like the User Profiles and Business Connectivity Services.

Many companies deploy search without really understanding what product will work for them and how to deploy search successfully. In this session, we’ll discuss the different options available for SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint 2010, compare and contrast the features, examine the underlying configuration for deployment and demo how each product in the enterprise search stack measures up against the other. We’ll also discuss the boundaries that exist between the two options  and demystify how enterprise search works for your users.

1. Effortless publishing overview and branding/formatting controls
2. Featured Product promotion
3. Social data capture and customer interaction

SharePoint ships with a number of services that can be used cross-farm and be used in multi-tenant environments. In this session, we will federate these services and consume them in a multi-tenant environment.

In this session, we will walk through a five-point migration methodology that supplements existing project management processes with a more holistic view of what it takes to successfully migrate your environments. We’ll examine tactical steps, and provide guidance on this iterative approach, focusing heavily on information architecture and governance. Attendees will leave with a clear picture of the gaps within their current planning efforts, and actionable steps to get back on track.

In this session, we will walk through three corporate scenarios where social media tools can drive significant business value, and then demonstrate how SharePoint 2010 (out-of-the-box) compares to third-party or consumer-focused solutions. The intent of this session is to show that the latest SharePoint version provides robust social computing capability that meets or beats competitive products.

The SharePoint community is connected, collaborative, and energetic. But how does someone get started? Based on the ebook “Inside the SharePoint Community: 4 Strategies Building Your Personal Brand,” this session will outline the four strategies for building out your community plans, including events, content, social media, and other tools and media, including 5 immediate steps you can take to establish your personal brand. Much of this material is community-driven, with examples and advice from some of the leaders in the space.
(link to free ebook)

Implementing a successful Corporate Social Networking Governance Plan is a topic that has become a necessity for organizations seeking to leverage the enterprise features of SharePoint 2010. In this session, attendees will gain an understanding of how collaboration impacts Social Networking, and the methods for ensuring successful Social Networking adoption both internally and leveraging popular Social Networking platforms for business usage.
Topics covered within the Social Networking Adoption Strategies include: 
List and explain the ingredients to ensure Corporate Social Networking Buy-In for an organization 
Review key Enterprise features and deliver strategies for increasing user adoption based on case studies and real-world examples
Explain the importance of creating Social Networking policies and guidelines leveraging examples from various business sectors
Discuss key strategies for implementing Social Networking into training, documentation, and Knowledge Management
Facebook Now or Later: Attendees will be equipped with tools to prioritize key SharePoint Social Networking features to ensure adoption
Explain the roles that Site Owners, Power Users, and Management play in the Enterprise rollout of a Corporate Social Networking strategy

This session will be focused on using jQuery and SPServices to create a Parent/Child accordion look. I will go over the lists setup and the code used to create the accordion. There will be a brief Question and Answer period if time allows.

Administrators and managers alike do not understand the importance of metadata as the underlying drivers of social computing within the enterprise, the connection between social tools and search, and how a solid taxonomy and supporting governance strategy can increase and optimize productivity. This session will outline the connections between keyword taxonomy, social tools, the end user search experience in SharePoint, and present a business case for improving productivity by focusing on all three.