I just past a six year milestone in my personal SharePoint history which coincidentally aligns almost perfectly with the history of CorasWorks. I started at another company as the primary manager for SharePointTrial.com - don't click it because that site is now dead replaced by SharePointSite.com. This was and is delivered as a hosted trial of SharePoint by another Northern Virginia based company - Apptix (see: www.apptix.com). The original SharePoint Trial site was a joint effort between CorasWorks and Apptix delivered under contract to Microsoft and was part of the original marketing efforts by Microsoft to promote the 're-launch' of SharePoint as part of the Office 2003 suite of products. This was the first "authorized" commercially available hosted SP solution. Apptix is still a CorasWorks partner and we are also a customer of their Hosted Exchange offering - I highly recommend you take a look at them. It was a truly amazing time being on the front lines of such a rapid technology adoption. The Microsoft marketing engine very effectively and efficiently delivered hundreds of new registrations every day. As a product company, CorasWorks had the unique opportunity to interact with this enormous user base and create software to specifically overcome the challenges they were facing. As the front door to most user calls, I would get inquiries every day asking, "How do I get rid of Quick Launch?" or "How do I see all my tasks and not just the ones on this site or that site?" In nearly all cases, CorasWorks had an answer. That continued for the next couple years until I changed teams and left Apptix for a sales role at CorasWorks. In truth that paradigm continues to this very day. Usage has matured since those early days and the questions from prospects and customers have evolved to"How do I replace my current Help Desk application with a SharePoint based solution?" and"How do I integrate my customer and employee data into MS Virtual Earth?" In most cases, CorasWorks still has an answer! And the evolution continues, coming very soon will be the CorasWorks version of an App Store for SharePoint. In concert with our partners, we are building the solutions most in-demand by our users and then we are making those solutions available as downloadable applications. These applications will be available for free and others for a fee via our ever improving Community site: (http://community.corasworks.net) .
I am looking forward to this next step in our growth - but it never hurts to take a look back to see how far you have come.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Why CorasWorks is Cool....
Yesterday we held a very successful Web cast titled simply, "Cool Topics". As you can see from the attached graphic, we covered topics ranging from the mildly cool - aggregation of project data across sites into a variety of parent/child displays to the very cool and visually appealing - integration with MS Virtual Earth and all the other BI charts and graphs included in our product.
While these may not be the primary challenges facing organizations trying to get real business value from SharePoint, they are among the most interesting. It is also most interesting to me to note that I find our biggest challenge at CorasWorks to be showing people precisely how easy it is to do these things with our tools - not how complex. Most prospects are expecting reams of code and 100's of hours of consulting and that is quite simply not the case. It is important to remember that CorasWorks tools are a mass market product designed to deliver the greatest value to the greatest number of organizations. We meet the challenges that are not necessarily unique to any one business or industry. Instead, we allow companies to save the coding and the consulting for those things that are unique to their company or their industry. Our customers can focus on gaining competitive advantage over their rivals rather than re-inventing the SharePoint wheels that we have already delivered to 100's of other companies.
We will repeat this series throughout the summer and we are looking for new 'cool topics' to present. If you have any ideas, tweet me @pblegere or email @ plegere@corasworks.net
Have a great day!
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Expansion or Contraction, half empty or half full...
While I have long tried to place a tangible business value to social networking, my personal use was limited to connecting with those closest to me in my everyday life, my family and friends for whom this was an alternative way to share pictures and occasions overcoming our geographic separation. In the past six months, I have heard from people that I have not laid eyes on in 20 years or more and still haven't 'laid eyes' on them for that matter. Unlike chance encounters of the past, I did not read about them in my hometown newspaper or get a call from them on the telephone - I got a connection request on LinkedIn, or a Friend Request on FaceBook, or they began to 'follow' me on Twitter. In a very personal way I now began to feel the impact of social networking.
This contracting of the universe and the reconnection with our true 'natural network' may be the greatest benefit of social networking - not in it's ability to help us evolve into the future - but it's ability to allow us to reconnect with or recreate the community of our past.
This contracting of the universe and the reconnection with our true 'natural network' may be the greatest benefit of social networking - not in it's ability to help us evolve into the future - but it's ability to allow us to reconnect with or recreate the community of our past.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Planned Obsolescence
Taken from Wikipedia,"Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence[1] is the process of a product becoming obsolete and/or non-functional after a certain period or amount of use in a way that is planned or designed by the manufacturer.[1]"
I can somewhat recall when I first heard someone unashamedly state that 'planned obsolescence' had been a mainstay of the American Automobile industry since it's earliest days. Even then, and I believe this was in my junior high school days, something about that seemed strangely inconsistent with what I thought a business should set out to do. With the Auto industry, at least until the last couple decades, being a model on which many new companies sought to build theirs, how many others industries have this at the core of their business plan? The software industry certainly comes to mind. The PC industry is perhaps the most obvious example - have you ever bought a PC and not felt that surely within a month a new model would be out that would make you feel some level of buyers remorse? Records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CD's, not to mention a bunch of early digital formats - all gone. How many video formats have come and gone in your lifetime, in your kid's lifetime? Is BluRay more likely to follow the path of VHS or BetaMax - does it matter?...they are both extinct. I was in the electronics business in the early 90's and can remember using one of the first MP3 players and realizing that every other SKU in our current lineup was "obsolete". The fact that every other person in America has an iPod reaffirms my belief that in ten years they will be an exhibit at a museum. Think - Palm Pilot, remember those?..check the back of your bottom desk draw there is probably one rattling around in there somewhere.
Constant innovation applied towards a sustainable and fully forward compatible product or service must replace planned obsolescence at the core of our business plans for the future.
References:
I can somewhat recall when I first heard someone unashamedly state that 'planned obsolescence' had been a mainstay of the American Automobile industry since it's earliest days. Even then, and I believe this was in my junior high school days, something about that seemed strangely inconsistent with what I thought a business should set out to do. With the Auto industry, at least until the last couple decades, being a model on which many new companies sought to build theirs, how many others industries have this at the core of their business plan? The software industry certainly comes to mind. The PC industry is perhaps the most obvious example - have you ever bought a PC and not felt that surely within a month a new model would be out that would make you feel some level of buyers remorse? Records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CD's, not to mention a bunch of early digital formats - all gone. How many video formats have come and gone in your lifetime, in your kid's lifetime? Is BluRay more likely to follow the path of VHS or BetaMax - does it matter?...they are both extinct. I was in the electronics business in the early 90's and can remember using one of the first MP3 players and realizing that every other SKU in our current lineup was "obsolete". The fact that every other person in America has an iPod reaffirms my belief that in ten years they will be an exhibit at a museum. Think - Palm Pilot, remember those?..check the back of your bottom desk draw there is probably one rattling around in there somewhere.
Constant innovation applied towards a sustainable and fully forward compatible product or service must replace planned obsolescence at the core of our business plans for the future.
References:
- ^ a b c "Computer Electronics : Blu-Ray". ComputerInfoWeb.com. 2008. Retrieved on 2008-09-20.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Top 10 Ways to Put SharePoint to Work
To use a sports metaphor, CorasWorks has always done a great job of skating to where the puck is going to be. In this perspective, we have stayed ahead of our competition and sometimes perhaps a little ahead of the mass market in general, so if this topic does not resonate with you now - give it time. This post draws directly and nearly completely from a recent CorasWorks White Paper titled 'Solutions Quadrant for SharePoint' which can be downloaded @:
http://community.corasworks.net/sites/v1Data/Material/Solution_Quadrant_for_SharePoint.pdf
What anyone should get from reading this or any other similar paper on the topic - is that planning is of paramount importance in the SharePoint process. Without proper planning and vision, SharePoint communities like any other 'planned' community will have problems. Without proper planning and requirements gathering - issues will arise over time. These problems, however, are foreseeable and avoidable. Whenever we take a 'quick fix' we know there are trade-offs in the long run. What one saves in short term cost and expediency is generally paid back in long term inefficiency and less obvious re-engineering costs.What a company like CorasWorks brings to the table, aside from the software, is the experience. A company need only respond to the needs of their client base over an extended period of time as CorasWorks has and it will refine it's product and increase its value to the wider market.
The solutions quadrant paper highlights the fact that CorasWorks has a vision for the product beyond the functionality of the individual piece parts. So if you are wondering how to derive value from SharePoint this year – here are some good starting points:
Top 10 Ways to Put SharePoint to Work in 2009
These recommendations are principally oriented towards organizations
that have a commitment to SharePoint as a corporate platform and that are looking to leverage SharePoint to “do more for less” in 2009.
1. Make Sites Part of the Whole
If you have siloed team sites, look at making them part of an integrated work environment. Social Collaboration applications are a solid bet to provide “the glue” to tie them together. In addition, we recommend implementing Global Navigation, Site Portfolios, Site Locators, and Site Profiling. The benefits are less duplication of effort and greater visibility of activities.
Further, we’d recommend adding a site collection for work consoles (by user, role, or group) that leverage site portfolios to increase end user productivity.
2. Leverage the eSAS model
If you have a shared services collaborative environment, we recommend that you move towards the eSAS model to manage application services. Small steps include creating an eSAS Center of Excellence, a Governance team and process, and a learning community. The products, services, and best practices for this approach will further mature during 2009.
3. Move Project Work up the stack
If you are working with just Project Workspaces, we recommend you move to Project Management by incorporating group dashboards
and/or work consoles. These dramatically increase productivity of managers and contributors.
If you have Project Workspaces or Project Management we recommend that you implement Portfolio Management. This simple step brings visibility and control to project work. The effect is to reduce duplication and increase the ability to act in real time. Once this is in place, it is an easy step to move to extend the basic architecture for Program Management.
4. Improve Internet Sites with Communities and Application Portals
The increased adoption of SharePoint for web sites is a great start. We have two next steps:
Add a community to your Internet presence allowing your communities to work with you or with each other on items that 1. drive your organizations objectives. This provides untapped leverage of your external community. Transform your Internet site into an Application Portal by adding interactive capabilities that leverage back end data sources using a standard composite application design.
5. Build in Social Collaboration
If you use SharePoint broadly, of the different Social Computing areas, we believe that Social Collaboration applications can add the most value. It starts with simple Bookmarking of pages. Adding Commenting, Tagging, and Work Sharing at the item level dramatically increase the usefulness of the existing information in SharePoint. They also serve to reduce email and meeting time, and increase responsiveness. Third party vendors are supporting this area with off the shelf capabilities and tools to easily implement
them in a customized manner.
6. Add Front-End Extensions to Back-End Data/Services
Each organization can benefit by taking a look at the key items where integration of back end data, applications, and services can be leveraged on the front end. It doesn’t need to be complex. Simple personnel directories from Active Directory or a back end data source are effective. As is Customer and Vendor information. Take this step towards composite applications on the front end and broadly distribute the access and use of information you already own.
We also recommend that you take a look in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) best practices. While these were designed for back end applications, the general approach is highly relevant to the front end environment of SharePoint which is effectively a distributed, composite architecture. You should also conduct an evaluation of your core back end applications to understand their roadmap for service enabling their application. You will find that much of the work is already being down for you and which you can leverage on the front-end.
7. Add the Structure of Departmental and Corporate Workplaces
If you are working with departments or a corporate environment, we recommend that you look at the top down design for adding
the structure of a workplace. You can start to embed the applications, processes, into your Intranet. Or, you can start to bring up new departmental environments along side of existing environments. The best practices for these environments are rapidly maturing as is a standard feature set. Take advantage of this in 2009.
8. Improve End-user Productivity
In truth, the productivity of the end-user has been under-served in most SharePoint implementations. A case in point is the typical
need to navigate to sites and then lists and then items to get work done. ISV’s are moving their products forward to increase end user productivity by reducing the need for navigation and automating routine tasks. A good exercise is to do a few “time and click” studies to understand where the issues may be. With tools as mentioned above, you can greatly improve the user experience and increase productivity and adoption.
9. Optimize Productivity with Work Consoles
This is really the next step to end-user productivity. The most effective way to increase productivity is simply to provide users with consoles that are user specific, role based, or group based; the more user centric and task centric, the greater the productivity. With the new capabilities, task centric components can be distributed to consoles enabling the end-users to see, contribute, and act on information without having to go anywhere other than your console.
However, it requires a bit more work to put consoles in the hands of each end-user (your benefit is reduced system resources from less navigation and page refreshes). Thus, you must decide what level of granularity you want to offer. For instance, you can start with Group Consoles, add a few key Role-Based consoles, and create a few User specific Consoles that are important.
10. Centralize Some Data
Workspaces are common in SharePoint. Here users work with information. Yet, a great deal of key information can be centralized to reduce duplication and increase consistency and data integrity. A “dataspace” is simply a workspace that is just used to hold data and/or configurations to external data spaces. They can • be implemented on a regional (department/site collection) or global basis. Just create a site to contain this Master data. Various vendor toolsets allow you to connect information to these central data repositories.
Most SharePoint environments can benefit significantly by bringing up a SQL Server database to store commonly used • information that cuts across the environment. A dataspace can get you started. However, getting used to working with a structured external data source is the next step. For instance, for larger organizations you will find that your Social Collaboration applications with typically use SQL Server custom databases to provide the scalability. This database will create the structure for composite applications on your front-end.
Source: 'Solutions Quadrant for SharePoint' from CorasWorks, published January 27, 2009 and available for download @: http://community.corasworks.net/sites/v1Data/Material/Solution_Quadrant_for_SharePoint.pdf
http://community.corasworks.net/sites/v1Data/Material/Solution_Quadrant_for_SharePoint.pdf
What anyone should get from reading this or any other similar paper on the topic - is that planning is of paramount importance in the SharePoint process. Without proper planning and vision, SharePoint communities like any other 'planned' community will have problems. Without proper planning and requirements gathering - issues will arise over time. These problems, however, are foreseeable and avoidable. Whenever we take a 'quick fix' we know there are trade-offs in the long run. What one saves in short term cost and expediency is generally paid back in long term inefficiency and less obvious re-engineering costs.What a company like CorasWorks brings to the table, aside from the software, is the experience. A company need only respond to the needs of their client base over an extended period of time as CorasWorks has and it will refine it's product and increase its value to the wider market.
The solutions quadrant paper highlights the fact that CorasWorks has a vision for the product beyond the functionality of the individual piece parts. So if you are wondering how to derive value from SharePoint this year – here are some good starting points:
Top 10 Ways to Put SharePoint to Work in 2009
These recommendations are principally oriented towards organizations
that have a commitment to SharePoint as a corporate platform and that are looking to leverage SharePoint to “do more for less” in 2009.
1. Make Sites Part of the Whole
If you have siloed team sites, look at making them part of an integrated work environment. Social Collaboration applications are a solid bet to provide “the glue” to tie them together. In addition, we recommend implementing Global Navigation, Site Portfolios, Site Locators, and Site Profiling. The benefits are less duplication of effort and greater visibility of activities.
Further, we’d recommend adding a site collection for work consoles (by user, role, or group) that leverage site portfolios to increase end user productivity.
2. Leverage the eSAS model
If you have a shared services collaborative environment, we recommend that you move towards the eSAS model to manage application services. Small steps include creating an eSAS Center of Excellence, a Governance team and process, and a learning community. The products, services, and best practices for this approach will further mature during 2009.
3. Move Project Work up the stack
If you are working with just Project Workspaces, we recommend you move to Project Management by incorporating group dashboards
and/or work consoles. These dramatically increase productivity of managers and contributors.
If you have Project Workspaces or Project Management we recommend that you implement Portfolio Management. This simple step brings visibility and control to project work. The effect is to reduce duplication and increase the ability to act in real time. Once this is in place, it is an easy step to move to extend the basic architecture for Program Management.
4. Improve Internet Sites with Communities and Application Portals
The increased adoption of SharePoint for web sites is a great start. We have two next steps:
Add a community to your Internet presence allowing your communities to work with you or with each other on items that 1. drive your organizations objectives. This provides untapped leverage of your external community. Transform your Internet site into an Application Portal by adding interactive capabilities that leverage back end data sources using a standard composite application design.
5. Build in Social Collaboration
If you use SharePoint broadly, of the different Social Computing areas, we believe that Social Collaboration applications can add the most value. It starts with simple Bookmarking of pages. Adding Commenting, Tagging, and Work Sharing at the item level dramatically increase the usefulness of the existing information in SharePoint. They also serve to reduce email and meeting time, and increase responsiveness. Third party vendors are supporting this area with off the shelf capabilities and tools to easily implement
them in a customized manner.
6. Add Front-End Extensions to Back-End Data/Services
Each organization can benefit by taking a look at the key items where integration of back end data, applications, and services can be leveraged on the front end. It doesn’t need to be complex. Simple personnel directories from Active Directory or a back end data source are effective. As is Customer and Vendor information. Take this step towards composite applications on the front end and broadly distribute the access and use of information you already own.
We also recommend that you take a look in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) best practices. While these were designed for back end applications, the general approach is highly relevant to the front end environment of SharePoint which is effectively a distributed, composite architecture. You should also conduct an evaluation of your core back end applications to understand their roadmap for service enabling their application. You will find that much of the work is already being down for you and which you can leverage on the front-end.
7. Add the Structure of Departmental and Corporate Workplaces
If you are working with departments or a corporate environment, we recommend that you look at the top down design for adding
the structure of a workplace. You can start to embed the applications, processes, into your Intranet. Or, you can start to bring up new departmental environments along side of existing environments. The best practices for these environments are rapidly maturing as is a standard feature set. Take advantage of this in 2009.
8. Improve End-user Productivity
In truth, the productivity of the end-user has been under-served in most SharePoint implementations. A case in point is the typical
need to navigate to sites and then lists and then items to get work done. ISV’s are moving their products forward to increase end user productivity by reducing the need for navigation and automating routine tasks. A good exercise is to do a few “time and click” studies to understand where the issues may be. With tools as mentioned above, you can greatly improve the user experience and increase productivity and adoption.
9. Optimize Productivity with Work Consoles
This is really the next step to end-user productivity. The most effective way to increase productivity is simply to provide users with consoles that are user specific, role based, or group based; the more user centric and task centric, the greater the productivity. With the new capabilities, task centric components can be distributed to consoles enabling the end-users to see, contribute, and act on information without having to go anywhere other than your console.
However, it requires a bit more work to put consoles in the hands of each end-user (your benefit is reduced system resources from less navigation and page refreshes). Thus, you must decide what level of granularity you want to offer. For instance, you can start with Group Consoles, add a few key Role-Based consoles, and create a few User specific Consoles that are important.
10. Centralize Some Data
Workspaces are common in SharePoint. Here users work with information. Yet, a great deal of key information can be centralized to reduce duplication and increase consistency and data integrity. A “dataspace” is simply a workspace that is just used to hold data and/or configurations to external data spaces. They can • be implemented on a regional (department/site collection) or global basis. Just create a site to contain this Master data. Various vendor toolsets allow you to connect information to these central data repositories.
Most SharePoint environments can benefit significantly by bringing up a SQL Server database to store commonly used • information that cuts across the environment. A dataspace can get you started. However, getting used to working with a structured external data source is the next step. For instance, for larger organizations you will find that your Social Collaboration applications with typically use SQL Server custom databases to provide the scalability. This database will create the structure for composite applications on your front-end.
Source: 'Solutions Quadrant for SharePoint' from CorasWorks, published January 27, 2009 and available for download @: http://community.corasworks.net/sites/v1Data/Material/Solution_Quadrant_for_SharePoint.pdf
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Skepticism and Minimalism
Skepticism and Minimalism. For me ,these are two indicators that a technology has a chance for success, short and long term. Skepticism, primarily by those 40 and over, is the best indication that a technology resonates in a way that those who have grown up with technology at their fingertips will readily embrace. Minimalism, in terms of promising very little functionality out of the box, allows a technology to become what it's users desire. This type of minimalism allows an iPod to be anything..a phone, a gps device, a level, a video game, a noisemaker, and on and on...Apple did not create all those uses, they made the device capable.
In my business, two technologies for which this thinking applies are SharePoint and Twitter. The product description for SharePoint promises very little, using words like 'accelerating shared business processes', 'facilitating information-sharing' , and 'can help improve organizational effectiveness'. Out-of-the-Box it does none of these things and yet at a record pace, companies are paying money to use the platform to deliver these capabilities. But why is the SharePoint community embracing a path of writing their own 'Apps'? Why would every company create their own version of something available for the relative price of $1.99?
For me, the future of Twitter is less clear, but it has the qualities of being minimalist and confusing to those over 40. Nobody knows what to make of it which means people probably will make everything out of it.
In my business, two technologies for which this thinking applies are SharePoint and Twitter. The product description for SharePoint promises very little, using words like 'accelerating shared business processes', 'facilitating information-sharing' , and 'can help improve organizational effectiveness'. Out-of-the-Box it does none of these things and yet at a record pace, companies are paying money to use the platform to deliver these capabilities. But why is the SharePoint community embracing a path of writing their own 'Apps'? Why would every company create their own version of something available for the relative price of $1.99?
For me, the future of Twitter is less clear, but it has the qualities of being minimalist and confusing to those over 40. Nobody knows what to make of it which means people probably will make everything out of it.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Version 10 is out!
Given someone ten chances to do anything and they will almost certainly get it right. My company has released ten versions of our core product, the Workplace Suite and, while being admittedly biased, I think we got it right - or at least we are getting close. We have the unique benefit of having started while SharePoint v2 was still in Beta in the spring of 2003 and of also having supported over 1,000 organizations worldwide in using our first 9 releases. The feedback and intelligence gained in that interaction was invaluable and can be found nowhere else in the SharePoint market. We may not always do things the way people assume they should be done - but that is almost always for a very very good reason. We are not creating web parts or the 'solution of the day'. We are not a quick fix or a company interested in a 'hit and run' sale. We are looking to help companies create sustainable, powerful, scalable and secure environments through the use of a cohesive system of interconnected resources. This system has a consistent interface, and is supported by full contextual help menus and a superior support team. Check it out and if we are doing something in a way that you think is not optimal - ask us why - the answers might surprise you.
Version 10 Launch Site: CLICK HERE
Version 10 Launch Site: CLICK HERE
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Way off-topic...Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks
This is not necessarily a coffee related debate. My morning visit to both of these well known coffee purveyors raised many items up for debate in my mind. Among the topics or analogies which can spin from this topic is the economy, what makes companies successful, the two-party system and many more.
Business news of late is one dire forecast or report after another and most if not all place the blame for their poor performance in large part on the state of the economy and in some cases that is appropriate in many others I think it is the easy or even lazy conclusion to draw. In my opinion, Starbucks is one of those cases. All businesses, but in particular retail and service businesses suffer from cycles of up and down service levels. Starbucks has been, at least at the locations I have visited, on a long down cycle. The locations are increasingly unkempt, the employees decreasingly motivated or pleasant. The product selection offered is wider but the product delivered over the counter is less consistently excellent.
We are a split family - I am a DD guy and my wife is a SB supporter. I visited both today and had my usual quick in and out experience at DD, then stood in line nearly 10 minutes to get my wife's drink at SB. Half the people in line in front of me at SB left before ordering. I noted that about half of those appeared to head straight across the street to DD. The others made a beeline for the Metro. Starbucks may be struggling, locations may be closing, unfortunately many will lose jobs - but I would not be so quick to blame the economy. Be skeptical of any company, or state, local or federal government that reduces services, raises fees, or threatens the same based on the economy.
Business news of late is one dire forecast or report after another and most if not all place the blame for their poor performance in large part on the state of the economy and in some cases that is appropriate in many others I think it is the easy or even lazy conclusion to draw. In my opinion, Starbucks is one of those cases. All businesses, but in particular retail and service businesses suffer from cycles of up and down service levels. Starbucks has been, at least at the locations I have visited, on a long down cycle. The locations are increasingly unkempt, the employees decreasingly motivated or pleasant. The product selection offered is wider but the product delivered over the counter is less consistently excellent.
We are a split family - I am a DD guy and my wife is a SB supporter. I visited both today and had my usual quick in and out experience at DD, then stood in line nearly 10 minutes to get my wife's drink at SB. Half the people in line in front of me at SB left before ordering. I noted that about half of those appeared to head straight across the street to DD. The others made a beeline for the Metro. Starbucks may be struggling, locations may be closing, unfortunately many will lose jobs - but I would not be so quick to blame the economy. Be skeptical of any company, or state, local or federal government that reduces services, raises fees, or threatens the same based on the economy.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Connected or Distracted?
I work a high percentage of the time from my home office, another percentage from wherever I may be at the time that a message, an alert, a tweet or a phone call hits my BlackBerry. Common wisdom has always been that this is a good thing. As time goes by, I wonder whether the quality of the work done in those what would have in the past been disconnected periods - suffers in quality to such a degree that I would be better served to wait. If I respond an hour or even a day later but I am fully focused and make no conscious or unconscious compromises in my response is my employee, customer or prospect better off with my 'delayed' response. As we develop our business processes and work flows - a prioritization and expectation on response time should be a big part of that. Can we create triggers for those events which can and should wait until the next traditional work day? The following study came out recently on Internet use by our 'always on' workforce and lead me to give it some thought...
Networked Workers: Most workers use the Internet or email at their jobs, but they say these technologies are a mixed blessing for them.... (CLICK HERE for the Full Story)
Networked Workers: Most workers use the Internet or email at their jobs, but they say these technologies are a mixed blessing for them.... (CLICK HERE for the Full Story)
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Sustainable Virtual Workplaces in SharePoint
First of all, it should be noted that I am married to an Architect. In Grad School, she also had a specialization in Urban Planning and worked for a time for one of the foremost New Urbanist firms, DPZ. This is why the analogies drawn between Urban Planning and Object Oriented Design in software, such as SharePoint, resonate so strongly with me. One can find a multitude of planning related quotations from the renowned architect, Christopher Alexander that could just as easily be written about the planning, creation, delivery and support of a SharePoint Environment. We are in many ways designing towns of widely varying quality everyday - some well planned multi-use cities which will flourish, others poorly envisioned, insufficiently regulated and inefficiently zoned masses of sprawl which will stagnate and require enormous re-engineering projects on a repeated basis in the future.
Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice. -- ChristopherAlexander
Only the least enlightened among us would consider our big cities and surrounding sprawl as good examples upon which we should build our virtual workplaces. What I believe CorasWorks has done is to create a system or framework that allows for creative and sustainable solutions to working within SharePoint. Not wider roads(bandwidth and processing), or more tolls(expensive single use consulting services), or high-priced super HOV lanes(higher priced licensing options) - but a truly sustainable and repeatable long term plan for success.
CW Roll-ups bring the work to the user, reducing their dependence on Search. The CW Actions framework allows for the bulk automation of simple business process. CW Navigation webparts provide for the easy, consistent and intuitive routing of users through the workplace. These are the problems which occur over and over in every SP environment and the CorasWorks Workplace Suite allows even the most unsophisticated user to easily overcome those barriers a million times over. The CW Data Integration Toolset extends that same methodology and ease-of-use to all the enterprise data which exists outside of SharePoint but again allows the user to go to one place to find their work - regardless of where the data resides.
Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice. -- ChristopherAlexander
Only the least enlightened among us would consider our big cities and surrounding sprawl as good examples upon which we should build our virtual workplaces. What I believe CorasWorks has done is to create a system or framework that allows for creative and sustainable solutions to working within SharePoint. Not wider roads(bandwidth and processing), or more tolls(expensive single use consulting services), or high-priced super HOV lanes(higher priced licensing options) - but a truly sustainable and repeatable long term plan for success.
CW Roll-ups bring the work to the user, reducing their dependence on Search. The CW Actions framework allows for the bulk automation of simple business process. CW Navigation webparts provide for the easy, consistent and intuitive routing of users through the workplace. These are the problems which occur over and over in every SP environment and the CorasWorks Workplace Suite allows even the most unsophisticated user to easily overcome those barriers a million times over. The CW Data Integration Toolset extends that same methodology and ease-of-use to all the enterprise data which exists outside of SharePoint but again allows the user to go to one place to find their work - regardless of where the data resides.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Managing a Virtual Team
CorasWorks is a virtual company and with that comes a unique set of challenges (as if anyone needs more challenges these days). I am constantly reminded of the need to be aware of and responsive to these differences in order to maintain a cohesive team. So from time to time I may also post info that I have found useful to me as a manager of a virtual team, such as...
Virtual Workplace Dos and Don'ts: CLICK HERE
There are plenty of reasons to release workers from the confines of the corporate campus. Studies show that virtual workers, when compared to their office-bound colleagues, tend to be more productive and stay with a company longer. Letting employees work outside the office can also help companies save big bucks on real estate. IBM, for example, saves about $100 million a year by letting 140,000 employees work from home, on the road, or at client locations. ...(more)
Virtual Workplace Dos and Don'ts: CLICK HERE
There are plenty of reasons to release workers from the confines of the corporate campus. Studies show that virtual workers, when compared to their office-bound colleagues, tend to be more productive and stay with a company longer. Letting employees work outside the office can also help companies save big bucks on real estate. IBM, for example, saves about $100 million a year by letting 140,000 employees work from home, on the road, or at client locations. ...(more)
Friday, February 6, 2009
Document Review and Publishing
Many folks coming through our booth at the SPBPC in San Diego were doing some type of Document Mgmt in SP so this is a timely promotion;
Click link below to view and download -
Document Review & Publishing
CorasWorks Document Review and Publishing is used to manage the process of contributing, reviewing, and publishing documents that are used by a broader audience. The tasks of users are automated to drive the process forward. You have the ability to keep version history and work on new changes in a separate, private workspace (i.e., training manuals, corporate policies, documents on a website, etc.).
Click link below to view and download -
Document Review & Publishing
CorasWorks Document Review and Publishing is used to manage the process of contributing, reviewing, and publishing documents that are used by a broader audience. The tasks of users are automated to drive the process forward. You have the ability to keep version history and work on new changes in a separate, private workspace (i.e., training manuals, corporate policies, documents on a website, etc.).
Welcome to my Blog
This blog will be primarily used to promote my passion which is my work. I work for CorasWorks a Microsoft ISV which creates solutions for MS SharePoint. We have been in business for more than five years and have customers on every continent. We have recently launched a community to support our users and many of my posts will link to the blogs and forums hosted there as they are proving to be packed with useful information that is not always easily searchable and locatable. We are successful because of both the opportunities and the challenges which SharePoint provides an organization. It has been widely adopted but remains underutilized. We believe we have the solution to overcome most of the barriers which you are facing. Rather than recreate the wheel, please give us a look and feel free to contact me for assistance.
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