When creating SharePoint team site, a home page is created which can be modified so that it meets the needs of the team better as well as looks great. The looking good aspect is also related to usability as a site must not compromise on user-friendly aspect when it is modified. The website can display announcements, calender items, tasks, etc or may be added with images or texts. To make any kind of changes to the site you have to be logged as a user with the necessary permissions for editing or modification of the pages. This means that the person must belong to the Members group of the site.
Some tips for better site
While designing new websites the top navigation should be consistent as well as concise. The navigation which is also known as global navigation should include something around top 5 elements which will be most essential for your needs along with usage. Some good examples are links to subsites or pages. In fact, navigation inheritance should be used from parent site unless it is a private site and it must be totally isolated. The links should not exceed nine as it will appear to be too confusing as well as cluttered.
Right or left scrolling should be avoided anyhow. Consistently scrolling back and forth for viewing or reading the website's contents can prove to be very frustrating for users. Extra wide parts can be moved into footer or header zones. While designing the website the varying screen resolutions should be kept in mind. Mostly in offices, the resolutions are set at 1280 x 1024 pixels while some laptops are wider so it should be tested in narrow windows to check if its working correctly or not.
The navigation at left could and must be changed according to your position at the website. The position is relative and top level sites can have links to calenders, discussion boards, custom lists, etc. The hyperlinks must be configured properly. You can force the links to open in new windows which will keep the main site open in background; users can easily return there simply by minimizing or closing the window.
The home page should be such that it catches attention as well as conveys meaning or purpose of the site. It is difficult but not impossible. For that you have to keep the content uncluttered and succinct. Important information should be placed “above the fold” or in the space of content which can be seen on screen before having to scroll down. Since screen resolutions of different browsers are different the placement can be tricky. Colors or effects and images should be effectively used so that attention is drawn to main content. Do not be too gaudy and use too many colors, text sizes and fonts.
How to edit
To edit or modify the home page you have to browse home page; click Page tab located in Ribbon which will display editing options. Click Edit and do all the changes that you want. Now the cursor needs to be placed anywhere inside the page body's rectangular boxes and the content can be edited and applied. Even styles can be applied. After that save the changes by clicking “Stop Editing”.
If you want to add links, web parts, images or tables to the home page then you have to follow these instructions:
- Click Edit button as mentioned previously to start the editing process.
- The Ribbon has an Insert tab which should be clicked. Place the cursor where the item needs to be inserted from Ribbon. The cursor should be inside the rectangular box in the body of the page.
- Click on the item that you want to add- whether it be table, web part, hyperlinks or image and select their variety accordingly.
- Click Edit; choose Stop Editing and your changes will be saved.
Remember that when a visitor enters the site it should be able to answer questions like what, why, what the site has and what can it give to the user. When you do custom sharepoint development, you get exactly the right thing which you precisely need.
We provide SharePoint 2010 development services. We have expert SharePoint team with 100% certification ratio. To hire SharePoint developer from us, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.
Despite being launched by Microsoft as a web development platform, SharePoint is widely used by enterprises to manage their records, documents and content. The latest version of SharePoint also comes with a set of innovative features that enable businesses to work with distributed teams. An organization can use these features to build websites and intranet sites to completely manage documents and share information with the members of its distribute team, along with generating a variety of reports to facilitate decision makers. If you are yet to migrate to SharePoint 2013, it is time to understand some of the significant benefits of MS SharePoint Services for document management.
6 Reasons Why Microsoft SharePoint Services for Document Management
1) Improved Productivity of Team: SharePoint 2013 comes with a set of simple yet effective collaborative tools to connect all members of a distributed team. These features also enable users to access required information and business resources at once. Along with organizing documents and getting important notification, the users can further use the collaborative tools to coordinate calendars and build team workspaces. The platform also comes with innovative features to create wikis and blogs. At the same time, the offline synchronization capabilities make it easier for users to access information on their mobile devices.
2) Easy to Maintain Content Integrity: While adding, updating and modifying documents professional find it a daunting task to maintain the integrity of content. The enhanced document management features of SharePoint make it simpler for users to maintain the integrity of content and documents stored on team sites. In addition to seeing revisions to documents and restoring the previous versions, a user also has option to activate relevant document checking options before editing the content. The document-level and item-level security features further contribute towards maintaining integrity of document.
3) Quick and Simple Navigation: Each user wants to access the information he needs in an instant. It is also essential for a content management system to allow users to navigate the team sites at their own pace. The Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 comes with improved menus and views. The features make it simpler for users to navigate among and within SharePoint sites. At the same time, they also have option to integrate the productivity tools in Microsoft Office system to access the document more quickly. While working within Microsoft Office system files, they can still access the SharePoint features to create sites along with adding, editing and modifying documents.
4) Customized Solutions to Boost Business Processes: Most organizations opt for content management systems that can be customized according to their business processes and specific needs. The simple and easy-to-use features of SharePoint enable enterprises to seamlessly migrate to the new platform. At the same time, an enterprise also has option to deploy custom Windows SharePoint Services by using a set of application templates. As the application templates are designed to perform specific tasks and complement particular business processes, the customized solution can be developed and deployed without requiring any extra time.
5) Easy Storage and Recovery of Documents: Microsoft has further designed Windows SharePoint Services with improved features to store and retrieve the documents and business data. The document management system is designed with features lie custom metadata, version history, check-in or check-out functionality, and customizable views. Also, it includes a completely revamped recycle bin functionality that enables users to recover the content easily, along with optimizing backup and restoration.
6) Complete Security for Business Information: While enabling its employees to access business information at their own pace, an organization must optimize the security of information resources. The administrative controls provided by Windows SharePoint Service help enterprises in securing their information without investing additional funds. The features further reduce the complexity associated with site management, provisioning and support. Along with setting permission at document or item level, an organization can use the features to manage storage limits, site lifecycle, site membership and permissions.
On the whole, many organizations migrate to SharePoint document management services to deliver user experience that is familiar, simple and consistent. The platform is also effective in simplifying how the members of a distributed team interact with documents, content and business data. Also, an organization can avail its broad capabilities to create customized websites, intranets, content management systems and similar tools that can be used to take better decisions. Custom SharePoint development teams can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.
We provide SharePoint application development services. We have expert SharePoint team with 100% certification ratio. To hire SharePoint developer from us, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.
Microsoft has launched SharePoint 2013 with a set of innovative features to complement the requirements of all types of enterprises. Along with developing a variety of solutions, organizations now have option to build customized SharePoint apps according to their specific needs. However, an organization must consider some key factors while migrating to the new technology. In addition to providing adequate training to its employees, an enterprise also needs to identify the important challenges associated with SharePoint development. The understanding of these challenges will further make it easier for the business to migrate to the latest version of the content management system.
Most Challenging Aspects of SharePoint Development
1. Adequate Product Knowledge and Planning: Often SharePoint development projects are affected negatively due to lack of adequate product knowledge and planning. Along with being too large and bulky, the technology is also complex. Microsoft has further included features to make it usable for a number of purposes like a rapid web application development framework or content management system. So the developers must understand all aspects of the product deeply to become experts. So an organization must be ready to allow adequate time to the developers and SharePoint site administrators to gain in depth knowledge of the technology.
2. Enhanced and Specialized Skill: Unlike other application development, SharePoint development requires specialized and extended skills. Along with understanding various aspects of the distinct platform, the developers also need to be proficient in C#, Visual Basic or similar standard managed-code languages. At the same time, the programmers must understand HTML, CSS and XML, along with ASP.NET and other web languages ad frameworks. When the developer understand a wide variety of web technologies, it will be easier for him to write the exact code or assemble the features to achieve predefined objectives of the organization.
3. Extended Development Time: Most developers consider SharePoint 2013 to be innovative and out of box. But the outcome of several surveys have also highlighted that additional development time is required to develop the ideas. In addition to implementing exact ideas, additional time is also required for customizing the solution according to the specific requirements of the enterprise. However, an organization can overcome this challenge by active planning and encouraging collaboration among IT and other departments. An active plan will further help enterprises in reducing the amount of time and funds required to build a tailor-made SharePoint solution or application.
4. Performance of Customized Solutions: The complex and highly customizable nature of the platform further makes it difficult for programmers to debug custom SharePoint solutions. Along with deciding the performance problems, a project leader also needs to identify the interactions and components responsible for such problems. The reason behind the poor performance of the SharePoint solution can be tracked down by checking application, web server traffic, SQL Server and similar logs. At the same time, the developers also need to consider the indexing time and performance counters to track down the issue. So there are chances that the Unified Logging System (ULS) provided by the framework may not track down the performance issues due to the large number of moving parts and components.
5. Post-Development Requirements: Most organizations ignore the post-development task associated with SharePoint development. In addition to building a robust and customized solution, an enterprise also needs to ensure that the system is managed and administered effectively. The custom solution needs to be supported with adequate documentation. At the same time, it is also essential for the organization to implement a strategy to maintain hardware and databases, and restore or backup procedure. An organization can also consider setting application deployment guidelines and infrastructure policy. The rules will make it easier for the staff to understand the support and maintenance required to optimize the performance of the SharePoint solution.
An enterprise also has several options to address the issues associated with SharePoint development. It can always adopt some widely used SharePoint development best practices, along with considering outsourcing the project to a competent development company. Custom SharePoint development teams can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.
We provide SharePoint webparts development services. If you would like to talk to one of our certified SharePoint developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.
Sharepoint development can provide enormous facilities to enterprises with certain tools and solutions such as extranet, internet portals, business intelligence tools, corporate websites, document and file management systems, corporate search and social networks. In addition to this, SharePoint development can also facilitate enterprise or organization operations with process integration, system integration and work-flow automation. When you have a large organization to take care of, governance is something you can’t afford to ignore.
The term governance is being much talked about in the present age. Owing to its much-hyped popularity, a number of organizations have attempted implying SharePoint governance. However, most of the time it ends up as nothing more than a weak effort of writing a plan and storing it in the document library. Governance should never be considered just a one-time shot since it is generally an active process. With SharePoint extending deeper into diverse areas of an enterprise, the significance of existing governance is turning out to be greater. The odds of ownership and the position of SharePoint within an organization are quite common. It is to be remembered that governance can greatly affect adoption, in case the controls are too rigid. Governance relates to guidance, processes, consistent management, cohesive policies and decision-rights for a given area of responsibility. And SharePoint does governance at its best.
SharePoint is often a grassroots implementation to build customized as well as collaborative websites. One can easily develop websites with a quick SharePoint install, making it available to anyone be it in a team, department, committee, whoever wants to organize and collaborate around a specific set of information. It gives the capability to integrate itself with certain enterprise class applications such as ERP (enterprise resource planning) or CRM (customer relationship management) applications. Being a web based model, SharePoint developed applications provides security, central governance and management controls to the administrator.
The underlying principles of good governance are the same whether managing SharePoint or any other enterprise collaboration platform and those principles do not change whether that platform is on cloud, premises or might be on both. Governance is even more critical to hybrid environments to make collaboration a success due to its additional complexities but SharePoint makes it simpler.
With SharePoint, one can create a successful collaborative governance strategy for any SharePoint site migration project, across any platform and any set of tools. The fundamentals include managing the risks involved with the decisions one makes around its environment right from access controls, roles and responsibilities which leads to how secure is the data to data management such as document lifecycles, storage policies, information architecture compliance monitoring, metrics, and collaboration transparency. Everything is governed well.
7 steps of SharePoint Governance Plan which makes it more popular and much-hyped among its end users:
1. Executive Support: Rarely few initiatives move forward successfully without the support of someone from the leadership team — someone who will help you to clear out roadblocks and to push for necessary funding and resources. From a governance standpoint, executive sponsor may not be very involved in the operations of the team, but should be available when needed to review and approve difficult decisions, or to clarify corporate goals and direction.
2. End-User Involvement: One cannot plan a system that will be primarily for end users and then not have those end users involved. By involving end users give the best support and result to give a good feel to the websites with collaborative process. They are best known as SMEs subject matter experts, the owners of the data to be uploaded and the consumers of the data.
As decisions and compromises are the primary communication method to the rest of the company, sharing what is changing decisions taken is a must. They give best quality assurance to the decisions being made and it makes sure it meets its expectations.
3. A Consistent Change Management Model: The key to successful change management is to ensure that the process is communicated well often transparent and that employees know the priorities of their requests. The longer one takes to provide the features and capabilities end users need to be productive, the more difficult task is in keeping those users engaged. They will often find other collaborative solutions to get their work accomplished and rarely will those alternatives meet the organization’s long-term goals for supportability and scalability.
End users involved in governance body is vital, but one cannot assume that they will always communicate the right message at the right cadence. Make change management a priority and a well-documented process with clear outputs such as dashboards, reporting, process for resolving conflicts.
4. Using Your Established Project Methodology: Most organizations have an established project management methodology with documentation templates, inputs and outputs and defined stages. One should utilize this methodology as much as possible, as people are familiar with it and understand their roles within the system — their inputs, their ability to review and sign-off on designs and so forth.
5. Have a Shared Understanding of Your Business Requirements: A sound governance strategy requires some semblance of understanding and agreement to further benefit collaboration. Needs frequently change and it is obvious. It is all part of a healthy change management model which involves ongoing need to reaffirm alignment with business goals. At the end of the day, the goal of technology initiative is to increase and improve business capabilities and deploying best business needs. Always have a clear line of sight between the business need and technology solution.
6. Have Clearly Defined Metrics and Auditing Criteria: Designing the right metrics such as business requirements, may change over time, so one has to make it part of regular audits and strategy review to walk through current metrics. This ensures measuring the right data points and encouraging the right behaviors within the system. As new requirements are ratified, always review measurements to ensure that they still apply and capture the data by meeting the needs of the everyday business.
7. Continually Optimize: The Total Quality Management (TQM) is an approach to organizational management processes that improves products and solutions through continuous feedback. It optimizes the system with rigorous feedback and make it usable and refined. The need to continually question the plan, improve upon it and iterate. Governance is not a static activity, therefore, one must include in governance planning a system of regular renewal. A structured approach will help to identify whether the technology is even a match - and help identify the gaps that need to be filled when it is not a perfect fit.
SharePoint plans infrastructure with the help of messaging tools and stakeholders assembled to address the requirements around structure and architecture, policies and standards, ownership and accountability, measurement and reporting, as well as ongoing efforts to automate and improve collaboration efforts within any organization. Therefore where there is governance SharePoint has to be there and it is popular for its flexible governance capabilities.
We provide SharePoint deployment planning services. If you would like to talk to one of our certified SharePoint developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.
SharePoint can be an extremely powerful tool, a well-designed solution for content, document and information management - a well-designed solution. SharePoint 2013 is an excellent improvisation which is increasingly mobile, increasingly social and all that promotes a greater collaborative atmosphere within the organization. With SP2013, it is possible to integrate social capabilities, organize, share and synchronize content properly. Now users can share their ideas and opinion with their colleagues continuously. SharePoint has been very popular technology in the web world which can be beneficial for enterprises and excellent platform for sharing content with others.
With the release of SP2013, there is a wide range of new features at disposal such as stronger search features, better cloud integration and infrastructure as well as content management. The 2013 release is an important one as the 2007 edition will no longer be supported, users have been upgrading to 2010 or 2013 versions nowadays. The SharePoint Connector supports SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013. SharePoint Connector 1.8 supports all the above three versions.
Microsoft thinking beyond 2013
Microsoft is happy about SharePoint 2013 to get a better understanding of what’s new. In developing the product, it has taken care of the main obstacles for organisations deploying the 2010 version. SP2013 is specially designed keeping in mind app scalability for large business enterprises. It has been targeting all knds of business sectors with its new features and functionalities.
Comparison with SharePoint 2010:
- No Internet Explorer 7 support.
- With the purchase of Yammer, there is more emphasis on social media.
- Licensing: Internet sites no longer require an expensive licence, the cheaper standard server licence means that customers can host their internet and intranet on the same platform, reducing costs and providing more flexibility.
- Records and document management: no real change.
- Greater adoption of internet and open standards, enabling broader device support and integration with other services.
- Users can have SharePoint on premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid of both.
- The core ‘Search’ capability, based on FAST technology, is much richer.
Striking Features of SharePoint2013 which makes it stand apart:
Support for mobile devices
Mobility adoption is increasing within organizations and it is the topmost trend. The new version of SharePoint offers a rich platform for mobile development. Contemporary view which is HTML coded view provides a quick access across various mobile platforms like iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.
Improved BI Capabilities
SharePoint 2013 offers extended capabilities to generate business intelligence reports. Its ability to provide big data reports and BI solutions has been expanded with the new version. Also, the integration between SharePoint and Excel has also been improved for a smooth functioning. It offers a better Power Pivot program that makes it possible to work with plenty of rows and columns in memory, making it convenient for use. It is used to generate extensive reports that reflect the organizations growth and provides insights into the business.
Cloud reality
SharePoint 2013 is geared for the cloud, which is great, but there are still a few things to watch for. Cloud apps reduce infrastructure costs and risks. Now users can spend more time in quality management and performance improvement. With this new version, it is easy for the users to keep a track of updated technologies. Now you can deal with complex and long programs quickly.
On premise
Running SharePoint onsite means that one can add more functionality or have better integration with other line of business systems. It also means that it has more flexibility over compliance features such as Public Records Act requirements.
Private cloud
Using a private cloud means that one can have predictable bandwidth and performance, but it also means that storage and disaster recovery costs are more obvious. This means that one can have a clear separation between infrastructure and application administration.
Search
Search on SharePoint 2013 is a real highlight. It is much richer than internet or Google-type results.It also provides a facility wherein it is possible to view the outline of a document while scanning through the search results. And the fact that Search has now been integrated with the ‘Term Store’, which helps standardise company language across documents, means one can now refine search results even more. Other great features include the ability to preview content whenever its hovered, meaning that one can preview a PowerPoint presentation without opening it. The ‘bad’ is that Search requires more server resources and requires an enterprise licence for certain advanced Search features.
New content features
The ability to drag and drop files into a webpage
- End users can “share” files with others more simply
- Better developer support
- New database storage reduces the overhead of versioned documents
- With Office Web Apps one can now edit documents on iOS devices
- Much more flexibility around images
- Video support improvements.
Infrastructure management
You can now take a more flexible approach to infrastructure management with SharePoint 2013. This means that you can take a hybrid on-premise and cloud approach. This is great for small to medium businesses that might not have the beefy bandwidth that you would need to run SharePoint completely over the internet, but by purchasing “Apps” hosted in the cloud these “Apps” will appear to be running on your server.
There are some technical traps to be aware of however:
- Most customers will want to virtualise the SharePoint servers but they are resource intensive so should not be run on over committed hosts
- Beware of remote access requirements, which can cause slow access
- There’s no need to keep scanned and read-only files in SharePoint – it’s an expensive form of storage – it’s better to have a link to these resources in SharePoint
- Don’t underestimate the technical skills that SharePoint needs.
- Some of the SharePoint features require that other infrastructure and client components are all on the 2013 version. Fortunately SharePoint 2013 still allows to run 2010 sites, which means that one can leverage some new features like search, while continuing to use 2010 document libraries for Office 2010 users. This ability to run both in parallel is a key feature introduced in 2013 to help reduce the upgrade pain.
The new version SharePoint 2013 customizations helps control and manage all the different aspects of the web portals in a splendid way. SharePoint webparts enables to add dynamic functionality to the site, and enables to create different layouts for the mobile platform. Microsoft has already started receiving good vibes about SharePoint 2013 because businesses have started adopting to the new version. Custom SharePoint development teams are can help you migrate from older versions of SharePoint to SP2013 within allocated budgets and time schedules.
We provide SharePoint 2013 development services. We are glad to share that all our SharePoint developers are Microsoft certified. If you would like to talk to one of our developers before you take the decision to hire SharePoint developers from us, we would be glad to assist you at Mindfire Solutions.
Intranet is gradually turning out to be a prerequisite for organizations and this is mostly because it enables centralized and effective information sharing as well as management. However, an intranet is not sufficient when it comes to connecting the management, suppliers, customers as well as partners in the best- possible way. Creating a direct extranet SharePoint site comes up as a possible solution to this problem. While developing your company's extranet, you have a few options to choose from. These options are In-house, Hybrid and Private Cloud. Here is a brief discussion about these three modes along with the factors you have to consider in the process of implementation of the extranet.
In-House Deployment
SharePoint, the popular web application development platform, already poses certain challenges with respect to connecting with the external users. You need to consider as to which third party solution needs to be installed for the purpose of offering the end-users with the sign-in as well as password reset capabilities. Now, the forum-based authentication is usually more preferred over the claim-based authentication.
Deploying an in-house SP extranet for your business requires you to spend substantial amount of time and money. The assistance of the infrastructure experts is extremely essential in this regard. Taking this into consideration, organizations are found going for the other options with respect to the site hosting that help in quick accomplishment of projects apart from remaining within the stipulated budget.
Public Cloud Deployment
Public Cloud Deployment or signing up for the SP hosting services on a platform called SaaS is a cost- effective option for businesses as, it is considered a low cost model. As far as the basic collaborative features are concerned, the hosted SP foundation solution offers unlimited access for users, hence, facilitating addition of multiple external users. However, licensing is a better option if you are looking for the highly advanced SP server features.
On the flip side, connecting the on-premises intranet with the extranet located in the public cloud hosting platform is not a feasible option. Even with a recognized provider by your side, data security would come across as a major point of concern.
Hybrid or Private Cloud
It is obvious for anyone to prefer the private cloud hosting solution for the extranet because it comes up with excellent flexibility along with control of on-premises deployment. Again if you are looking for low cost and scalability, a public cloud solution such as Office 365 is preferred. Private Cloud hosting is indeed the best- suited option for the small to mid-sized organizations attempting at combining the intranet and the extranet. At the same time, a hybrid deployment including the process of having two sites on one farm is also facilitated.
Now, running a hybrid solution implies keeping the intranet in-house while hosting the extranet in the cloud. The challenge lies in allowing internal users to move from intranet to extranet and also the other way round. SharePoint's newest claims feature enables choosing the claim type characters while making the connection between farms actually more hassle- free than with SP 2010.
The good thing is that even though you start with two different environments, that is, the intranet and the extranet, connections can still be made and content published from the on-premises intranet to the extranet hosted somewhere else. In fact, it becomes simpler to move the complete intranet to a similar private cloud. Cross-site publishing enables two sites to connect easily while also making it easier to implement with least amount of involvement on part of the SP administrators.
All said and done, your company's extranet will certainly be of substantial benefits provided you make the right choice and take the right decision. This would help you leverage the benefits of SharePoint application development.
We provide custom SarePoint development services. If you would like to talk to one of our certified SharePoint developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.
While designing new websites the top navigation should be consistent as well as concise. The navigation which is also known as global navigation should include something around top 5 elements which will be most essential for your needs along with usage. Some good examples are links to subsites or pages. In fact, navigation inheritance should be used from parent site unless it is a private site and it must be totally isolated. The links should not exceed nine as it will appear to be too confusing as well as cluttered.
