Andrew Walmsley of WorkShares Limited has just joined the British Computer Society (BCS), which is a leading professional body for those working in IT.
Regards,
WorkShares Team.
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Our preference at WorkShares is to use mindmaps wherever problem definitions, requirements definition or understanding relationships between business processes needs to occur.
This is especially useful with SharePoint related projects as requirements often sit between traditional infrastructure related topics, to more bespoke software driven that require a deeper appreciation of functional details. Such tools form part of our ‘best practice’ advice and guidance we provide with our professional services.
Mindmaps help document existing processes, workflow’s and project scopes and our favourite approach to help define the mindmaps is usually through the use a ‘white board’ or flip chart, followed by software to document the outcome.
The software we use to document such things is MindManager, by Mindjet.
Regards,
WorkShares Team.
Technorati Tags: MOSS, WSS, Mindmap, WorkShares, SharePoint
Hi All,
For those of you whom wish to radically changed the out of the box ‘look and feel’ and if the out of the box themes don’t inspire you, take a look at the following page:
http://www.heathersolomon.com/content/sp07cssreference.htm
It’s an in-depth listing of the CSS reference you should review.
Not for the faint hearted and squarely aimed at the developers.
Kind Regards,
Andrew Walmsley
Technorati Tags: wss, moss, sharepoint, css
The guys over with Bamboo Solutions (specifically Lam Le) have produced a great article on user management with Windows SharePoint Services (WSS V3) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS 2007). Document located here:
http://store.bamboosolutions.com/kb/article.aspx?id=10829
Worthy of a read and also at a look at their great range of 3rd Party add-ons which can enhance your deployments of SharePoint.
We are looking to become a partner pretty soon, so if you want further information, we’d be happy to investigate on your behalf through our contact there.
Regards,
Andy Walmsley
Technorati Tags: moss, sharepoint, wss
I came across a useful article from Microsoft which describes how to stop users whom have SharePoint Designer installed, from modifying their WSS or other MOSS sites.
Though SharePoint Designer shouldn’t ordinarily be installed on most users PCs, this article provides you with the steps on how to prevent them from editing the sites. It works by you modifying the site template of which you wish to restrict, hence quite powerful and flexible.
The article can be found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/940958
Regards,
Andy
Technorati Tags: moss, wss
After an exhausting week at Training Camp in Oxford last week I successfully completed (Thanks again to Marzanne Bruwer 
) the MCTS exams for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 configuration. General Information on the courses can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcts/default.mspx.
Overall the course was well run, instructed and we were looked after in terms of accommodation/food for the duration of the course.If you have the time I think them well worth the investment and a must for anyone considering deploying WSS/MOSS.
More specific information on the course are as follows:
MOSS: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcts/spserver/config/default.mspx
WSS: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcts/spservices/config/default.mspx
Not a particularly easy set of exams as the topics were quite broad. What didn’t help also was the expectation that you should answer “with the answer the examiner wanted”, rather than what you would do in the real world! Frustrating, as this meant you could have two answers correct for the same question!!!
I personally found the WSS a lot harder to pass. This was because approximately 25% of this course is aimed at the wider supporting infrastructure elements (DNS, ISA, SSL, NLB) which I was a little rusty on!
Regards,
Andrew.
Technorati Tags: MOSS, WSS
I have had several conversations recently which has led me to write this short article, around the different applications and hence licensing requirements for "SharePoint Technologies".
Much of the confusion tends to be the issue of ‘free’ Windows SharePoint Services (WSS V3.0) which is licensed against your Windows 2003, or Small Business Server and is downloadable from Microsoft. Many people think this is SharePoint in its entirety. It is not!It is however licensed by your Windows 2003 or Small Business Server, so if you’re licensed for this, you can download/install and use it without any additional licensing.
The above is not to be confused with its bigger ‘brother’ Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), which encompasses WSS V3 plus brings with it a whole series of other very powerful features and in particular other server based products, including but not limited to the following:
Web Content Management
Collaboration
Enterprise Search
Business Intelligence
Portals
Business Process and Forms.
It’s licensing is also a tad confusing which is why I have posted this article by John Stover, which gives more details:
http://stovereffect.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!37306EC9B9CF1B12!117.entry
In addition, a Microsoft Overview of their licensing and products with MOSS 2007.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX101865111033.aspx
In short, MOSS is licensed per server/client access license (CAL) for ‘standard features’ and is around £3-4k per sever, plus £30-£50 per user CAL . But if you want to use Forms/Excel/BCM Services you will need the ‘Enterprise CAL’ which will set you back another £30 per user CAL on top!
Both the WSS and MOSS installation will need Microsoft SQL 2000/5 licenses as well…though in some cases you can get away with the lower cost inbuilt database – SQL Express. This is fine for smaller businesses or demo environments only, but not so for everyone else.
In addition, if you want to make your SharePoint deployment public facing, i.e. use MOSS for your organisation’s web site, much of the above ‘web content management features’ will mean you need £20k plus for the Internet Connector license. 
So, when you add together costs of your hardware, a WSS deployment isn’t going to be that expensive, especially if it is just used for internal document management and collaborative workspaces. However, introduce MOSS and you’re looking at around £10k minimum in hardware/software alone. Plus then add on other elements means your deployment will soon start costing you 10′s of thousands more in licensing costs, plus potential consulting fees and ongoing support costs.
All of the above figures assume little or no special licensing that you may have with your software provider, so could come down, in particular for the larger customers or charities/public sector whom have volume or special pricing.
So, the advice I am giving to my customers is to look carefully at the business case of deploying WSS/MOSS. Identify cost savings to help this business case. In addition, you may find you can gain a tremendous amount from just deploying WSS based solutions or indeed outsource the whole deployment of WSS to someone else whom will look after the backup/support of this environment.
Before unnecessarily getting into complex Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 design topics, it is important to note that the document management and collaboration needs of many organisations can be satisfied with the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 client, is available as a free download from Microsoft. WSS 3.0 deployments are single-server deployments with SQL Server 2005 Express as the integrated database, in most cases, and so they do not require a complex design session.
If basic levels of functionality are required, or simply to demonstrate SharePoint 2007 technologies in an environment, installing and using WSS is ideal and affordable, especially if chosen via a hosted ‘pay as you use’ model.
Regards,
Andrew.
Technorati Tags: MOSS, WSS, SharePoint
Update: Great article by Emma Healey from Microsoft UK licensing team provides a useful pictorial representation of some common SharePoint licensing models. For those whom wish to deploy internally as part of an intranet perhaps, or those with more complicated intranet/extranet scenarios sharing information with none staff members.
A complicated area we all need to read more about!
Link here:http://ladylicensing.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!87F95F1B5B21B01E!575.entry
Thought I would post a note about the books that are available which I have read/currently reading about SharePoint. These are predominantly generalist SharePoint (MOSS) books in the main and cover the breadth of the platform in its entirety, but not necessarily in any great depth.
The content I would suggest, is aimed at anyone with an interest in SharePoint, in particular the design installation and build of these environments.
What it is not is aimed at very low level advice and guidance for developers and or analysts whom wish to create advance workflow, KPIs or records management based deployments. There are books and others resources for this, but I will come on to these at a later date, 
In addition, there are more specialist books, for example on the specific topic of Workflow coming out/out all ready. Again, I will post when I know more/have read such books.
For now, here is my list of recommended reading.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Administrators companion
Microsoft SharePoint 2007 – Unleashed.
Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
SharePoint 2007 User’s Guide
Simply search on the above in Amazon or other such online book sites and you will find them available to purchase. Most come with a searchable PDF file of the book for you to take offline as well.
Regards,
Andrew.
Technorati Tags: MOSS, WSS, SharePoint, SharePoint Books
I came across this site which gives you some useful tips and advice around sizing of your Site Collections, be that for WSS or MOSS based servers. Its by the legendary Joel Oleson, so needless to say its great advice.
Site here.
In my view its probably only applicable for your enterprise sized organisations, but still good to put such measures into your ‘best practice’ approach.
Regards,
Andrew.
Technorati Tags: WSS, MOSS
I have been experimenting with the Windows Live Writer product which is going through beta phases at the moment with Microsoft. Essentially its a localised blog editing tool.
Impressive first pass I have to say. Is pretty good for updates to WSS V3 based Blogs and also ‘maps’ itself onto the other types out there (WordPress, LiveSpaces, Bloggers, etc.).
I know the interface on WSS based Blogs is usable, but a little weak so this is a great enhancement and worthy of a trial at least.
Download from here:
Kind Regards,
Technorati Tags: WSS, Live Writer, Blog, SharePoint
Andrew Walmsley