Entries for the 'SharePoint' Category

A lot of our SharePoint clients at DMC want a SharePoint site which allows users outside their company network to have login access to the site. SharePoint supports a type of user authentication called claims-based authentication, which is a composite of Windows Active Directory authentication and forms-based authentication. Forms-based authentication stores the credentials for users not within an... [Read the rest of this blog...]

In some cases, regardless of how well a SharePoint site is built out, users express frustration when discussing the user experience.  Examples are asking for your credentials every time you open a file, experiencing long wait times, or having trouble accessing pages.  As it turns out, the difficulties that they are experiencing can usually be solved with a few simple configuration settin... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I meet with a handful of business leaders every week, and I regularly get asked the question “What is SharePoint?”  Most people, especially busy executives, don’t have 60 minutes to hear a presentation and demonstration about SharePoint.  So here’s how the conversation usually goes: Busy Business Executive:  What is SharePoint? Me:  “SharePoint is an Enterprise Collaborati... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC is proud to announce the launch of its new consulting services website: DMCconsultants.com  The goal of the new site is to better serve clients in professional services industries such as legal, property management & development, management consulting, and financial services, as well as non-profits and government agencies.  The service offerings highlighted ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Microsoft has released their first service pack for SharePoint 2010 and it comes with several new features and upgrades. This blog post will guide you through the upgrade process and explain the steps you should take to deploy Service Pack 1 to your SharePoint server. Preparing for the Upgrade Before you start installing anything new on your SharePoint server always create a backup of your Share... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for Office 2010, Project Server 2010, Fast Search, SharePoint 2010 Server, SharePoint 2010 Foundation, and SharePoint Designer 2010.  In order to ensure the continued stability of your SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Foundation platforms, I highly recommend that your organizatioin take the time to install Service Pack 1. Below is a summary ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

SharePoint can now be accessed in the cloud using Microsoft’s latest business offering, Office 365.  Office 365 offers access to a cloud-based suite of Microsoft applications that only require a browser and an Internet connection to access.  The full suite includes: SharePoint Online Office Web Apps (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) Exchange Online Lync Online ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Humans are visual by nature so creating a graphic icon for a list of items or tasks can be extremely beneficial when trying to sort through data. Without having to configure SharePoint Designer or writing custom code, you can create a simple color coded icon that will enhance your list tremendously in just a few minutes.   Step 1- Create a “Color” column in your list. ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

In many cases, a deliverable will have multiple files as part of a standard set of documents that are used together to fulfill the needs of the deliverable. Some examples would be: ·        A manufacturing company has documents related to design, testing, and fabrication for each product it manufactures. ·        A sales ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

“Inspiring Performance” is the theme of the 2011 Control Systems Integrators Association (CSIA) Executive Conference being held in Orlando, Florida April 27 - April 30.  DMC's Director of Consulting Services, Rick Rietz, will be leading an educational session titled "Achieve business goals and get things done with SharePoint". With over 100 million users worldwide, Micros... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Event Overview More than twenty business and IT leaders gathered on March 16, 2011 to participate in DMC’s Team Collaboration Breakfast Workshop hosted at Microsoft’s Midwest Headquarters in Downers Grove.  Led by Rick Rietz, DMC’s Director of Consulting Services, the workshop focused on how to make the switch to a collaborative company culture by applying technology like Microsoft Sha... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Paul Pease and Peter Zafiro of The Pease Group recently invited DMC to speak at the Manufacturers’ Agents National Association's (MANA) "Successful Rep Channel Management" workshop on March 11th.  It was a great opportunity to demonstrate how SharePoint can be used as an extranet to support sales activities. Business Owners and Sales Managers often struggle... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC is excited to announce the achievement of Gold status within the SharePoint Portals and Collaboration competency of Microsoft’s new partner program. The criteria for earning Gold status in the new Microsoft Partner Network is far more stringent and promises to better represent organizations who have demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment within specific technical ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC will be leading an executive breakfast workshop on March 16, 2011 at Microsoft's Midwest Headquarters in Downers Grove, IL.  The event will focus on making the switch to a collaborative company culture and applying technology like Microsoft SharePoint to achieve your business goals. As the Heath brothers (authors of Made to Stick and Switch) say, “To make a switch, you need to script t... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Recently as I was creating a SharePoint web part for a DMC client I ran across a problem which really stumped me. At first, I thought what I had was an easy problem to solve: how does one open a popup window from C# in a web part?...

[Read this blog...]

I recently fielded a question from a potential client who wanted to know if Microsoft SharePoint or Google Docs with Google Sites was a better fit for their organization's document management and collaboration needs.  Although this question is pretty straight-forward, the explanation can get a bit complicated.  The short answer is Google Docs/Sites is great tool if you do not have ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Creating custom web parts for SharePoint 2010 is relatively simple, as is creating basic configuration options which can be edited in the properties panel. However, as you advance in your understanding of SharePoint and custom web part creation, you inexorably run in to the problem of creating rich, custom configuration capabilities for your web part which go far beyond the basic configuration cap... [Read the rest of this blog...]

If SharePoint Search saves you 30 minutes per week, think how much time and money it will save your entire organization...

30 minutes x 52 weeks x 50 employees = 78,000 minutes or 1,300 hours.  At [$25] an hour, that saves you [$32,500] every year!

Impressive results for a business software license that's free.

[Read this blog...]

Recently, I was working on a suite of web parts for a client. Everything was proceeding fantastically until I needed to deploy my farm solution (containing many web parts) from my development server to another SharePoint server for demonstration purposes. Visual Studio 2010 provides outstanding functionality for creating Web Parts for SharePoint, and can deploy them locally (provided that SharePoi... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) To help explain why one would choose Silverlight for application development, I think it’s important to have a basic understanding of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).  Silverlight is one of a small handful of RIA software frameworks that are used to build interactive web applications for internal enterprise applications and public-facing Internet si... [Read the rest of this blog...]