Entries for the 'DMC Consulting' Category

DMC and Metalogix will be holding an executive workshop on June 20, 2012 at the Microsoft Midwest District in Downers Grove, IL. The event will focus on helping business leaders take advantage of cloud-based data and information solutions. With the release of Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint 2010 is now available in the cloud and poised to go mainstream. Many are considering hybrid solutions... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Ryan Taylor, Systems Engineer What do you like best about working at DMC? I like that I come in and do interesting work that is always different. Working at DMC gives you a diverse experience base to draw from. The lunch conversations at DMC are always fun and they never end up where they start from. Robots are usually involved and many of the Quote Board comments originate at the lunch ta... [Read the rest of this blog...]

This month’s Geek Challenge is in honor of Cinco de Mayo. The traditional Mexican sombrero has an elegant symmetrical shape, and is fun to express mathematically.     Your challenge is to match three sombrero graphs with their corresponding functions in cylindrical coordinates.  Each graph is plotted from 0<r<2.  Graph A   Graph B   Graph... [Read the rest of this blog...]

A big question that lingered after looking at the results of the geek challenge was how much luck played into the outcome against how strong any specific entry was over any other.  Most entries relied heavily on seeding and used other factors to tweak the effect of the overall seeding. Only Dan Freve chose a different approach, weighting strength of schedule heavily and actually using a negat... [Read the rest of this blog...]

In the event that a site needs to be created when an item is added to a list, users are able to manually create the site from the out-of-the-box templates or even a customized template if one has been created.  To avoid users having to perform these manual steps and chance them creating the site incorrectly, the custom "Create a Site" action from ILoveSharePoint which can be downloaded free i... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC's Director of Consulting Services, Rick Rietz, led an educational session on April 27 at the Control Systems Integrators Association (CSIA) Executive Conference. "Capture Success" was the theme of the 2012 CSIA Conference, held from April 25-28 in Scottsdale, AZ. Rick led a session entitled "Take Control of your Projects with SharePoint Dashboards." A review of this presen... [Read the rest of this blog...]

What are you doing on May 3rd? DMC is hosting a Tres de Mayo party and we hope you are able to join us! Tres de Mayo Party at DMC Thursday, May 3, 2012 3:33pm - ??? 2222 N. Elston Ave, Suite 200 Chicago, IL 60614 [Driving Directions] Stop by anytime throughout the evening for food, beer, and fun. There will be plenty of convenient parking available. Feel free to bring signi... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Congratulations to Dean Schmitz, who earned victory in the March Madness Geek Challenge thanks to Kentucky’s win over Kansas in the final. He used his superior average bracket score to best Dan Freve, who turned in the tournament's highest individual bracket. Six of our seven entrants centered their choices primarily around tournament seed, while DMC employee Dan Freve chose to highlight a combin... [Read the rest of this blog...]

After a great time on last year's DMC ski trip to Breckenridge, nine DMC employees and friends decided to continue the tradition. Last month, we headed west to hit the slopes in Vail, CO. Enjoy the photos below and live vicariously through our ski trip limericks!   Leftovers –or- Pound Some Fruit Bananas, eggs, granola and cheese Two whole carts we needed to seize Don... [Read the rest of this blog...]

On March 25, 2012, for the 7th year in a row, DMC competed in the Shamrock Shuffle, an 8K (4.98 miles) race through downtown Chicago. It was a great day for the race and we had more than respectable results. Of special note is race newcomer Dan Lawler who looks like he might be able to give Sully a run for his money. Check out posts from some of our previous races here: Hustle up ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC is proud to announce its continued achievement of Gold Partner status within the Microsoft Partner Network. In obtaining this highest level of competency for both Software Development and SharePoint Portals and Collaboration DMC enters its eighth consecutive year of Gold Partnership with Microsoft. Gold Partner status distinguishes DMC among the elite 1% of more than 64,000 Micros... [Read the rest of this blog...]

A client of our Consulting Services team recently decided to take the plunge and upgrade their SharePoint farm from Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 (a.k.a. MOSS 2007) to SharePoint 2010 Standard Edition. They also decided to add a separate SQL server to their farm, which up until then had been a single-server farm. This wrinkle presented both opportunities and challenges for our upgrade ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

I recently encountered an error in SharePoint Designer without much documented information available and wanted to share my workaround with others who may be experiencing it. The bug occurs when attempting a specific action in SharePoint Designer 2007 and 2010, known as “collect data from user.” In SharePoint Designer 2007 the options you choose will not be ma... [Read the rest of this blog...]

This month’s Geek Challenge was created in conjunction with  Kevin Ferrigno.  The challenge is to pick the winners of this year’s NCAA tournament, not by choosing teams, but by picking the winning formula.  You can use this spreadsheet to practice with based on last year’s games. We’ve simplified the process of picking a bracket from selecting the outcome of 63 ga... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Every year, DMC celebrates our holiday party sometime after the holidays and this year we took to the lanes at Lucky Strike. It was a great setting to socialize and, of course, enjoy some friendly competition. We even held a special bowling-themed Geek Challenge. Congrats to oncoming DMC employee Han Yang for claiming victory!  

On February 29th, DMC celebrated Leap Day with a little friendly competition.  With some tape on the floor, I set up an event court for a Standing Long Jump competition.  Standing Long Jump was an Olympic event until from 1900-1912, and I remembered it from grade school gym class.  In addition to the starting line, I marked the 3.47m Olympic record.  It seemed like an... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Those who visit DMC may notice our ever-changing "Quote Board." This is where we document the most infamous utterances of the moment.

Eric West, Systems Engineer What do you like best about working at DMC? I like a lot of things. I enjoy working with a group of people who have a good sense of humor and fun in addition to being great at their work. I can count on them to support me in all of the interesting and challenging projects we encounter.  Everyone is expected to provide high quality work and the environment is al... [Read the rest of this blog...]

With the final few plays of the super bowl still fresh in mind, we enter March on the verge of another of the greatest events in sports, the March Madness of Programming Languages. This epic, world-renowned event (not to be confused with the similarly named athletic event) pits some of best programming languages head to head. At DMC, we pride ourselves in being fluent in many, many software ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

 The Unified Logging System (ULS) logs are one of the developer's and administrator's best friends when trouble-shooting SharePoint. But as anyone who has ever browsed through ULS logs can attest, their readability leaves something to be desired. In this blog I'll review two solutions to improve the readability and searchability of ULS logs: Microsoft's own, unsupported ULS Viewer and a compe... [Read the rest of this blog...]