Entries for 'Rick Rietz'

Microsoft's "New Office 365" plan lineup for 2013 is pretty extensive, providing customers with many choices to consider. Since you cannot change plan families (more on this later), it is critical to be aware of a few subtle, but key details that differentiate the new plans from one another. If you are unsure if moving to the Office 365 cloud is a good move for your organization, here are a few scenarios that often drive businesses to move to the Office 365 cloud: ...

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I recently fielded a question from a client who wanted to know when it was appropriate to save a file to SharePoint instead of saving the file to the network shared drive.  I was happy to hear that the alternative to saving to SharePoint being considered was a network shared drive and not a personal hard drive  Why, you might ask: You can't index and search for a document on a personal hard drive Others won't know the file even exists unless you tell them No one c...

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Join DMC at the Chicago SharePoint "Share-A-Pint" on June 13th at 5:30pm, featuring discussions led by DMC's Anjali Bharadwa and Jack Cosgrove. "Share-A-Pint" is an informal monthly event aimed at knowledge sharing and networking between SharePoint professionals. Event Topics: DMC Senior Consultant, Anjali Bharadwa, will lead an administrator roundtable entitled "SharePoint Designer Workflows". DMC Application Developer, Jack Cosgrove, will lead a developer roundtable...

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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 Collaboration Portal” Busy Business Executive:  So, what does that mean? Me:  SharePoint enable...

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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 of a few of the key SharePoint fixes and enhancements: A large number of fixes have been made...

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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 to communicate in a timely and effective way with their independent channel reps.   ...

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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 an enterprise collaboration platform at your disposal, and you need to to get a document sharing&nbs...

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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.

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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 sites.  Flash and Java are the other major RIA software frameworks that compete with Silverlight....

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As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, DMC has access to exclusive training and online content which allows us to better serve our clients.  Important Details Users Need to Know about SharePoint 2010 is a recent webcast that Microsoft is allowing DMC to share with you.  This webcast session demonstrates SharePoint 2010's new features, with a focus on Sites, Communities, and Search.  The webcast runs about an hour long.  If you don't have the time to view ...

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Of course the answer to this question can vary significantly, but far too often, ideas that are supposed to change things by 1% are dismissed prematurely.  Why does this happen? To most people, the number 1 is a pretty small number.  If you have to make an effort to change something and you expect the result of that effort to yield a 1% improvement, a common gut reaction is that it’s probably not worth the effort.  For motivation, justification, and acceptance of any risk that co...

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Beginning a Microsoft SharePoint Portal implementation is exciting, as it holds great promise to deliver value to everyone in your organization.  To make your SharePoint Portal project a success, it's important to do some up front planning. In this video blog, I describe some key factors to closely consider when planning your SharePoint Portal. Functional Planning: Features - Collaboration, Business Processes, Content Management, Search, Web 2.0, and KPIs/Dashboards Versions -...

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Microsoft has just released SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint 2010.  In this video blog, I provide an introduction to Microsoft SharePoint and break down the key features and differences between the currently supported versions of SharePoint: SharePoint 2010 SharePoint Foundation 2010 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0)  See Related DMC SharePoint Video Blogs: Automating a SharePoint Das...

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Instead of writing a traditional web blog, I decided to break from tradition a bit and author a video blog instead this time! Nearly all SharePoint projects I work on include a SharePoint Dashboard component that automates the aggregation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).   In this video blog, I highlight the key benefits that automating the aggregation of data via a SharePoint Dashboard have over manual KPI reporting.  To have a successful Sharepoin...

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Looking back over the last three years of implementing SharePoint solutions for a wide variety of clients (large and small), I would say this is the number one question clients ask me when looking to get started on their first SharePoint portal solution.  I think it is definitely one of the first questions you should try to answer when planning your SharePoint solution.  After all, selecting the right version of SharePoint will save your organization time and money; and ensure that you...

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DMC has earned its fourth Microsoft competency:  Information Worker.  The Information Worker competency recognizes DMC’s investment and dedication to delivering world-class SharePoint Solutions for its customers.  This new competency demonstrates DMC’s proficiency and experience implementing Microsoft SharePoint solutions.  Microsoft awards competencies to partners who have demonstrated expertise by certifying multiple developers in a particular technology and producing...

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