Access and SharePoint - Another Qiuck Hit from SPC09

Access has been Microsoft's "end user" database product for well over a decade. It allows users to easily create sets of tables, forms, and reports.

With the 2010 release, Microsoft is introducing Access Web Services. Essentially, this allows you to take an Access database and convert it (not merely upload it) into SharePoint site, with virtually all of the functionality intact. Tables are converted to SharePoint lists. Macros are converted to JavaScript and SharePoint workflows. Even your forms and reports display virtually identically.

What's more, this isn't a one-way ticket - it is a round-trip. You can re-open the site in Access to tweak it, or have full "access" to the functionality that doesn't convert (either by product limit or your choice).
Integration now also exists for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Visio.


From Woody Windischman Notes on the conference

Quick SharePoint 2010 Hits from around the SPC09

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/10/19/sharepoint-2010.aspx
SharePoint 2010 New features overview - Describing SharePoint 2010 in 1 Sentence, 8 Categories and 40 Feature Areas


SharePoint 2010 - Ratings by Christophe

The ratings service uses a ratings control seen here that uses two star displays. The first display shows the average rating. As you hover your mouse over the stars the colour changes to yellow to reflect the rating you’re about to assign via a mouse...

ratings service uses a ratings control seen here that uses two star displays. The first display shows the average rating. As you hover your mouse over the stars the colour changes to yellow to reflect the rating your about to assign via a mouse...";

SharePoint 2010 - Lookup Columns by Christophe
In SharePoint 2010 you can choose to display multiple columns from the lookup list.
SharePoint 2010 you can choose to display multiple columns from the lookup


SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management

From Andrew Connell's blog:

• New in SP 2010:
• Content Organizer
• Ratings
• Metadata Everywhere!
• Web Analytics
• Video and Rich Media

BI in SharePoint 2010 --Sandra Tersteeg

Imagine a page on your site with information coming from any line of business application displayed in a graphical dashboard with live, up-to-date data and the ability to drill into the details and filter any way you like. Sound exciting? Then you are going to love the new products coming out with the 2010 wave.

Microsoft's PowerPivot (previously known as Gemini code name) has officially hit the world in two versions, one for SQL Server and the other for SharePoint. PowerPivot allows you to drill-in, filter, and sort on any category of data in your charts. Imagine the power of Excel's Pivot Table now inside of SharePoint.

The example provided into today's breakout session was a chart coming from PerformancePoint, a Visio diagram showing a map of the U.S. color-coded based on the data, and an Excel chart, all bound to live data.

In addition to the stunning visual charts, also available is a web part displaying the profile of the owner of the page with their image and contact info along with a Notes Board allowing for viewers to add their own comments.

All the data on this dashboard is live and the page refresh is seamless. SharePoint hardly misses a step.

Another cool functionality that was demonstrated is a timeline slider that allows you to view the data in the visual chart as it progresses through time by sliding it across with your mouse.

Co-Authoring in Office 2010

Here is an update on CO-Authoring in Office 2010

Highlights from each product

OneNote

• When changes have been made by one author, another author is able to view it within seconds afterwards.
• It's highlighted in green and the page title is bold, just like Outlook bolds an unread email.
• Even when multiple authors make changes to the same area such as adding a new row, merging takes care of integrating the changes appropriately.
• You can search for changes based on a particular author.
• Page versioning is supported and by turning it on, right-side tabs will display allowing you to step through the history allowing you to right-click and restore to a previous version.
• Much easier to create a new notebook in a SharePoint site by utilizing previously accessed sites.
• Simultaneous editing occurs the same between editing in OneNote and editing in the SharePoint site web application.

Word

• Rich view of the document in the SharePoint web application without opening in the Word client, as well as the ability to edit.
• When changes occur from another author, a bubble notification pops up alerting you of that and an icon in the status bar at the bottom appears allowing you to click on it and see the user and their profile details.
• The paragraph being edited will show-up within the paragraph being edited with the user's name to the left. If you try to modify the same text, Word won't allow you to until the other user moves on.
• Also along the bottom status, "Updates Available" will appear letting you know there are changes that have been made. By saving, the changes come through and are highlights so you know exactly what the changes are.
• In the document Navigation (know as Document Map in 2007), the section that is being modified by another author will pop-up with their name.
• Automatically populates with recent SharePoint sites to allow much more efficient saving of the document.

PowerPoint

• Same as Word above, with the exception of editing which requires the client.
• When modifications are made to the same item in a slide, users receive a notification alerting them of the conflict and allows them to review the changes. They can then decide to accept or reject.
• Publish the slides to a presentation with a link so that people can view directly from the slideshow and not the edit mode.

Excel

• Same as Word, including the ability to open and edit within the SharePoint web application, including tabbed spreadsheets.
• A row of data entered by one user, other columns can be updated by another user.

From the Microsoft Office SharePoint Blog

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=273

Building a Project Management Information System (PMIS) in SharePoint

A lot of people are using SharePoint to help the project management process. Time and Time again I see organizations stand up out of the box team sites and call it project management. While SharePoint is a great step forward in collaboration and sharing of information, the team site really only touches the surface of what we as project managers need to do to truly manage a project.

In this series I am going to discuss the use of SharePoint as a Project Management Information System (PMIS). I will cover some concepts and details on how to use the out of the box features and functions to create a PMIS. At the end of each major post I will also cover some 3rd party products and how they can be used to enhance and or accelerate your PMIS. I will also cover new features for SharePoint and how they can be used to enhance the solutions. This information will become part of the posts once Microsoft releases me from my NDA.

Now it is important to note that even though I am going to cover a lot of items in this series, there is no one tool or process that is right for everyone. There are many different ways to mange projects they range from broad frameworks like PMBOK ,Prince 2, Critical Chain, Lean and Extreme, to process Based management like CMMI and ISO.

This series does focus loosely on the PMBOK methodologies but the concepts and principles presented here should be easily adaptable to the other methods. This Series also focuses on single project execution not portfolio management (which I will cover in another series).

I love SharePoint as a PMIS because of its Flexibility. With SharePoint I can take any organization, no matter where they are in project management maturity, and build a PMIS that allows them to change, grow, and evolve the PM practices over time. Because you can do this over time you can plot a path to any level of maturity. It works especially well for those who are lower in the maturity scale because you can use simple systems and expand them as you are ready.

Since the majority of my experience lies in the realm of managing complex and large software development projects, most of the examples that you will see are focused on this. I will also be focusing on using SharePoint lists to manage items. These lists are not intended to replace good project documentation, but to allow users to manage items that will be eventually converted to formalized documents.

Before we get into the SharePoint details I want provide some PM fundamentals. I promise in this series I will try to keep the Project Management soap box speeches to a minimum.

Introduction to Project Management Information System Fundamentals

The Project Management Institute defines a Project Management Information system (PMIS) as an integrated approach for the management and distribution of project information. This system does not necessarily have to be electronic but in my experience it is rare to see a good PMIS that is purely in the paper world.

What is a PMIS?

A PMIS contains all the information required for the stages of a Project:

• Initiating
• Planning
• Executing, Managing and Controlling
• Closing
  

The framework you implement should provide a way for:

• Collecting
• Organizing
• Storing
• Processing
• Disseminating project information
  

It also should provide the basis for assessing the status of the project with respect to time, cost, and quality.

Things to consider in the stages

Initiation (Think it through):
This is where you look into an idea or requirement to see if it is desirable to turn it into a project. The focus at this stage is on what might be done and whether it is required.

This stage determines the nature and scope of the development. If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business’s needs.

In this phase, the project manager can use the PMIS for:

• Preliminary budget, labor requirements, and financial structure.
• Preliminary schedule
• Approval cycle, including defining the Scope of work and presenting the information to the stakeholders
  

Planning (Plan it Out):
In this Stage the detailed planning and analysis happens and the system is designed. Controls should be in place that ensure that the final product will meet the specifications of the project charter

In this phase, the project manager can use the PMIS for:

• Detailed schedule, detailed task analysis, project working calendar
• Cost management planning, detailed work breakdown structure, integration of control procedures.
• Resource planning, including labor/material/equipment requirements, availability of resources, and resource leveling
• Obtaining sign-off - This includes establishing baselines for scope, schedule, and cost.
  

The main goals of this stage are:

• Communication - This is the point where everyone with an interest should be made aware what you are intending to do
• Realistic figures - costs and timescales are as accurate as possible
  

Execution, Manage and Control (Time to Do it):
Once the project is under way, the project team collects and enters current information. The project team compares the actual to the baseline plan to track project progress. The PMIS should provide cost and schedule forecasts to help the PM to develop scenarios concerning alternatives and corrective actions. It assists the project manager and stakeholders in investigating opportunities for reducing costs and accelerating schedules.

In this phase, the project manager can use the PMIS for:

• Materials management, which includes expediting orders, tracking deliveries, and controlling inventories.
• Cost collection, which includes collecting actual costs, extracting accounting data, and summarizing cost data.
• Performance measurement, which includes monitoring project status, analyzing variances, assessing productivity, and forecasting trends.
• Records management, which includes controlling artifacts, tracking contracts, and records management.
• Reporting, which includes revising budgets, modifying schedules, analyzing alternatives, and recommending actions?

Closing out (What Did We Learn):
During this phase, the project manager and the team can use the PMIS for reviewing requirements to ensure that the project has met all of its contractual requirements. We need to properly organize this information because it provides a comprehensive set of project archives, which includes contract performance review, productivity analysis, final project report, and historical archives.

The 1st step is often the Hardest Step
For project managers, the 1st step is the most major step… deciding to implement a PMIS. The next step is to determine the uses of the PMIS to make certain that it will meet the needs of the project manager and stakeholders based on how you execute projects and how you should be executing projects.

Is it a project?

A few simple rules I like to use when identifying whether something is a project:

• Is there a set of tasks or activities with a start and end point?
• Are there well defined objectives?
• Are specific resources needed to be assigned?
  

Not everything can be defined as a project. Some processes may be developments of existing operations or an extra task for a team or individual. A project is an operation to achieve particular outcomes, usually involving many stages, often involving many resources and with an end point. It is not 'business as usual' type of activities.

Throughout these posts my intention is to give you a blueprint to create a PMIS with share point 2007. Once the NDA for SharePoint 2010 has been released I will also include new features and functions that can enhance your project management information system by using SharePoint 2010.

In the post in this series I will be covering each Phase one by one.

Next post: Project Initiation (Think it through) with your SharePoint PMIS.

If you would like to provide feedback you can:

• Post a comment on the blog
• Email me at PRC@i3solutons.com
• Tweet me- @SharePointLinc