Free Webinar: Combating a Weak Economy With Strong Proposals

Transform SharePoint into a Platform that Manages Performance and Increases your Win Rate

Is your proposal team agile and able to rapidly respond to the changing market? Are you winning all the opportunities you should be? Are you bidding the proposals you should be? Are you producing proposals at a fast enough pace and to a strong degree of quality?

If not, you might be facing tough issues like:

• Managers spending too much time coordinating assignments and chasing down documents

• Documents are stored in multiple locations everywhere • You do not know which is the latest version

• Content is duplicated and often rewritten each time

• Content is out of date, no longer relevant, and used over and over again

Ready to have the ability to organize, monitor and manage individual proposals and the proposal process?

i3solutions SharePoint Proposal Resource Center Solution provides individual sites for collaboration on each proposal, as well as the ability to build dashboards that present information across all your proposal efforts!

Ready to have a proposal process that coordinates and interfaces with you line of business applications? The i3solutions SharePoint Proposal Resource Center has helped organizations decrease their turnaround time for proposals, eliminate redundant work, and increase your win rates.

The solution is built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to provide a central repository for all proposal related documents and to establish a collaborative forum in which to create, track and modify proposals.

Join i3solutions as we explore how to utilize SharePoint to create a dynamic and robust Proposal Resource Center!

Where:

Online Web Seminar

When:

August 7th at 1 PM (EST)

Go here to Register

SharePoint 2010 Test Drive

Today I got a chance to test drive the SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. There are a ton of new features and functions. I wanted to take a few minutes and tell you about some of them

SharePoint 2010
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx
A new SharePoint 2010 sneak peak…and the new Overview Video by Tom Rizzo.

“Value Pillars” This is the central pitch around SP2010
Connect and Empower People
Heavily pushing on multiple devices: multiple Browers (IE, Safari, Firefox); mobile

Cut Costs with a Unified Infrastructure
One platform with multiple solutions

Rapidly Respond to Business Needs
Quickly skin SharePoint and “mash it up” business processes


Nicest new features in my opinion
After takeing it for a spin and playing with the features here are the ones that I liked and saw good potential in impacting a Project Managers world:

• Live Editing of text on page in Office 2007

This is a critical factor in document creation and collaboration! Imagine that I am working on a requirements document in SharePoint. I open it up and start working. Meanwhile Steve the BA on my project opens it up and starts working. Each section of the document I work on is locked and Steve can see it visually (green bracket with my name associated with it). As Steve changes items those sections are locked to me. At anytime that is good for me I can sync this changes with a simple click of a button. It is cleaner – nicer and not forced (it does not interrupt me with prompts or other distractions!) I did it in Word and powerPoint

• Content Controls

This allows me to go into a document and create SharePoint Tasks directly in the document. When they complete the task and attach the created document. SharePoint takes the task document and integrates it into my document. So imagine if you will that I am writing a design document that is sensitive in nature. I have section that requires a person outside my team to write a blurb. I can assign the task and not have to give them access to the document itself. This is very powerful! I can also kick off workflows with content controls.

• Visio web integration

Now I create a process diagram and use it visually show the progress to the user on the diagram – without the need for the user to have Visio and it can pull data from LOB apps or SharePoint

• Upload images as content is seamless

No more upload to a picture library then add to a webapart – do it all in one step

• Browser Support for Firefox and Safari

I saw no difference

• Office Ribbon everywhere!

All the apps including SharePoint now have the ribbon. Easy access to commands and functions that are relevant

• Nicer BDC integration (now BCS business catalog service)

Read – Write
Easier managemen

• Clientless web version of Office

Acconding to the keynote speach at the partner conference all windows live accounts will have access to use the web version of Office 2010

More to come Later!

Linc

Filtering SharePoint calendar by Start Time

Trying to filter WSS 3.0 calendar list by Start Time column. This column doesn't appear in filtered columns list. I found solution that is a workaround, but at least it solved my problem. So,

Let's go step by step:

1. Open Calendar list settings.
2. Add new column called (by example) Begin.
3. Choose "Calculated" as a type of new column.
4. In the Formula field insert the following formula:=[Start Time]
5. Select Date and Time as data type of new column.
6. Clear check from "Add to default view" checkbox.
7. Save the new column.
8. Now you should be able to use the column called Begin instead of Start Date when you need to filter calendar list.

SharePoint 2010 Promotional Video

Received this today from Microsoft - I though it was entertaining.

I am getting ready for the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Confrence where I will get a preview of SHarePoint 2010 - This is your chance to give me questions to try and get answers to. Submit them here!

Getting Started with the Project Mangement Template

Thanks to everyone on the overwhelming response to the template! Hundreds of downloads already!

This next video goes through how to get started with the template. I walk you through the process I use to initially set up a project to start managing it.

YouTube Videos:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Please use the template and give me feedback

If you have not already Join our LinkedIN Group: SharePoint for Project Management

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2062948

You can download the template by registering at HTTP://www.i3solutions.com/PMO

A small number of people have trouble downloading the file - if you are one of them send me an email at PRC@i3solutions.com and I will email you a zip file with the template and instructions.

Linc

Released! Free Project Management Template for WSS 3

This is my Project Management Template for WSS 3.0


You can download the template by registering at HTTP://www.i3solutions.com/PMO

Dont forget to join our linkedIN Group - SharePoint for Project Management at
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2062948

This template is not meant to be the end all - be all PM site. My intention was to show some of the things that you can do with SharePoint and Project Management. It is a good starting point for most organizations that are just getting started


Once again a Special thanks to EndUser SharePoint and Path to SharePoint Blogs for providing great material and concepts used in the template.

• Some of the features added to this template are:


• Expanding / Collapsing Left Navigation


• Tabbed Navigation, Google Charts and Print Web Part Functions


• A Series of Dashboard Pages for common KPIs (generated with google charts) based on the Task Lists

Here is an Introduction Video for the template:

You can also get the videos on YouTube

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvMmce9w7dk

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyRPczliw4U

Take it for a spin and let me know what you think

Linc

Comming Soon - Free PM SharePoint Template

I will be releasing a free SharePoint Template for a basic Project Mangement site with some added bells and whistles!

I will be Demoing the template at the SharePoint Users Group of Washington D.C.’s conference on June 26-27 ( http://www.sugdc.org/ ) If you are at the conference stop by and see it. If not I will be releasing it for general consumption the week of July 13th