You want to improve the team collaboration, Better manage documents, Find information faster, again, Map approval processes automatically, and a functioning Knowledge management introduce? You could find no solution so far? You are in good company! After more standardized business processes in inventory management, Accounting or inventory management z.B. well mapped by ERP solutions, do software vendors with knowledge- and document-based processes still hard. IT platforms such as SharePoint here allow a huge productivity surge in the companies, with almost immediate return in investment.

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Do already have blogged? What do you know about Twitter? Look up information in Wikipedia, have but still no entry edited? The tags Blog, Twitter, Wiki, Web 2.0 are available almost every day in the press. Now there is even talk of companies 2.0, a new kind of information processing of knowledge workers in the enterprise, with more interaction, faster communication, better Knowledge management and of course a significant productivity boost through the use of modern Internet technologies. What is the promises, and what measures can be implemented in medium-sized companies simply?

First, a definition of Web 2.0, less is much more the changes in the way the tags in the foreground, how people communicate with each other and go to.

Which in itself sounds yet not too spectacular, can we send E-Mails in seconds around the globe for many years yet. What does however change, is that Presence and Diversity information, continue reading…

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has positioned itself as a “The business collaboration platform for the enterprise & the Web” in the market for enterprise solutions. Steve Ballmer goes even further and positioning SharePoint as “the headquarters for the Cloud computing” (“SharePoint is at the center of the cloud.“). In this post we will try to give a first overview, What information specifically for IT managers are interesting, the deal already with SharePoint and want to know, What to expect in the new version and how to SharePoint 2010 in your companies should strategically position.

Overview - what's new

The most important thing for users of SharePoint 2007: When migrating to SharePoint 2010 be migrated and adapted to the SharePoint 2010 user interface to existing sites and pages complete with their design.

Operation and administration - the Office Ribbon

• He left office 2010 known Ribbon (the Ribbon) consistently finds its way into SharePoint 2010. Although this control is something getting: who already with the Ribbon from Office 2007 is familiar, is the operation of SharePoint 2010 find significantly more intuitive (on the client side as well as the Central Administration). Many settings were difficult to find in the current Central Administration, the entry in the SharePoint Administration 2010 is much easier. U.a. is it no longer necessary, right-click to display the actions/options for documents, they are accessible via the Ribbon always ad hoc.

   

Social computing or Web 2.0 for companies

Steve Ballmer says: “There is no company in the world, which aims to implement not social aspects of computing. But the companies do not know, such as. If we can show managers and IT managers, consider how employees can communicate your ideas with each other and this privacy and security issues, then, staff will use social computing in the enterprise.”

Thus, he is certainly right. The implementation of already known Web 2.0-Been the subject of criticism was repeatedly technologies such as WIKIs or blogs in SharePoint, are more specialized platforms like z.B. WordPress here already much further. With SharePoint 2010 but introduces a number of improvements:

• Improvements in blogs, WIKIs and calendars
• At the same time working on articles by several persons
• Keywords (Tags) for content
• Keyword cloud (Tag clouds)
• Reviews
• Bookmarks/favorites
• “Smart profiles” and feeds for the personal Web page
• Browser to search for colleagues and experts
• Publish one's own side with “Share this site”

It is an introduction of Web - at least from a technical perspective- 2.0 in their company nothing more in the way. The holistic view of organizational aspects they find here more information (also as PDF-download)

Presentation and content editing

• With the new “In context editing” editable content now finally directly on the spot in the browser. The change between edit mode and display mode eliminates. Completely WYSIWYG is not there yet, but it will be.
• SharePoint workspace provides a “Rich client” with drag & Drop capabilities from Office hereaus and synchronization properties, to z.B. Content to work offline and then synchronize.
• Finally is also FireFox adequately supported. So far, SharePoint was optimized for Internet Explorer.
• At last! Pictures no longer must be stored in a SharePoint library, but can directly from the PC be uploaded
• New Web parts You can now visually create (no/less individual programming required)
• Through the AJAX integration the SharePoint pages appear much more elegant in the operation, When content downloaded to, not the whole site is rebuilt from scratch - chic!
• Silverlight-Integration (For moderns & appealing layout)
• Development for Vista- und Windows 7-Design
• Digital asset management is introduced

Workflows

The Workflow-Designer (previously only available for a fee and then free install) is now an integral part of SharePoint 2010. IT departments can now more easily and completely without programming workflows to create and customize than before. Even if the workflow designer not the intuitive usability of the Nintexx workflows offers, He however very well suited for most workflow tasks. Also, workflows once created can now be reused. Interesting: It is now possible with the Visio services, Visio to visualize processes directly from SharePoint out to use. And it goes further: Workflows created with Visio can be exported and imported in SharePoint. More about this in the post by Fabian Moritz.

Business intelligence

With the help of lists and links you could already in SharePoint 2007 simple data models represent, for example, in a list to display contacts from a central contact list. Once but more complex data relationships should be implemented, a separate database schema had to set up and z.B. be made through the business data catalog in SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 now supports:

• The selection and display multiple columns from a linked target list. This could be for example next to the How to contact with at the same time displays the phone number in a range entry. This was in SharePoint 2007 just hard to realize
• The concepts known from the development of the database of the “Restrict delete” and “Cascade Delete” (to subordinate records from a linked list when deleting a main list record equal to delete)
• The direct Output of the ID field
• New possibilities of the Excel Services (Slicer filtering pivot tables, new charts, Scorecards
• Publish access databases about SharePoint (Access services)
• Business connectivity services

Taxonomies and metadata

In SharePoint 2010 Approaches are of the Semantic Web implemented. Even if in practical business use for this purpose is still no use, It shows but, where the journey goes. SharePoint is becoming a kind of “Operating system for the Internet/web/intranet”. Who flirts with the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies within the company, has an alexsanders and future-proof platform with SharePoint.

• Feature: Taxonomy (allows a kind of knowledge map on a specific subject with specific terms and relations between them). More information at http://www.twason.com/glossary.html
• New column type: Managed metadata
• Term sets, Term set Manager

Improvements in the search

SharePoint 2010 offers a number of improvements

• FAST Search technology
• Improved search algorithms
• Phonetic search
• Multilingual search

New interesting templates

• Visio process repository: Represent processes and workflows in Visio out in SharePoint
• Bugs / Bug tracker: Suitable for the management of internal IT support
• Projects: A simple project management
• Cost analyses
• Application- and recruitment
• Citizens management and citizen portals
• Sales evaluations
• Conference planning  

Conclusion

A round thing! Microsoft much of the specialized suppliers copied from itself and successfully integrated into the new platform. The learning curve for SharePoint users both on user- as well as to administrative level is much easier to master. SharePoint and shows clearly the strategic future direction: To the Web, zur “Cloud”, to the “Operating system for the Internet” respectively “Operating system 2.0 for the entire company“. If you are looking for a holistic path, to all knowledge- and information processes in the company to reproduce better and future-proof, hardly come to SharePoint.

More information

Our focus is more on an economic and organizational analysis of SharePoint and other IT technologies. A more technical summary of SharePoint 2010 You will find under http://sharepoint.namics.com/2009/10/gesamteindruck.html, otherwise, the best German-language source for technical information is the SharePoint community under http://sharepointcommunity.de/