I was expecting to have to justify SharePoint’s use and cost so I pulled up executive summary of the governance plan, site usage numbers, training plans, the internal Power User program and all those “Good Stuff emails”.

In my experience once you start filling in this role you’ll soon find yourself at the center of attention and all sorts of questions about how SharePoint is going to sure all the organization’s woe

We took the initial step to actually admit there is a crisis. Then we asked of ourselves and our organizations and realized that in concept and in SharePoint terms we can call this person the Business Super User or Super End User for the moment.

But as “SharePoint as a Platform” resonates more and more into the business and IT consciousness this role’s name will grow along with all other projections of SharePoint growth.

It wasn’t until I began using and propagating SharePoint usage that I saw the true model of this theory. As it has been mentioned in many blogs and white papers, SharePoint gets pushed from the top level decision makers, through IT and onto the end user without much guidance, thought or direction. The foremost flaw is the “not understanding” how SharePoint needs to be used for the Business at hand. Usually this knowledge does not lay with executive leadership, not with IT units who deploy it, and certainly not in the end user who is too busy performing to have to worry about how to translate it to their daily routine.

The other day I was hungry and needed to eat. I didn’t have time nor desire to sit down and enjoy a full blown meal, yet I knew I didn’t want anything fast food. I needed to refill but didn’t want a poorer quality substitute. In a local market I found the [...]

I’d like to thank all the speakers who made the event a great experience as well as the sponsors and Microsoft. All the effort was well worth it. SharePoint Saturdays are really special events. They provide an outlet for information and networking without the hustle and bustle of busier conferences. It’s now two weeks out and I still miss seeing emails coming in and people being so excited to participate. I for sure will do one again and I would recommend organizing an event to anyone that wants to receive nothing but a positive experience.

SharePoint can be a nagging fellow, especially if you begin to stray from any “out of the box” solution. The crux of the problem is usually that you are asked to go out of the box to create columns, content types and views. A wide range of SharePoint experts will always say, “If you can do without coding or SharePoint Designer you are saving yourself possible headaches down the road.”

One of the main reasons I chose to dedicate so much of my professional time on SharePoint is because it gave me the possibility to own the very site where I post and work. As a knowledge manager and trainer I have the constant need to keep materials updated. I also need to keep my end user engaged. Working within the constraints of enterprise learning and publishing structures means you have to send materials out to teams that then in turn publish the materials out, not always swiftly.

Two things really. The first is that SharePoint Designer became free and all the ideas, projects and requests that had been labeled “I’ll do them when they spend the $” were all green lighted. If you have read my earlier posts and case study you’ll know that I have had a fair amount of time in front of people selling MOSS. In each group there are always a few or so the saying goes, but in this case they weren’t what you’re thinking. They were the minority, the ones who see the value and begin to research and think along side as you move forward. Needless to say the four key elements that are recurring eyebrow raisers are: Branding, Versioning, Security, and Workflows.