I went to Top 10 Administrative Bad Practices ITP220 and navigated the exhibit hall.
Ben did a great job, however I believe if you didn’t know these things you shouldn’t be consulting in SharePoint. Now he did ask what the break out was as far as people in the meeting, and it was developers and CIO’s, BA / PM. I’m sure they benefited from this speech. And as I said yesterday, very smart man. He was able to respond with a wealth of information when asked.
As far as the Exhibit Hall, Three things to note H3 Solutions and NINTEX, and Black Blade.
· Out-of-the-box support for SharePoint Lists, Document Libraries and Search
· Out-of-the-box support for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Palm Pre browsers
· Customizable interface elements through simple CSS alterations
· Developer’s API for building custom mobile applications to support your business
· Complete framework for extending your enterprise to your mobile workforce
Seems like an easy sell…. Most of our customers say they want some sort of mobile functions. Now out of box SharePoint has the “/m” option, but for most list information and or general navigation it’s kind of crappy. H3 Solutions out of box app is only $199.99 per WFE, and allows for targeted mobile information by views and it looks real good on the phone. And fast!! So for anyone who wants more mobile integration without having to customize the “/m” look no further. Now who knows SharePoint 2010 may have this beat, since it seems like so much that was missing the first time is on its way in 2010.
· Extends Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to provide advanced workflow capabilities via a graphical web based interface embedded within SharePoint.
In this market there are many workflow products. Here at Aspenware we have generally work in the Windows Workflow Foundation, and plug K2 in where appropriate. And on the K2 side a really great product for very complicated workflows. But NINTEX’s in SharePoint site, GUI workflow generated makes it so easy a child could use it. Now I haven’t personally used this product but the live demo was very persuading. And its seem to support parallel and tiered workflow steps, but without using it myself, who knows. It’s licensed on the farm level and I believe standard is $9,000 and the enterprise version is $18,000. So may be a better choice if on a budget.
docBlock Ascend was their product that was basically debuted here.
· The power to allow multiple authors to work on one document in parallel,
· Virtual document capabilities seamlessly integrated into the standard SharePoint document features,
· Automatic configuration within your SharePoint farm, after answering only a few simple questions about your environment.
Now at 50K an appliance this is a large chunk to swallow, however if you need it. Get it… Now I did think the user interface was a bit cheesy. All dark colors, like there website, blue and black. Seemed goofy. I believe training will be a must for some of the features, since not every user is a power user. Interacting with the document is just as it would be in SharePoint, but setting up the slices and remerging it could need a smarter person and some governance.
Day 2 coming!!!! WOOO!!!!
