Author Archives: Tori Pazda

If you’re like the majority of companies, you’ve probably witnessed it first-hand: great business solutions — namely, Intranets and collaboration tools — that are difficult to adopt among employees. It’s a scenario that’s all too common — and worse, many companies don’t even realize there is a problem until it’s too late. So why the disconnect? 

The truth is, many companies embrace what I’ll call the “Field of Dreams” mentality. They believe if they build a great solution, users will come. But this couldn’t be further from the truth; in fact, without the right strategies in place for planning, building and supporting your solution, you’ll find yourself in a Field of Dreams — where no one is playing ball.  

But the good news is, that by putting the right strategies in place from the start, you avoid this scenario altogether. In this two-part blog series, I’ll surface the specific methods and strategies you can use to increase your adoption and make your Intranet or collaboration tool a homerun for everyone. In Part 1, we’ll look at the essentials and discuss some must-know planning principles. Then, in Part 2, we’ll go through some more specific and actionable strategies and ideas to get that plan moving in the right direction. 

The Essentials 

First, let’s discuss the must-haves. These are the building blocks upon which you should build your plan for adoption. Set yourself up for success by following these guidelines: 

• Have a Vision:  What company goals and objectives are you meeting by implementing this solution? When people ask the question, “What do you hope to accomplish?”, do you have a good reason? A surprising number of companies do not — so be sure you don’t move forward until you have your answer. And throughout the implementation process, keep this vision to of mind to ensure its meets your intended goals.  

• Get Stakeholder Support:  Executive buy-in, appropriate resources and a shared vision are critical. It’s only natural that employees care a lot more when their executives are putting their own time and resources into a project.  Plus, it’s key to have the support and assistance from an executive sponsor along the way.  

• Know Your Value Proposition: Make sure employees understand, “What’s in it for me?”  While a good vision statement is nice at a high level, you’ll want to show demonstrable ways that this solution positively and tangibly benefits the daily working environment for the people using it. 

• Communicate & Manage Expectations:  The more involved and informed people are, the more connected they feel to a project – and the more they care about its success. Be sure you have a communication strategy, and throughout the implementation, make sure people understand what is happening and when. 

• Lead by Example. Champions for a solution can come from all levels, across all departments – so give them the chance to demonstrate leadership by visibly contributing to the success of the project. Designate employees to take an active role, and provide them with incentives to make it worthwhile. 

Barriers to Success

Second, let’s discuss some of the common roadblocks that prevent you from a successful adoption. Keep an eye out for them so you can see them coming – and if they happen, here are some ways to work through them.    

• Lack of available time to work on the project. If someone doesn’t make an Intranet/Collaboration solution a priority, then there is a bigger problem.  Did that person’s manager effectively allocate the time needed for this project to succeed? And what about that manager’s manager? It continues up the hierarchy until someone re-evaluates whether or not this project is important or not.  If it’s not important, then what’s the point of a successful adoption?  This happens a lot:  team leaders want an Intranet, but they keep it so low on the priority list that it yields a poor result. Bottom line: if it’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing right.  

• Lack of resources assigned to see it through. This is the exact scenario as “time” but can be replaced with “budget.” It costs time and money to create solutions of any kind. If you set the expectation that you can complete it for less than it actually costs, you will be faced with some difficult decisions at some point.  Face those decisions at the beginning of the project — so can ensure your budget aligns with your requirements.  Do not expect to get a Cadillac for the price of a Toyota.  All too often, people underestimate what it will take to truly meet their needs.  

• Avoid the “I don’t see the value, so I’m going to phone it in” mentality. This is where vision and executive support play a huge role. When explaining the value of the solution, it’s good to have a key executive do it – so he or she can lend credence to it and explain how it aligns with corporate goals.  If you are building this solution for the right reasons, you should have a compelling argument to provide value to the end user. Ideally, employees care about their company – so by simply explaining to them the solution’s value to the organization, they’ll have a good reason to use it. 

• Failure to provide sufficient training. “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do.” Planning the training and support is one of the most critical factors in the long-term success of a solution; yet this statement is an all-too-common pain point when it comes to adoption. We’ll cover this in more detail later– but in short, your employees should know who to talk to when questions come up. This requires active and passive support from a specific team, in addition to the helpdesk. 

Planning 

Now that you know the essentials, and various barriers to success, here are some basic planning principles to help ensure your SharePoint Intranet & Collaboration project is moving in the right direction from the get-go: 

• Perform discovery and (some) design as a first step. Get employee input from different organizational areas – and avoid coming up with a budget until you complete this step.  How do you know how much it will cost unless you know what you want to create? Reduce risk by evaluating, not guessing. 

• Use someone with like experience to perform a budgetary analysis and estimates. Individuals who have built SharePoint intranets correctly have project plans from past successful implementations — and can easily show you the steps and talk about how to apply your solution to your specific needs.  (Note: Include these individuals in the Discovery and Design phase mentioned above.) 

• Promote open feedback from all parties during the planning phase.  This gets everyone involved as stakeholders from the beginning 

• Form specialized teams: such as a project team, adoption team, or governance committee.  Staff these teams from various facets of your organization, and ensure everyone has a shared vision of long-term success. 

• Create a road map to help you determine when certain features or elements will be implemented. It prevents scope creep, and can help avoid a common problem: trying to implement every desired feature to appeal to the widest audience. Instead, implement in smaller, precise phases.  This creates less risk and creates more opportunity and helps you ride on the success of the next bullet… 

• Showcase your wins. When you reach project milestones and road map phases, be sure to communicate that victory along with specific examples of how a particular feature or capability helped achieve a goal. Promote your victories internally, and others are sure to take notice.  This tactic may also get you more resources and commitments to drive additional features, creating more opportunities for internal success. 

• Recognize your Intranet or Collaboration tool as an organizational undertaking — NOT an IT project.  Asking your IT department to “build an Intranet” is a relatively unfair request, and chances are, IT will not have the time or know-how to perform company-wide discovery and business analysis. Naturally, they may build and pilot with their own departmental needs in mind; which, in terms of adoption, is a backward approach. 

Knowing the basics – and laying the groundwork for your plan – is a great first step in increasing the adoption of your Intranet. Next, it’s time to put those ideas into action with the right strategies. We’ll take you through some critical checklists in Part 2 to help you accomplish this. If you have any questions so far, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

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Microsoft recently announced that its plans for new development will be done using SharePoint Framework, a page and part model that gives us yet another way to customize Office 365 and SharePoint. SharePoint Framework is fully supported for client-side development and allows for easy integration with Microsoft Graph, in addition to providing support for open source tooling. For Timlin, this is good news, as we will likely be able to develop against the same application program interface (API) as the product team. 

Setting the Stage: Past Problems and Future Promise

Looking to the past, we’ve seen some shortcomings with the look and feel of other Microsoft methodologies –  particularly, it’s been difficult to customize applications to look and feel like they are part of the Office 365 platform. Microsoft has solved for this issue, however, with the release of Office UI Fabric, a front-end toolkit that helps your app or add-in blend into Office and Office 365.

And now, as we see it, the future is promising for SharePoint Framework. There’s an increased user demand for new capabilities when it comes to collaboration platforms – and the SharePoint Framework model responds to that demand with customizations that integrate with SharePoint UX. Users can also look forward to the new look of features including the SharePoint Online document libraries.

Getting Started with SharePoint Framework

So what are some things you’ll need to keep in mind to get set up with SharePoint Framework? Here’s a quick run-down of what may be involved, and some resources to help you along.

First, you will need to set up your environment. Now, if you are like me, a long-time Microsoft Developer who looked to C# as my bread and butter, you may expect this to be some add-in to Visual Studio. However, this is not the case. Microsoft has made it easier for non-SharePoint developers to start adopting the platform: they have embraced the open source world and tools; partly out of conviction and partly out of necessity (perhaps the Visual Studio team simply can’t keep up).

Next, let’s take a look at the list of tools you will need and what they do:

• Node.js: A JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. Think of Node JS as your IIS Express in Visual Studio — you need something to serve up the files for your application.

• npm: A package manager that allows you to find, share and reuse packages of code and reassemble them in new ways. (In Visual Studio, it would be comparable to the Nuget package manager.) If you need to get the latest version of something, there is an npm package for it. And typically, when you install Node.js, it will install npm for you as well.

• Yeoman: This tool helps you kick start new projects, prescribing best practices and tools to stay productive. For example, Yeoman offers new project templates, which we can equate to New Project– Empty SharePoint 2013 Project.

• Gulp: Gulp is a JavaScript task runner that lets you automate tasks, namely solving for repetitive processes that developers find themselves doing over and over again on a daily basis. Think of MSBuild, which is scripting to automate builds and deployments.

Finally, you’ll want to think about a source code editor. Of the myriad of choices when it comes to code editors, here are two popular choices you’ll want to consider:

• Visual Studio Code from Microsoft: This powerful and speedy source code editor is good for daily use, and allows you to debug code directly from the editing tool. It also has built-in Git commands, extensions for new languages, themes, debuggers – and the ability to connect to additional services.

• WebStorm from JetBrains – From the same company that brought us ReShareper, WebStorm is a lightweight but powerful IDE that can handle complicated client-side and server-side development with Node.js. It provides intelligent coding assistance for developers (like smart code completion and error detection) as well a support for the latest technologies.

Now that we’ve covered the basics on SharePoint Framework, including some of the tools you’ll want to keep top of mind, keep an eye out for our next blog where we’ll cover how to setup your environment and write some code.  Stay tuned until next time – and remember, if you would like to learn more about the SharePoint services Timlin provides, contact us at any time.

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As a Microsoft consulting partner, Timlin runs its core business using the tools and capabilities of Office 365 and Project Server Online.  All of Timlin’s project work — including project tracking, task management, resource planning, timesheet entry and project status reporting — is delivered using Project Server and SharePoint sites. Project Server has been around for a long time; however, only with recent enhancements to Project Server Online has the product evolved to the point where the long list of capabilities is getting easy enough to realize the benefits of a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution. The challenge in using Project Server Online is not that it requires coding or extensive customizations: it’s determining the best way to configure the product to meet an organization’s requirements in a user-friendly, easy-to-understand way.

In this blog, we’ll share some learnings and insights around implementing such a PPM solution using Project Server Online – and show what this solution looked like in action for one of Timlin’s recent clients: a neighborhood health care center that needed a better way to enter, prioritize, plan and track all of its enterprise projects.  

Setting the Stage

Based on our healthcare client’s PPM requirements and the built-in capabilities of Project Server Online, our expectation during the sales process was that most of the requirements would be delivered using out-of-the-box components.  During the project, we found this to be true. Here’s some of the strategies we used to provide the best-fit solution to meet their needs: 

1: Employ an Agile Approach

With the many features of Project Server — and the ability to quickly change configurations to meet the requirements — an agile, iterative approach is critical. Here are some of the ways were able to do this for our client: 

• Hold working sessions with the client to go over the project requirements and goals
• Develop the initial configuration of the application to meet those needs
• Demonstrate our proposed configuration and make needed modifications
• Revisit and simplify that approach to provide an easy-to-use for all the Program and Project Managers

By employing this approach, we learned that with in-depth knowledge and expertise on the capabilities of the application, the actual configuration was smooth and relatively simple.

2: Maintain an Open, Accessible Project Center

A central repository for all projects is vital. It allows senior management to quickly access and review the status, timeline and any related issues.  In configuring the Project Center for our client, we implemented the required new fields and views to allow the client’s senior management to ascertain this information at a glance. This central view was a huge win for all team members, and the built-in views helped senior management easily get updates to project status, see any risks, and quickly understand if certain issues required attention.

Color-coded indicators (along with distinguishable shapes for one color-blind project team member) denote project status. This is just one example of the product’s flexible, customizable format. 

3: Enable Project Prioritization and Approval

A customized PPM solution enables program and senior management team members to prioritize and put projects through a formal approval process.  Project Server Online has built-in capabilities to support this using the features of Project Strategy, allowing its users to:

• Establish drivers (in other words, objectives that you can measure against)
• Prioritize your projects using those defined drivers
• Rate one driver against all or a subset of the remaining drivers (Project Server Online helps configure this by asking the user a series of questions)
• Run a system check on the consistency of your answers – this provides an automated calculation of project priorities (a percentage of the priority against 100% for each driver)

Going back to our recent case study, we found that our client prioritized projects using a simple Excel spreadsheet with built-in functions to calculate project priority based on critical objectives. We quickly determined that the Microsoft strategy approach was too complicated and this particular client required a more simplified approach.  So to meet those requirements, we implemented a custom workflow where we built out phases to track the lifecycle of the project.  That way, new projects would go through a project approval workflow, and the approval process consisted of a simple calculation of the project priority.  The standard views were successful in allowing management to see projects throughout the stages defined in the workflow – which in this case, included: Proposal, Approval, Execution, and Retrospective.  

4: Customize Resource Allocation and Management

Resource Management is always a critical component and driver of project success. Once an organization reaches a certain size or number of projects, the task of managing resources across projects is particularly challenging. Project Server Online solves for this with features, that when properly configured and used, allow users to:

• Make resource requests
• Implement approval workflows to assign resources
• Use the tools to match resources to projects based on their role
• Assign and monitor resource utilization by project and across projects

For our recent project, we created a custom field to capture skills for each user, then used the match functionality to find and assign resources with the matching skill. For capacity planning purposes, simplified reporting views help team members quickly identify and act on over- or under-utilized resources. 

5: Implement Reporting, Tracking and Analysis Functions

One of the best benefits of using Project Server Online as a PPM tool is the excellent capabilities and flexibility of reporting on project data.  Out of the box, the tool provides a number of views, charts and graphs to easily report on the entire portfolio of projects.  If those functionalities aren’t enough, it is very easy to extend the reporting capabilities using Excel services, or connecting Power BI to the Project Server Online site and building out custom dashboards for full flexibility.  In addition, the recently added Office 365 Project Portfolio Dashboard app provides an out-of-the-box dashboard application. We found that this not only provided our client with tremendous reporting, but an easy-to-use mobile application to get your reporting from any device, anytime.

Using Past Learnings to Develop Future Best-Fit Solutions

In summary, Microsoft has shown us that its recent and continued innovation with Project Server Online has brought incredible improvements to the platform: it’s extremely flexible and configurable, and there are multiple ways to tackle any given problem. (Note: This is the same fundamental paradigm with SharePoint, and probably why both platforms often make developers and users confused on the best way to use the many tools available.) Additionally, as mentioned previously, PPM implementations can be configured out of the box with no custom code.

As with any implementation, it’s critical to understand your requirements, key goals, and the ability of your users to handle change before you start configuring the solution. As we learned in the project cited above, as well as in most of our SharePoint work, there are multiple ways to configure the application to meet the requirements. When done right, relatively minor customizations can greatly enhance the end user experience as well as user adoption. While the above strategies are a good overview, using Project Server Online as your PPM solution requires expertise and effort in order to get the very best custom-fit solution. If you’d like to connect with us to better understand the level of expertise we provide, please contact us at any time.

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We’ve been working diligently with Microsoft Planner since its early release, and after three solid months of tinkering with the program, I have a few updates I’d like to share with the community. 

Setting the Stage: Why We Want Planner (or Something Like It) 

We evaluated planner for two main reasons. First, our business specializes in helping companies get the most out of Office 365 and SharePoint. We need to fully test and understand the platform’s capabilities when making recommendations and designing solutions for our clients. Likewise, we believe in “drinking the koolaid,” and we use these same tools every day to run our own business. There’s no better way to learn a platform than by using it to solve your own problems.

My second reason for paying attention to Planner (and the Yammer groups discussing it) is that it helped us to recognize and further develop our specialized skills with the Office 365 suite. This has become a niche skillset for Timlin consultants, and almost all of our clients and prospects seem to need it. This need is what excited us so much about Microsoft Planner to begin with, as we hoped it would deliver a Trello-type user experience with a robust platform for time tracking, resource management and document storage and search. 

Ultimately, however, we discovered that Planner is disconnected from almost every other relevant service – the opposite of what we hoped for and needed! We thus decided to create what we believe is the ideal modern project management solution. 

Vision: What People Want 

At Timlin, we see a major opportunity in the void left by Planner. Organizations need the end-user flexibility Planner does provide, but with a host of additional capabilities: project management, time tracking, resource allocation, portfolio management, organized data storage and reporting. Overall, most people want structure and formality in planning and flexibility in execution. They also want transparency and integration, which requires an open system with a familiar toolset and seamless interfaces to existing systems and data. 

Essentially, most of the organizations we’ve talked to want the capability of Project Server Online and the flexibility of Trello. They want to use a familiar, existing set of tools with no hidden application elements that create extra complexities in data storage and compliance. We’re working to deliver all of those elements in one integrated platform within Office 365. We will also work with our clients to configure this system, train their employees and support their teams to ensure that the solution meets their requirements. 

What We Are Building 

Based on feedback from our clients and consultants, Timlin is developing a set of tools that will sit seamlessly within Office 365. This solution will provide a user experience similar to Planner and Trello, but it will be fully integrated into SharePoint project sites and Project Server Online for full fidelity with traditional project management capabilities. 

We will also provide tools that allow users to integrate our card-based user experience onto an existing set of project sites. In turn, this capability will allow users to import existing sets of projects into Project Server Online. Visualize your team working on your projects in the following manner: 

Project Manager 

After a project manager builds a plan via Microsoft Project, a task list or Project Server Online, the project’s data synchs to the corresponding SharePoint site. Individual tasks’ metadata can be created, and the work can be assigned to determine whether the task should display as a task card in the plan. Task data will also appear in the relevant swim lane with any necessary flagged metadata. Additionally, the project manager can determine which data needs to be collected from various task assignees through the task card interface. 

Resources are assigned via standard plan or task management, or via the underlying data in the Project Server Online backend. There is a robust set of tools for portfolio and resource allocation. 

Certain configurable elements are also determined – whether or a plan requires time tracking, for instance, or whether any custom metadata elements need to be captured or created. To prevent data loss or management issues, the project manager also determines which data task assignees can change on the plan. 

Additionally, the project manager invites the task assignees and project members to the site or plan, where they can automatically view a Trello-style interface for all tasks, including assignment. 

Project Resources (Task Assignees) 

Task assignees can view the project board, swim lanes and any information about their tasks from the project management interface, including hours or work allocated, due dates and any other metadata derived from the original plan. Overall, the real value of solution to task assignees is the ability to manage their tasks in their own ways, with notes, links, attachments, lists, images and other data that helps them complete their work. 

Assignees can also update statuses, time sheets and remaining work from the task card, and that information flows back to the project plan for maintenance by the project manager. This data can be sourced in Project Server Online or in other manners according to the organization and configuration. 

Finally, the plan maintains a “living” presence by highlighting task updates, new and changing data and visual indicators about status and changes. This features makes new information clear and evident to everyone working on the plan in real-time. 

Wrapping Up 

Unlike traditional project plans or task lists, the information about a plan (and the tasks within it) remains fluid, able to be accessed and customized by members of a project. Visual icons on the tasks cards and plan indicate the type and quantity of new information, and notifications stream in real-time to quickly show people what changes have been made. The project manager can also choose a traditional portfolio or Microsoft Project view, either of which will provide key project updates via updates to end users’ individual task cards. 

Task assignees and project managers view and interact with the same plan in very different ways, and we need to embrace those differences while maintaining seamless integration. No matter the assignees’ working methods, managers can view summary and detail information across all projects quickly and easily, using standardized KPIs and measurements. This solution truly blends the best of both the formal project management and modern task management worlds. 

We’re currently building the structure to support this application, and we have plenty of interest and feature requests. Now is a great time to let us know how our application can help you, and we want your input on what features will make it a great product. Please send us feedback and feature requests, or reach out to talk details and timeframes. We look forward to hearing from you! 

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SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference is back for another round this year, from June 27-30. The conference offers over 80 technical classes and tutorials presented by top SharePoint experts, as well as a wide variety of keynote speeches on branding, management, business intelligence and a host of other topics that are sure to pique users’ interest. 

Of course, this year’s SPTechCon will also feature the first conference sessions on SharePoint 2016, the highly anticipated, most recently released version from Microsoft. In addition, several presenters and instructors will still focus on SharePoint 2013 and Office 365. No matter what version you’re running – and whether or not you plan to upgrade in the near future – the 2016 conference will have a great deal to offer you! 

As for Timlin, we’ll be sponsoring and attending the event, which will take place at the Sheraton Boston in Boston, MA. We’ll be running our usual information booth #500, as well as a “Stump the Experts” session on 6/29 at 9:45am and a “Lightning Talk” on 6/28 at 5:30pm.  Great information will be offered for those who attend and we’ll be sure to share this knowledge post-event. 

We’ll also use this opportunity to announce our new solution that builds on the project management tools available in Office 365 to provide a robust, yet easy to use project management solution.  After evaluating the Office Planner product along with 3^rd party solutions such as Trello, we feel there is a strong need for a solution that provides the structure available in Microsoft Project and Project Server Online, but provides much more task flexibility and friendliness for your end users.   At SPTechCon, we will be announcing our new offering based on Office 365 for managing your projects at a new level of flexibility, while also maintaining structures for time and costs as well as resource planning. 

With all of these exciting improvements, our project management solution is sure to help you manage your data, workflows, employees and clients more effectively. We hope you’ll come out to give it a look! This year’s SPTechCon is sure to help you leverage exciting new SharePoint features and add-ons, as well as improve your skills and expand your knowledge of Microsoft’s award-winning software suite. We hope to see you there!

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Now that SharePoint 2016 has been released, consumer demand has steadily increased for SharePoint, Office 365 and hybrid solutions that combine the two. There was a lag in interest over the past eight months, but now businesses are looking to implement these products as Microsoft solidifies its shift towards hybrid and cloud solutions. On our end, demand for support services has skyrocketed since SharePoint 2016 came out – but not for the same services requested just a few short years ago. As new options become available, our clients and many businesses like them are adopting different software and workflows that better meet their needs.

Overall, the SharePoint 2016 release should serve as a reminder to consider your current options, future opportunities and the availability of support for the platforms you choose. At Timlin, we specialize in helping organizations design, implement and support their platforms based on these core software and service components. In this Office 365 migration guide, we’ll discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Microsoft’s current offerings and explain why certain solutions may be best for you.

SharePoint 2016: On-Premise Only

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If your existing SharePoint environment is already onsite, your path of least resistance will be to upgrade or migrate to a new version of the same software. Your best bet will depend upon which version you’re currently running. If you’re already on SharePoint 2013, you may or may not want to make any move at all – at least not yet. However, SharePoint 2007 and 2010 are out of date in both features and support, and we strongly recommend an upgrade if you’re still running those versions. Our recent article highlights some of the new features of SharePoint 2016. 

The following are a few of the most common scenarios and reasons for adopting this approach:

• If you currently have, or if you anticipate developing a heavily customized SharePoint environment, a hybrid or on-premise solution will make the most sense. Server-side development and tight integrations with “behind-the-firewall” systems necessitate an environment that you control.
• The need to crawl and index local content also necessitates a local SharePoint environment. File shares, websites, databases, custom searching and content enrichment are common needs in larger organizations, and although they can be supported with a hybrid approach, the volume of local data my dictate an on-premise platform. Strict security and compliance requirements may also dictate where data must live within your organization. While Microsoft’s cloud solutions can support most compliance needs, some organizations’ policies can only be solved with an on-premise solution.
• Regulatory authorities’ validation requirements may create specific restrictions that can only be managed locally or with a specialized, dedicated hosting environment not supported by Microsoft’s cloud solutions. 
• The need for largescale, strategic investments in IT personnel, data centers, hardware and licensing may influence your ability to quickly change direction. There are other costs to consider, as well, including patching, training, support, redundancy and disaster recovery. These costs aren’t exclusive to an on-premise solution, but they must be considered.
• Dedicated SharePoint “applications” may provide specialized services vital to your organization, and those services may be influenced by any or all of the above considerations. If there’s an application you can’t do without, you’ll need to adopt the solution that allows you to continue using it. 

SharePoint Online via Office 365 

Thinking of moving entirely to the cloud? This path represents 100 percent of your SharePoint exposure within Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

The following are the most common scenarios and reasons for adopting this approach: 

• You’re starting from scratch. Like a first-time home buyer without a house to sell, you don’t have anything steering you in one particular direction. Although this scenario isn’t exclusive to a cloud-only approach, many brand new SharePoint environments are now based in the cloud.
• You want to get out of the administration and infrastructure business, and the software-as-a-service approach is looking more and more attractive. You’ve done the math, you’ve heard how many companies are moving to the cloud, and you want to be next.
• Your organization is fairly small, or you’re a non-profit organization. Not long ago, SharePoint was only available to large enterprises with the resources necessary to purchase, host and manage their own environments. Traditional multi-tenant SharePoint hosting wasn’t very good, either, and it was usually limited to single-site collection with no active directory integration or administrative capabilities. These barriers to entry have vanished, now that the price per user has dropped so much. Office 365 is an absolute no-brainer for small businesses and non-profits, even if they’re only using it for email, Skype and OneDrive. 
• You have an existing on-premise SharePoint environment that’s not well used, well governed or widely adopted. Many of our clients are in this boat, and they want to start over and make the most of SharePoint Online and Office 365.
• You don’t need heavily customized or extremely robust applications in your environment. On-premise solutions have historically been more friendly to customization, and organizations with more complex needs have traditionally avoided cloud-based solutions. That being said, each iteration of SharePoint Online continues to introduce more modern methods to build custom solutions – so don’t think that a cloud-based platform will keep you from customizing as needed in the near future.
• You’re either going to move all of your file shares to Office 365, OneDrive or SharePoint Online, or you don’t want to index and search for them via your cloud solutions. 
• You don’t need to easily connect to local data sources or line-of-business systems to integrate with SharePoint. 
• You don’t have very restrictive compliance needs that prevent you from storing data in the cloud. 
• Your current SharePoint environment (if you have one) is relatively simple and has minimal customizations. If this is the case, it may make sense to just migrate your whole environment to Office 365, instead of upgrading to a newer version on premise.
• You buy into the roadmap and investment in the Office 365 platform. You understand that most new features and integration capabilities – Delve, Groups, Planner, Dynamics CRM Online, Project Server Online, etc. – will be built first and foremost for the cloud. You also believe your organization needs to align with this strategy to take advantage of the roadmap and pipelined features, and you fear falling too far behind what everyone else is doing. While I’ve never believed in following the herd, I do understand the reasoning behind this mindset.
• You never want to perform a SharePoint upgrade again! This capability is a mixed blessing for Timlin. Upgrades have been a cornerstone of our business for years, but I see how painful they can be. Ultimately, I want to do what’s in my clients’ best interests, and it makes sense for them to spend resources on meeting their business needs – not unnecessarily upgrading software.
• Your organization bought an Office 365 license to move Exchange, and since they’re already paying for it, you want them to leverage its features and services. This is a fairly common scenario, and you can talk to us about what you can do to take advantage of your investment. Intranets, team sites, collaboration, project management and search: these are just a few of the features Office 365 offers beyond basic email, instant messaging and file storage and syncing.

Hybrid Connection: SharePoint On-Premise and SharePoint Online via Office 365

As the title suggests, this solution combines the two previous options. Although it’s more complex, the hybrid approach offers several powerful advantages. Essentially, you get to create an on-premise environment and connect to Office 365 and SharePoint Online, allowing you leverage the best of both worlds with cross-capable services and features.

Here are a few cases where the hybrid approach shines: 

• Your on-premise solution is working well, your organization has migrated several major services (Exchange, Skype, etc.) to Office 365 and you now own SharePoint Online. You’re already paying for all of it, so you might as well take advantage of the cloud-only features you can now offer your users. This option is cheaper than a complete migration to Office 365, and its usability and features are much more flexible.
• You use many custom applications, but you also have a lot of team sites, intranets and department sites. You want to offload the larger or more mundane group of sites to simplify your backup and recovery processes, so you keep that simple data in Office 365 and the more complex data on your local servers.
• You want to take advantage of Project Server Online and use SharePoint integration as your portfolio and project management suite, but you don’t want the hassle of Project Server onsite. This scenario also applies to the sole use of Office 365.
• Due to unknown organizational needs, you require the ultimate in flexibility for your environment. You also want to stay a little agnostic on your updates and upgrades and follow Microsoft’s suggested paths for future-proofing.
• You need to connect to on-premise systems and index content, but you also want to leverage everything else Office 365 has to offer. 
• You want the freedom for deep application development, including system integration, but you still want the “rest of SharePoint” to be in the cloud. 
• You want to build first-class external sharing capabilities while keeping much of that data segregated from your on-premise environment. 
• “Because Microsoft recommends this approach.” Don’t laugh; I’ve heard this one several times! Although a hybrid solution may be your best bet, you still need to seriously consider your other options.
• For various reasons, many organizations need to keep on-premise environments. Still, they’ll want to invest in the future by adopting cloud-based services and features. For these companies, it makes perfect sense to add a hybrid connection to the existing environment. I favor this approach because it provides, by far, the greatest possible flexibility and capability.

Outliers

Other configurations that can impact your decisions:

Multiple Environments and Configurations

If you have more than a single SharePoint farm – or if you’re going to need more than one – then you’ll have another dimension to consider as you decide what your roadmap should look like. There are several reasons for this scenario: dedicated application farms; validated environments that require more change management, and that are often separated from mainstream servers; and older infrastructures that are still in use because time and budget didn’t allow for migration. 

If you’re dealing with one of these scenarios, take the time to work through it with a mid-term vision in mind, instead of kicking the can down the road. Now may be the best time to consolidate, migrate, retire and think about the next version of your architecture.

Azure / AWS

Azure services and virtualization offer several components you can take advantage of with Office 365 for Hybrid environments. Microsoft keeps on adding to an extensive list of services, but Rights Management, Auditing, databases, virtual machines and application platforms all add significant extendibility to your core architecture and capabilities. If you’re in this boat, you’ll want to think about how these services can fit into your needs as you plan. 

Managed Hosting

If you’re hosting your environment with a traditional hosting or managed services organization, now is the time to discuss your next move. We work with these companies all the time to help them keep their facilitate their customers’ adoption of newer platforms, and many of them now offer solutions and services on top of Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

If your managed services provider can’t help you take advantage of SharePoint, they probably aren’t focused on the platform’s capabilities, and they may not provide you with a roadmap to adoption. Many of these companies don’t offer SharePoint or Office 365 implementation beyond infrastructure management and licensing, and you need to consult with a company that focuses on these solutions.

Conclusion

The details we’ve discussed today are still very high-level. You’ll work out the specifics as you conduct needs analyses, select business solutions, create a vision and construct a plan. Given the recent release of SharePoint and Microsoft’s newest plans for its productivity tools, this is a great time to have conversations about the best ways to move forward. If you’ve been waiting for the dust to settle – it has. We encourage you to reach out for further assistance on your migration options.

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In Part 3 of this blog series: Building your Governance Plan – A Deeper Dive we examined the details of building out your governance plan in a way that meets your business requirements while striking the balance that ensures a successful adoption.  In this installment, we will discuss additional adoption topics as well as training guidelines and measuring success.

Adoption Woes 

Getting users to adopt a new tool or way of doing their jobs can be very difficult, and SharePoint is certainly no exception.  SharePoint has historically been brought into organizations by IT professionals who understand the platform enough to believe it will add tremendous value.  Unfortunately this group often does not understand the business requirements enough to build the solutions most relevant to users across the organization.  The absence of the conversations needed to gather these requirements leads to many failed adoptions.

Once installed, tools like Microsoft Office experience almost instantaneous adoption because they are tools that can be used independently.  They aren’t tailored to how individual users work, and they usually aren’t tailored to how they work together. 

Successful adoption of a collaboration tool such as SharePoint requires an understanding of how users engage with each other currently, (“current state”) and how that could be made better (“desired future state”).  The people best suited to tell you this are the users themselves, or representatives thereof. 

If your SharePoint project is planned without input from your primary business units your adoption will fail.  Put a different way:  If you don’t fully understand how your users do their jobs, you can’t build them tools to improve how they do their jobs and they won’t use what you build them because it’s an irrelevant burden.   

Adoption Best Practices

A successful SharePoint adoption involves proper planning with key stakeholder involvement and a full understanding of your business requirements across the organization.  Because of this, adoption planning must start at the very beginning, during the solution design process.

During the discovery phase of your project, you will hold envisioning sessions with your leadership team (“executive stakeholders”), your department stakeholders and your information security team (“key stakeholders”).  These sessions allow you to capture a clear picture of the needs of your users and areas that will need to be governed.  During this process, you also begin grooming your “champions”.

Champions are the boots-on-the-ground that represent their constituents and spread the SharePoint excitement.  The thought process of their fellow workers goes something like this:  “Jake understands what we need and is excited about this change.  We are going to get what we need because Jake is involved.  We can learn from him, and though the change will be difficult, we feel properly represented so expect this to be a good thing.”  The first impression win in this game is a significant win, and keeping an “A” is a lot easier when you start with an “A”.

These champions are an integral part of all phases of the project and will continue to be hands on in the evolution of the solution; participating in design sessions, and periodic demonstrations of functionality as it is completed.  They will also be key players in the creation of training plans for their teams and often will play an active role in delivering that training, and follow-up support.

Keeping Momentum, Building Excitement

Throughout the project, regular team meetings should be held where your champions share project status and updates with their organizational units.  These sessions can include demonstrations as well.  It’s important during these sessions that the message is business solution-oriented and not techno-speak.  Technology discussions can be overwhelming when introducing new tools, but the business solutions are familiar ground and build excitement for the change that’s coming.

Corporate launch events or broadcasts and announcements, brown bag lunch sessions and other activities are a great way to build enthusiasm for what’s to come, especially when these activities include participation from the leadership team and champions of the project.  This shows corporate leadership “buy in”, validates the project and allows your users to become invested without fear that this is just an unsupported flash in the pan.

Targeted Training

Your training programs will include instruction on how to use the platform and solutions being built.  These programs will also include details around governance and the specific importance of each piece of your governance plan as it applies to that particular group of users.  A typical training plan would include at least the following types of training:

• Administrator training.  Administering, configuring and maintaining the business solutions in your SharePoint portal, as well as the portal itself.  Topics from all three governance pillars will be covered in this training:  IT governance, information management, and application management governance.
• Content Owner Training.  For users who will be responsible for updating content in the sites, sub-sites and pages.  Typically this training will include topics of information management and application management governance.
• Power User Training.  For users who will expand the features for their organizational units based on a deeper understanding of the platform and how it can be leveraged to better serve business requirements.  Information and application management governance will be covered here, and depending on the level of customization, these users may also need to be fully educated on the IT governance policies of your organization as well.
• Help Desk.  For employees who will support your end users.  The members of your help desk team also need to be instructed on the other project roles and their division of responsibility for the platform; administrators, content owners, power users.  A help desk request is often where the clock starts ticking on your SLA’s so be aware that this is an incredibly important role in your rollout, adoption and user satisfaction metrics.
• End User Training.  Basics of how to use the applications in your sites.  This training can often be delivered by departmental champions.  Governance topics covered for these users are typically centered on your information management governance, but can include topics from the other pillars as well.

The format for your training sessions can be demonstration based, or presented as hands-on sessions where users perform a series of scenario-based instructions that give them the opportunity to learn by doing.  This hands-on approach is also a fantastic opportunity to identify areas of improvement in your user experience and your end user documentation. 

To supplement your group based training you can make use of training tools, FAQ’s, wikis and video tutorials for these different user groups and these elements can be factored into your information architecture.  You can also use SharePoint surveys and social features to gather important feedback from the consumers of your training to improve your delivery of these important topics.

In addition to the initial training that occurs as part of the solution development and rollout, periodic refresher training is important as you identify areas that are not gaining adoption or where governance is failing.

Gathering Feedback and Measuring Success

Providing channels for feedback increases engagement and expands your team of champions.  As adoption grows, so will the need for new features, solutions and governance improvements.  Providing channels for this communication will increase user engagement and timely response to those requests will increase adoption of SharePoint as a valuable business tool.

Adoption activities happen frequently during the planning, design, build and initial SharePoint deployment, but they should not stop there.  Once the solution has been delivered, it is important to hold regular sessions with your teams of end users to gather feedback, positive and negative and use this as a mechanism to improve your business solutions and your governance.  This end user interaction allows you to understand the items that are enabling or driving success, and the issues that are inhibiting or slowing your users down. 

Your help desk statistics are also a fantastic way to measure success and identify areas in need of improvement based on call volume.

Supporting Your Users

In Part 3 of this series, we discussed service level agreements and their importance in your governance plan.  Not surprisingly, these SLA’s play a large part in your adoption.  A system that is dependable, remediated in a timely fashion when there are issues, and a responsive help desk go a long way toward growing trust and adoption of your solution as an integral tool in the daily lives of your users.

Putting it All Together

In summary, SharePoint is a highly customizable and flexible platform, and with collaboration at its root, is highly individual.  Because of this, when building business solutions and forming policies for how SharePoint can be used it is important to expand the conversation to include key representatives from across the organization in all phases of the project.  These individuals are not only your governance committee, but they are your project champions and play an integral role in your adoption.

There is a very balanced relationship between governance and adoption.  Your governance committee, in understanding your business and your users is best suited to come up with a governance plan that meets the business requirements without inhibiting productivity.  Rollout activities that keep your users engaged in the project build ownership of the end solution and ensures successful adoption.  Proper initial training programs targeted to different user types, periodic refresher training and feedback sessions will help you evolve your governance plan and your platform in a way that ensures continued success. 

This wraps up our 4-part series on SharePoint Governance Best Practices. If you need help developing your governance plan, please contact us for assistance! 

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Office 365 Planner was recently released, and I couldn’t have been more excited. I waited anxiously for this tool because our organization specializes in solutions on the Office 365 and SharePoint platforms, specifically regarding data management and project management. In addition to the customizations and developments we do for our clients, we use these tools extensively for our own needs – project management, timesheets, budgeting, resource allocation and more. We believe in pushing these tools’ capabilities as far as they’ll go, and our experience gives us a great deal of perspective in helping clients build their solutions. To me, it’s a requirement for Office 365 / SharePoint solutions experts to use the platform for real-world business – not just demos and sales pitches. 

In this post, I’d like to give you my initial impressions of Planner’s new set of capabilities, now that I’ve used the program with SharePoint and Project Server Online to manage Timlin’s client projects. I’ll share what I like, what I don’t like and where I’d like to see the software go in the future. We won’t dive too deeply into specifics, but I’m always happy to share more about how we’ve put this platform’s pieces together for our own needs, as well as our clients’ needs. If you’re involved in Project Management, Kanban, Collaboration, Document or Task Management, Portfolio and Resource Management, Professional Services Automation or Timesheets, there may be something here that can help you. 

Initial Impressions 

First, Planner is very easy to use. Creating a plan is quick and simple, and the program automatically generates an associated Office 365 Group, which in turn provides its own level of collaboration infrastructure. This infrastructure includes OneNote notebook, conversation feed, calendar, lightweight document library and an easy-to-manage list of Planner members. Simply put, the creation of a plan includes a Group with all the bells and whistles. 

If you’re accustomed to Project Server, Project Client, task lists and Gantt charts, this way of working will feel pretty new. Planner’s process is much more ad hoc, fast and notification-based than traditional styles of project and task management, and there isn’t even a task list or a tie-in to a project. 

Planner also captures the newer design elements users have come to expect of web applications. We’ve been using it internally for non-client related activities that don’t warrant an entire project plan, resource management and infrastructure and overhead. The classic list and row-driven approach has become stale, and this modern user experience is a breath of fresh air. 

The notification system is based on the conversation elements tied to Groups, and assigning tasks and receiving email and conversational notifications along with task comment updates is very helpful. However, I’m not a “stream of consciousness” kind of planner. I may think that way, but when I want to plan things out on paper or screen, I need to stay organized. The Conversation features of Groups is a big catch-all at this point, and the recent addition of “Connectors” allows feeds from external sources, which will further clutter the data. I would like to see a better process for categorizing, bucketing, and filtering all of this data without using the search function. 

Moving on, Microsoft has finally brought back task aggregation, but this time it’s in the form of Planner. All tasks created and assigned are available under the “My Tasks” circle in the main navigation menu. It appears this layout is the replacement for the quietly removed classic task rollup in SharePoint, which I very much appreciated. However, it doesn’t include tasks from non-Planner locations, such as those living in task lists, using the task content type or coming from Project Server Online. 

Finally, the Charts page looks neat, but it ultimately isn’t much more than a visual indicator for task statuses and assignments. It’s useful, but it’s a little underwhelming. There are some clickable elements, which essentially filter the tasks that you can also group with non-editable metadata elements. It’s a different way to look at the tasks and statuses, but it offers more of a clean-looking veneer than any real functionality. 

What I Like 

Moving on from the overview, the following are a few of the program’s elements I really enjoy: 

• Planner’s user experience is much better than the standard task and list management experience of the Web 2.0 days. Modern UI capabilities, such as web-based drag and drop, minimal mouse clicks and interface simplicity are the name of the game here. Creating plans, cards, buckets and details within a card feels more like you’re in a mobile app than a classic computer interface, and it works surprisingly well on a desktop screen. Overall, I really enjoy the user experience over the classic SharePoint’s, especially for the target usage.
• Planner Task surfacing is also excellent. When you’re assigned a task, you’re simultaneously notified via email through the Group conversation elements, and the interface for viewing all of your assigned tasks is quick and easy to find.
• Card-based tasks – and the UI in general – are easy to read and use, and they offer a decent visual foundation for placing data elements. Each task card has basic, pertinent information and visual indicators for its title, messages, links and assignee. Clicking on it provides a “most needed” set of information, including a few nice features such as attachments, a checklist and a running commentary. All of the document-based data attachments are stored in the Groups library, and updates are automatically surfaced via the conversation feature.
• Planner includes a running comments section, which has proven to be quite useful for sending updates and correlating discussions and information to specific tasks and cards.
• You can email the “plan,” and because that plan is simply an Office 365 Group, everyone in the plan is automatically included and dropped into the conversation history.
• Planner is very easy to adopt. I get the feeling Microsoft kept it light to keep it intuitive, but also to bring it to market with minimal testing requirements. Almost any user can pick the program up in minutes, and most will master the functionality in no time. 

Overall, this software is very useful. A highly functional program that can be mastered in minutes hits that magic spot that Steve Jobs always managed to find with Apple products. Microsoft is really on to something here, even if it’s just the beginning. Planner is so easy to use that I can create a plan, drop in some data and notify the right people in about five minutes. I understand why people appreciate Trello, Basecamp and Asana, but I can’t use siloed tools that don’t live in the integrated business world of Office 365. Planner solves that problem. 

What I Don’t Like 

All that being said, there are still several problems with Office 365 Planner, and this wouldn’t be a critical evaluation if we didn’t take a look at the things that can be done better. I’ll begin with the smaller implementation items: 

• Tasks only allow single-user assignment, but tasks are often assigned to multiple users.
• Task communication and notifications occur via “Conversations” in Groups, which, due to Groups’ disconnections from Planner, doesn’t provide the best user experience. Conversations doesn’t categorize or tag notifications, which makes it too linear for my liking.
• There is no customization. What you see is what you get with Planner, and that’s going to come as a shock for anyone accustomed to SharePoint, MS Project or Project Server. Metadata options, task status, charts – it’s all fixed.
• Task data is also fixed. I thought there would be at least a few options to collect more data elements with a task, but you’re locked into the options Microsoft gives you. Tasks are completely independent in nature, with no connectivity to any elements other than embedded links or “attachments,” which are actually stored in the Group files.
• The “My Tasks” page is too basic, displaying only your cards. Those cards are bucketed based on status, but status options are fixed. It would be nice if Microsoft had at least color-coded them, displayed sticky notes or offered some other sort of custom categorization and prioritization. Despite its flaws, the old SharePoint process at least grouped them by location, so you could only view the projects you knew were high priority. What’s more, you’re limited to Planner tasks, but there are a lot of users who use task lists for other reasons.
• The main landing page, Planner Hub, is a simple representation of all the Plans you can access. Landing pages usually represent a jumping-off point, but everything surfaced on a landing page is also in your left-nav. You see your favorites in a chart, followed by a bunch of plans without filtering, grouping or interaction. Landing pages are important, though, and a lot could be done here to make the Hub more useful – especially for users with lots of tasks and plans.
• Navigation elements are locked down. You can pick a color for a plan block, but that’s about it as far as visual updates and access are concerned.
• Permissions are very basic. Everyone either has full access or none. Some type of tiered system is probably warranted for more robust management. 

Overall, the big issue with Planner is that the experience is disconnected. The program is related to but not integrated with Office 365 Groups, and it sits in an entirely separate web application (tasks.office.com). Groups, on the other hand, are part of OWA. Accessing the group tools, even automatically, opens up a new window because there’s no path back to the plan. It’s not connected to the plan from the group, even if the group was created from the plan. 

My main disappointment, however, is the lack of integration of any kind with Project Server Online or SharePoint sites. At Timlin we use Project Server Online heavily for resource management, robust project planning, budgeting, time tracking and more. We then connect those plans to SharePoint sites in Office 365 with a whole system and template for managing projects, data, communications, workflows, forms, project lists, status and access. This process is the lifeblood of our business, both internally and in the solutions we build for our clients. Planner is in isolation from all of it. You can do some great stuff with Project Server Online, SharePoint Online, Power BI, Nintex Workflow and Forms. What’s still missing is a friendly and flexible end user interface designed for people who work on the tasks.  

Next Steps 

We’re knee-deep in these technologies right now, and I plan to release a Part 2 of this article in a few weeks to talk about next steps, vision and some potential plans to reach our goals. If Planner and similar tools are important to you and your organization, please reach out and contact Timlin for a discussion!

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Most of the articles and discussions I see regarding Office 365 and cloud migrations focus on the nitty-gritty technical elements.  This is the first of a multi-part blog series in which I’ll review the key considerations you need to address to ensure a successful migration.  We will first focus on some of the less technical issues that require a more human approach.

In this article, we’ll cover some of the most important considerations for your overall SharePoint migration plan. Considerations we’ve gathered by helping a variety of enterprises move their on-premise and hosted SharePoint infrastructures to Office 365. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, there are certainly some adaptable best practices.

Treat Migration Like a Real Project 

Even if your organization is small, an Office 365 migration is a significant project, and it should be treated as such. I favor the project lifecycle approach, wherein you break down projects into phases, tasks, deliverables and milestones. This approach forces you to think about what you need to get done, to account for those tasks and to plan for dependencies. Ultimately, a detailed plan will save you time and money down the road. 

Keep in mind, however, that migrating a SharePoint environment is not the same as upgrading it. Office 365 is easier to use in some ways, but more difficult to navigate in others. The severity and complexity of each potential problem will depend upon how you’ve set up and used your current applications thus far. 

Understand the “Why” Behind Your Migration 

Do you know what stakeholders in different departments and management levels hope to accomplish through your migration? Their goals will help guide your plan. Take the time to identify the main reasons and objectives for this project, from cost reduction to hosting company shut-down. Then, tailor your plan according to those objectives, and refer back to them when difficult decisions need to be made. You should know what success will look like ahead of time, and you want to be able to show those stakeholders how you’ve accomplished their goals. 

Similarly, talk to the users throughout your organization to understand the pain points and weaknesses that exist in your current infrastructure and feature set. Write these findings down, and include them in your Discovery Phase when you’re gathering the requirements for your migration. The more you know about potential problems before the project begins, the more prepared you’ll be to solve them once it’s complete. 

Understand New Capabilities 

Even if Office 365’s specific features aren’t the reason for your migration, you should learn what the new platform has to offer. The functionality and feature set are beyond the scope of this blog, but the high-level buckets include Azure and related services, mobile device management, Office 365 Groups, business intelligence, search-based data surfacing, Kan Ban-style planning tools, video portal, document storage, digital storytelling, Skype for Business integration, smart phone management, external sharing and robust co-authoring – just to name a few! Plus, don’t forget about the ability to integrate with Project Server Online and Project Lite, which allow you to handle enterprise-level projects and resources with your Office 365 sites. 

The new platform will also provide your organization the opportunity to develop alternative methods for completing daily work. Compared to on-premise SharePoint environments, Office 365 offers greater freedom for users to complete tasks in ways that suit their preferences and styles. Adjusting processes around the new features may seem like a daunting task, but with the right information, your IT team or a third-party consultant will be able to lend a hand. 

Finally, you’ll want to consider how you can consolidate and retire existing third-party applications. You’ve probably purchased and maintained a variety of apps to shore up gaps in your old platform’s functionality, making it difficult to support and monitor the flow of potentially compromising data through your organization. Office 365 offers quite a few features that could fulfill the same roles, and it’s far safer and more efficient to offer as many solutions under the same roof as possible. 

Don’t Leave the Project to IT 

IT doesn’t really “own” most content – don’t leave the migration to them alone! Unlike more straightforward technical efforts, the migration of organizational and collaborative data must involve the providers, owners and consumers of content to a significant degree. At some point in the process, almost every department in your organization will need to get involved. 

However, IT often fails to thoroughly gather requirements from the users who will be affected by the migration. Tech skills and business skills are NOT one and the same, and IT personnel usually have a plethora of other tasks on their plates. Migrations require a great deal of communication and multiple touch points between IT and other departments, and you’ll want to create a cross-functional project team to ensure everyone’s voices are heard. Ultimately, creating buy-in within the operational departments encourages people to pitch in, provide support and make the migration as efficient and successful as possible. 

Learn more about Office 365 SharePoint Migration with this guide!

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Do you need to learn how to write fast, efficient, high performance SharePoint applications? Here’s a great case study on a recent client success. With a little ingenuity – and a LOT of experience – we were able to satisfy a company with very particular demands for their SharePoint-based site.

This client recently tasked us to write a SharePoint application with a strict requirement of sub-two second page loads. While two seconds is plenty of time for simple pages, some of these contained up to ten distinct sets of data – almost like dashboards linking to multiple sources of information. The client’s user interface was completely customized, as well, containing no traces of SharePoint from the end user perspective.

To make matters more difficult, they requested that all of their data be served up via server-side code. Plenty of experts told us this wouldn’t be possible without some serious data caching or lots of client-side code, neither of which were allowable.

We immediately decided that we could:

1. Use a custom master page based on a minimal master page template.
2. NOT use web parts, which are slow and cumbersome to position precisely.

The data we were consuming lived inside SharePoint and externally in an SQL database. We wanted to write modular code, similar to writing visual web parts, but we didn’t need all of the end user customization that a web part offers. We considered using External Lists to bring the data into SharePoint, but we decided that strategy wouldn’t offer the fastest possible performance.

Our solution:

1. Use custom pay layouts.
2. Use a custom minimal master page.
3. Embed custom user controls within these page layouts. To reduce the amount of code, we also created multiple views within each control, as well as control parameters to dictate how each control should render its data.
4. Use the Entity Framework to access data living in the SQL server. We created custom views in the database to make it easier to consume that external data.
5. LINQ to SharePoint. We automated the entity model creation by adding the SPMetal call directly from Visual Studio with a custom-input XML that limited class creation.
6. Use client-side code for external services we didn’t control: Facebook, Instagram, SmugMug, etc.
7. Set daily syncing to bring data over from the external systems into the SQL server, where data latency wouldn’t be an issue.

Because we were so concerned with performance, we tested immediately with large data sets. Our tests results were even better than expected, and on our most demanding page, the load time was less than one second. Data below the fold took longer to load, but even that bit of latency was unnoticeable to the end user.

Moreover, our LINQ-heavy code was modular and easy to maintain. All of the data queries used similar patterns, and there was no need to write complicated CAML queries. Our code also made some of the more complicated filters very easy. For instance, the site is completely customized to the specific user following login.

Ultimately, our client was amazed with the speed of the end product – a fully responsive website built on a SharePoint 2013 farm that delivers a wide variety of content.

Are you interested in learning more about building high performance SharePoint applications? Or are you looking for a team of dedicated experts to do the heavy lifting on your behalf? Either way, read more about our Professional SharePoint Consulting and Development services today!

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