SharePoint Community Newsletters

Howdy 'Pointers, welcome to another packed SharePoint Community Newsletter. We have some really great things to share with you this time. If you have noticed we have just launched phase 1 of SP24, which is our new 24-hour SharePoint Conference that will be held entirely on-line and is also free for all attendees:) We have also just launched 2 great contests allowing you to win from a selection of prizes totalling $2,000!! Please take a few minutes to read about SP24 and look at the prizes below.

Welcome to the November edition of the SharePoint Community Newsletter. This months edition has been guest edited by our fantastic sponsor, Almond Labs. Almond Labs have also donated 3 (yes 3!) Nexus 7 tablets and all of the winners are announced below. Big congratulations to those lucky people and thanks to everyone that entered!

Welcome to the September edition of the SharePoint Community Newsletter. So what's been happening since the last one? The big news in the community is that we are close to welcoming our 4000th community member! (It only seems like yesterday that we ran the 3000 members Give Away). SharePoint-Community.net also became 6 months old so I thought it'd be nice to put together some interesting statistics. We are also in the middle of two other great competitions. You can either win a full conference pass to SP360Live! in Orlando, or you can a win a Surface RT. A big thanks to Collabion and 360Live for providing these awesome prizes.

Welcome to a special edition of the SharePoint Community Newsletter. To celebrate the preview launch of Office 2013 last night, which we live blogged, we are dedicating this entire Newsletter to nothing but SharePoint 2013!

We know most of you are very busy people and haven't the time to trawl endless blogs of information, so we have spent the day doing it for you! If you like what you read, please share it via Facebook and the Twitter links (just below) so that others can get a good round-up!

Thanks and we hope you enjoy the read!

We asked over 650 what they thought of SharePoint and here's the results!

It's been a battle to get this edition out - there have been so many Diamond Jubliee celebrations (here in the UK) we have barely had time to sit down. Anyway - in between eating and drinking - we have managed to pack in some really good SharePoint news and also discovered a great little tool that allows you to test out FAST Search queries - it's FREE too! In addition to this we recently discovered a FREE Windows 2012 Ebook on Microsoft Press - awesome!

Rapidly build sound enterprise-class intranets on SharePoint 2010. Gain efficiency and boost your application performance by using Telerik SharePoint Acceleration Kit. Impress with stunning UIs and data visuals. Integrate line of business data in your SharePoint project and empower business users by leveraging a rich set of ready-to-use web parts. Developing against the SharePoint platform is now quicker and easier.
As with all Telerik products, the SharePoint Acceleration Kit also enjoys a fantastic fully workable SharePoint 2010 site. The demo can be found here.Whilst our deliberations continue, why not check out some comments from the latest popular discussion "Why there is a shortage of SharePoint experts", Denis Shorin is "In The Spotlight" and we have an update on Augusts most popular SharePoint books and videos from Safari books.

"Hello my name is Mark Jones and I am a Listly addict!" I didn't mean for this to happen, however, I have recently overdosed on Listly and I absolutely love it. If you don't know what Listly is - the quick answer is it's an on-line service that allows you to create lists of anything. But there's more. With Listly you can comment, vote and embed a list straight into your blog (others can do the same). This gives those lists - you usually make in your blog posts - a whole life of their own. Why not contribute to the SharePoint lists I have created (details below) ?

I would also like to bring to your attention ARMA's new SharePoint Records Management Certification. If you are a Records Manager or need to implement large or complex Electronic Document & Records Management Systems (EDRMS) in SharePoint then this course and certification is well worth a look.

Hello there! We have been really busy being part of something very exciting! Working together with other co-founders such as well known MVPs, community contributors, conferences and vendors, we have launched a brand new social network called the "SharePoint-community.net". Think of this new network as something akin to a Facebook, but where all your friends are all SharePoint friends. We still have many new features to implement, but the basics are there, so why not come on board as an early adopter and help shape it as your community.

SPServices is a jQuery library which abstracts SharePoint's Web Services and makes them easier to use. It also includes functions which use the various Web Service operations to provide more useful (and cool) capabilities. It works entirely client side and requires no server install.

André is an experienced professional with in-depth knowledge in the fields of Planning, Control and Reporting. Andre began his career specialising in the finance sector working for consultancies such as Ernst and Young. Andre also has a strong passion for Information Technology and was fortunate to gain experience as an ICT manager whilst still maintaining a strong focus on finance.

This week includes a fantastic 'top 10 reasons why SharePoint projects fail' and also highlights a discussion about what the ideal length of a sprint (scrum) should be on a SharePoint project. We have also found a great resource on costings for SharePoint, plus a comparison chart highlighting the features that are available with all 3 SKU's of SharePoint. More and more of you are sending us content to feature in the Newsletter which is fantastic, so keep it coming! (details at the bottom).

Joel is a social media strategist, collaboration visionary and SharePoint evangelist. At a very large non profit Joel is guiding the strategy of the Collaboration group driving the global vision and adoption. He recently left Quest software where he flew around the globe speaking at conferences in over 50 countries across 6 continents forming user groups and strengthening the global SharePoint community for 2.5 years.

The Birthdays Web Part displays current and upcoming birthdays on your SharePoint intranet or portal. Now you'll know whose turn it is to bring cake!
The Birthdays Web Part for SharePoint 2010 selects upcoming birthdays from a custom Birthdays list (or Staff Directory user store) and displays them in a simple yet professional layout. The Birthdays Web Part shows birthdays for the current month and next month, and if it's someone's birthday today, it will be highlighted.

In this weeks edition, find out about the Survey Plus web part and read Gail Seymours Top 10 SharePoint Templates for Small Businesses. Find out who has been adding great comments to various discussions and is "In The Spotlight".
One interesting stat we picked up this week is that SharePoint has sold over 125 million licenses to over 65,000 customers. In addition to this - 80% of Fortune 500 companies use SharePoint!
While reading up on the SharePoint conference we also found a video of Huddles PR stunt performed 2 weeks ago : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_Ntlu9wTJU&NR=1. (Huddle hired some cheerleaders to parade right outside the conference - awesome!).

Earlier this week, Vernon Wall became our groups 16,000th member and earns the Spotlight position this week. He writes:
I am the Knowledge Manager at the 3rd largest Refinery in the US. We have been using SharePoint for all of our internal sites for a few years now. A little over a year ago we began the task of upgrading from WSS 2003 to MOSS 2007. With the hundreds of sites we own and the amount of data and site modifications involved it quickly became a huge undertaking for everyone.If you know of any great "tricks or treats" that you want to nominate for our 'cool tool', 'best of blogs' or other features, keep sending them in - we love to hear from you and aim to include as much as we can! Must catch the next broomstick before I turn into a pumpkin......!

John has been working with SharePoint for over 3 years and has been involved in various projects mainly for the utilities sector and more recently a leading telecoms provider. He focuses on ensuring the business get a high return on investment by understanding their users pain points and ensuring these are addressed through the project.
If you want to find out more about John then check out his LinkedIn Profile or tweets https://twitter.com/#!/JohnInstoneDoes your Movember feature on our fan-'tash'-tic wall of fame? Do you agree with the Top 10 SharePoint features? Is your blog featured? Find out which group member is 'in the spotlight' this week.

With the Thanksgiving holidays fast approaching we thought it would be appropriate to feature people and items we are thankful for! With that in mind, our heartfelt thanks go to:
Everyone who submitted useful links to SharePoint learning resources on the LinkedIn group discussion. There are some great ideas and if you haven't already checked them out and benefitted from the learning on offer, then we've shown them again this week in the featured discussion.

Chris is one of the most prolific SharePoint bloggers there is! He covers topics such as content deployment, development techiques, continuous integration and also talks a great deal about the SharePoint Client Object Model. So, if you are a developer his blog is a must read. Visit Chris's blog at SharePoint Nuts and Bolts.As you can see, the Newsletter has had a big makeover this week so it is now easier to find the information you are interested in. From now on we will be announcing the Newsletter on the group but not copying the content into a LinkedIn discussion as it's very hard to make it look nice (due to a lack of serious HTML formatting options on LinkedIn).

Happy New Year! Well, somehow Christmas has come and gone and a New Year is already underway. We hope you had a very peaceful and Happy Christmas holiday and we would also like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!
We recently welcomed our 17,000th member to the group. As luck would have it, he works for a wine making company and not only has he sent a biography for our 'InTheSpotlight' section, but also has provided wine tasting tips. Unfortunately we didn't get chance to include them in in a newsletter before Christmas, but we did follow his advice (once or twice over the festive period!) and can give our seal of approval!

The DocImage solution was developed to meet the need for a basic, functionally-rich storage-and-retrieval imaging solution for SharePoint - at a very affordable price point.
Enhance the native capabilities of SharePoint with an easy to configure search web part and universal, zero-footprint viewer. DocImage is available for SharePoint 2007 + 2010 and is licensed on a per Web Front End basis.In this edition we have featured 13 of the products you have added to the "do you know any SharePoint Add-ons, web parts, applications, templates or services" discussion we featured in the last edition. Find out if your nomination is included or whether you are 'in the spotlight' or our featured blogger. You can also check out some fabulous websites and links we've found from around the world.
We would also like to say a special congratulations to group member - Bill Ayers - who has just passed his final lab and is now a Microsoft Certified Master (MCM)! Well done Bill! You can view his LinkedIn profile here.

CloudShare gives you the ability to create development and test environments completely off premise. You can choose what you want in your environment from a pre-defined set such as SharePoint 2010 Farm. If you hit a brick wall or break your environment then you can start over with a fresh sandbox in mins. Fabulous!
My favourite feature is the ability to share a "permalink" with other users. When they click this link they are given an entire 48-hour FREE clone of your environment at the last snapshot. We are using exactly this to trial DocRead. You will also find that CloudShare doesn't break the bank. Find out more at the CloudShare site.We also have the usual features, Best of Blogs, 'in the Spotlight', links to the next three SharePoint worldwide events and also find out if you are named as a Top 10 LinkedIn Member! We hope you enjoy the read!

Here we are again, SharePoint Newsletter 48 is ready! So, what's been happening? Our group continues to grow and is big - really big! We will be welcoming our 21,000th member some time in the next two weeks. Why the logo on the left? Well you may have missed it, but conference tickets are now available for the SharePoint Conference 2012 . This is going to be the conference that unveils 2013 to the world. There's a rumour that the beta will be out in June, but we are sceptical.

As you will see from the new title, we are in the process of renaming the group to 'SharePoint Community'. This means we are now all set for the arrival of SharePoint 2013 and also makes the group a little more memorable than 'SharePoint 2007 - 2010'. We also welcomed our 21,000 member on Monday. As always - if you are a member of the group and want to share information in the Newsletter, then please feel free to send it over to us.

This week Salem are pleased to announce the official launch of their brand new comprehensive & original publication, SharePoint Governance & The Pillars of Wisdom, together with its new website to the global community.
In this exclusive and packed 150+ page business governance bible, Salem demonstrate how the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a philosophy that underpins all major belief systems, also underpins the corporate universe and how it applies directly to SharePoint.
What else? There's a link to a great article about Microsoft (probably) buying Yammer along with some other great picks. In addition to that, the big announcement from Microsoft this week is the Microsoft Surface - we are sure you will agree that it's going to look lovely with SharePoint 2013! There's a video below showing the key note from yesterdays announcement.