Decatec Sharepoint Demo Server

My company has setup a Sharepoint WSS demo server with some of the applications-templates (CRM, HelpDesk and others)

 

URL: http://62.149.225.30/

UserName: SpDemoVisitor

Password: Decatec

I'm looking forward to your feedback !!

Grid Computing for BizTalk

Recently I've come across several projects using custom pipelines to receive, uncompress and parse all sorts of legacy formats and to create billing statements as PDF. I believe such custom pipelines to be ideal for grid computing to offload serious CPU work to other boxes and to keep it all super scalable.

grid computing

Sharepoint: What is it really? How can one best define it?

Critics of Sharepoint and often potential customer are confused by what Sharepoint really is. And MS marketing haven't found a perfect 3/4 Word definition as yet. Perhaps something like Office-CMS-Portal-Server would come near to it.

I usually describe it as a "Microsoft Mega CMS/Portal/Intranet" depending on who I am talking to. Then I add "It does (take care of ) X for you out of the box". X being file/archive documents/mail, project management, content management, bpm, workflow, publishing, (personal) intranet(s), business intelligence, search, forms, wikis, blogs, server side Excel, versioning, auditing.

How would you best describe it?

 

More Sharepoint posts

Agile BizTalk Development

Agile BizTalk Development
Lately I was tasked to prepare a project plan for a BizTalk development.
Since the deadlines were very tight, but had no issues with budget/resourses, I had to parallelize everything as much as possible.
To make it I adopted an Agile/XP metodology with CRC cards:
I essentially created 2 matrix Word templates:
1) Overview Template: For each message I had an axis for field items and systems
2) Detailed View : For each message and each step in a BizTalk orchestration I have the field items, and 3 columns: the incoming filed values, the actions applied to it and the output values for the fields.
So by creating the matrices/CRC cards each single item can be analyzed as information becomes available, developed (schemas, code) and tested, Each of these CRC cards have additional info like Orchestration, Message, WorkFlow, Project Phase, Owner. And also, each document from these templates can be printed out.

FeedBack? What could be done better?

Other Agile BizTalk posts:
http://www.winterdom.com/weblog/2006/07/17/AgileBizTalkDevelopment.aspx
http://www.theagiledeveloper.com/articles/2006/03/02/biztalk-orchestration-to-bpel
http://codebetter.com/blogs/gregyoung/archive/2006/07/13/147347.aspx

Free .NET Grid Computing software

Free .NET Grid Computing software

Digipede Tecnologies has a free Developer Edition for grid computing with free licence for a server and 2 nodes (ie. 2 computers or 2 CPUs running any version of Windows supporting .NET 1.1/2.0)

 

Read more abour Digipede grid computing from these blogs:

http://powersunfiltered.com/
http://westcoastgrid.blogspot.com/
http://krgreenlee.blogspot.com/
http://et.cairene.net/

What is still missing in Sharepoint?

What is still missing in Sharepoint ? -

Time - Tracking - to do PSA: (Professional Services Automation) - time tracking, billing .... even a basic object would be fine -

Org Chart Wizard: most customers don't know how to structure a Sharepoint installation, most often they don' t have all the needed info in Active Directory. Therefore having some sort of wizard to create an org chart - will all business units, departments and "workgrups" which generates a structure within MOSS would be ideal, especially when done and validated by a HR person

 

Anything else?

Sharepoint Taxonomy

Sharepoint 2007 Helpdesk

My employer has recently create a HelpDesk entirely build on Sharepoint - MOSS 2007.

Here is the translated page for the Sharepoint 2007 Helpdesk features.

Another Sharepoint HelpDesk blog post

Should Sharepoint become more relational

Supposing a helpdesk where each Issue has several tasks attached with a specific cost. There is no easy (fast) way to do it right now, besides some custom coding. Would it help if Sharepoint was more relational?

 

Related: http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/stefandemetz/archive/2006/09/12/Sharepoint_to_become_a_Web_DB.aspx