One thing that I really encourage different companies to do is to take advantage of any and all of the training opportunities you can. No matter your skill level in SharePoint, there is something to learn from a week of onsite training. My training preference, of course would be for the classes we offer at Rackspace. Our team has worked to develop a 4 day training class for Business Users that will really get you to the next level when it comes to building business solutions. The class starts with an Introduction to SharePoint and then goes through several modules such as – Working with Lists & Libraries, Search, Social, Low-Code Solutions and Content Types (full agenda can be found here). The final module (my personal favorite) is one called “Putting it all to Good Use” where you will take everything you learned from the previous sessions and combine the techniques together to build out a business solution. There are many different reasons to attend training, this post contains a few of the ones that I feel are the most important / beneficial.

Opportunity to Learn in a Classroom Setting

I know all of us have different learning styles, but there really is something to be said about being able to learn in a classroom environment with other students and an instructor. The structure of our training allows for you to have full access to a site for testing and completing labs. This set up will allow you to follow along with the instructor as they are teaching or even allow you to create sample environments. And, the best part of all- you are away from your desk and not as easily distracted by the day to day tasks at hand. So yes, you will be away for 4 days, but imagine how much more productive you will be when you get back to the office after the training.

Opportunity to Network with Other Students

The next best thing about training is that you will get to learn from and network with other students, who likely have some of the some business needs and internal challenges that you are facing. There is no better way to learn how others do things than networking with them, learning how they have accomplished various tasks. There is a lot to be said for book knowledge and classroom training, but the equation isn’t complete until you apply all that you have learned to real world scenarios. In an environment like this you will be able to meet with and learn from others.

Opportunity to Network with Instructor

The best part about our instructors is that…we AREN’T!  Don’t get me wrong, we are all skilled at speaking in front of audiences and do teach classes on a regular basis, but we aren’t full time teachers. This means that we spend the majority of our time working with clients and building out solutions and then we also teach. What this brings to the classroom is an instructor that has a wide range of real world experience. This allows for your training experience to really become more like a consulting experience, taking the training to the next level. If you are really looking to “jumpstart” your ability to build solutions for your organization then this training is just what you need to get started. You could even spend time thinking about the solutions you want to build internally and gathering ideas so that you could come to the class prepared to ask questions specific to what you have in mind.

Learn New Techniques

The last thing to highlight is the importance for everyone who uses SharePoint to learn exactly what SharePoint can do out of the box. If you really want to be the best Server Administrator or Developer, then you have to first understand what the tool can do on its own. This will help ensure that you are building solutions that complement the product and that you are configuring things in ways that will ensure the best experience for your users. SharePoint is all about end users having tools that empower them to work smarter and more efficient. If you role is to support these users, then you should be very familiar with the tools and what can be done out of the box. More than once I have run into a developer that has spent the time building a custom solution for something that could be done out of the box. The best way to prevent that is to learn all that you can and then develop things to complement and enhance what SharePoint already does. To get the most of the training you could even consider sending several team members that fill different roles, allowing them to learn side by side and have conversations about applying what they have learned internally.

Let’s Sweeten the Deal!

To encourage you just a little more, I am going to make you a deal- for those that read this blog and sign up for our training course June 3-6, I will provide you with:

• A signed copy of my new 2013 book: Beginning SharePoint 2013: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint
  
• A 1hr session of “Office Hours”. For those that don’t know, Office Hours is something that I started last year at SPTechCon and it is basically a session with me where we can talk about anything SharePoint. We can cover solutions ideas that you have or even troubleshoot problems you are having as you are trying to build them. Or if you like we could pick a topic like Governance or Workflows and I could provide some quick training for you. Anything goes in Office Hours!
  

To get the perks you must reference my blog post in the comments when you register. I really hope you will take advantage of my special offer, I promise you won’t regret it!

The start of 2013 is turning out to be quite busy for me! I am going to take this post to let you know about some of the upcoming conferences. Two of them are international and I am looking forward to getting out and about to meet new folks!

First up, Virginia Beach SPS. This is my first time at this event and I am looking forward to attending, what I have heard referred to as one of the best SPS events! I will be doing an afternoon session on Visio Services and highlighting how easy and powerful it is for building solutions.

 

Next up, Southeast Asia SharePoint Conference – Jan 2013 (Singapore). This will be my first time headed to Singapore and to say I am excited would be an understatement! Just looking at the speakers and the agenda, it is easy to say that this event is a “can’t miss” event for the area. I hope that if you are in the Asia area that you can make plans to attend!

 

 

Third, SPTechCon. I think it is safe to say that the team who puts on this conference likes me as much as I like them because they keep inviting me back J I am doing several sessions at this event, including a full day workshop and a session on what tools an Information Worker has available to them when they are working with SharePoint 2013.

 

Wrapping up the first of the year I will be heading to London to speak at the SharePoint Evolution Conference. This is my second time at this conference and to be honest I have been looking forward to this once since the minute the last one ended! I will be delivering some new content here that is focused on building complete solutions AND the workshop will work for both 2010 and 2013. So no matter the version of SharePoint there will be things for you in my session.

 

The start of 2013 is turning out to be quite busy for me! I am going to take this post to let you know about some of the upcoming conferences. Two of them are international and I am looking forward to getting out and about to meet new folks!

First up, Virginia Beach SPS. This is my first time at this event and I am looking forward to attending, what I have heard referred to as one of the best SPS events! I will be doing an afternoon session on Visio Services and highlighting how easy and powerful it is for building solutions.

Next up, Southeast Asia SharePoint Conference – Jan 2013 (Singapore). This will be my first time headed to Singapore and to say I am excited would be an understatement! Just looking at the speakers and the agenda, it is easy to say that this event is a “can’t miss” event for the area. I hope that if you are in the Asia area that you can make plans to attend!

Third, SPTechCon. I think it is safe to say that the team who puts on this conference likes me as much as I like them because they keep inviting me back  I am doing several sessions at this event, including a full day workshop and a session on what tools an Information Worker has available to them when they are working with SharePoint 2013.

Wrapping up the first of the year I will be heading to London to speak at the SharePoint Evolution Conference. This is my second time at this conference and to be honest I have been looking forward to this once since the minute the last one ended! I will be delivering some new content here that is focused on building complete solutions AND the workshop will work for both 2010 and 2013. So no matter the version of SharePoint there will be things for you in my session.

This year I had the great opportunity to attend SPC12 and write about it for CMSWire and for Rackspace.

Each day I created 1-2 summary articles that highlighted my view of the conference. Overall, the conference was great and I learned many things, mostly around the future vision of SharePoint. Much of what I learned at SPC is going to help frame my path for the next year as I work with various clients and customers. I wanted to quickly put together a post on this blog that points you to the articles posted at CMSWire.

I would love to hear any feedback you have, so feel free to add comments below.

 

Article	Link
Finally – It’s All About Us! Thoughts from the SharePoint Conference Keynote #spc12	http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/finally-its-all-about-us-thoughts-from-the-sharepoint-conference-keynote-spc12-018195.php
SharePoint 2013: A Small Piece of a Greater Puzzle #spc12	http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/sharepoint-2013-a-small-piece-of-a-greater-puzzle-spc12-018197.php
Project 2013 – A Few Surprises Under the Covers #spc12	http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/project-2013-a-few-surprises-under-the-covers-spc12-018227.php
Social – It’s Nothing New #spc12	http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/social-its-nothing-new-spc12-018244.php
A Few of My Favorite Things in SharePoint 2013 #spc12	http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/a-few-of-my-favorite-things-in-sharepoint-2013-spc12-018293.php
A Few of My Favorite Things in SharePoint 2013 #spc12	http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/a-few-of-my-favorite-things-in-sharepoint-2013-spc12-018293.php
SharePoint Conference, Surface Style #SPC12	http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/sharepoint-conference-surface-style-spc12-018310.php
SharePoint Community: Loud and Clear #spc12	http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/sharepoint-community-loud-and-clear-spc12-018315.php
A Racker’s Perspective On The SharePoint Conference Keynote	http://www.rackspace.com/blog/a-rackers-perspective-on-the-sharepoint-conference-keynote/

In early 2013 I will be starting a new series highlighting some of the new features in SharePoint 2013 that will make your like easier

I wanted to do a quick post to answer a question that I have received a lot lately – “How do I create my own custom buttons like the one in the getting started web part?”

The steps to do this are actually pretty simple, and in this post I will outline them for you. Before you get started though, go ahead and get your images together and uploaded to your SharePoint site so that we can reference them in future steps in the example. Unfortunately this isn’t a place where you can upload the image to the list at the same time you create the list item, so it must first be uploaded to the site.

Create a New Promoted Links Application

To get started, go to the site that you want to have the custom images and create a new application based on the Promoted Links App.

When prompted enter the information for your list and click save / ok. You will notice that the list loads and there are no items in the list. Use the Items Ribbon to create a new list item.

Enter the required information for the list and click save. The key fields you will want to fill in are the Background Image Location (should be a link to an image stored in a SharePoint site) & the Title. These will be the fields that are used in the Tiles view. An example of a completed list item is below:

Continue to add the remaining items that you want to have displayed as Tiles. Once you have added all the items you need, you will want to add the list web part to a page to display the tiles.

You should now see the tiles you configured on the page. Below is an example of a site that is using this approach. In my example I was using the promoted links as a way for them to quickly navigate to content that I wanted to highlight for them.

Today I am giving two different SharePoint 2013 webcasts. This post is to provide links to the slides that will be used during the presentation. There is still time to register as well if you are interested in attending.

Wednesday, November 28^th 2:00 p.m. CST
Sharing Content, Now Easier than Ever! – with Jennifer Mason, Racker and SharePoint MVP

Wednesday, November 28^th 3:30 p.m. CST
Working with Documents in SharePoint 2013 – with Jennifer Mason, Racker and SharePoint MVP

Today I did a webcast on an Introduction to SharePoint 2013 for the Information Worker. We had only a brief 20 minutes, so we just covered some of the new “basics” and things you can expect to see when you log into a SharePoint 2013 site for the first time. As promised in the presentation, I wanted to get my slides uploaded to my blog so that you could reference them at a later point in time.

Also, once the link for the webcast is posted I will share that with you as well so you can watch it if you missed it the first time. That link should be available sometime later this week.

Below is the information on where you can find Laura (@wonderlaura) and I this week at SPTechCon. Stop by and see us!

I think which each new release of the SharePoint product, I get asked the most in the first week by users about when they should jump in and when they do, what should they focus on. So in this post I want to walk through some of those concepts. And just to show you how my opinions don’t really change from release to release, here is an old school post that I wrote right after the 2010 launch. In the next few weeks much content will be published that will most likely make your brain explode with the amount of new materials available. Everyone will be itching to be the first on the market with the latest and greatest content and it will be like drinking from a fire hose. Below I have mapped out some of my tips for dealing with the overflow of information and some of the guidelines that I follow as I sort through all the information.

Know Your Role

First up, I recommend that you spend time understanding your role within SharePoint and then you start looking for information and resources specific to that information. Listed below are a few of the roles that I base my research on.

• IT Pro : Those that install and or configure (Office365) SharePoint
  
• Developer: Those that use tools such as Visual Studio to build applications to be used within SharePoint
  
• Information Worker: Those that use the Out of the Box tools to configure SharePoint Solutions
  
• Consumer: Those that use SharePoint and simply want to understand the newest cool features
  

If you are able to really start to focus first on the information that applies to you and your role you will greatly reduce the fire hose effect. Off course, this means you might need to be patient and wait for the content to become available. Like most releases with SharePoint on day 1 much of the content will be focused on the IT Pros and the Developers. But give it a few weeks, the dust will settle and then information that is more focused to the Information Worker will start to surface. This is a natural progression that I have seen over the past few releases. Besides those IT Pros need to get us the environments up and running so we Information Workers can really see what it can do!

Know Your Tools

Next, I would encourage you to spend time getting to know the tools available to you and how they play into the story of Office 2013. From the Information Worker perspective, there are a lot of avenues to explore this time around, and that’s just starting with Office! I recommend at this point that you look fresh at the tools included and look at what each of them can do. Often times we run to the new product wondering if they improved “how we do x” or if the tools from our existing methods have improved. There is a little bit of danger in this approach because it may cause us to miss out on some great new features available for us! An example of this might be looking at the concept of tasks in SharePoint. If you just look for improvements in the tasks list you may miss the new solution templates around Tasks in Access or you may miss out on some of the new Project 2013 features that integrate with SharePoint. If you instead just start with the tools available and look into what they can do and what features they provide you will get a great overview of the vision of the new product and will be able to see a more clear roadmap of how you can get the most benefit out of the new release.

Here is the list of the tools that I am going to be digging into over the next couple of months:

• Office
  
  • Outlook Integration with SharePoint
    
  • Word, Excel PPT & OneNote
    
• Access Services
  
• Project
  
• Visio
  
• SharePoint
  
• Office365
  

Know Your Source

The next warning I will give is to be careful of the source of the content you are reading. With the release just happening, your most authoritative source of content will always be Microsoft. Much of the information in the community will also be helpful, but be sure to look at the content through the lens of the officially released content. Remember this is a beta and things can still change before the final release. It is important to get out there and explore and to join the conversation! If you are new to the community, I recommend these locations to jump in:

• Office Next Blog – review the content here and provide comments! Watch and see how the teams at MS monitor this content and provide feedback when you post questions.
  
• Twitter – do a search on #officepreview and #SharePoint2013 and you will find plenty of content
  
• Yammer – join the SharePoint Community on the #SPYam network. Many different MS folks have joined this network and are actively responding to the community.
  

And this post of course, would not be complete without a big push for you to attend the SharePoint Conference in Vegas this November. The content made available at this conference will be all you need to jump headfirst into this release. The best in the community will be coming together to network and educate you on the new tools available. This is definitely the conference of the year and one that you should work hard to convince your boss that there is value in you attending. If you are new to SharePoint, an expert SharePoint shop or someone who is just getting started with Office365, there will be great content for you at this conference.

Know Your Future Plans & Roadmap

The final thing I would encourage you to do as you start to look at the new product release is to spend some time evaluating your organization and the direction it will be going over the next 6-12 months. What is the technical roadmap and what are the key areas that technology can be used to help fill a gap or provide added value? The most successful SharePoint implementations aren’t really based on using the latest and greatest technology, but instead are the ones where SharePoint has been used to really fill a need within the organization. The need can be big or small, but the impact of your solutions can lead to change within the organization. Don’t lose sight of this in the excitement of the new products, but instead use it to drive your direction as you evaluate and look at what you will focus on. This will also help you as you work on projects during the transition stage. If you know that new methods and tools are coming soon it may impact the timeline for your upgrade or may cause you to implement a temporary solution that will be used until the newest features and tools are available. The bottom line is that there is great value in understanding the latest and greatest, but the more you can do it with a plan and a strategy the greater your returns will be.

This week at the Office Preview launch I was lucky enough to receive a new Samsung series 7 tablet that is running the latest and greatest Office and Windows preview builds. I was excited to finally get my hands on one of these devices so I could start to play! I had considered in the past buying one, but decided I really should hold out to get the newest ones coming out later this year. With the testing program that started at the Office Preview I am lucky enough to get to have some hands on time before investing in one of my own.

During the launch event, Steve Ballmer sold this device as one of the many ways that you could be efficient across any device at any time doing anything you wanted. A tall order in my opinion, especially since I am one of those people with multiple devices that I use, based on whatever the task is at hand. Could one single tablet really cut down on the need for all other devices? I can say honestly at this point, I think not. As I type this my tablet is sitting under the seat in front of me as I type away on my netbook. The tablet has had many uses for me over the last week, but I simply can’t bring myself to open a blank page in Word and type away. This is the second time that I have had the choice of writing a doc on the tablet or the netbook and both times the netbook has won. If I was just consuming the data or making minor changes than the tablet would definitely have been the tool of choice. For authoring content though, I think there is a good deal of improvement that needs to come before I am excited about using the tablet for authoring large sections of content.

Big Wins

The biggest wins I have seen in the first week are around the use of Office as a tool for productivity in my day to day tasks. The first day I used the tablet I was in a full day, all team meeting. I used the tablet primarily to take notes, using One Note. I used the Stylus in the mode that converted what I typed to text. This method was wonderful! What I loved most was the natural feeling of note taking. It is I much easier to just write and not have to think about typing as I am listening, to me writing is much easier in that scenario. For about 98% of what I was writing the tablet was able to translate into the correct words. The other 2% was pretty easy to fix using the same method and just tweaking some of my writing style. They stylus was what really made the difference for me in this scenario, and had I only had access to the touch keyboard I would have probably stopped using the tablet within the first hour or so.

The second big win for me was the new layout of the Office programs. I was personally shocked at how I enjoyed working with the new tools, especially in a touch environment. If you would have asked me before I started working with the tablet, I would have told you that there was probably no chance that I would even consider having a touch enabled environment as my primary working environment. After seeing the tools in action though, I can see how easily having this available would greatly increase productivity. But beyond that, the thing that I noticed the most was that it was natural and easy to use, especially when it came time to edit things such as Smart Art, Images and styles. I could easily see myself working in an environment where I could be typing away one minute and then interacting with the screen the next. The thing that stood out the most was how natural everything seemed. In my opinion this is a big win because for your typical end users this is what will help them adopt the tools and take full advantage of what is available.

Finally, the thing that I liked the most was the integration with SkyDrive and how easy it was to be taking notes and at the same time have them updating live to my phone. I know this has been available in the past, but the difference in this version is that it just happened so much easier. I think that this alone will be a huge improvement for most use cases.

Areas of Improvement

So the post wouldn’t be complete without me mentioning some of the less desirable things I have experienced. The biggest issues I have had to date are with the device itself and how it responds to my touch. I have had many issues working with the screen to make it do what I want it to do. I also have struggled with how some of the commands just seem hidden. I have been using Windows7 phones since the early release and if I were to compare the two on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best I would give the Windows7 phone an 8 and the Windows8 tablet a 6. It doesn’t feel intuitive and in many cases when I want to do something that I feel is easy (like rearrange the tiles) I end up opening the program at least 3 times before I manage to “click” it correctly to move it.

For areas that I have to write a lot of text, like an email, I have also struggled with the onscreen layout. In some cases everything on the screen is visible, except for the area that I am adding my text, which is covered by the keyboard. I have hopes though that these are just issues related to the beta. I am basing this hope based on one of the latest blog posts from the Office Next team. I am hoping that with the final release, they are able to get working all of the pain points they address in the blog. I think based on the blog it is clear that they are going in the right direction; I just hope it isn’t another full release cycle before we see all the fixes.

My Thoughts to Date

To date my thoughts are very positive. I know people often think of me as the biggest Microsoft Fan Girl that there is, and I won’t deny it. The truth of the matter is, I have been waiting a long time for these kinds of tools and I am very excited about getting them to be part of my everyday work experience. If I had to guess right now, this year will be the year of new tools for me. I imagine I will be first in line to get a Surface and who knows how long it will take me to update my personal environment at home and, even though I am not up for a new phone, I imagine it won’t take much convincing for me to go for the new Windows8 phones. I have been on the fence about much of the Windows8 hype, but once I got my hands on the new office suite and the tablet I am ready to go! I will say though, that I am still proceeding with caution. In the past I have often run the beta software on my primary machine alongside of the current version of the product. Based on my initial experience with the product I am going with my gut and keeping it only on test machines at this point. I am basing this on things I have heard from others in the community as well as my overall feeling of how the two would work installed together. I may give it a few more weeks and change my mind, but for now this is my stance.

My final thoughts from week one are around my excitement that MS is taking ownership of the hardware and releasing the Surface later this year. I think by them having full ownership of the platform that we will be able to see some great improvement in the overall success of the product. I imagine that it won’t be long before partners jump in and offer up alternatives, but I for one am excited to see what Microsoft brings to the table. I just hope that all of my excitement is met with a tool that I find I simply don’t want to work without!

That’s all for this week! Watch my blog in the next few weeks for some additional posts on my thoughts and feelings. This week I will be using the tablet at a conference and hoping it will allow me to do all I need for a full day without having to recharge. This is a tall order, so hopefully I won’t be disappointed!