SharePoint Coommunity www.sharepoint-community.net

SPCHAT SEASON 1 Nineteen sessions of questions and answers with SharePoints top experts

What are SPChats? SPChats are a way for the community to ask questions directly from the experts that specialized

in the topics that were covered in each SPChat session. Not only could they ask questions

directly, but they could ask it their way and have a short conversation with the expert if they

needed clarification. This was invaluable for the community as they got to learn from people

who have been there and done that.

Author

Vlad Catrinescu Vlad is a SharePoint Consultant with more than 5 years in IT

specializing in analyzing and deploying your perfect

SharePoint Infrastructure. He also specializes into designing

and implementing High Availability and Disaster Recovery

SharePoint solutions as well as hybrid scenarios between

SharePoint and Office365 and deployment automation using

Microsoft TFS.

Vlad is currently the youngest SharePoint MVP in the world

and is known in the community for his technical abilities and

for founding the biggest and most active SharePoint Community that you can find at

www.SharePoint-Community.net. Vlad also has his own blog at http://www.absolute-

sharepoint.com and he often shares his knowledge by speaking at local conferences and

community events.

Vlad is currently working as a President and Senior Consultant at his own company: vNext

Solutions and is always looking to hear about your upcoming SharePoint or Hybrid projects!

You can connect with Vlad using one of the following Social Media Options

SPChat Organizers

Brad Shannon Brad Shannon is an entrepreneur and founded DevSoft

Solutions . Brad has worked with SharePoint since 2007 as

a developer, administrator, and architect. He has spoken at

several events and specializes in automating and improving

business processes. Brad is also a representative for the

SharePoint-Community.net site and was instrumental in

making the SPChats successful and helping to double the

member count at SPCom.

Mark Jones I have spent many hours working as a SharePoint

Developer, Architect and Consultant for lots of

organisations in the UK such as the NHS, Tarmac, O2, Lloyds

of London, Lloyds TSB, BT etc. In 2007 I co-founded

Collaboris, which is a SharePoint Software that is

committed to building well-crafted SharePoint and Office

365 solutions. Our flagship product is DocRead for

SharePoint that allows you to request that staff, read, pass

a test and confirm your key content.

I am also very active in the SharePoint Community and have made the following contributions:

- Founded SharePoint Community Group (LinkedIn) - has 34,000 members and I moderate

it daily.

- Founded this site (SharePoint-Community.Net) - the largest SharePoint Community

social network out there.

- Founded SP24 - the world's largest, virtual, 24-hour SharePoint Conference.

- I also have written over 100 SharePoint Community Newsletters which are distributed

weekly.

Contents How to become more active and involved in the SharePoint Community with Wendy Neal ........ 4

JQuery and SPServices with Marc Anderson ................................................................................. 13

Workflows with Fabian Williams ................................................................................................... 20

Build visibility in the SharePoint Community with Mark Miller .................................................... 26

SharePoint Online with Jasper Oosterveld .................................................................................... 36

Social in the Enterprise with Christian Buckley ............................................................................. 44

Fast Track Project Management Success in SharePoint 2013 with Dux Raymond Sy ................... 51

SharePoint App Model with Chris Johnson ................................................................................... 58

SharePoint 2013 Upgrade, Mobile, and User Adoption with Joel Oleson .................................... 70

SharePoint 2013 Content Search Web Part with Benjamin Niaulin .............................................. 77

SharePoint Branding and Web Design with Stefan Bauer ............................................................. 83

Out of the Box SharePoint Solutions with Laura Rogers ............................................................... 87

SharePoint Search Deep Dive with Chris Givens ........................................................................... 97

SharePoint from a Business Analyst perspective with Matthew Bailey ...................................... 107

SharePoint User Adoption with Erica Toelle ............................................................................... 115

SharePoint on Azure Services with Mahmoud Hamed Mahmoud .............................................. 122

Content Aggregation and WCM with Christina Wheeler ............................................................ 126

SharePoint App model vs Solution Model with Jeremy Thake ................................................... 134

SharePoint Architecture and Infrastructure with Spencer Harbar .............................................. 144

How to become more active and involved in the SharePoint

Community with Wendy Neal

Brad Shannon

**** STARTING SPCHAT WITH WENDY NEAL ****

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for today's #SPChat. This is our 3rd chat session

and will kick off a very exciting lineup that looks to continue every week through August,

currently.

A couple rules to go over:

1. Only Wendy or Admins may chat in the main room, unless Wendy asks for another

question

2. Please do not post your questions until Wendy says 'Next question?'

3. No heckling, Fabian! :)

4. We will post the full transcript on the blog immediately following the chat.

5. Have fun and learn lots!

Wendy, thank you again for joining us! We are all very excited to learn from one of our

SharePoint Community experts on the topic of 'How to Become More Active and Involved in

the SharePoint Community'. If you wouldn't mind, could you please give a brief introduction

on the topic and about yourself?

Wendy Neal

Certainly! Thanks Brad and hello everyone! I'm Wendy Neal and I am a SharePoint Architect

for a financial services company in Cedar Rapids, IA, USA.

You may know me in the community as "SharePointWendy" - I enjoy writing articles on my

blog sharepointwendy.com, and on NothingButSharePoint.com and this fine community

here as well, SharePoint-Community.net.

I chose this topic for today's chat because I was virtually unknown in the SharePoint

Community back in late 2011 when I joined Twitter and started my blog.

Today I have over 5000 Twitter followers, I speak at SharePoint user groups, SharePoint

Saturdays and conferences, and my blog is doing quite well, and I thought I could share

some tips with you on how to become more involved in the community.

FIRST QUESTION PLEASE.

vlad catrinescu

Wendy, how did you get so many followers on twitter :)?

Wendy Neal

When I first joined Twitter, I started following prominent SharePoint people in the

community and then anyone who had "SharePoint" in their bio as you may know, Twitter

etiquette says that most people will follow you back if you follow them.

After a while, however, as I started writing good content and my blog took off, I now get a

lot of followers who aren't "follow-backs". The key is to writing or sharing great content, and

people will start to notice you.

NEXT QUESTION

Fabian Williams

How do you decide on what topics to write for your blog?

Wendy Neal

Great question. I'm very passionate about a lot of topics relating to SharePoint whether it be

branding, development, user adoption, governance (did I say that??), etc.

I have a huge backlog of topics in my mind and not enough time to write about them all but

when I get a few minutes, I'll just pick something that I feel like writing about at the

particular time

Wendy Neal

If you've seen my blog, the topics are all over the place. I'd like to get to a point where I find

my "niche" but for now I'll keep writing about whatever interests me

NEXT QUESTION

Brad Shannon

Wendy, do you have a way of tracking/noting on those topics that you want to write about

that you add to on a regular basis so you can go back and reference them?

Dan Kreitz

Why did you decide to start contributing your free-time to the community?

Wendy Neal

I'll answer Brad first.

I use OneNote religiously. I think my whole life is in OneNote. I have a whole section on blog

topics and as I get ideas I add them there. I can also go back and continue to add notes to

each topic before I'm ready to start writing

And since I've set my OneNote to sync to SkyDrive, I can access it from anywhere, on any

device. As all writers know, you're not always sitting at a computer when you have your best

ideas :)

Now for Dan's question: I started my blog primarily as a knowledge base for myself, and if

anyone else could learn from it, great. That led to writing articles for

NothingButSharePoint.com, and when I started doing that, I really started to get noticed in

the community.

About the same time, I attended my first SharePoint conference, and had a fabulous time

and met some great people.

It was through meeting and networking with these awesome SharePoint rock stars that I

thought, I can probably speak like they do. And things just kind of snowballed from there

and I discovered that I really love speaking and teaching others about SharePoint

Yasir Kazi

Do you google the topic u plan to write to make sure its not been blogged by someone else

already ? To avoid repetition

Wendy Neal

Yasir I generally don't google (or bing) the topic. I follow a lot of SharePoint blogs on Feedly

and see a lot of articles posted to Twitter, LinkedIn, Yammer, etc. So I know what topics are

being written about.

Sometimes a blog post will be inspired by someone else's post on the subject, and I feel like I

need to add my 2 cents worth and the comments aren't a big enough area to portray all my

thoughts on the subject. I don't think repetition on a topic is necessarily a bad thing :)

NEXT QUESTION

Ralph Rivas

Q: They say "Write what you know" but with SharePoint what you know today may not be

so for long ... will you still write it if you are not sure about it or if it is a topic that is known

to be in flux (e.g. the social bits ... perhaps governance, did I say that? ;-))

Wendy Neal

Ralph I do like to make sure that my articles are factually accurate so I do quite a bit of

research while writing the article. I realize that things today may not be the way they are

tomorrow but at the time of writing I like to make sure it's correct. That's the only way you'll

come to be known as a credible source of information. There are no shortcuts in this area.

Which is why I have a ton of ideas, and a few half-written articles that I don't seem to have

time to finish, since I want them to be accurate.

Marc D Anderson

What are the benefits you get from all of this community activity?

Wendy Neal

I have received a few tangible benefits, like free software from vendors and conference

passes. I think for me the main benefit is just personal satisfaction. I love to help people and

share my knowledge

Marc D Anderson

Maybe another way to ask it is: What do you want to get out of it?

Wendy Neal

The tangible benefits are things that I did not ask for and were just a byproduct of doing that

Wendy Neal

My husband asked me the same thing and to be honest I'm not even sure sometimes :)

Again I just like the satisfaction of helping others and getting to network and hang out with a

great group of people at conferences and SharePoint Saturdays from time to time

Suhas R.S

Do you use a dedicated developer machine that has only SharePoint 2013 for learning? 2013

hardware requirements are so steep? How do you manage that?

Wendy Neal

Suhas my company just got finished rolling out SharePoint 2010 to all our users late last

year, so we will not be upgrading soon. I do have a SP2013 instance set up on

SharePointPower.com to play around with and learn. But haven't spent as much time as I'd

like learning 2013 yet, since I have to support 2010 full time. So no I don't have a dedicated

machine for development at this point

NEXT QUESTION

Jasjit Chopra

Q: If someone was to start building their blog in SP do you have any do's and dont's for

writing content ? (Onenote is a great idea any others that you follow and absolute no nos)

Wendy Neal

The biggest DO which I already mentioned is write good content. Take the extra time to

research, proof read, and then re-read again before you publish. You could even ask a

trusted colleague to read it for you, especially when first starting out.

Absolute NO NO's would be don't copy or steal content from someone else. It's OK to

reference or quote something that someone wrote about, but absolutely give them the

credit they deserve by linking back to their article

Fabian Williams

I know u declared that ur topics r what comes to mind, but to what extent as u become

more known in the community for 1 thing over another do u find that u r either (1) only

invited to speak on certain topics or (2) are expected to only submit on certain topics.. and

ill take my ans of the air :-)

Wendy Neal

Fabian I think that is my issue, that I'm not really known for one thing and so sometimes I

have a hard time trying to pick a topic to write about, or to submit to conferences. I guess

there are pros and cons with either one, being know for one thing or more of a "jack-of-all-

trades"

Paul Choquette

How do you balance being involved in the community and being an employee of a

company? Do you find that employers influence your interactions within the community at

all? Should they?

Wendy Neal

That is a great question Paul about balancing community time with work time. My employer

is great about understanding that my time spent networking at events and sharing and

collaborating via social media and various SharePoint community sites is actually beneficial

to them.

That's not to say that I can spend hours a day on Twitter or SharePoint-Community.net or

writing blog posts. I have to balance that and it can be a fine line sometimes. I like to user

Buffer for scheduling Tweets for example, and only checking in on the various social

networks and community sites at certain times of the day, for example in the morning or at

lunch time and try to only be on them during the work day if I have a specific SharePoint

issue that I'm trying to solve.

NEXT QUESTION

Dan Kreitz

With so many communities out there -- including this fine establishment -- do you focus on a

select few, or do you find yourself trying to participate with as many communities out there

(e.g. Facebook, TechNet/MSDN, LinkedIn, etc., etc., etc.)?

Wendy Neal

Dan as new communities and avenues seem to pop up all the time, I have to be selective for

time's sake. I'm mostly use Twitter, LinkedIn, I'm on SPYam sometimes and here at

SharePoint-Community.net. It can be hard to keep up with everything going on, and I finally

had to tell myself, I can't keep up with it all. The world won't end if I don't see everything

that everyone posts.

Ralph Rivas

Q:what is the biggest distraction you have from doing work and this great community stuff

and how have you tackled/defeated/kept it at bay ... ?

Wendy Neal

Ralph the biggest distraction for me is actually email over anything else. By trying to keep

my social media time at set intervals (sometimes I stray from that ;)) I don't really get

distracted by that. As far as email, I'm using some tools to help me keep it all organized

using the GTD (Getting Things Done) principles

Stephanie Cole

Do you ever blog about situations that happen during your day job, and if so, does your

employer have any rules in place for what you can and can't discuss?

Wendy Neal

Stephanie yes I have blogged about those situations from time to time. While my employer

doesn't have any hard and fast rules, I have taken upon myself to protect the privacy of the

company. For example, I don't mention any names of my coworkers, and if I include

screenshots that show private or personal information, I blur those sections so the words

are unreadable

Thomy Goelles

hi wendy! thx for your time! how did you achive to speak at your first conference? I think

the first step is the hard one or?

Wendy Neal

Thomy that is an excellent question. I recommend to everyone who asks me that, if you

want to speak at conferences, you need to start out somewhere small first to get some

experience speaking. I started speaking at my local SharePoint user group meeting and then

I submitted to speak at a SharePoint Saturday. Even by doing that, you are not guaranteed

that you will get selected to speak at a conference

It's hard to get in as a firs time speaker. There are conferences I've submitted to that I was

not selected to speak at. I don't let it discourage me, I continue to submit and hopefully one

day I'll get selected :)

NEXT QUESTION

Paul Choquette

How much "sales pitch" is acceptable in a blog post? Should you be product-agnostic when

participating in the community?

Wendy Neal

I actually do write product reviews sometimes on my blog. At first they were for free or in

exchange for a license to the product. After a while it wasn't cost effective for me because

of the huge amount of time I spent researching, testing the product, and writing the blog

post, so I started to charge. I be sure to mention at the beginning and again at the end of the

article, that while this is a paid production review, it is unbiased

Honesty is the best in these situations, and if the vendor has a great product the review

should be mostly positive. I also try to highlight at least one or two things that the product

could do better, because no product is perfect. I think that breeds credibility into the

reviews as well

In answer to your question, I think it does provide value to the community as these products

can solve a lot of issues that users are facing with their SharePoint deployments

NEXT QUESTION

Brad Shannon

Mark Jones had a good question: What do you think the most effective mechanism is to gain

exposure (LinkedIn, Twitter, FB, Blogging or here) ?

Wendy Neal

For me when I first started writing, cross posting my articles to NothingButSharePoint.com

really gained me a lot of attention in a short time due to the amount of traffic on that site.

I think that Twitter also plays a huge part in that whenever I post to Twitter that I've written

an new blog post, for example, I see a surge in traffic right after that.

And of course this community, SharePoint-Community.net with all it's great content that

members are submitting every day gives me a lot of content to share, which in turns gives

me more traffic to my site

NEXT QUESTION

Stephanie Cole

Has your reception in the community been affected at all by being a woman? Do you feel

like it makes things harder, easier, or just plain different for you than for your male peers in

any way? Do you see any double-standards being applied (either for or against you)?

Wendy Neal

Stephanie no I don't feel like being a woman in SharePoint has affected me in any way,

either making things harder or easier.

I've always been more interested in "guy" things over "girl" things, such as sports,

computers, programming and I'm just really comfortable doing those things. So I don't feel

out of my comfort zone at all, it's just "normal"

NEXT QUESTION

Ralph Rivas

Q:with fame comes infamy as in the infamous who are perhaps over bothersome with so

many questions, perhaps irrelevant ones or just sending you spam because of your easy to

follow online foot print ... how do you manage to keep the pesky paparazzi/SharePoint

groupies away or at bay?

Wendy Neal

Well I don't know if I have any groupies :) but as far as keeping spam away I just unsubscribe

or use tools to filter it out

NEXT QUESTION

Anthony Obi

where do you think the future of the SharePoint community is heading.. and do you think

this positively/negatively affected by O365

Wendy Neal

I think the community will just keep growing as Microsoft continues to sell SharePoint to

more and more companies. What new forums and avenues will we have to communicate

with each other, only time will tell.

With companies moving to the cloud, it will be interesting to see if/how this affects the

community. We may have less devs/admins for example, but more power users joining the

community.

Belaid

SharePoint as a Brand name is being replaced by Office 365. Please comment.

Wendy Neal

Belaid, my thoughts are that no matter what it's called (SharePoint or O365) there is still a

need for community and sharing of ideas and content

Brad Shannon

Ok folks, that wraps up our SPChat for today! Thank you to everyone that participated!

GREAT questions all around!! The transcript will be posted to the Blog section momentarily!

If you have additional questions that you would like answered, please comment on the blog

post once it is published!

THANKS WENDY!!

JQuery and SPServices with Marc Anderson

Brad Shannon

**** STARTING SPCHAT WITH MARC ANDERSON ****

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for today's #SPChat. This is our 4th chat session and we are very excited to welcome the

Father of SPServices!

A couple rules to go over:

1. Only Marc or Admins may chat in the main room, unless Marc asks for another question

2. Please do not post your questions until Marc says 'Next question?'

3. We will post the full transcript on the blog immediately following the chat.

4. Have fun and learn lots!

Marc, thank you again for joining us! We are all very excited to learn on the topic of 'jQuery and SPServices'. If you wouldn't mind,

could you please give a brief introduction on the topic and about yourself?

Marc D Anderson

My name is Marc Anderson, and I'm a jQuery addict. You may know me from such classics as Unlocking the Mysteries of SharePoint's

DVWP or SPServices. The title of this SPChat - "jQuery and SPServices: No longer just for the cool kids" - is absolutely one of my silly

little jokes. Some of us - me, c

The title of this SPChat - "jQuery and SPServices: No longer just for the cool kids" - is absolutely one of my silly little jokes. Some of us

- me, certainly - have enjoyed doing things client side for a long time now. Early on, programming client side with SharePoint was

considered an annoyance to

However, client side coding is where the rest of the world has been going for a while. SharePoint development is, in a sense,

catching up. This isn't a new phenomenon; we've been balancing processing across different tiers for decades. Client-Server

Computing. Rich Client Applications. You name it, we've done this balancing act. It's not a replacement for server side coding, but it's

an added set of tools for the toolkit.

jQuery is one of the most popular toolkits, and SPServices is, well, awesome. So, what questions do you have for me today? I'll

answer what I can and say "I don't know" when I can't.

Ralph Rivas

Q>JQUERYUI has a nice "autocomplete" feature. It seems like it should have been built in to the OOB controls, do you know of

performance issues when the "list" source for them are coming from large lists in sharepoint (e.g. 5000+ items) or even external lists

known to sharepoint?

Marc D Anderson

If you use script to retrieve values for autocomplete, all the normal rules apply. Lists with over 5000 items are a problem if you try to

retrieve all of them. I suggest always requiring at least 2 or 3 typed characters before you fetch anything. As for performance, the

Web Services are far faster than most people think. Watch in Firebug or Fiddler sometime.

Make smart calls that only retreive what you actually need at that momeent, and you'll finer that things [in a well-tuned farm] will

fly along. 3 chars may make sense, or maybe 1. Should I issue the blanket "It depends"?

If you look at most autocompletes, though, you'll see 2 or 3 chars before a fetch. Caching client side can help, too.

Paul Tavares

I will add that lists with over 5000 are an issue regardless of whether you limit the amount of data retrieved (CAMLRowLimit)

Marc D Anderson

Next question?

John

Please comment on using for a secure extranet document uploads. Regarding extranet doc uploads, I'm nervous to put too much

logic client side, eg site col and library. Logic like how the doc upload is correlated to a specific user account, so someone might try

to spoof to grab other users docs

Marc D Anderson

As long as users are authenticated, they aren't really any different than internal users. Then you are questioning the fundamental

way that SharePoint works. The DOD uses it, so I have to assume that the underlying code is OK. If you log in as someone else, then

you do. It's all the basic permissioning stuff. SPServices doesn't help with the underlying permission model. That's all SharePoint. You

can't spoof identity with the Web Services any more than you can in the browser.

vlad catrinescu

Q: What is the coolest thing you were able to make with SharePoint 2013 and JQuery?

Marc D Anderson

In 2013, I've done some work with Display Templates, which are very cool. I think of them as an HTML/JS replacements for my dear

DVWPs.

Richie Brown

I may be a little behind as I've mostly coded with SPServices in 2007 (although most recently jumped straight to 13, missing out

2010!) but can you tell me if there is a quicker way to access user profile data now without having to recursively grab each user of a

group and then look up for each one?

Marc D Anderson

Probably the best suggestion would be to look at the REST service. The SOAP services, which SPServices supports, have had zero

improvements. Yes, I'm getting over losing my dear friend the DVWP in SPD2013. But it's a long road.

Paul Choquette

Are there any capabilities you would like to see Microsoft expose to the client-side in the future?

Marc D Anderson

I think a lot of the UI controls that MS uses are antiquated. We should see drag and drop for reorering things. We should see smarter

dropdown-like controls. Each version has basically the same forms 2007-2013. I execpted a lot of improvements.

Jasjit Chopra

Do we have to worry about multiple browser issue while using SPServices in 2013?

Marc D Anderson

jQuery is especially good at smoothing over browser differences; it might be one of the best reasons to use it over straight

JavaScript.

Ankur Madaan

Marc, with Mobile Application HTML5 how can i put documents in SharePoint using Jquery?

Marc D Anderson

Ankur: Scot Hillier has a great post about uploading documents using script. Check it out.

Ralph Rivas

http://www.shillier.com/archive/2013/03/26/uploading-files-in-sharepoint-2013-using-csom-and-rest.aspx

Richie Brown

Will we be able to genuinely move documents through SPServices rather than using the copy method? I'd love to write a tool that

"sorts" from a dropbox on the fly but to date could only copy linking to the original and not taking any metadata with it.

Marc D Anderson

SPServices can't help much with that, as it can only do what the underlying Web Services do. However, "moving" is in many cases

just a change in metadata, right? So it's an update to the item(s) based on some user action. For example, using drag and drop to

reorder items in a display by changing a SortOrder column. You can change the folder metadata using UpdsateListItems, I belive.

Paul: Keep me honest here. So if the user drags a doc from one folder to another, you can simply update the item to "point" to the

new folder. There's no "folder" per se, simply metadata.

Ralph Rivas

Q> sorry if I forgot this ... is SPServices Microsoft or a codeplex?

Marc D Anderson

SPServices is on Codplex at http://spservices.codeplex.com

Matt Youngstrom

Have you ever looked at using the JSOM to retrieve data and inject it into a jQuery control? I'm thinking about how the batching

performance capabilities of the JSOM can result in less chattiness of client side apps.

Marc D Anderson

Microsoft has nothing to do with SPServes, and in fact no one from Microsoft has ever talked to me about it except casually. I fine

that "chattiness" is a misnomer. The key is to make your call intelligently, just as you ought to be doing server side. I can write

horribly slow and chatty client side code or I can architect it well to cache things or only retrieve what I need at the time based on

user action. I'm so old, I used to store data in bits. I still try to be frugal where I can be.

Matt Youngstrom

So why did MS create the batching mechanism? Was it really to protect developers from themselves?

Marc D Anderson

Many client side calls don't even need to happen in the course of a page lifespan. They only should be triggered when the user does

something. Believe me, they like that small delay a lot better than a postback. Batching is a great idea where you need it. Absolutely.

But JSOM also does multiple calls for things like determineing the current context. I try to do as much as that as I can from what's

already in the browser, like what the current URL is. Watch those calls in Firebug. I don't think that the SPServices approach would

be all that much more chatty.

Matt Youngstrom

The REST API gives you the granularity it seems to do only what is necessary when it is necessary

Marc D Anderson

Remember that if you really think about things client side, you control everything in the DOM. If you think like a server side person,

you're always running off there because it's familiar. Yes, I prefer REST over JSOM. See Andrew Connell's recent post.

Ralph Rivas

Q>do you have any tips doing debugging of SPServices say when used as code in a content editor webpart?

#whywontmyfunctionwork :)

Marc D Anderson

Debugging client side is something we all need to learn. I swtich back and forth between IE's Developer Tools and firebug. Both have

their strengths in certain areas, but IE is a first class citizen, so you have to debug there. DO NOT DO ALL TYOUR WORK IN CHROME

BECAUSE IT IS COOLER. Your users will undoubtedly not be using Chrome with SharePoint.

http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/sharepoint-2013-csom-vs.-rest-...-my-preference-and-why

Brad Shannon

Do you know of anyone using SPServices in conjunction with the new "App Model"?

Marc D Anderson

I'm not aware of anyone useing SPServices with the app model. Anyone here?

Wendy Neal

What are some of the coolest uses of SPServices that you've seen or heard about? Whether from your blog series SPServices Stories

or just from what you've heard in general?

Marc D Anderson

Coolest uses of SPservices? There are some MAJOR public-facing sites that fetch content for image sliders and such with

SPSwervices. That's really cool oto me. Also, simply based on the questions I get in the Discussions on Codfeplex (a trwasue trove of

all sorts of info about SharePoint) I know that many large companies around the world use SPServices.

Paul Tavares

Question: In your experience, are your customers open to solutions that use client side code instead of Managed Coded on the

server? And are seeing any greater acceptance by the community of Applications created solely with client side code?

Marc D Anderson

Paul: I started doing client side (I called it Middle Tier becasue of the DVWP) stuff primarily because I had clients who wouldn't

deploy any server side code, yet they wantted to build real solutions. People are more and more open to client side code. I think it's

an excellent career move to get your head out of the Microsoft sand.

Paul Choquette

What can we expect from future SPServices releases? Any big features in the works?

Marc D Anderson

Paul C: I'm working on 2013.02. What would you like to see? It'll be the usualy set of bug and performance fixes, plus some new

stuff. I'm thinking cascading dropdownds for 2013's "datasheet view". Any takers there?

Richie Brown

I tend to load SPServices and all functions on initial SP load to create an "app" that users never need to reload and then load data

into divs based on user interaction - is that a good idea? It means a slow initial load but it's very, very fast afterwards!

Marc D Anderson

Richie: It's a trade off. If you're loading content that the users don't actually need unless they take some action, then I'd put it off.

Only do what is required to make the page snappy. Isolte your use cases where you can. I guess that's a winner idea, then. Cascading

in 2013 datasheet view.

Matthew J Bailey

Q: Hi Mark, With so many different .JS frameworks and libraries coming out now (angular, TypeScript, bootstrap, Node.js,

Knockout.js) I am starting to become confused. Could you clarify what things we would use SPServices for and exactly what it is and

is not?

Marc D Anderson

Those frameworks are all great, but they know nothing about SharePoint. SPServices can be the middle layer between them and

SharePoint. SPServices exposes the CRUD functions for you in GetListItems and UpdateListItems. REST or JSOM can play that middle

layer role as well. If you're in 2007, SPServices is the only game in town. I can also guarantee you that code you write with SPServices

will upgrade more easily in most cases than server side code.

Paul Tavares

Matthew: Ill add my use case: I currently use SPServices + knockout.js to maintain a client side data persistence layer for one of my

apps I have found these two to be a very nice combination.

Eduardo Osorio

Have you ever look at https://github.com/lstak/Backbone.SharePoint ?

Marc D Anderson

No, Eduardo, I haven't looked at that. So many choices, so little time.

Brad Shannon

Have you used SPServices in the new JSLink in 2013? Have you seen any interesting implementations of this?

Marc D Anderson

No, I usually just use a straight-up tag. A .js file load order can make a huge difference, though. I trust my tags over

Microsoft SOD stuff, frankly. At least I know what mistakes I'm making.

Eduardo Osorio

Are you going to publish an ebook for SPServices at amazon?

Marc D Anderson

Would you buy it? :) Writing a book is very time-consuming. I just wrote a chapter in a book with SharePointWendy and Paul T.

about SPServices. That's a more manageable size of writing for me. That and blog posts. The SPServices docs are a book unto

themselves, I suppose. Writing is not an economically feasible puruit. But then, neither is givine SPServices away for free. The title of

the new jQuery book we did is... Black Magic Solutions for White Hat SharePoint (title of the jQuery book)

David Shumate

I've successfully implemented SPServices with Office 365 in the past, but it required some fancy footwork within the content editor

and document library housing for SPServices... any updates on integration of SPServices with Office 365?

Marc D Anderson

David: SPServices works really well with Office365. In fact, it's where many people have turned bacuase they can write server side

code. Can't write server side code. What problems have you had?

Richie Brown

David - you could pick up from a CND host?

David Shumate

Yes, that's why I attempted it, the 'sandbox' is not conducive to producing on client requirements :) Initially I had trouble with the

content editor wp overwriting the script, and only succeeded by what appears to be accident... and left it when i got it to work, but

its not very effective way if you have to update. I haven't attempted it in the new version out there now, it's on my list of things to

do.

Marc D Anderson

Always use the Content Link and point to a separate file. Don't ever put your script directly into the CEWP.

Ralph Rivas

Q>I forget but is there a CDN for SPServices? Would one be a good idea at all?

Marc D Anderson

Yes, it's on cdnjs. http://cdnjs.com They are a great resource, hosting a lot of libraries that the big guys don't care about. And you

can store all of your scripts in a Document Library centrally. Magic source control! Build a utilities.js file for commonly used

functions. That's a lot of my chapter in the book: how to think about buliding your own library. Buold it whereever. I use SharePoint

Designer to edit, but if you map the Document library to a drive, you can use whatever editor you want.

Paul Tavares

Has SPServices open many doors for you in your consulting business? and if you had a chance to do it all over again - would you?

Although free, I'm sure if it drive business in, its a good thing, right?

Marc D Anderson

Yes, it's been a boon for me professionally. First off, I learned and continue to learn a TON from building it. Then there are the

questions people ask me and I need to figure out. That's my training. Then there are the calls I get about work. They know what I do,

and I don't need to pitch them. I hate sales, so it's a win-win. I don't think I'd be an MVP or still be out on my own consulting without

SPServices. (At least that's what I tell my wife.) I'm sitting in jornata's office today because they know I can help them solve some

specific problems. I like to do shorter project using my best skills and then get out to the next thing. I'm having a ball and SPServices

is a big part of that. If you have any ideas at all, I highly recommend doing something like it.

Paul Choquette

What influenced your decision to offer it free to the community instead of creating a paid product from it? Of all the 3rd party stuff

I've used in the past, it's one I would've gladly paid for (especially in SP 2007 days.)

Marc D Anderson

Frankly, at first I didn't think it was all that good or worth much. Turns out I was wrong about that, I guess. I know that with what I've

learned I'm a lot more proud of the code than I used to be. I'm happy to take donations. ;+) It's all been worth it, though. I wouldn't

change it.

Brad Shannon

How can the community help you Marc? Is there anything, besides donations, that you would like to see?

Marc D Anderson

Testing is always hard to make happen. I have my standard stuff, but the best tests are real people trying each new version to see if

it has any regressions.

Workflows with Fabian Williams

Brad Shannon OK everyone, it's time for our #SPChat! Please suspend all chat until Fabian chats 'Next question?'. You are welcome to private chat with me or one another, but please do not private message Fabian as he will be busy enough trying to keep up! :)

**** STARTING SPCHAT WITH FABIAN ANDERSON ****

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for today's #SPChat. This is our 5th chat session and we are very excited to welcome the one and only, Fabian Williams!

A couple rules to go over:

1. Only Fabian or Admins may chat in the main room, unless Fabian asks for another question

2. Please do not post your questions until Fabian says 'Next question?'

3. We will post the full transcript on the blog immediately following the chat.

4. Have fun and learn lots!

ANNOUNCEMENT: A participant will be chosen during the #SPChat today to receive a FREE 30-day trial for TrainSignal. The winner will be chosen based on participation, best question, and following rules.

Fabian, thank you again for joining us! We are all very excited to learn on the topic of 'Workflows'. If you wouldn't mind, could you please give a brief introduction on the topic and about yourself?

Fabian Williams

Hello, and thank you all for attending todays SPChat event on Workflows. I have 4 prepared statements & Im instituting a 2

heckle maximum for my good friends out there in IMverse I have my Dr. No/Dr. Evil/Mr. Gru ejector button at the ready. Just to help frame the discussion & a bit more about myself. My name is Fabian Williams & I work for Planet Technologies based out of Germantown Maryland. I report up to the Federal Division managed by Patrick Curran (@pcfromdc) I blog athttp://www.sharepointfabian.com & tweet under the handle @fabianwilliams

Todays discussion is on Workflows and I guess it will help if you understand the parameters of the work I have done with Workflows in order to help frame questions. So, a primer.. Workflows can be somewhat intimidating when you engage them, but as with any challenge, its all in the approach, whether its a SharePoint Designer (2010/2013) WF or a Visual Studio (2010/2012) WF or a Vendor Product like K2/Nintex/ etc.

In every engagement no matter how small I create a Requirements Doc (& get signoff), create a Visio diagram of the Flow (& get signoff), I get suckered into creating test plans as well [which IMO, as the dev I shouldnt as its my own work], but I unit test the heck out of it, and then I hopefully walk away to the next challenge. So a quick elevator pitch on my work with Workflows. In SharePoint 2007 and 2010 I worked mainly doing Visual Studio Workflows (disclaimer: I know best practice says go OOB first then Customize, then Code) I did that b/c frankly I hated SPD 2007 & 2010 wasnt that much better.

I focused on State Machine WFs because it was more flexible than Sequential but thats not to say that its better, infact I had a lessoned learned when I over engineered a WF and paid the price. However since then I have grown & SharePoint has as well too, & SPD2013 is IMO phenomenal. I do a lot of my WF dev there now & THEN take it to VS if I need to. Ive also had the opportunity to do some K2 WF for a Gov Client which opened me up more knowledge.

So, I will try to engage you today with as much as I can recall in my lessons learned, and I dont profess to know everything, far from it. In todays discussion Ill field any question you pose, and if I dont have the answer readily, Ill jot it down and get back to

you & possibly do a blog post about it as well so with that Lets Begin! First Question?

Wendy Neal

How do you convince clients that doing the upfront requirements documentation and Visio diagrams is cost effective in the end? For example that it will save time in the long run by less scope creep and workflow rework, etc.

Fabian Williams So, great question. I am a firm believer in measure 10 times cut once and I explain to client that. If we plan properly, then later on

our work is more maintainable and we can adjust if needs be it also gives us a contract if you will of what you the client need and

what I am preparing to deliver that way there is no misunderstanding... I usually win them over by saying that my dev time will be

shorter, as well as their test time if we plan up front did that answer your question Wendy?

Wendy Neal

yes perfect thanks!

Fabian Williams

cool. Next question?

Jasjit Chopra

How do you decide which Workflow to pick from in SP 2013 since two platforms exists - SP2010 and SP2013? Any limitations on there on using one instead of other?

Brad Shannon

What is the difference between Sequential and State Machines for those that are new to workflows?

Fabian Williams

Sure there are limitations, so, off the bat all your SP2013 functionality that you get using the new Azure Workflow Engine is not available to you in SP2010 WF if you choose to implement that.. for instance...the Workflow Manager and the Message Notifications from a back end which is what makes workflow so powerfull is not available but from a client side, all the tooling that you get in SPD for SP2013 such as the new dictionary object, REST Calls, etc are not available to you BUT that said.. i give you one good thing for having SP2010 WF ability in SPD 2013 or SP2013 in general overall...you remember how in SP2010 SPD you could do Reusable WF based on a Content Type.. well in SPD 2013 using SP2013 model, that is gone. the option only shows up if you select a SP2010 WF, but that is to be expected based on the way the architecture is now BUT that doesnt mean it is not available to you.. if you do a VS 2012 WF you can reference the Workflow Manager in your PRoject and then tap into the GUID of the WF created and then use it to target a content typeso based on functionality .. i guess is my long winded way of explaining why i will choose one way over another FIRST, then I also look at IF the client wants to support it after I leave, and what skillset they have to do that, if they dont have C# devs, then I am obliged to build them something can support

Jasjit Chopra

I tried sending emails to external users using SP2013 worklow and it does not work - few users have tried here in the community too? Do you know of any good workaround or we just call a SP2010 workflow from SP2013 platform to make this work?

Fabian Williams

hmm good questionso personally i havent tackled that as of yet but are you limiting my answer to SPD Wf's or can we bring in Visual Studio in the mix because you know i will tell you that you can do anything in Visual Studio?

Jasjit Chopra

SPD Workflow

Chris Givens

It works, there are some questions around this on the MSDN forums

Fabian Williams

there u go

Chris Givens

This might help you http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/0d83bea4-62bb-40eb-8bf1-a5f2044b8ae7/send-an-email-workflow-action-not-working-in-sharepoint-2013

Chris Givens

the hard part is changing the "from" in the email

Jasjit Chopra

SPD* it was so easy to type in external email address and the email will flow out - but with SP2013 it checks if a user exists for that email address in the sp site

Thanks Chris will look into this

Thanks again Fabian

Fabian Williams

So there are tons of guidance out there to differentiate the two... and Im sure CG can find them as i type out a response. but from an informal response i must first say that State Machine and Sequential are really done away in SHarepoint 2013. its now Declarative or go home but if you are using SP 2010 then sequential WF means that you are progressing in a chronological order through your WF,

from a to b to c, etc. Whereas in State Machine WF, you are moving in "States" or to use a SPD terminology "Stages" that means you can jump through autonomous units of work inside your logic and really keep it going for long periods of time, that is why SM WF's are cool, and better suited for long running processes so that brings up an interesting topic in SPD 2013 the fact that there are stages now, really allows you to do State Machine WF's "psuedo" in SPD 2013 and use Stages to encapsulate those work, and Steps to manage in inside plumming..

Paul Choquette

What do you think of Visio's ability to export workflows for SP? Worth using in some scenarios?

Fabian Williams

So Paul, excellent question...Ill tell you this.. in all honestyI dont really see the use case for that as of yet, I personally wont be using it for that, but i tell you how i use it and why it is awesome. Remember i said that I usually will Visio out my work using Cross Functional Diagrams in the JAD / Rqmts sessions

Fabian Williams

so, IF i am using SPD as my platform I will switch over to the Visio View and what I will expect to see is the same represenation albeit a bit muddled b/c SPD is SPD, but it will match up in functionality as what I originally designed, I also use it in my documentation to my client in the end and that cuts down on my grunt work :-)

Charles Willwerth

I have many custom workflow activities developed for SP2010. Most are simple (zip, unzip, XSL transform, copy, etc.), but some send/receive data to WCF services. Can you talk about how this goes in SP2013? I will need to change all of these activities to get them to work in SP2013 WAW, correct?

Fabian Williams

well this is a good time to give a consultants answer :-) Its a definite maybe, because its all in approach. Now your answer is correct, you can certainly do that but since SPD now have those REST call capabilities if you took logic and moved it up into a Service and then consume the response back in SPD and then act on it, you can certainly do it that way. You can also seek opportunities to create Custom Actions (declaative again) that can take some of that burden off certain areas and promote code reuse or like you said, you can definitely re-factor it in VSdoes that answer it for you?

Charles Willwerth

Can you go into Custom Actions vs. REST Services choice?

Fabian Williams

well custom actions are still going to be somewhat limited right, based on how SPD expects to work, whereas REST Service Calls is well, totally up to you and i guess it is based on your design as well, personally, Id offload as much as possible in REST and then consume the response and act on it but if it requires some user intervention like a task activity, then I come back into SPD with custom activities and the like..

Mark Jones

What are the main drivers that would make you choose a 3rd party product (like Nintex) instead of SP Worflow ?

Fabian Williams

So, Ive never used Nintex but I have used K2 and the story behind that can be found in the annals of Twitterverse, but to answer your question. So, ill go back to my introductions and say that best/better practices preaches that you should use OOB first, Customize second, and Code/Vendor/Third Party next...that saidIll tell you about my specific scenario where i had to use K2 and i will expand on it I was/actually still am :-) doing a project for a Fed Client and the OCIO office purchased K2, and even though the Sub Organization that i was doing the work for wanted it in VS, i had to stop my work, and learn K2 and redo all my work over in K2, now I can understand why as a large organization, they want to standardize what is on their platform and I had to comply.. and secondly they can support K2 because of their vendor relationship and at least inmy case there was no custom code thats my segway to saying agian, that "Know Thy Audience" build what they can support when you leave, unless you, unlike me want to stay behind and support something already created, i have developer disease, i want the next hill to conquer. Does that answer your Q?

Mark Jones

I have never used a 3rd party WF product, (or seen one), so was just wondering what gap they fill. The standardisation makes sense

Fabian Williams

they fill the gap from a architecture build perspective, as well as supportability

Paul Choquette

Any improvements in taxonomy manipulation in SPD 2013 workflows? Will I be forced to write more custom code to make it happen?

Fabian Williams

yes there is, ive read it somewhere, but havent done anything with it, i am sure i read it on Andrew Connells blog he is quite the authority in WF as well, ill see if i can find it and get it to you

Matthew J Bailey

What is the best improvement in SharePoint 2013 Workflows over 2010, scalability?

Fabian Williams

so, IMO scalability yes, but with that you get increased performance because it is decoupled from SharePoint, you also get tighter integration with External Sources, tooling is alot/ actually WAY better, and its closer to the dream of what Windows Workflow Manager promises in this current form.

I really like what they have done..

Chris Givens

Stages and transitions to implement state machine is my favorite

Fabian Williams

and also because i love Azure, and I also speak on that as well, with Office 365 that was the only way to go really...they had no other choice. Stages is a game changer.. big time. i actually think the biggest winner in all of this are BA's and PowerUsers

Chris Givens

Not a fan of workflow running outside of sharepoint, even though it allows for a separate workflow architecture, you must ensure that both the workflow subsystem and sharepoint are in the same state if you ever recover from failure...not easy

Fabian Williams

they now can stub out what they need using just Stages and Steps, give that to a Professional IW person, and I can take it from there and put the logic in.. that is worth the price of SPD right there.. nah JK< its really powerfull but thats why you have the Service Busmessaging will help you with thatanyway before i get in a war with CG , next question :-)

Wendy Neal

Do you have any experience using impersonation steps in SPD 2010 workflows? If so, have you discovered any gotchas or things you should be careful of when using them?

Fabian Williams

I did a project where I was doing a WF for a Public facing site...and ofcourse the users in the public cant interact with SP on the inside so I had to use Impersonation throughout the entire WF to manage that experience.. but and this will be the C# snobbiness coming out of me now..If i had to something like that I could 'justify' a million and one reason to do that as a SharePoint App instead.. then i can work under the App Account identity so i dont know any gotchas per se but i hope that gives you some more insights on it.. ?

Johnathan Lightfoot

What is your best tip (or trick) you have used when developing workflows?

Fabian Williams

Hey Johnathan... long time mate.. good questionso, again, its the military doctrine of the P's in planning right Poor Planning... yada yada yadabut seriously dont just jump into your workflow development even in SPD. Like Chris Givens said about Stages and I do this ALL the TIMEstub out your work, infact I think i have a Blog Post out there where I walk though how i Love SPD, someone see if you can find that for me as we go through this.. thanks Next Q

Matthew J Bailey

Do you know if you know if you have a lot of existing 2010 InfoPath/SPD workflows and you want to upgrade to 2013 if there will be issues?

Fabian Williams matthew Ill be the first to tell you I suck at Infopath.. I stayed away from it like the plague.. but Ill point you to the scuttlebut about what MS plans are for Infopath and leave it at that :-) next Q

ArisAlex http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/finally-a-sharepoint-designer-that-developers-and-bas-will-love/

Fabian Williams

thanks ArisAlex.. next Q

Paul Choquette

Can you discuss how Azure fits into the workflow architecture in 2013? Do 2013 workflows require connection to Azure? Can you use the Azure Pack instead for on-prem?

Chris Givens

For InfoPath, if you used the User Profile Web Service, you are going to have a big headache in 2013 to resolve

Fabian Williams

Great question on that Paul and Andrew Connell has a blog on that as well, now the Name Azure WF can be confusing because they are on this nomenclature marketing aspect of "Cloud First" design so they are using the name every chance they get but really they are using the Same Service Bus Architecture found in Azure and Workflow Manager to route tasks and messaging so you can subscribe to events and messaging, its works both on prem as it does in the cloud but thats ALSO the big benefit, what you write will work in both platforms On prem or cloud

By the way I like K2 and what it does and although I get no money from them to say thisim not a shill :-) Their product really does alot especially their BlackPearl with SmartForms

Chris Givens

To sum up Fabian, no, it doesn't require the cloud and its "Just a name" they gave to it. It all runs locally.

Fabian Williams

and they saw the writing on the wall, they always built their WF engine apart from SharePOint which is where SharePoint 2013 is now

well. so ill talk about this.. and feel free to inturupt with a question if you have one. Ive been doing work in Mobile as of lately and I think there is alot to be accomplished with Workflow and Mobile

Paul Choquette

Workflows vs. Event receivers. What factors should be used to make that choice?

Fabian Williams

awesome question. i usually have a quick and dirty answer for that. I sometimes get people asking how to do somehing and they are really engineering it or over thinking it as a Workflow and usually ill give them this answer, IF you dont need any interactions from the End User, or you dont need to send Mail, use an Event Reciever, its faster and less complicated and obscured from everyone. Im a fan of it.. and it works now depending on what you trying to do (Site Collection Bound Work) in the Cloud as well. I am also a HUGE!!! fan of whenever i am doing a workflow to build out all my site assets ahead of time, that again may seem like a lot of work but well worth it, because you will get that isolation of work, assurance that your GUID / type will be there and its is also portable, I have another blog post on that as well

Ramiro Rincn Barraza

Is there a limitation about resources (hardw, softw) for the new Workflow Engine in SP2013? Is that possible to have SP2013 implementation and 2013 Workflow Engine in the same server? Or you recommend having those separetely?

Fabian Williams

so there is no limitations as much as to say that it was decoupled for a reasonif you put in on your SP box it will eat away at compute cycles. In my Dev Rig or in small farms that i do for clients i do violate what i just stated, but if you need to be mindful of perfomance then you want to break it off in its own farm and yes you can have a farm of Workflow Managers Instances

Build visibility in the SharePoint Community with Mark Miller

Brad Shannon

**** STARTING SPCHAT WITH MARK MILLER ****

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for today's #SPChat. This is our 6th chat session and we are very excited to welcome the one and only, Mark Miller!

A couple rules to go over:

1. Only Mark or Admins may chat in the main room, unless Mark asks for another question

2. Please do not post your questions until Mark says 'Next question?'

3. We will post the full transcript on the blog immediately following the chat.

4. Have fun and learn lots!

Mark, thank you again for joining us! We are all very excited to learn on the topic of 'SharePoint Community'. If you wouldn't mind, could you please give a brief introduction on the topic and about yourself?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Thanks for the invitation, Brad. It looks like I know most of the people here, so this should be fun.

Here's the corp gobbledy gook on me:

I help companies create strategic plans to gain global visibility through the use of social media tools , online community building and relationship development. Mark Miller, Senior Storyteller

Mark Miller, Senior Storyteller, is recognized internationally for weaving engaging tales to simplify the explanation of complex, technological solutions. He is a serial community builder, participating in the creation of global online communities.

So that pretty much gets us started. I've done a lot of community building, I've documented it, and now I want to talk about it.

First question?

Wendy Neal

When you first started EndUserSharePoint.com, what were your specific goals? Did you have any idea what it would become?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Hi Wendy. No goals. I was just documenting simple solutions I was building while managing AIDS vaccine research data at the VA hospital in New York City.

I had NO idea it would become as big as it is in the community.

While we're at it, people like Wendy are what makes EUSP possible. Thanks Wendy.

Next question?

vlad catrinescu

Hey Mark, I had a small question about what you are working on at the moment. I saw that your recent tweets are more on "Security" then "SharePoint". Do you still do a lot of SharePoint or you mainly switched focus?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Hi Vlad

I'm working on a project with Sonatype at the moment, and it is based around open source security.

That said, I'm looking at really cranking up the volume on EndUserSharePoint in the fall. More on that to come...

Next question?

vlad catrinescu

What's the difference between EUSP/NBSP .. and I saw you also got a Nothing but Branding ? or something similar

Mark Miller, @EUSP

For those of you who are lurkers, I'm also a good cook and can talk about the food community if you like.

NBSP is a combination of multiple sites: Developer/IT Pro/EndUser. EndUserSharePoint was a standalone site that was incorporated into NothingButSharePoint as one of its content areas.

Next question?

Ralph Rivas

Q: what type of company industry has given you the most "resistance" to SharePoint and Q: are you here with beard or sans beard (good versus evil Mark #transporteraccidentsinSP)

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Ralph - I'm here sans beard, but wanted to remind everyone that I USED to be the most bearded man in SharePoint.

Next question?

Brad Shannon I have a question for you, Mark. I've had this discussion with several recently and it's a difficult one to answer. How do you balance community involvement and family life? I have 3 little ones and a wife and they are very demanding of my time and presence! :)

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Brad - I include my 8 year old and my 10 year old in the community.

They come to conferences with me and have even presented on stage.

When Aurora was 6 years old, she and I build a digital bookshelf in SharePoint and she presented it at the SharePoint Saturday Philly.

Digital bookshelf: Organizing all the Curious George and Thomas train books. It grew from there.

Next questions?

vlad catrinescu

Since the title of the chat is how to build visibility, What is your opinion on how to build Visibility on SharePoint. What did you do special to be where you are now?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Vlad - Step one: Bring your kids to SharePoint conferences and let them speak. That will get you a TON of visibility :-)

I say that in all seriousness. Go borrow a neighbor's kid and show them a little bit of something and help them build a simple solution. You'd be surprised at the things you never thought of.

2nd: Become part of the community by participating on OTHER people's sites. Wendy, how many sites are you contributing to now?

Show real interest in what others are doing is key to gaining credibility and visibility in the community.

Next question?

Wendy Neal

Several, probably 5-6

Ralph Rivas

Q: is it easier to promote sharepoint to non-technical types versus, say Developers and how do you deal with those who "know a lot" and Q: how do you deal with the younger whippersnappers in the community #yesiam50+

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Is it easy to promote to non-techs. Not really, but they don't really care about SharePoint, they care about the solution.

Show them a solution without mentioning the word SharePoint, and you're in.

Developers and SharePoint? Is there such an animal?

How do I deal with the young smartassess? I support them in their smartassed-ness.

Harold Gale

Turning my 13 yr old into a ShrePoint guru

Mark Miller, @EUSP

The young ones aren't going to be limited by the legacy of what we've had to go through in the past 10 years.

Harold, I hope that wan't in jest, because I think it's a great idea.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

How does SharePoint relate to MineCraft? Find that key and we'll both retire.

Next question.

Brad Shannon

What is the recommended approach to handling the 'expenses' conversation when speaking at a distant location? I'm sure once you are established you have sponsors, but how do you handle it when you get started? Do speakers typically have to pay for themselves?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Brad - I am ADAMANTLY opposed to speaker "paying to play".

If a conference or event is charging a fee, the speakers deserve, and should demand, travel expenses and hotel.

SharePoint Saturdays and free events are a different story.

I have never paid for myself, other than for free events. If expenses aren't covered and they are charging a fee, it's part of the contract.

Why would you pay out of your own pocket so that some conference promoter can make money off your visibility. That's wrong and should not be tolerated as an industry.

vlad catrinescu

were you like that from the begging? "I am ADAMANTLY opposed to speaker "paying to play"" .. or when you're just starting you 'suck it up" and pay for yourself?

I know most conferences give at least hotel, some even pay you to speak.. but not many pay for travel.. and some don't pay for ANYTHING anymore (see SP Summit Vancouver)

Brad Shannon

Do you have signed contracts in place when you speak?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Brad, absolutely yes.

More questions, more questions. I like getting a little angry.

vlad catrinescu

I completely agree with you Mark, and that's why I believe "non-paid" internships for example should be banned... however, like SP Summit Vancouver was able to find speakers without paying a dime, do you think other conferences will try and follow so they save money?

(there you go.. provoking you lol)

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Vlad, as long as people are will to pay, the promoters will take advantage of it. If the speaker circuit as a group refuses to speak without at least hotel and travel expenses, I think all promoters will pony up or they will have to close down.

Harold Gale If you are going to speak at free events (SharePoint Sat, Code Camp, etc) Look at http://www.ineta.org/. They do offer some type of reimbursement

vlad catrinescu

Thanks Harold!

Stefan Bauer

What is your opinion on Yammer in general and SPYam?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

I'm willing to be the advocate for that movement.

Stefan, good to see you. My opinion of Yammer: I like it.

I've used SPYam to coordinate the production of a a new EUSP book that comes out at the end of this month.

Harold Gale

Loved being part of the reviewers EUSP book.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Wendy, Marc Anderson, Ben Tedder, Dave Coleman, Eric Overfield, Paul Taveras, all authors in the new book.

Wendy Neal

Yes Yammer worked well for the collaboration around the writing and reviewing of the book

Mark Miller, @EUSP

And thank you to people like Harold who helped proof read chapters. I think is was a good experience for all. That's number three in community development: Don't write you own book. Encourage others to write a chapter and then take credit for it :-)

Paul Tavares

I agree... creating private groups and coordinating review efforts seems to be a very good fit for Yammer

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Paul - It was just one of those things that popped up and seemed to be pretty transparent and easy to manage once we got it started. You might add a little here on your experience using Yammer for your chapter. (See how I did that? Now Paul will contribute to the flow of this conversation and I can take credit for it) Real world example :-)

Stefan Bauer

Sometimes it's hard to track especially if there are many people in Yammer like in SPYam. How do you personally keep track in yammer?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Stefan - I don't. I only track what's of interest to me. I don't follow the main stream.

Robin Witcher

I enjoyed proofreading a chapter of the book as well. Looking forward to its release

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Yammer is a tool. I use it to filter out the noise and grab what I need.

Paul Tavares

The combination of open forum and file upload capabilities were very helpful... You (the author) still have a large task incorporating all feedback, but Yammer helped work through discussion in a transparent form.

Jasjit Chopra

Q: There are many wannabes and beginners for SP - What advice do you have for them to get started on the SP visibility in the community?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Hi Jasjit - I think I said it earlier, but beginners should participate on other sites, using comments and replies.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

The best way to get noticed in the community at the beginning level is to add value to what other people are doing. They will add you to their circles once they realize you're sincerely interested and have something of value to say.

Harold Gale

Go to SharePoint Sat, Code Camps, conf. Get involved with Twitter #SharePoint and Yahoo SharePoint NewsGroup

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Anyone want to talk about influencer networks?

Brad Shannon

Mark, can you explain what that is?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Brad - Influencer Network: a network of influencers

If you could talk to 10 people in the SharePoint industry, have dinner with them, really talk with them, who would that be?

That's your influencer network. They are the ones who influencer your thoughts and actions.

It's very important to recognize who your personal influencers are.

Brad Shannon

Very good point

Paul Tavares

Nice take away

Mark Miller, @EUSP

There are various studies that come out each year who tell you who those influencers SHOULD be, but ignore that.

Who do you follow, who talks in your language, who influences you personally?

That's the key to building a true influencer network.

Wendy Neal

What you mentioned before about not writing your own book was a perfect segway to my next Q: I've heard you mention before that "curating is easier than creating." Can you elaborate on that more and explain how this concept has propelled you as one of the top influencer in the SharePoint community?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Wendy, is that a baited question or what?

How has that propelled me to the top of all influencer lists in the world?

Yep, that's it. I give everyone else the ability to speak their mind and a platform to get THEM exposure.

(BTW, that statement about me being on all influencer lists was a joke, if you didn't get it.)

Brad Shannon not far from the truth though! :)

Wendy Neal Well you're on mine anyway :)

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Laura Rogers, Marc Anderson, Wendy Neal, Paul Grenier, Christophe Humbert and about 200 more people have made me famous.

I say that in all seriousness. Those that know me, know that I give credit everywhere I go to the people who trust me and allow me to act on their behalf.

Fourth thing on the community building list: Write KILLER content!

... or else find people who do and ask if you can help them.

Brad Shannon

What do you think the most effective mechanism is to gain exposure (LinkedIn, Twitter, FB, Blogging, Yammer, sites like this one, etc)?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Harold - Why in the world would you want to sit at a table with Todd and Shane. If I was part of that group, I'd force you to sit between them. You'd be ducking for cover all night.

Brad - None of those. Third time repeating might be the charm here: Participate on other people's sites and show value in the comments. That's where you get noticed.

Not by saying "Good post". That spammy crap.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Find your personal top 10 influencers and comment on their site once a week on a subject that you're comfortable with.

Brad Shannon

Good takeaway

Robin Witcher

Speaking of platforms for others to speak their minds, Mark, are there plans to begin having more Workshops like used to be on EUSP? I enjoyed those immensely and found them most helpful

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Robin - YES! Natasha and I are working right now to setup workshops for the fall. Stay tuned.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

I thought the Superstar workshops with Paul Grenier and the power user workshops with Christophe Humbert really set a good path for many power users.

Mark Jones

Hi Mark, thanks for doing this firstly! I was wondering if you have any tips for keeping people interested and active in a community ?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Hi Mark - How to keep people active: Acknowledge them.

"Thanks for your comment." "I agree with you but have you thought about..." "That is a GREAT idea! Would you mind writing an article about it?"

Mark Jones

Yeah - good tip, we are doing that, but with larger numbers it's an ever increasing task.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Wendy, Laura, Marc, Jim Bob and many others, I found in the comment sections on EUSP and developed long term relationships with them.

Mark - Tasks are based on priorities, right? What's your top 3 priorities? Figure that out, and you'll see the path, Grasshopper.

Alright, anyone else want some sage wisdom?

... and by sage, I mean from an old guy.

Did I tell you the story about the time some you guy called me old, to my face, at SharePoint Saturday?

Brad Shannon

lol no, please do

Paul Tavares

this is going to be good....

Wendy Neal

No, would love to hear it

Daniel Glenn

Did you have the long beard then?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Guy comes up to me and says, "Are you Mark Miller?" "Yes, I am.", in my humblest voice.

"Man, you're OLD. Wait till I tell the guys at work!"

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Daniel - No beard, clean shaven. Just told him to get some social manners and walked off.

Brad Shannon

wow

Daniel Glenn

Nice. That is more and more a lost art - being able to politely interact with others

Ralph Rivas

Q: How do you keep sharp with the vast variety of sharepoint topics or are you finding that you are becoming a specialist to a few things about sharepoint (e.g. UX versus DEV versus Admin versus Governance) and TAGs: #marksaysgetoffmylawnthanksforkeepingmylawncleanmark #oldguyzrule

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Ralph - That's impossible.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Surround yourself with people who do know something and you'll look really smart.

I think you can make a LOT of money if...

(anyone want to know the answer? I need some encouragement here.)

Daniel Glenn

back in the day of v1 and v2, you could know a lot about every aspect of SP. Now, there is just too much (depth) in the product

Brad Shannon answer, please! :)

vlad catrinescu I would like to know the answer Mark ;)

Wendy Neal

me too!

Mark Miller, @EUSP

... more encouragement please...

Paul Tavares

WAITING...

Mark Miller, @EUSP

(see, here's your first lesson in engagement. Look at all the people sitting on the edge of their seat)

Brad Shannon

Mark, you are the top influencer in the community and only you can provide such knowledge...

Harold Gale

..pulling hair...

Daniel Glenn *you work for the federal mint* :)

Paul Tavares

(love the way you are working the crowd here)

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Here it is:

Ralph Rivas

(Harold, at least you have some to pull!)

Harold Gale

in anticipation

Paul Tavares

yes, yes,... go on....

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Develop a solution that does one thing right for a specific industry.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

For you old programmers out their, think of the first Linux tools.

Each did one specific thing VERY well.

No bells and whistles, no crap.

One...

Simple...

Solution

Brad Shannon

Very good point. Consultants have an edge on this too I think. We get to see lots of different industries

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Do that for a specific industry and you can retire.

Finance, health, pharma, gov, edu...

vlad catrinescu

By the way, Talking about Money Q. Is NBSP the others paid by your own pocket, or you got a sponsorship from Microsoft/ FpWeb for it?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

Vlad - Fpweb has been very supportive for years. They host our site as a contribution to the community.

I don't know if Microsoft even knows we exist.

... and that's sad, right?

When I say that, yes there are some in MS that know and support us.

Daniel Glenn

Yes, it is sad - if "they" did know you existed, what would be different? what benefits would you see?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

But in general, there has been no acknowledgement of our contributions to the community.

Daniel - More than anything else, the exposure would help.

Daniel Glenn

Did they give the spot for the booth at SPC12, or did you have to pay for it?

Mark Miller, @EUSP

We get a ton of referrals from TechNet and other forums.

Mark Miller, @EUSP

... but that's from other community members, not MS.

Daniel - Ah, you jest young man. Joel Oleson and I came out of pocket for that.

That's it for today.

I hope I've helped you a little, with the main takeaway being...

Participate in other people's site, encourage your own network and say hello the next time you see me.

Brad Shannon Thank you for participating Mark! We really appreciate it! I'll have the transcript up by EOD and will Tweet it out :) Thanks again!

Mark Miller, @EUSP

SPTechCon Boston: Be there for the cage match between me and Joel Oleson.

SharePoint Online with Jasper Oosterveld

Brad Shannon OK everyone, it's time for our #SPChat! Please suspend all chat until Jasper chats 'Next question?'. You are welcome to private chat with me or one another, but please do not private message Jasper as he will be busy enough trying to keep up! :)

**** STARTING SPCHAT WITH JASPER OOSTERVELD ****

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for today's #SPChat. This is our 7th chat session and we are very excited to welcome the one and only, Jasper Oosterveld!

A couple rules to go over:

1. Only Jasper or Admins may chat in the main room, unless Jasper asks for another question

2. Please do not post your questions until Jasper says 'Next question?'

3. We will post the full transcript on the blog immediately following the chat.

4. Have fun and learn lots!

Jasper, thank you again for joining us! We are all very excited to learn on the topic of 'SharePoint Online'. If you wouldn't mind, could you please give a brief introduction on the topic and about yourself?

Jasper Oosterveld

Hi Brad, thanks for the intro!

Today I would like to talk about the new and improved features in SharePoint Online 2013. I really love the platform! I presented at SharePoint Saturday NL and Oslo about the topic and would love to answer questions here :)

On a personal level, I work for a Dutch company called Macaw as SharePoint Consultant. I support customers implementing SharePoint portals from beginWning until end. So think of doing workshops, writing functional design/creating prototype and implementing out-of-the-box features and of course end-user training sessions :) That's briefly what I do :)

So the questions can start!

Ren Modery

What are the most common use cases for SharePoint Online?

Jasper Oosterveld

Thanks for the question Rene

I do see a lot of use of SharePoint Online for Intranet Collaboration Portals. A home page with general news articles including tabs with news from team sites. Team Sites for departments where people can share documents and use a general calendar. You can create some really nice portals with SP Online because you can create custom Master Page to implement your companies look & feel. I do hope to see a switch towards Extranet scenario's, especially with the release of SPO2013.

You can invite external users without assigning a license. It's an easy system to use and it saves money for customers. Combine this with the new project site template and you can start creating your own Extranet Project Portal. I really hope to work on that in the near future.

Ramiro Rincn Barraza

Hi Jasper! Which are the best scenarios to build a hybrid environment (using SP on-premise & Online)?

Jasper Oosterveld

Rene actually wrote a great chapter about this in our new SharePoint 2013 Handbook! haha, a little bit of shameless promotion here Rene do you mind chipping in? This question is up your alley :)

Ren Modery

Hybrid environments are best used, when one platform (on-premises / Online) doesn't offer everything that the other one provides. Alternatively, they are also an option when you want to migrate from one to the other, and it takes some time (e.g. a 3 month migration from SharePoint 2013 to SPO)

For example, if you use SP2013 in-house already, but want to collaborate a lot with externals, using SharePoint Online (as mentioned by Jasper) may be an option, and a hybrid can be set up

Jasper Oosterveld

Please do always check your requirements before you start with a hybrid environment to check if SPO can meet your demands.

Ren Modery

Good point by Jasper, and some general advice/warning: There are still lots of technical limitations and restrictions for Hybrids, so a perfect integration is not given. For example, Managed Brad Shannontadata currently can't be shared between the two environments

Jasper Oosterveld

I believe Rene has multiple links on his blog to documentation about the subject.

Ren Modery ok, shameless plug as "requested" by Jasper: www.hybridoffice365.com (some useful links there)

Wendy Neal

Along these same lines, what are some of the restrictions of SharePoint Online? Can you give some examples of things that administrators or developers cannot do in SharePoint Online that they can on premises?

Jasper Oosterveld

I will answer Wendy's question first

Let's see

The most important thing to realize is, that you don't have access to Central Administration

That immediately results in multiple restrictions You don't have any control over timer jobs, this is were a lot of dev/it pro's start to complain ;)

One of the limitations I cannot stand, although I love the platform don't get me wrong, is the time frame of audience compilation.

In the 2010 version, not sure if it changed, this was ONCE a week. That really limits your testing time frame

Wendy Neal

Wow

Jasper Oosterveld

I know! To be honest, not sure if it changed. Wouldn't bet on it ;)

Developers cannot create any full trust solutions for SPO and are limited to Apps and Sandbox Solutions.

Doesn't need to be a problem but it can be.

My last presentations about SPO had one slide with the main limitations. I will summarize these:

1. No full trust solutions (just mentioned this)

2. Limit BCS (don't know all the details) to connect to external systems

3. Limited WCM

That one is interesting because SP2013 came with many improvements on WCM

Of course aimed at public internet sites

Office 365 already comes with its on template for public facing internet sites

That means features such as friendly url's and cross site publishing aren't supported

You are stuck with the default template. It's not to bad though so long you just want to show text and some images :)

4. No Performance Point Services

This limits your options for BI features

but

You can still use Excel Web Access to show Graphics from Excel Sheets. Pretty cool.

5. Search Code and Index

You cannot code against the Search index to create specific Search solutions

You also cannot perform any crawls. This is set by Microsoft. Last time I checked it was every 15 minutes an incremental and once a day a full crawl

I will publish a blog tomorrow about this subject.

It contains a link to an extensive overview with all the supported features Long answer :)

Jasjit Chopra

May I also add you cannot create Date and 2 other data types for managed properties in search

Jasper Oosterveld

Good one! Didn't know that.

Search is available in the SharePoint Administration Center, it mentions the option to create managed properties.

Cool!

Sreeharsha

Hi, What are the cases where SPOnline is not recommended compared with SP?

Jasper Oosterveld

Sreeharsha Hi, What are the cases where SPOnline is not recommended compared with SP?

This is a difficult question to answer because it totally depends on your business requirements

Do you want to have full control over your SharePoint Portal/Farm?

Yes? Then Online isn't really an option for you.

Can you live with certain disadvantages? Then go for it!

Don't forget that Microsoft is going Cloud first with SP 2013

That