Quick Tip: Don’t forget Outlook’s ability to display a web page for a folder

Robert Bogue July 19, 2005 No Comments

While working with a client recently we were discussing the issues with the Exchange web parts that are shipped as a part of SPS. (This spawned the development on the new Exchange web parts, see my previous post.)

However, we came to the conclusion that it might be too small to include some email items in SharePoint. So I mentioned the idea of doing things the reverse way. Use Outlook to host your SharePoint site. It’s a feature that’s been around in Outlook for a while. All you have to do is…

Create a folder in Outlook.
Right click, select properties.
Click the home page tab.
Enter the address of your SharePoint site in the address text box.
Select the show home page by default for this folder checkbox
Click the OK button.

Now when you navigate to this folder in Outlook you’ll see your SharePoint site. Not a bad deal when you’re looking to have a single dashboard to the organization and you live in email — as many of us do.

Beta Opportunities

Robert Bogue July 19, 2005 No Comments

I’ve got a series of web part packs and utilities of various sorts that I have on my radar to release in the next few months. As I’m getting geared up for that, I’d like to see if anyone would be interested in doing some beta testing. Here’s what’s on the plate short term…

SharePoint URL Management – If you let your users enter URLs on your SharePoint sites then you know that they can and do link EVERYWHERE. The point of the URL management utility is to first, identify where users are linking to — in every URL field in every list in every site in a site collection. The links are organized by server by URL and finally by where they are used from. The second feature of the application is to do wholesale replacements of URLs and parts of URLs. So you can change the server that a URL points to, the path of the page, or even everything about the URL including any querystring parameters provided.
Exchange Web Parts – SharePoint Portal Server offers some basic Exchange Outlook Web Access web parts. From my perspective they have two fundamental flaws. First, they can’t be used in Windows SharePoint Services. Second, they require that the user personalize the web part properties. This web part pack won’t need the users to personalize the properties to be able to use it. Thus it doesn’t require personalization at all. The web parts figure out who the user is based on their login name.
Site Properties Pack – Site properties in SharePoint are very powerful. They are a quick way to provide some “state“ information about the site which can be used to connect to other applications. The site properties pack will contain a web part to visually display and modify site properties, a content editor web part which will take content and display it while doing property substitutions, and a list display web part that allows for display of a list with property substitutions in the URLs. Together they are a toolkit to get you started with working with site properties for integration.

There are more applications to come but these are the ones that I’m to the point of writing documentation for.

Four steps for reducing project risk

Robert Bogue July 19, 2005 No Comments

Risks in a project are inevitable. However, carefully collecting, evaluating, prioritizing, and controlling risks can increase the chances of success for your next project.

Whether it’s small or large, complex or simple, every project has risk. It’s our job as managers to do our best to not only minimize the risk in our projects but to minimize it as soon as we can. In this article, you’ll learn a simple four-step approach for doing just that.

Inventory

The first step to managing the risk of a project is to inventory the situation. That is, identify all of the risks that you think are possible in the project. The inventory should include all internal factors for the project such as resource changes, assumption failures, and sponsor availability. It should also include all external factors such as a change in company direction or a change of technology direction. Most of all, however, it should include the things that are new in the project. If the project is working with a new technology, is using a new development methodology, or even if there are new, relatively unknown team members, these need to be listed as potential risks to the project.

http://techrepublic.com.com/article/four-steps-for-reducing-project-risk

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Quick Tip: Don’t forget Outlook’s ability to display a web page for a folder

Beta Opportunities

Four steps for reducing project risk

Inventory

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Public Speaking