SharePoint User Group UK

Hi all,

many thanks to everyone who came along last night. We hope you enjoyed the presentations and the whole evening. Apologies for the room change, 95% of people turning up for a usergroup meeting is unheard of!!!

As mentioned last night we are keen to get your feedback on how you thought the evening went (both good and bad points!), and what you'd like to see presented at future events. We want to make these evenings as interesting as possible to you so this second point is very important.

For feedback/ideas, either post a reply here, click on my username to the left and send me a private message, or just send an email to nick@dotnetsolutions.ltd.uk

Next meeting will be on March 13th. I'll post an agenda and sign up thread for that by the end of the week.

Many thanks
Nick

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http://www.lightningtools.com

Thanks for organising last night, just brilliant and what we need for this tool.  Possible topics for future events:-

• Customization for now and the future (what we customise now will it be undone when upgrading to v3)
• Searching - how the beast works, building search scopes, editing noise files etc
• Building an Intranet using SPS Portal Server ( Topics V Areas, Publishing Web Content - listings v content editor web parts)

Cheers Andrew

First of all, thanks Nick for all your efforts in organising last night.

Both presentations were very informative. As someone who is more familiar with application development and only having worked with basic standalone WSS and SPS deployments, I think I gained most from the first presentation on SharePoint Farm Design. However, having not worked on web part development before, it was valuable to see the differences from more conventional deployments.

Thanks to both Steve and Brett for the work they put into their presentations.

I'm just sorry I couldn't make the pub afterwards!

I have a couple of topics I would be very interested to see presented in future:-

• SharePoint Security Best Practices
• The paradigm shift between traditional folder structures and SharePoint

Thanks again,

Rob

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Robert Wormald

Nick,, many thanks for organising this, very useful, looking forward to next event.  As discussed here are my own personal suggestions for future topics:

- InfoPath and SharePoint.  I'm quite interested in the potential of InfoPath but not sure how widely it has been adopted.  Would like to hear more from anyone who is putting it to proper use in a SharePoint environment, particularly in conjunction with:

 - Workflow - big topic I know but becoming increasingly important.  As things progress with Microsoft Workflow Foundation it would be good to hear how this integrates/overlaps with SharePoint plans.

Derek

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Derek
http://workerthread.wordpress.com

I definitely echo all the positive feedback both for Nick and the presenters at the first meeting.

I would be very interested in hearing more about workflow options in SharePoint and in particular InfoPath implementation and customisation.  I read an article recently that suggested InfoPath version next (O12) will support browser compatibility which really opens up the possibilities and encourages me to want to get on board now...

Many thanks

Matthew

Nick,

I found it very interesting - there were many useful pieces of information in both presentations and Brett's demonstration of using user controls to build web parts was definitely a "work smarter not harder" moment for me!

One area that I would be particularly interested in hearing more about is the migration of users from existing file-share based document storage into SharePoint integrated document management. This is an area that causes a lot of pain, but can bring so many benefits. I have found that, as with many things, it is not enough to rely on training to get the users to migrate to the SharePoint server. Training, making the document file-share read-only and limiting where users can store their documents (and occasionaly, crying, begging and perhaps a little torture... ;-) ) - a general "holistic" approach to the subject is the only way and even then, people find a way round it.

Some sharing of experiences in ways to make the switch worthwhile for the users with quick wins (the ability to share, the ability to search easily, for example) and discussion of what problems people have found and how they have got around them would be of great benefit to me. Anyone else agree?

Murad James

http://thetechnophile.blogspot.com
http://www.chuquet.com

 

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Murad James MBCS CITP
Systems & Software Consultant
50% of Chuquet.Com
http://thetechnophile.blogspot.com

Hi Nick

Thanks for a brilliant meeting, the presentations and the company were superb.  I look forward to seeing the slides and meeting everyone again at the next meeting.

Cheers

 

Derek,

I agree with you on both points. I think both are big topics and sadly I am not your man to tell you how we are putting it into practice, wish I was! Like you I would like to hear further on the topics if Nick is able to arrange anything.

Excellent first meeting, content was very useful and very welcome.

Bruce 

Hi all,

from having a read over the above posts it seems there are two main topics we want to see covered:

1, Infopath/Workflow etc

2, How to get users to make the paradigm shift to using SharePoint

Is that about the jist of it?

Cheers
Nick

 

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http://www.lightningtools.com

Sounds good to me

Derek

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Derek
http://workerthread.wordpress.com

Workflow will be a part of the March one I think. Infrostrata will be demonstrating Skelta I believe Nick ? I agree though you could use the whole 2 hours just on Workflow.