SharePoint for Public Websites: Top 6 Things to Consider

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In only 10 years, websites have greatly evolved from their beginnings as simple sites. ‘Gone are the days of static text, flat images, and broken links’, as Eric Riz wrote in his article “SharePoint: Should you use it for your public website?” . And as the landscape continues to change and people do more and more business over the Internet, today’s Internet visitor demands more from their website experience. They not only want a website to be informative and look good, but they also want it to provide real-time information, dynamic content, social interaction, and an immersive interface. In other words, today’s site are interactively pleasing, not just aesthetically pleasing.

So what about SharePoint 2010? Just like any technology platform, there are pros and cons and debates over whether SharePoint is always a good fit. But with its extensibility, audio and video integration, and social capabilities, it can be a very powerful and strategic option. In fact, if you have SharePoint already within your organization, another benefit you can realize is that there is little or no duplicated staff training necessary, no separate systems for Intranet vs. your external-facing website.

But before we go further, let do some foundational work. Many are unaware of SharePoint’s public website capabilities although many already use SharePoint. So, if this idea is new to you, stop over at a site called WSSDemo. This site lists many public-facing SharePoint sites, and even categorizes them by industry.

In addition, many of Microsoft’s sites are built on SharePoint and serve as good examples. (Tip for spotting SharePoint sites: When looking at the URL, if it has /Pages/ and the webpage ends in .aspx, than it’s likely a SharePoint site.)

So, is your business considering SharePoint for your public website? In this post, we will review 6 key things to consider when planning a SharePoint public website project.

1. Licensing and Support

In order to use the full SharePoint Server product for your Internet website, the server licensing will comes in 2 flavors, Standard and Enterprise. However, there’s no client access licensing. Only the “for Internet Sites” server licenses are required, but within your production environment you will need licenses for each running server instance.

Another nice thing to note is SharePoint’s support community. Beyond Microsoft and its partners, there are many third-party developers of management tools, web parts, and templates. In addition, there is a thriving SharePoint developer community on CodePlex with many downloadable open-source tools.

2. Planning

It’s essential to have a well-developed game plan for your new SharePoint site. As with any website project, you will likely also plan a website face-lift. Thus, you will want to take time to define and approve your brand strategy and the look and layout of your site. Do you plan to stay closer to the “out-of-the-box” look, or do you want to significantly customize? In SharePoint, the key to remember is the more Master Pages and Page Layouts you have, the more time is involved in design and the building of the site.

In addition, SharePoint website projects often require planning and strategy regarding development. In a well planned development process, you have separate environments for development and testing. While Microsoft licensing often allows for these additional environments, hardware resource requirement still need to be planned and allocated.

3. Staging

Publishing information on a public website should always involve a staged process, that includes SharePoint. This is an important consideration regardless of whether you’re a small business or a large organization. SharePoint includes powerful publishing features from simple approval workflows to multi-farm content deployment paths. So be sure to plan out your content approval process and then utilize SharePoint to complement, or even enforce, your plan and process.

4. Web Standards and Accessibility

These two items are important to consider for any public website and SharePoint 2010 comes a long way from it predecessors in being compliant and flexible around ASP, CSS, and JavaScript. As you plan to customize, check out the many resources online to help you better work with, for example, SharePoint’s CSS classes and IDs.

SharePoint 2010 is WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 compliant out-of-the-box and Microsoft put a lot of work into interface enhancements such as in-browser dialogs, keyboard support, and tab access. In addition, attributes such as labels, descriptions, and tooltips, are built into SharePoint. So, as you customize and brand your SharePoint site, think about accessibility standards and ensure that added content and pictures maintain the same standards.

5. Custom Development

As you plan your project, you will likely customize your site’s branding and layout and will probably look at extending functionality to include powerful e-commerce functionality such as customer order entry, order status, etc. Happily, there are some great resources to help you with SharePoint enhancements and development.

To start, check out the “Patterns & Practices SharePoint Guidance” project on CodePlex. It includes a hands-on lab and good reference material. Next, there’s a great SharePoint Dev Wiki at Nothingbutsharepoint.com. And finally, this is an area where an experienced consultant company such as Pinnacle, can be most valuable.

6. Security and User Logins

As with any website project, security is a key item to address early in your site’s architecture discussions. For most public websites, many visitors will simply browse. Thus, anonymous access is all that’s needed. However, if you are looking into an online store with checkout, a vendor or dealer portal, etc., the major benefits come from interactions after login.

SharePoint can use domain logins through your Active Directory, but most companies don’t want to be limited or exposed and choose to configure Forms Based Authentication or use a third-party authenticator such as Live ID or Facebook. SharePoint offer significantly better support of these options compared to its predecessors, so it’s important to think about which authentication method you want to use, how you want visitors to login, and how you want to manage user accounts.

Summary

Planning and strategy is key. As a platform, SharePoint has truly grown since its first release. Today’s latest SharePoint 2010 sites work well on Firefox, Safari, Chrome, iPads, and more. So while the features are there, the strategy must support your online and business goals. The result of that combination is a site your visitors can easily use and navigate to find your content.

Data Visualization with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

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With the ever increasing amount of data generated by business systems, finding meaningful, timely information can become a real problem.  Getting this data compiled into a concise, easy to read format often takes someone with special skills in report writing and data mining. This can be both time consuming and costly for businesses without those skill sets on staff.

With its release of Dynamics CRM 2011, Microsoft has made a great leap forward in giving end users the tools they need to easily and quickly create meaningful  graphical reports and compile them into a dashboard.   Here is an example showing one of the “Out-of-the-box” dashboards provided with the CRM installation:

CRM 2011 Dashboard

This type of dashboard gives business decision makers the ability to open up their computer and receive real-time information about the health and activities of their business.

Each of the reports on the picture above is editable simply by clicking into the image, and changing the criteria. You can also receive detail information by clicking into the report. Let’s say for example, you want to see the customer detail of a specific day’s cases.

I clicked on the date in the “Cases By Priority” report and got this selector:

I can now choose the field I want for more detailed information.  In this case, I will choose “Customer.”

CustomerSelect

Then I will choose the type of chart, and click the blue arrow.

Choose Chart Type

With that done, my page reloads with my new chart showing.

The piece that really adds value to this dashboard component of CRM is that each user can create their own, personal dashboard or use one of the many provided with the software.  They can choose which one they see by default.  This means that the Sales Manager can log in and view sales, opportunities, and leads, while a service manager would be more likely to want to see service cases, and appointments.  With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, that can all be accomplished quickly and easily by any user with just a small amount of training.

Authentic Leaders: Everyone Needs an Editor

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I can’t proof myself. I have blindspots.  At best, we are about 70% self-aware.  After that, we need some trusted advisors around us that will help us fill in the gaps.  Here are some simple examples:

  • I won’t post this blog without someone else reading it.  It will make sense to me but something won’t register to someone else reading it.  I need proof-readers.
  • I miscommunicate.  I think I said it, I know what I meant, but what I say is often missed, misinterpreted, or leaves employees and co-workers needing more information.  I need interpreters.
  • I’m too close to the business challenges I face at times and can spin my wheels.  I need an outside point-of-view, an advisor, or a consultant.
  • I have weaknesses.  I can pretend, power up, or tell people they’re nuts - but I have them.  I need a trusted team around me to fill in with their strengths.
  • I can’t stand shopping for clothes.  It sucks the life out of me and if it were left up to me, I would only own black and blue suits, safe ties, and a wardrobe you can’t screw up.  I need a fashion consultant.

Often in our roles at work, at home, and as leaders in business, we fall into the trap of feeling like we have to have all the answers.  The truth is, we can better understand the perception of others around us by having trusted people near us, who have our permission to give us the candid reality.

Your value as an employee, as a leader, or as the owner of your company will increase in proportion to the people you have around you that will “keep it real” with you.  If you’re trying to do it alone – you’re capped and you’re walking around with mustard on your face and no one wants to tell you about it.  Your team already knows your weaknesses, you might as well get them on the table.

Proverbs 15:22: Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.

Extending Dynamics GP Data within your Organization

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Do you find that you’re running GP SmartLists and exporting the data to Excel so that it can be shared with others in your organization?  If you’re using GP 10.0 or later, there’s an easier way.  And you may already have it at your fingertips… GP Excel reports.

Beginning with version 10.0, Microsoft began offering a set of Excel reports based on the existing SmartList favorites.  These reports take advantage of a Microsoft Office integration method, called an Office Data Connection (ODC), which will allow you to view Microsoft Dynamics GP data in an Excel form.  This means the Excel reports have a “live link” to the GP data, allowing them to be refreshed with current data each time they are run.

Once the reports are deployed, you can of course access them from within GP.  But even better, since they can be deployed to a network share (or a Microsoft Office SharePoint library), they are also available to users in your organization who do not have a GP user license.  As long as a user has access to the deployment location (see figure below), that user can navigate to the share location, select the desired report and get up-to-date, live GP data right there in Excel.

But wait, there’s more!  If the users have rights to access the data connection, they can also create their own reports directly from Excel, using the Office Data Connections provided with GP.  It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Open Excel and select either a New or Existing Data Connection from the Get External Data options.  (I’m selecting a new one below which will ask for the name of the server housing the data.)

2. Select your company database and the Connection to use.

3. Finish and return the data to Excel.

It’s that easy!  You end up with an Excel report containing a “live” connection directly to the GP data that you can now manipulate as desired in Excel.  When you save the Excel report, the data connection is saved with it, and the data will refresh each time you open it!

If you’re on GP 10.0 or later, and haven’t yet deployed the Excel reports, you might consider it as just one of the ways to open up the GP data to other users in your organization.

Don’t Worry – Everything is under Control

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Welcome to 2012!  End of year activities are in full swing for us “financial folks” and hopefully your desk doesn’t look like the picture here :) .  It strikes me as somewhat odd that financial management professionals are given job titles such as “Controller” – yet when I talk to these people – their #1 complaint is that things are “out of control” in their organizations. As accounting professionals, we are preparing our financial data for 2011 for external reporting and/or tax preparation purposes, so we are closely reviewing all of the financial data for accuracy.  How frustrating it is to discover the inaccuracies that have occurred throughout the year by staff members! 

 Some of the more common errors are:

1. Immaterial Asset purchases are being coded to “Fixed Asset” accounts on the Balance Sheet in order to be capitalized and depreciated / expensed to future periods.  It is not uncommon to find $20 staplers in Asset accounts on the Balance Sheet rather than just being expensed to the Office Supplies expense account directly.

2. You may have Standard Monthly Journal Entries that book such things as Tax Expenses – with a corresponding entry to the Accrued Tax Liability Account.  Then when the A/P clerk makes the actual tax payments, they code the payment to the Expense Account – rather than to the Liability account.

3. You find that a significant number of vendors have been setup as Non-1099 Vendors when they really should be receiving 1099′s.

4. You review Payroll and determine that an employee was setup to participate in your 401K plan, however the payroll clerk forgot to appropriately exempt the deduction from Federal and State Income Tax withholding.

I could go on and on with examples like this – and they all lead to one thing – Controllers working late nights composing Adjusting Journal Entries to correct all the mistakes – and trying to figure out how to correct the 1099′s and W-2′s in order to make them accurate.
Why do these things happen year after year?  I used to think that it was poor training or poor communication – but I don’t believe that any longer.  Some of these mistakes are being made by employees who have been on the job for 15 years – and even more frustrating – in past years – these same employees have actually NOT made these mistakes. 

Consistency of performance is a great thing – so it would be nice if a clerk coded something wrong – that they would at least CONSISTENTLY do it wrong – not go back and forth between right and wrong!  If you have “given up” on the hope of making these types of errors go away – GREAT NEWS – I have discovered a way to solve the challenge!  Stop relying on “humans” to remember things – and instead, invest in Financial Management Software that allows you to establish Business Rules that the software then enforces FOR YOU!  We use Microsoft Dynamics GP Software to do this for our Company.�
Here are just a few examples of what can be done with the Dynamics GP Software:

1. We use Account Level Security to restrict users’ ability to code to G/L accounts that they should NOT be using.

2. We have the software enforce business logic on transactions.  For example, if an A/P clerk codes something to a Fixed Asset account for capitalization – we have the software look to see if the amount of the transaction is greater than $250.  If it isn’t, the A/P clerk must change the G/L coding in order to process the transaction.

3. When a new vendor is setup in A/P, if we have not received a W-9 from them – we mandate that the system start tracking them as a 1099-Vendor.  Once we receive the W-9 we can easily change the vendor to “Not a 1099 Vendor” if so desired.

4. On Payroll, we make “inaccessible” setup fields on employees that should never be changed. We are all human – and we all have “good days” and “bad days”.  The nice thing about the Dynamics GP Software is that when someone has a “bad day”, the software makes sure that they still do their job correctly. 

In summary, if your financial reporting environment is “Out of Control” – make a New Years’ resolution to look at Dynamics GP Software to better your life come January of 2013!

Archiving Email on Exchange 2010 or PST = Evil

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OK, Evil might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s not far off in my book. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people save precious emails to their local hard drives only to have the drive crash and not be able to recover them. From an administrator’s point of view I certainly understand how this happens. Some administrators say, “I’m running out of space on my SAN” or simply, “I’m trying to get people to use less storage space”  (the most common reason I’ve come upon for IT teaching people how to setup PST Archiving.) PST Archiving allows you to back up Outlook data to a .pst file, which is stored locally on your computer rather than on the e-mail server. Continue reading →

Critical Vulnerability in ASP.NET

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Microsoft has recently identified and developed a patch for several vulnerabilities found in ASP.NET. The patch is considered to be a necessity and can easily be downloaded from the Microsoft’s Security TechCenter. These vulnerabilities could cause a DoS attack on any machine with the .NET framework installed.

We highly recommend updating your PCs and Servers if you have .NET installed. If you have any questions please feel free to contact our help desk and they will be happy to help you.