SharePoint for Public Websites: Top 6 Things to Consider

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Joel C

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.

Business Productivity on iOS and Android Devices with SharePoint

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Joel C

Recently, I’ve noticed that many of my conversations with organizations regarding SharePoint included a growing amount of time around remote and mobile access. Why? You probably already know the answer; users are relying more and more on their mobile devices. Continue reading →

Microsoft Announces Office 365

Posted on October 21, 2010 by neil

Earlier this week Microsoft announced its online productivity suite – Office 365. With quite a large base of features and functionality it’s essentially Microsoft’s answer to other top tier online productivity suites like Google Docs and Apple’s iWork.com. The most feature rich version of the service offers document viewing and editing through the Web Apps; email and calendar through Exchange Online; document sharing and your company intranet with SharePoint Online; and calling, web conferencing and instant messaging with Lync Online. Any mobile device that supports ActiveSync (that would be all Windows Mobile/Windows Phone devices, iOS devices and any device running Android 2.1 or better) will be able to access mobile docs. No word yet as to whether mobile editing will be supported. Web applications include a version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Microsoft also claims other features such as multiple person document editing, and photo and video editing.

Some included features:

Master your Inbox and calendar with Conversation View and other advanced management tools in Outlook
Leverage the power of business and social networking right within Outlook with the Outlook Social Connector
Collaborate with control and confidence with co-authoring
Instantly share slideshows, across town or around the world with PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show
Create presentations that are as brilliant to watch as they are easy to create with new video and photo editing tools in PowerPoint
Quickly work with hundreds of millions of rows of data in Excel. Transform enormous quantities of data into meaningful information

This service is still in a beta testing phase, and won’t be available until sometime early 2011. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

Screenshot 1: Web Application for Word

Screenshot 2: Web Application for Excel

Screenshot 4: Main Page

3 Key Benefits to Using SharePoint

Posted on September 9, 2010 by neil

Managing documents, calendars and inter-office information can be difficult. Documents get lost, version control is virtually non-existent and daily business functions that can be easily managed often get out of control.

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is a web-based framework that allows you to host powerful services and applications, and it comes out of the box with services such as document management, calendars, etc.

Key Benefits:

Document collaboration & management

One central repository for your files – This ensures that the most recent copy is available to everyone (or as SharePoint promotes… there is only… “one version of the truth”).
Check in / Check out - When adding new changes to official documents, employees can check documents out and make changes without worrying about other changes being made simultaneously.
Content approval –Document changes are not published until the document is checked back in and approved by a manager (if approval is required).
Versioning – Unlike your current file system, document versioning allows you to track changes made to your documents. SharePoint tracks who/when/why the change was made and also gives you the ability to revert back to prior versions.
Search indexing of content of files – SharePoint relies on the file content, not the file name, for searching. So, rather than worry about naming your file correctly and putting it in the right location where everyone else will find it, SharePoint Search will find the document you are looking for based on the content of the document.

Integration to Microsoft Office as pertains to Office 2007 & 2010
Create a two-way street between SharePoint and Office. Update calendars, view documents, etc.

Shared Calendars – SharePoint 2010 can be a central location for a team calendar, contacts and tasks and can be viewed and managed from within Outlook 2007 and 2010.

Documents – SharePoint can surface document libraries to manage and edit in Outlook. Document Libraries can be attached to your Outlook account and brought offline for changes.

CRM Integration with SharePoint

By integrating SharePoint with your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, you can extend the document management and collaboration capabilities of CRM. Any entity in CRM can be connected to content in SharePoint, including documents, tasks, calendars, etc…

Top 10 reasons to try SharePoint Workspace 2010

Posted on August 13, 2010 by pinnacle

1. On the go? Take SharePoint Workspace with you.

Isn’t it time you got things done according to your schedule? Synchronize SharePoint 2010 libraries and lists to your computer with just a few clicks. Easily update documents and lists offline, and be confident that everything will automatically synchronize to the server when you’re back online.

2. Redefine the way you work together.

With co-authoring, you don’t have to work in the same room as your peers to get team projects done. You can simultaneously work together on Word and PowerPoint files posted in SharePoint Workspace from different locations.Save time by editing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, or content with other people, and be assured that your changes are stored and updated in SharePoint Workspace and on SharePoint Server. With co-authoring, you can work together simultaneously on Word and PowerPoint files posted in SharePoint Workspace from different locations.

3. Quickly and easily find what you need.

SharePoint Workspace 2010 includes powerful integration with Windows Search, so you can easily search through your local copies for content. With support for customized queries, you can pinpoint your results exactly the way you want.

4. Review and manage documents with ease.

Support for features such as Check In and Check Out make it easy to control your documents. You can also easily review versions stored on the server — leaving you in control of your content. Features such as drag and drop from anywhere are supported — even other Office applications such as Outlook, right into a workspace!

5. Work more efficiently with easy-to-use SharePoint lists.

SharePoint workspaces can contain most standard SharePoint list types, including Discussion, Announcements, Links, and custom lists. Form previewing and editing is provided through Microsoft InfoPath 2010 technology. SharePoint Lists customized by InfoPath will be fully intact.

6. Access and make changes to external data sources.

SharePoint’s Business Connectivity Services enables connections to external data sources — including read and write access to line-of-business applications. When combined with SharePoint Workspace’s offline capability, you can review your external data inside SharePoint Workspace, search/filter/group it, and even make changes to the data. SharePoint Workspace synchronizes your changes directly to the external data source.

7. Get quick access to SharePoint content from Windows Explorer.

After synchronizing your SharePoint content to your computer, you can quickly access the same files from Windows Explorer. This makes it easier than ever to work with your files from a SharePoint site — browse them in your local folders or even use save directly from applications into those same folders.

8. Check for updates at a glance.

The Launchbar lets you easily view all of the workspaces of which you are a member. You can see which workspaces currently have people working in them and which have new materials you haven’t seen. You even get alerts for new SharePoint content that has synchronized to your computer.

9. Do things faster.

SharePoint Workspace 2010 now adopts the Ribbon. With a new and an improved Ribbon, you can access your favorite commands quickly and create custom tabs to personalize the experience to your work style. In the new Microsoft Office Backstage™ view, you can set alerts, share, print, and manage accounts with just a few clicks.

10. Share your files with almost anyone.

You don’t need access to SharePoint Server to get your work done in SharePoint Workspace. You can create local, Groove workspaces to share documents with others and see at a glance what content is new, updated, or unread.

¹Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 required.

Thanks to Microsoft who is permitting us repost this article on the Pinnacle Blog. The original article can be found on Microsoft’s Office Blog.

Pinnacle Blog