The hardest issue regarding skinning a SharePoint site is the CSS that MOSS generates — it’s cryptic, and more often than not, it shouldn’t be changed. Heather Solomon has a great reference guide that covers just about every CSS class SharePoint has, complete with screenshots.
Microsoft is testing a prototype of a social network built on SharePoint, and again, it won’t be the first. We’ve done a few (Paul Mitchell Connect, a few companies I can’t name of I’d have to shoot you ;) ), and SharePoint’s governance model lends itself very well to maintain such a network. Some of the issues of legality and privacy are actually limited within a corporate social network.
Looking forward to more companies going social!
A couple of these have already past, but here’s a list of webcasts from the MSDN guys that seem pretty valuable. Read on…
I wasn’t paying attention (big surprise), but this came across my RSS feed: SharePoint + SilverLight. Looks like a good read. The original post is over at the SharePoint Product Blog.
Well, not really. But this white paper covers a lot of the technology and it’s a bit techy for my taste, but you get a pretty good idea how to create a Social Networking feel to MOSS pages.
One of the things we’ve been doing at the day job has been turning SharePoint on its head and using it for social networking capabilities. I know it’s one of those catchphrases that are popular now, but in our implementations, it’s done very, very well (and scaled well) in those environments. The Official Blog of the SharePoint Product Group has a great article and links to a white paper that talks about the use of knowledge within an organization.
With some of our clients, we’ve been talking to them about using SharePoint as the source of truth and establishing governance as part of that, and really analyzing their culture.
Just put it this way — MOSS isn’t just about intranets.
I’m not a big fan of tag clouds. Okay, I hate tag clouds, because I can never make them look good (I need some order in my life, okay?), but here’s an interesting concept that I saw come across my RSS Feed: a SharePoint site that is completely tag driven, built for the New Zealand Ministry of Transport.
This article walks through step-by-step how the Microsoft Partner Provoke created a series of custom lists so documents could be tagged by any number of categories across different groups. While there was a more controlled structure than a folksonomy (the IA’s were driving the bus), this is the ultimate flexible system.
The benefits are:
I’m guessing that the document library lives at the top level.
Ironically, they went with tag lists and filtering because tag could usability is still up in the air — hmmph!
You probably thought that it was going to stop at one part.
Clever Workarounds has published parts 2, 3 and 4 on their blog, and I’m sure it’s going to continue for some time. My favorite of the Part 4 is the square peg, round hole illustration.
Here’s the complete list:
A shout out to this blog for providing a link to an Excel worksheet that is a good starting point for doing a SharePoint implementation (or reviewing an existing implementation). It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but there’s a lot of great information even for experienced MOSS Architects.
Usability Counts is run by User Experience and Product Management expert Patrick Neeman. He's had many, many job titles (Information Architect, Product Manager, Program Manager, V.P. of Marketing), but now Patrick works for speakTECH, a Microsoft Gold Partner based in Southern California that specializes in MOSS, Custom Development, and Open Social MySpace engagements as a Principal Consultant, User Experience and Product Strategy. He's been working the web for over 13 years -- don't hold that against him.
Ha Phan is a Business Analyst/User Experience Consultant in San Diego, California. Ha has worked for Hasbro, NPR Music, Fisher Price, KCRW Media Player which received an Honorable Mentions from the Webby for Best Practices. Ha has also designed games and Business Process Applications.
