The Role of SharePoint in Your Business’s Digital Strategy

The digital marketing strategy of modern businesses focuses mainly on customer relationship management and customer engagement. Often businesses look for innovative customer relationship management (CRM) systems to enable their marketing, sales and customer service professionals to build long lasting customer relations. The right CRM solution can help your business in implementing a personalized customer engagement model to engage the customers and deliver higher customer satisfaction. Businesses across the world rely on SharePoint as a smart CRM platform to optimize its digital marketing strategy.

Why SharePoint can Optimize Your Business’s Digital Marketing Strategy?

Simple and Attractive Interface: SharePoint 2013 comes with an interface that is clean, simple and easy-to-use. While accessing the interface, users can avail the universal navigation feature of Office 365 navigation. As the interfaces supports touchscreens, it becomes easier for users to access it on their mobile devices. Also, they can use Office Web Apps to edit and drag-and-drop documents.

Mobile Experience: The latest version of SharePoint also renders site based on the user’s mobile device, and accommodate mobile web browsing. With more and more users accessing internet on their smartphones, tablets and phablets, the feature makes the interface effective in staying connected to their work on-the-go. At the same time, the user can view the interface in both landscape and portrait display modes, while accessing push notifications and location services.

Easy to Share Information and Ideas: SharePoint 2013 is also designed with a set of social network-like features. The authorized users can publish their Office documents to SharePoint, and share the files with others. The interface further allows them to post activity updates, share ideas, check what members of the team are working on, and get answers from their colleagues. Further, they can use their mobile devices to share their ideas and documents on the go.

Option to Organize Projects and Tasks: The professionals also use SharePoint as a CRM system to arrange their projects and tasks. Once they organize the tasks and projects, those will appear as upcoming deliverables across SharePoint, Outlook and MS Project. A business, at the same time, can set up a team site to gather the documents and emails of the teams in a centralized location. The documents can be further synchronized across the conventional and mobile devices through Microsoft SkyDrive.

Design and Publish Public-Facing Websites: An organization can create a public-facing website by availing the streamlined design features of SharePoint 2013. Microsoft has further updated SharePoint with an improved Content Management System (CMS) to make it easier for users to publish a variety of content. Thus, an organization can create community sites to enable its sales and marketing teams to share and collaborate with others.

Integrated Search: The latest version of allows businesses to effectuate document management and collaboration through a super fast search engine called FAST. As FAST is now embedded in SharePoint 2013, the users can avail the advantages of the super fast search engine without incurring any additional expenses. Also, FAST comes with a set of features that make the searching process more efficient and faster. For instance, the users can use the thumbnail preview option to browse through the documents without opening those up.

Enhanced Stability and Security: The updated version of SharePoint is compatible with several operating systems and mobile devices. So the users can access the web interface by using any of the major web browsers on Windows or Mac. It also comes with workflow advancements to eliminate the chances of system outage. The authentication enhancements further contribute towards optimizing both security and connectivity.

Most businesses, nowadays, deploy distributed teams to reduce project overheads. Microsoft has updated SharePoint 2013 with features to complement the needs of distributed teams, and help them in working together. Further, the users can start using SharePoint site without requiring any additional or specialized training.

You can hire developers from top custom sharepoint development companies in India who can help you build your projects within allocated budget and time schedules.

We provide sharepoint application development services. If you would like to know more about the experience of our sharepoint developers, please get in touch with Mindfire Solutions.

Best Practices for SharePoint security, privacy and compliance

Huge amount of content is being generated by organizations everyday and with cloud solutions, enterprise social collaboration as well as mobile access, new ways are being adopted by employees for information sharing. This is leading to continuous expansion of the ways of collaboration. Most organizations use Microsoft SharePoint as a corporate information hub with the content coming from external clients and partners as well as internal employees. This may result in risks entering the organization such as malware getting in to the enterprise, regulatory compliance issues cropping up as well as sensitive information getting exposed unintentionally. This makes it essential to secure the system properly so that you protect sensitive information from getting out. Here are some practices that help improve SharePoint security.

Assigning users to groups- This is a practice that should always be adopted. Through assignment to SharePoint groups, the capability of a particular user may be predicted without their security profile getting audited. While using Active Directory, hybrid should be used in conjunction and then SharePoint groups created. AD groups should then be assigned to the apt group.

Need-to-know assignments- People should only be assigned to sites where the access is mandatory. Only if somebody can demonstrate the need for accessing a site, then they must be assigned to a group which is associated with accessing the needed sites. In most scenarios, if the purpose behind a user’s presence in contributor groups cannot be justified, then they should not be allowed on the site in the first place.

Site inheritance should not be broken at object level- There can be a lot of frustration as well as confusion if permissions are broken at the object level. A user should be assigned to proper security group; then they must be left alone. If the list or library contains sensitive data then a child site must be created and accordingly group permissions assigned.

Refrain from assigning document level permissions as far as possible- Assignment of permissions at the very document level can turn out to be a maintenance nightmare. If the need arises, then additional sites or libraries must be created before breaking a list or library’s security. Permissions may be broken but it may turn out to be a fatal decision.

Monitoring content- You should monitor the content both on schedule as well as in real time by using automated processes that are rule-based, in a way that will provide protection to the information in a systematic way. The content must also be classified by the use of related metadata where metadata may be added by the authors but the controls of allowing user’s classification being overridden, is with the system.

Audits and scans- To check the level of compliance, ongoing audits must be performed as well as scheduled scans run regularly for SharePoint sites.

Risk evaluation- Risk must be evaluated according to the organization’s logic for providing multiple perspectives related to potential risk to data transport as well as delivery.

Measuring progress- Over time, progress must be measured so that priority is demonstrated, along with the triumphs of compliance initiatives; accordingly modifications should be made wherever necessary.

Prioritizing areas for improvement- Areas that need improvement must be prioritized and accordingly concerns as well as issues should be addressed. For that you should work in close association with content authors as well as stakeholders.

Linking compliance improvements- Compliance improvements must be linked to migration programs. For example, before migrating to SharePoint, scan data should be run on file shares. It should also be remembered that new initiatives need compliance.

Implementation of proper monitoring ensures that your information stays safe. However, the security problem is not simply a SharePoint-specific problem and may be said to be a universal problem for all content, no matter where it resides. But proper planning along with the correct technology may help you address this concern.

You can hire developers from top custom sharepoint development companies in India who can help you build your projects within allocated budget and time schedules.

We provide sharepoint application development services. If you would like to know more about the experience of our sharepoint 2010 development experts, please get in touch with Mindfire Solutions.

Business Value and SharePoint

Most organizations adopt new technology platforms only after evaluating their business value. Many reports have highlighted how an organization can avail several benefits by creating a well-designed intranet solution using SharePoint 2013. But the design and implementation of the intranet solution need to be customized according to the organization’s specific business needs and objectives. At the same time, the business as well as technology departments must understand the full capabilities of the web application development platform from Microsoft to get higher ROI by optimizing content and document management through a customized intranet solution.

Driving Business Value with SharePoint 2013

Create Intranets Accessible on Several Devices

The modern professionals use a variety of devices to access their corporate resources. In addition to desktops and laptops, users also access the document on smartphones and tablets. So the intranet must be scalable enough to allow employees to access documents on devices of their choice. SharePoint 2013 allows organizations to create customized and scalable intranets that allow their employees to access the information on any device. Further, the platform is compatible with major operating systems and web browsers.

Bring the Distributed Teams Together
Nowadays, most professional service organizations work with remote teams. An organization can easily curtail overheads by working with teams located in different regions. But it must facilitate quick and interrupted communication between the members of the in-house and distributed team to carry out the business process without any hassle. SharePoint is widely used by enterprises to create secure and effective intranet solutions that can be accessed simultaneously by multiple users. The intranet will further acts as a central location where employees can access the required documents and information anytime and anywhere.

Share Internal Documents Securely with Various Stakeholders
Each enterprise also has to share internal documents with various stakeholders to facilitate the decision making process. Each stakeholder in a project must access the internal document immediately to facilitate key activities like project planning, resource sharing, documentation, collaboration and approvals sign off. The custom SharePoint solution provides a secure environment to modern businesses to share a variety of content with various stakeholders. In addition to members of a remote team, the solution can also be used by partners or clients to access the required information. The solution further help users in avoiding the complexity associated with document sharing.

Easy to Find the Required Information
Along with being secure, the SharePoint solution further makes it easier for the stakeholders to find the required information immediately. Microsoft has updated the web application development framework with both Bing and fast capabilities. These features enable end users to quickly find a specific document, along with reviewing the search results while initiating or after the search.

Realign Business Processes
The complex projects often require organizations to restructure and realign their business process. While realigning business processes, the strategy must be communicated to different departments in a detailed and unambiguous way. For instance, the details of a sales deal must be clearly conveyed to the sales, finance and project management departments. The native SharePoint applications make it easier for enterprises to realign key business processes. Each time a department initiates in change, it can submit the information into the system on a daily basis. The solution will further inform other stakeholders about the updates and changes by sending notifications. Thus, business process realignment can be done smoothly without affecting the core activities of an organization.

Microsoft has further released SharePoint 2013 with a set of new features to deliver enhanced business value. The business and technology departments of an organization must avail these capabilities to create customized and scalable technology solution that complements their needs and objectives.

You can hire developers from India's top companies in sharepoint who can help you build your projects within allocated budget and time schedules.

We provide sharepoint custom solutions development services. If you would like to know more about the experience of our sharepoint site branding experts, please get in touch with Mindfire Solutions.

Top 5 SharePoint Collaboration App for Android

SharePoint wildly popular as an enterprise platform for many reasons such as integrates meta data stores, document repositories and successful social enterprise deployments.

According to IT survey on enterprise collaboration, last year it was found that 73% of its respondents were using SharePoint for their business apps. And slowly it gained success as a new collaboration and knowledge sharing platform. SharePoint 2010 SharePoint 2010 lacked mobile support, hence SharePoint 2013 came to picture with new enhancements and customized features. Finally SharePoint 2013 has finally gone mobile supporting varied screen sizes with different kind of gadgets.

Some of the new unique features makes SharePoint all the more interesting and useful for creating best business apps:

Mobile Browser Experience
SharePoint provides different browsing options depending on the usage of the mobile browsers they can be called as Contemporary View, Classic View, the and Full Screen UI. The Contemporary View is new to SharePoint 2013. This view renders beautifully in HTML5 and is made available to the newest mobile browsers such as iPhone’s Safari 4.0+, Mobile IE9.0+ and Android 4.0+. It is a clean view with the goal of providing quick access to document libraries, lists and other common SharePoint content. The Classic View gives backward compatibility for older mobile browsers. It is always meant for a specific purpose and function and it is not going to win any user design awards. The Full Screen UI deals with a full desktop view of the site shown on the mobile device.

• Device Channels - Device Channels renders content flawlessly on different devices. SharePoint 2013 cleans up. master pages, page layouts and style sheets that can be mapped to specific mobile browsers, allowing much more control over the usability of content.
• Push Notifications - SharePoint library fulfils the needs of every business and gets notified on mobile device when a new or changed document is posted to that list. Alert functionality was there before and even one can send an email or text. Now SharePoint 2013 takes it a step further by providing users with notifications on their mobile devices when specific activities occur on SharePoint site. This powerful tool keep users informed of key changes to SharePoint-based sites and business solutions. It can automatically push notifications to the employee who submitted the idea each time the status of that idea changes. This is a great way to keep occupied users and increase overall use of solutions.
• Location - With the help of geolocation field type in SharePoint many numerous application can automatically log the location of a user each time they enter any information. This powerful feature of SharePoint-based applications where mobile users capture information through their smartphones is unique. Bing Maps helps to display this exact location information.

SharePoint 2013 and the Office Web Apps Server work together better than ever before to provide a higher quality experience for users who interact with documents on their phones. This covers Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and the viewer for these documents is now optimized for phones. Microsoft continues to enhance this experience, since viewing and editing documents on our mobiles devices is becoming much more common.

Top 5 SharePoint Collaboration Apps

SharePlus
It offers secure SharePoint browsing from anywhere. The app supports all Content Types and there's native support for Office files. To ease collaboration, one can share documents via email or send a link. Collaborate with team, sharing documents and tasks lists right from the meeting room, a taxi, or when out visiting a client. Browse documents, discussions, announcements, wiki pages and custom lists.

Filamente
Filamente is a SharePoint client for iOS from Aircreek. It gives users a touchscreen optimized interface for SharePoint, the ability to upload files from a mobile device and offline access to resources.

Forms Central
Formotus offers a SharePoint client for Android, iOS and Windows Mobile called Forms Central. Like Filamente, it provides offline access to SharePoint data. It's free to download, but requires a subscription.

DocAve
DocAve is a management platform for SharePoint created by a company called AvePoint. It consists of a suite of products to enable integration, document migration and data management. These products can be purchased as a suite, or individually. Free trials are also available to download from the official AvePoint website.

Quick Apps for SharePoint
This application is created by Dell and is available to download directly from their website. It is a great app for smaller businesses because it allows quick and easy customization of SharePoint, without the need for large IT departments. It is also quicker and faster than making custom code changes.

Huddle
This is the best cloud collaboration tools, designed with ease and efficiency kept in mind, with millions using it for content management and enterprise collaboration. Small, mid and big businesses can easily manage and exchange information or projects with others. It also allows to track milestones, project deadlines, view late projects, completed tasks, making collaboration effective and easy. In addition, unlike the on-premise SharePoint, it supports several mobile applications such as Android, iPad, BlackBerry and iPhone.

SharePoint is one of the most versatile business software applications available on the IT web market. Its popularity over the years has dramatically increased because of the systems flexibility and the abundance of professional apps that can be integrated into the platform with little time and effort required and supported almost all browsers and electronic gadgets.

You can hire developers from top custom sharepoint development companies in India who can help you build your projects within allocated budget and time schedules.

We provide sharepoint development services. If you would like to know more about our sharepoint site branding experts, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

SharePoint - A Precious Business Tool

One of the most successful platforms for any business enterprise in today's time is SharePoint. It is creative by nature as it provides enhanced productivity with long lasting collaboration to business owners across varied needs. The latest versions’ launch of shareware has proved Why SharePoint is considered as precious business tool, since it is very appealing and user friendly, say experts.

Icing on the cake using this platform is that the service deliverables it brings along would be excellent as well as highly efficient. It helps with collaboration that makes businesses run smooth along with functioning ethics that are fabulous to say so. Share-point with its latest version has gained more happy users than ever before. This is because; clients now can use the platform to send large reports along with data across in a jiffy, which is so important for business needs or business expansion these days.

The wait is over
Gone are the days when other platforms took a century almost to transfer large files as well as data. The suite SharePoint now does it all in no time. The anticipation and wait is over, SharePoint now is being looked at as manna from the heavenly technological world, or should we say an answer to all large data transfer needs. The updates have excited users, and customers are exploring the major changes in the platform like never before. Unlike its predecessor, the SharePoint version launched this year has features and functions that offer the best, plus more support for options such as;

a. BI
b. Search
c. Mobile support
d. Public Website Support
e. Mobile as well as social sharing

Business wise intelligent
Companies need to be smart and for that SharePoint is used to the rescue, or else perishing in the deep business oceans would be the fate. Analysis or insights given by the latest version of SharePoint are unmatched and of high quality. Excel as well as SharePoint are tightly integrated, performance wise, say sources.

Businesses run not only through browsers on the computer but also through the phone as well, hence SharePoint allows such features which would help users use desktop apps on any smart device as well, irrespective of the size of the screen. Mobile browsing options come in;

a. Contemporary view
b. Classic view
c. Full screen (UI)
In addition to that, customers now also have efficiency with geo-location in the form of push notification services, which can be used on tablets and smart devices like never before.

Socialising made easy and plenty more reasons to be happy
There are newer features for socialising offered by the latest version of SharePoint. Newsfeed, community sites, sharing, collaborating as well as knowledge transfer and more, all of which the latest version of the platform has brought for everyone to use, and businesses are making the most using them all.

Even the search options have been optimised so well that the results are relevant and to the point, hence no more scourging around for an answer. Laymen and IT users are the happiest with such new features, especially when they can customise appearances based on the type of content than the history that was being looked for.

Another feature which has caught the eye and fancy of users with the latest version of SharePoint is the eDiscovery function; it has a range of new tools that manages discovering like never before. This in fact is wonderful for business owners; since it helps them stay protected while the centre searches across SharePoint, Lync or Exchange for content that has been preserved or exported.

Finally, with the latest version of SharePoint in place, companies now can have public facing sites or even internal intranet sites using pixel perfect schemes for branding. It used to be a complicated task achieving the same in the past, but with the latest in SharePoint and its tools, things are now done in a jiffy. One doesn’t need a lot of internal support for the same, expenses too would be the least and the designs are a wide variety to choose from, say experts.

Make your dreams come true by expanding your businesses like never before. Let the large files or data not worry you anymore! Hire developers from top SharePoint development companies after due diligence and they would help you develop SharePoint applications within allocated budget and time schedules.

We provide custom SharePoint development services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our expert SharePoint developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Why hire experienced SharePoint consultants?

When it comes to getting quality service, it always depends upon hiring an experienced and competent SharePoint (SP) Consultant. However, if you are to know in what way does the hiring affect a business, you need to know what role does such a consultant play in a particular business. Hence let us first know who is a SharePoint Consultant. However, prior to that, it is perhaps necessary as well to know what is actually SharePoint.

It is a particular type of proprietary platform of web application prepared by Microsoft which can easily take care of the common web based needs of any business organization in the most cost effective and versatile way. This web application is integrated with the suit tools of MS Office and is extremely handy when it comes to offering users with interface similar to that of MS Office.

Now coming to SP Consultants, they are the ones who take care of various problems pertaining to a particular business. Naturally, it can well be stated at this juncture that when it comes to getting intricate business issues or problems solved or getting quality services, hiring a competent and experienced SP consultant makes all the difference. This article discusses in fairly great details why it is so important to hire an experienced consulting professional for enjoying quality services.

Content Management
An able consulting professional would come in handy for effective content management. SharePoint is a platform which comes with an effective Content Management System, social capabilities along with some really advanced search options. Such a professional would always help to make content management extremely easier, free of hassles and quick for the users. It will also help giving productivity along with information value, a shot in the arm with the help of some simple document, records, high end media, centralized platform, web content management.

Managing the Community
An experienced consultant would also help in getting the very best tools for collaboration – a fact that would enable one to share ideas, locate various information related to the business, locate people along with expertise that are needed to run a business rather seamlessly. Besides, it also becomes easier to personalize the experience of the user along with the multi lingual support and tools used for user tagging.

Managing Websites
The expertise of these consultants also helps the users in changing or modifying the contents of a page without any effort whatsoever. They also help in applying newer themes, designs and removing/adding various interaction.

So in a nutshell, the work of a SP Consultant covers the following areas:

• SharePoint Collaboration, customization as well as consulting
• Development and synchronization of various business processes, solutions and parameters
• Providing a number of application features
• Explaining SP Migration application features
• Effective creation of records through integration services
• SP Deployment Planning Services or SDPS
• Branding of SharePoint Sites
• Development of SharePoint Web as well as Portal
• Management of SP Enterprise Contents
• SP Enterprise Portals as well as Business Intelligence
• SP Installer applications
• Reporting service of SP SQL
• Testing as well as providing technical support for SharePoint

Therefore, through a process of hiring experienced consultants, companies can enjoy a lot of added advantages that come in the form of recognizing those features that helps in decreasing the developmental costs, improving the efficiency or output of the business, and the likes. SharePoint solution is perhaps the best and the most economic way of sharing documents or information.

Hence, seeking the help of an experienced consultant is definitely the best decision that can be taken by a business owner. This makes these professionals extremely adorable in the business circle. These professionals are generally paid high remuneration for the services they provide.

You can hire developers from top sharepoint development companies in India who can help you build your projects within allocated budget and time schedules.

We provide sharepoint webparts development services. If you would like to know more about our custom sharepoint development team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

The Importance of SharePoint Software Development in the Marketing Technology Today

Microsoft launched SharePoint in 2001 as a rapid web application development platform. But within a decade, it is being used by enterprises for various purposes. Many companies even use SharePoint to manage their content, documents and records. A number of survey results have further highlighted that the platform is being used widely by companies across the world to build intranet. The innovative features offered by SharePoint 2013 also make it easier for businesses to constantly collaborate and communicate with both external parties and internal departments.

The quick and hassle-free sharing of documents, images and content further helps the marketing teams in boosting sales, and beating competition. At the same time, an enterprise also has option to build a customized SharePoint intranet site to enable members of its sales teams to access the latest information, images and videos on the go. If you are yet to migrate to SharePoint 2013, it is time to understand the significance of the platform in latest marketing technologies.

Why Invest in SharePoint Intranet Solution for Your Marketing Team?

Hassle-Free Communication and Collaboration
The SharePoint intranet will allow you business to store marketing brochures and similar collateral in a PDF or Microsoft Word format. The data can further be tagged and classified according to your marketing strategy. So the members of your marketing team can access the most updated and relevant data without putting any extra time and effort. You can further use the versioning feature for documents to ensure that your employees are accessing the most updated version of marketing collaboration. The quick and hassle-free collaboration will contribute towards optimizing the performance of your sales team.

Better Control over Marketing Images
Most marketing campaigns, nowadays, use images to attract and engage the prospects. But each member of the sales team must know the approved marketing images. As SharePoint allows you to store the images at a centralized location, the library can be accessed by each employee, along with acting as an archive for old marketing images. The accessibility with further help you marketing department to exercise a greater control over the images that will be used as part of the ongoing marketing campaign.

Easy to Share New Marketing Videos
Similar to images, videos are also an integral part of marketing campaigns. Some of the video clips can be used to promote products or services offered by the company, whereas others will convey important information to the employees. SharePoint allows you to add new marketing videos by using the Media Web Part feature. You can simply post the latest video on the home page of the intranet, and the video clip will be accessible to all employees in an instant. The feature can also be used to display both audio and video clips on the various pages of the site.

Find Required Information Quickly
Microsoft has further designed the latest version of SharePoint with an advanced search center. The feature enables users to find the most relevant information on a topic in a simpler and faster way. The search results will be displayed according to the relevance of words in the search term entered by the user. Further, the search center is designed with a refinement pant that allows users to restrict the search results by choosing from the links appearing in the panel. At the same time, SharePoint further enables enterprises to promote the expected results through features like Keywords and Best Bets. These features will help you in allowing sales team members to access the most relevant information according to their individual contribution and expertise.

SharePoint 2013 also comes with a set of innovative features that enable the members of a distributed sales team to stay connected with each other. The members of your marketing team can use the instant messaging and online chat option to find the members of their group who are currently online. So they can discuss various aspects of a sales deal in an instant.

Custom SharePoint development teams can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide SharePoint bespoke development services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our SharePoint developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

The Power of HTML5 and CSS3 in SharePoint 2013

SharePoint 2013 has ushered in a number of changes in the manner in which developers tend to build as well as implement branding packages. The largest changes that have taken place incorporate the capabilities of CSS3, HTML5, as well as the Design Manager. With the help of these tools for development, SharePoint branding experts are able to come up with unique and dynamic designs for the environment.

The new features of HTML5 constitute the following:

• The < audio > and < video > elements in the default player of the browser for media browser.
• Support rendered to local storage (capability of reading content offline along with the potential for using web applications)
• Fresh content-oriented elements, such as < section >, < nav >, < header >, < footer > and < article >. These tags facilitate enhanced SEO content indexing, standardization and organization with respect to all designs.

One of the significant things is that HTML5 allows developers to focus on the greatest number of devices with considerably lesser amount of effort towards development. HTML5 comes up as a universal language for every device, whether it is a SmartPhone or a wide screen desktop monitor.

Along with HTML5, a greater number of branding options are opened up in CSS3. The options in CSS3 include the following:

• Font file references are allowed to render within a live environment with the help of @font-face property
• The capability of making rounded corners over a number of objects including boxes is enabled by the border-radius.
• Generation of a shadow over elements which are customizable as per the preferences of developers.
• Proportional sizing coupled with dynamic width facilitates adjustment to manifold screen sizes. This is of immense significance as it provides developers the capability of using responsive web design. Development of a responsive website involves the utilization of a number of components. These assist the developer in creating designs which possess dynamic widths and are also capable of re-sizing proportionally depending upon the resolution of the screen or the device size.

Responsive web design is in fact a flexible grid that helps in creation of a layout which expands as the page increases in size. The design of this flexible grid takes place in terms of proportions. In this case, as the re-sizing of a window takes place, every element within the layout undergoes re-sizing of their width with respect to one another. This is done with the help of CSS3 Media Queries that involve the rendering of a web page depending upon certain conditions like screen resolution.

One of the important feature concerning a responsive website is that fixed pixel size should not be given to anything, not even images or other media.

In fact, SharePoint 2013 offers branding developers a number of options while designing the SharePoint environment. However, there are some specific factors which can be questioned so far as responsive web design is concerned.

• Money and time: The question lies in the fact whether the required money and the time is available for building an intricate grid system with the help of HTML5 and CSS3. If the same is not available, the best option is going for something that is increasingly out of the box.
• Browser Support: It is to be understood whether the project needs a design which will only be used on a laptop or desktop, or a design compatible with mobile phones, tablets, and other devices is required. Another point in question is whether more web browsers like Safari, Firefox or Chrome are required instead of Internet Explorer.
• Performance: Is the project in need of a design that will be used for a long period of time, or the design would be changed by the organization every few years?
• Content: The amount of content that the site will incorporate should be decided.
• Web Application and Website: You need to consider whether the project requires a website for every device, or a totally distinct web application that can be used on Smart Phones and tablets with different functionality.

Getting the answers to all these questions will enable developers to efficiently determine how they can utilize the new tools offered by sharepoint 2013 mobile development platform, in short SP 2013.

We provide sharepoint portal development services. If you would like to discuss with a certified sharepoint developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Tips for Effective Migration to SharePoint 2013

In the recent times, with Microsoft launching SharePoint 2013, a large number of businesses are considering migration to this new edition to enhance their business processes. In fact, this new version of SharePoint is anticipated to revolutionize the way in which companies are building links amongst their knowledge workers, business processes as well as business-related content worldwide. This platform includes novel features such as enhanced document management capabilities with respect to sharing and contributing content, enhanced social features along with a renewed search experience. SharePoint 2013 is speedily positioning itself as one of the much sought after technology for the introduction of crucial organizational initiatives in the areas of social collaboration, enterprise content management and web content management.

The advanced features of Sharepoint make it vital for organizations to take certain points into consideration prior to adopting this latest platform. Let us discuss some of the guidelines that should be followed in order to achieve effective migration to SharePoint 2013.

1. Take care of hardware requirements: In case of SharePoint 2013 servers, minimum of 8 GB RAM and four 64-bit cores is needed for small environments while medium environments require 16 GB RAM. For every server operating in SharePoint 2013, location within a single data center is essential.

2. Operating system requisites: The ideal operating system incorporates 64-bit edition, R2 SP1 Windows Server 2008. The 2012 Windows Server operating system can also be utilized. You must consider migration to 64-bit servers before any other upgrade or migration.

3. Decide upon the destination before starting off: Doing this gives you a clear-cut idea of where you are heading to and this allows you to go for proper channelization of the resources at hand. For example, if you are using SQL 2012, use Windows 2012 along with an Office Web Application Server.

4. Divide current customizations into categories: It is advisable to categorize the customizations into three categories. The first category constitutes items such as custom authentication provider that would stop the project. You need to have solutions for this, or else the migration would not be a success. The second category comprises items that would not put a halt to the project but are required to be completed. It is good to address them once the migration is completed. Items that need to be eliminated make up the third category.

5. Realize environmental alterations: When you are deciding to go for Windows 2012, the environmental change that takes place needs to be taken into consideration. The SMTP server role has been deprecated by Windows 2012 and depending on the information, decision needs to be taken as to whether to use a more intricate configuration or go for installation of the deprecated feature.

6. Get every migration step scripted: This task involves restructuring site hierarchy, mounting content databases.

7. Conduct dry runs: While performing dry runs, you must follow a sequential guide. Through the dry runs, it is quite convenient to identify the disk space and timing requirements.

8. Go for proper space and time planning: Once the disk space and the upgrade time required are identified depending upon the dry runs, you can take necessary action. For instance, by adjusting the SQL server memory, the time for mounting as well as upgrading SharePoint can be decreased.

9. Follow dry runs with test: The only thing that separates a live run from a dry run is that the data is not updated, hence the end result should simulate the live migration. Taking this into account, through utilization of an alternate access mapping, it can be opened up to selected end users for testing, in order to validate the overall usability and the basic functionality.

10. Set up destination environment: It is advisable to configure and prepare to the maximum extent prior to migration. Once the configuration of the environment is done, the same will ensure smoother migration.

The above mentioned tips would go a long way in helping you plan your SharePoint 2013 migration. They will definitely help you enhance the overall efficiency of your SharePoint application development team.

We provide custom SharePoint development services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our expert SharePoint developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

SharePoint Apps will change the way you work

“SharePoint Apps” refers to add-ons or pieces of software which enhances the features of an application developed using SharePoint. These ‘apps’ can be written using a number of languages like PHP, HTML, Javascript etc. Another basic thing about apps is that they can be hosted in either the SharePoint environment or outside, in the cloud. Outside part can be at two different places – either Microsoft Azure or any other cloud service provider.

As done by mobile apps, SharePoint apps also increased the options of things that developers can do. That in turn has translated into providing a large number of smart options for a developer building an application using SharePoint. Suppose earlier a developer wanted to have a feature to enable viewing of SharePoint application using tablets or smartphones, he/she would have had to develop it on his own and that might have taken a really long time. But now all the developer has to do is use an app called Shareplus. This app is available for iOS and Andrioid based tablets and enables a user to browse, edit documents directly from SharePoint via the tablet directly.

Similarly there are many such apps or applications which provide the developer with the option to make applications smarter. Apps like OurCRM, DocAve, MyView etc are quite popular. For your reference OurCRM is a CRM that runs on MS SharePoint – it basically allows organizations to edit the customer relationship management software as per their need.

DocAve is a data and document management platform for SharePoint.

MyView the winner of Best SharePoint App 2013 award (at the European SharePoint Community Awards), enables users to focus on productivity and important ongoing projects by collating and synchronizing SharePoint and Microsoft Outlook tasks and calendar items, presented through online, mobile, or desktop based Microsoft Exchange applications.

Similarly there are many such ‘apps’, based on the need one can search for those and use the one best suited. A simple Google search can fetch you the app that you might be looking for, for example I was looking for “Top iPad apps for accessing SharePoint” and I found this Techrepublic link which lists out details of best apps for iPads - http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tablets-in-the-enterprise/top-ipad-apps-for-accessing-sharepoint/.

My interest primarily in SharePoint Apps has been in applications related to Marketing and Social aspects of a business. These days Social media constitutes a major part of marketing and this area has to be handled effectively to ensure active participation of people in your products, which in turn would lead to increased revenue. The top 5 social media SharePoint apps, as per me, are the following:

• Social Squared : Social Squared is an app which gives organizations the choice of providing a large forum environment to its members for them to discuss projects or other topics. This provides as a nice space for sharing and brainstorming of ideas.
• eLocker Solutions : eLocker Solutions is the perfect social SharePoint solution for teachers and students. It allows them to interact without worrying about security within the SharePoint environment. It can be customized for a specific school or district and allows teachers to assign projects, track progress and interact with students.
• SharePoint twitter web part : The Twitter Web Part allows users to tweet right from their SharePoint environment as well as display the latest Twitter posts and search based on hashtags. This is a great option for companies who want to control everything (including social media) from their SharePoint environment.
• Blog Rollup webpart : The Blog Rollup Web Part allows organizations to display a blog roll of the most recent blog posts created within the SharePoint environment. This is a very useful tool, which is perfect for seeing at a glance the most recently published posts.
• SP Community : SP Community utilizes SharePoint’s existing social features and transforms them into a complete user experience that organizations and businesses can take advantage of. It offers groups, user home pages and profile pages, discussion boards and much more.

You can hire developers from top sharepoint development companies in India who can help you in your project within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide sharepoint application development services. If you would like to discuss with our certified sharepoint programmers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

How is SharePoint advancing the enterprise social roadmap?

The newly introduced SharePoint 2013 exhibits a clear incorporation of the social features in your daily routine. Adding to this is the seamless integration with Yammer, which also seems to offer promising results in the field. It can be undeniably said that the ‘social’ features found in Yammer and SharePoint is sure to make way for efficient as well as effective collaboration at the workplace. With the passage of time, a growing number of organizations have embraced the wave of integration between the two.

The rapid growth of Yammer itself validates that enterprise social is presently representing a significant trend influencing the way people are wanting to learn, connect, and share at work. With more organizations adopting the advantages of enterprise social solutions, maximum clients are noticing profitable return in aspects of enhanced customer response time, improved cross-functional communication/collaboration, as well as better business agility. Enterprise social has completely changed the way of work by reaching beyond organizational silos and making things more collaborative alongside enabling the enterprise to be more responsive to its clients/customers.

Advancing the enterprise social roadmap

Over the last year, Yammer has been continually making room for product updates involving message translation abilities, platform updates (i.e. embedded feeds and ‘follow’, ‘like’ buttons), file collaboration improvements along with increasing developments on a varied range of mobile platforms.

It has also been continually delivering an outlined strategy to offer a social layer across third-party applications as well as Microsoft Office. Microsoft truly believes that it is required to make social an essential part of everyday application. Only then it can rise to become a mainstream aspect in the workplace. To deliver on that line and previous roadmap declarations, Microsoft is presenting interoperability with office 365 integrated with the following newly released characteristics:

• Yammer newsfeed for Office 365 and SharePoint Online – Presently, Yammer functions more intensely and effortlessly with SharePoint Online and Office 365 enabling customers to replace the newsfeed of SharePoint with the same.
• Yammer application availability in Office Store – Yammer applications available in the Office Store enables the customers to effortlessly embed the group feeds in SharePoint sites thereby, establishing a connection between sites and groups to provide the best of both worlds.

Microsoft is also due to release a number of SharePoint, Office 365 as well as Yammer update to improve the connection between the services thereby, making room for better collaboration. It has already spoken about delivering a single sign-on along with enhanced user experience. However, the newly planned features are designed to involve advancements in email and search. Here is a quick look at the Yammer developments that are about to make a mark in enterprise social roadmap:

• SharePoint search integration – Allow SharePoint search to look for Yammer conversations thereby, establishing a stage for improved as well as powerful apps combining social and search.
• Yammer groups in SharePoint sites – The app available in the SharePoint store will enable you to replace a site feed of SharePoint with a group feed of Yammer manually. More work is being done to make the feeds appear by default in SharePoint sites.
• Yammer messaging enhancements – The user experience is being redesigned to make it more user-friendly as well as easy for use as a primary tool of communication. Multiple group messaging and direct messaging features will be incorporated.
• Email interoperability – Microsoft is working to make it easy to email and use Yammer together. This will allow you to follow a complete thread via email, participate in conversations, as well as respond to messages through email.
• External communication –Improve the messaging infrastructure so that it becomes easy to include external or third parties in the conversation.
• Mobile apps – The idea is to enhance user experience alongside adding new exciting features to mobile service and apps.
• Localization – Localization of the interface in new languages is being done to cater to the increasing demand across the globe.

Microsoft will make complete use of its fast development approach making room for continuous improvements to generate connected experiences all across Office 365 combining collaboration, instant messaging, social voice, email, and video applications in pioneering ways.

Companies offering sharepoint webparts development and customization services are the ones who are gearing up with servicing Office 365.

We provide sharepoint application development services. If you would like to discuss with an expert sharepoint development team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

5 Solid Reasons why SharePoint Intranet Projects Fail

SharePoint has been implemented in many organizations with huge success rates. As reflected in the count of successful Intranets built across the SharePoint platform, it can indeed be said without any hesitation that this software platform is having a positive impact on a number of organizations. However, there are certain crucial issues which should be taken care of while adopting SharePoint as your intranet platform. These issues are not purely technical but revolve around stuff like shared understanding, change management, technological configuration and fundamentals of project management. However, failure to focus on these issues during implementation of SharePoint may lead to a serious failure of the Intranet projects. Let us understand each of these problems and explore the reasons behind the failure of SharePoint Intranet Projects.

Focusing on technological aspects rather than outcomes: Many organizations commit the blunder of implementing SharePoint platform without knowing their exact requirement and how they would be leveraging the platform. These organizations tend to ignore the specific final outcomes, driven by the misconception that SharePoint will act as a cure-all, ending all their technological problems. If organizations get lured by the impressive list of functionalities that SharePoint offers, without concentrating on the business outcomes that they need to achieve, it will only lead to some complex solution addressing some poorly defined problem. Hence, organizations need to go for an in-depth analysis of their culture, strategies and goals, so that they can determine the problem and then arrive at resolution techniques over the Intranet platform.

Making Room for Scope Creep: SharePoint projects are a storehouse of potentials and scopes. This is because of two major reasons. First, technically difficult stuff like intricate document management can be handled with great ease. Secondly, seemingly simple things might be very difficult to achieve. This mismatch between appearance and reality can create confusion among project team members, who tend to rope in a functionality that appears simple, only to understand at a later stage that they are incurring huge costs solely because the functionality is not matching the exact business requirement.

Another issue is that even though certain things are technically easy to handle, they may prove pricey from the perspective of change management. For example, implementing User Profiles in SharePoint may make certain organizational processes easy, but the very task of making people create their individual profiles may involve huge costs so far as governance is concerned. The best way to avoid these problems is to focus on core business requirements and implement SharePoint Intranet accordingly.

Confusing between Collaboration and Communication: It is important to understand that an Intranet that is communication centric with some social attributes like tags, blogs, ratings, etc. is radically different in terms of objectives and outcomes from a collaborative solution focusing on a specific business issue. Many businesses commit the blunder of clubbing in communicative and collaborative aspects within one Intranet project. However, it is important to understand that collaboration involves a combination of organizational strategy, culture and basic processes within a particular framework, which requires spending of considerable time and effort by the right people. Hence it is vital to realize the scope of the Intranet project along with the fact that the challenges of communication and collaboration need to be addressed separately.

Using Improper Tools and Techniques: Most of the SharePoint elements are platform friendly and organizations tend to incorporate them without knowing the exact business value that they would provide. This in turn leads to failure in solving the basic business problem that the organization is facing. You can always go for the best Intranet elements from disciplines like Information Architecture, Business Alignment, Business Needs and Design but make sure that you carefully choose a SharePoint partner who can provide an effective balance between the technical and business perspectives.

Lack of Proper Education for End-Users and Content Authors: In order to properly implement SharePoint Intranet within your organization, you cannot neglect training or education for the content authors and end-users. While content authors need to be guided on the technical aspects of authoring content, communication tones and specific procedures and policies, end-users need some amount of training in the search functionalities, user profiles as well as the basic navigation and layout.

When leveraged in the proper manner, Sharepoint application development can indeed pave the way for brilliant Intranets that add value to the organization with lesser amount of effort. The best thing is to concentrate on the outcomes and core business requirements to gain substantial value from this Intranet platform.

We provide sharepoint development services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our custom sharepoint development team, please visit Mindfire Solutions.