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.

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.

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.

10 Tips for Making Your SharePoint Project a Success

While SharePoint, as an advanced web application development platform, has become widely used for its many benefits, several organizations fail to emerge successful with a SharePoint project. So, prior to looking into the tips on making SharePoint project a success, here is what one should avoid doing at the time of implementation of SP.

Mistakes to Avoid in SP Project Implementation

• Trying to accomplish too many tasks within very less time is one of the common mistakes committed by enterprises. It needs to be realized by the stakeholders as well that the specific needs will be catered to and fulfilled in future if not right now.
• Point searching several websites that are quite large is a mistake for the reason that there is no possible way of limiting the volume of data in the search catalogs of SP. As a result, SP will simply index numerous pages while also bringing the server down.
• The attempt at doing everything including delivering projects in house leads to a failed outcome. Unless the enterprise has quite a large team, emerging successful with a SharePoint project is but a rare possibility.
• Allowing any one individual to exercise complete control of permissions is a blunder. This is because users with full permission can take certain wrong steps such as adding a lot of content, deleting sites, giving inappropriate permissions and so on.

Tips on Enjoying a Successful SharePoint Project

Once you are aware of the things to be avoided, it is time to concentrate on few tips or strategies, applying which paves the way for an effective SharePoint project. Here is a list of these:

1. Making Use of Standard Functionality

Configuration is always preferred over coding. SharePoint is immensely powerful and mistaking it for just a .NET application should be avoided. As such, spending on other resources instead of spending too much on coding makes it easier to support as well as upgrade the site.

2. Understanding the Technology

Understanding SharePoint thoroughly is essential in the very first place. One should gain the basic knowledge of SP in order to be able to not just deploy it in the desired manner but also encounter the issues, as and when they arise.

3. Empowering the Users and Delegates

When it comes to executing a SharePoint project with success, one must not be apprehensive of handing down the rights to create sites or author content and so on. Alongside, use of publishing control, version control along with workflows to adhere to quality and policy of the organization should also be facilitated.

4. Focusing on Simple Visual Designs

With respect to the SharePoint user interface, more emphasis should be laid on the functionality of the site instead of its looks. Let the designers know what matters most for a SharePoint site from the very beginning, as customizing it later might appear to be a rather tough task.

5. Never Planning for the End

This might appear to be rather tricky but it has to be remembered that a project in SP, unlike others, does not end but expands with the growth of the business. What is necessary is to take an interactive approach and let users understand as well as contribute to the process of repeating till the desired goal is achieved.

6. Managing Expectations Arising from Different Quarters

Every SP project will essentially begin with two figures set as goal, one of cost and the other of delivery date. One must always stay careful about managing the expectations of the senior managers by means of giving them high level costs as well as timescales.

7. Allowing the Permission Model to Stay Simple

The permission model, especially the structures, should be kept as simple as possible. Building complex structures implies managing too much in return of too less a value.

8. Choosing the Partner Carefully

It is more than necessary to have a partner, who understands both the technology as well as the NHS. Partners should be the ones you can trust no matter how much you test or challenge them. Mutual advice and cooperation paves the way for appreciable results.

9. Convince Even the Rather Stubborn Customers

The best way of engaging the stubborn customers are by considering and appreciating their requirements as well as ideas. It has to be remembered in this respect that the stubborn ones are also the most vocal ones and hence, they can turn out to be the real assets for an enterprise.

10. Be Ready to Take Risks

As the saying goes, 'No risk, no gain', it is always good to take risks than stay back in apprehension. Try out varying strategies and trust the users enough to gain the desired success in the usage of SharePoint.

Implementing the 10 points suggested above greatly amplifies the chances of getting successful with SharePoint application development, leading to the benefit of the enterprises.

We provide custom Sharepoint 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.

5 ways to spruce up SharePoint 2013 for your intranet CMS

One of the biggest drawbacks that affect content management is the lack of proper search plug-ins. In the current scenario, businesses do not have adequate amount of time for tracking down different files. SharePoint comes to rescue in such a situation.

SharePoint intranet comes with convenient document libraries, enabling every business to categorize information in the way they want. In fact, you can have all your content easily accessible by means of different libraries within a hosted portal- a library for media, one for finance, report, sales, marketing and so on. The inconvenience of lost data will never be experienced. The intranet also comprises the latest antiviral software for ensuring preservation of online infrastructure.

As a business owner or team member, SP allows you to open up documents through the web, and also to synchronize work via document collaboration. In short, SharePoint provides a collaborative, hosted solution for content management through the intranet. Investing in SharePoint development for org-wide collaboration always pays rich dividends. Let us discuss 5 trending ways which will help you to spruce up SharePoint 2013 for your intranet CMS.

1. Creation of an intranet newsfeed with SP 2013
With the help of an intranet newsfeed, users are able to publicly and rapidly communicate with each other by sharing ideas, posting updates, asking questions along with other activities. So far as the management is concerned, it is a great means for engaging with employees personally, directly and openly. Moreover, the SharePoint newsfeed renders a micro-blogging experience similar to that derived from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Users are able to post comments, direct particular users with the help of @targeting as well as tag the same to a particular topic utilizing #tags. Comments or users can be liked or followed.

2. Showcasing intranet blogs with SP 2013
Intranet blogs are a brilliant way to discuss on relevant topics providing authors with the capability of communicating a message as well as starting conversation and collecting feedback. Readers can have their opinions heard and addressed. Authoring and publishing tools are offered by the SharePoint blog site to authors, in the same manner as they would expect from a consumer CMS. The features include the ability of video embedding from sources such as YouTube, rich text editing, capability of content publishing directly from MS Word. It is possible to like, rate, follow or share blog posts.

3. Using SharePoint 2013 for creation of intranet survey
With the help of intranet surveys, creators are able to speedily crowd source precious information from a huge employee pool. As participants, employees can get an easy means for bottom-up feedback and hence become more engaged. The SharePoint survey app offers a template to easily as well as quickly build surveys with diverse question types (multiple choice, text fields, rating scales). On completion of the surveys, results are represented graphically with the facility of exporting to Excel. The promoted links app of SharePoint builds metro-style tiles along with a hover-over state in order to make room for additional text information. The advantage is that tiles offer increasing visual engagement as against a standard list, following the SP site's theme.

4. Leveraging SP 2013 for surfacing intranet KPIs
With regular and convenient access to KPIs, employees can adjust their activities to accommodate the changing business demands. Enhanced visibility of performance metrics at an organizational level helps in greater employee collaboration. With the help of the Excel Web Access Web Part, data can be displayed from an Excel spreadsheet straightaway onto a SharePoint page. Granular control can be maintained by the author over the data that can be displayed from the spreadsheet and accessed. Once it surfaces on the SP page, the data can be made user-interactive.

5. Using SharePoint 2013 for creation of an intranet discussion list
Through intranet discussion lists, users can discuss specific topics with subject matter experts and their peers. It can be used for diverse purposes helping employees draw the benefits of a wide organizational network of resources and knowledge. Forum-style collaboration areas can be created with the help of SP Community Site Features. Using the discussion list, users can start discussions or ask questions. Moreover, categorization of the content can be done.

For creating an engaging and dynamic intranet CMS, SharePoint 2013 is loaded with all the requisite functionality. Great outcomes can be enjoyed by those who comprehend the changing intranet demands and leverage this new functionality.

We provide SharePoint application development services. If you would like to discuss with an expert 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.

Migrate a SharePoint Team Wiki to an Enterprise Wiki

An Enterprise Wiki (EW) refers to a publishing site that offers updating and sharing huge volumes of information within an organization. In case an organization requires a centralized, large knowledge repository which is designed to both share as well as store information over an organizational scale, the use of EW can be considered. They make use of the Enterprise Wiki site template, developed over the publishing infrastructure of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. This particular infrastructure makes room for a number of means for controlling content. For instance, permissions can be assigned or workflows may be used for establishment of an approval procedure.

The EW Site template can be leveraged for the creation of sub-sites or site collections. The site created through this template is focused on the content. The “Pages” Library is the main component of the site. Again, there is the “Wiki Page Library” list template. It has the potential to host wiki pages and can be utilized to create various kinds of sites. In fact, Wiki Library list template serves as the default pages library for the “Team Site” template.

Planning for an Enterprise Wiki

Before implementation of an EW, the concerned organization must determine whether it is the right solution. It is a perfect solution when the business is in need of manifold users for contribution to the knowledge repository. But in case a means to establish one-to-many communication regarding an area of interest or a project is required, a Team Site should be preferably used.

While deciding whether to go for it, the following things should be considered: 

• Purpose to be served: It should have a clear-cut purpose. For instance, a particular business goal can be addressed or it can be a centralized knowledge body regarding particular business problems, processes or topics. The aim is to offer a space wherein members belonging to a virtual community can remove, change or create content, including content created by previous authors. However, in case you need to have a knowledge exchange means that is more structured where one-to-many communication is mostly used, a blog or a team site comprising Web Edit facility can be used.
• Number of users who would be contributing: A number of factors influence this decision. These are- whether there is potential to support enhanced growth coupled with the need for enhanced server and network capacity, whether legal consideration regarding contribution are there, whether key contributors from each business area should be determined.
• Control of EW access: Ideally, each member of the organization should have access to update, edit or contribute content. In case there is the need for information separation with respect to groups, blog or team site with Web edit can be used.
• Implementation of control over content: Blogs are designed in order to provide structured knowledge exchange while a wiki makes room for informal contributions. However, there are requirements and guidelines with respect to an organization for handling of particular content regarding specific subjects. Addressing inaccurate or inappropriate entries can also be considered.

Before creation of an Enterprise Wiki, the following tasks must be completed: 

• In order to provide storage for notes and social tags, a Managed Metadata serve application should be created.
• For the management of the site collection wherein the EW is located, administrator permission pertaining to site collections must be there.
• A User Profile Service Application must be developed in case the EW is intended to be used with My Sites.

Migration of Wiki Library

The following methods may be followed for migration: 

• The Enterprise Wiki may be linked to the existing Wiki library without moving the same. In this case, navigation must be well structured.
• This involves linking to the existing Wiki Library. Here, the entire library is moved or copied to the EW site. This facilitates links to other pages and lists because they belong to the same site always.
• Old wiki pages can be migrated into new EW Pages. This implies copying the wiki page content within the “Page Content” field. This can be manually done but may take a long period of time.
• Migrating to Enterprise Wiki may indeed prove beneficial for your organization. The steps should be carefully followed and it should be properly done to ensure maximum success.

We provide custom sharepoint development services. In addition we can assist you in migration to and from Sharepoint. If you would like to speak to one of our certified sharepoint programmers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

Receiving More from SharePoint Deployment – Top 10 Approaches

SharePoint is a powerful and robust tool that has gained a good niche in the industry. Proper deployment of this particular tool helps resolving a number of cases for organizations. The tool features Enterprise level functionality that can easily be deployed for gaining effective solutions for improved collaboration, search, workflow, business intelligence, document management, etc.

However, it is to be noted that deploying such a level of authoritative solution, maintaining little thought and effort on its consumption, management, and development can lead to poor adoption. Well, to achieve success, you must focus on aspects adapting to which at the organization level can lead to increased user acceptance and better growth. Of course, the technical traits need to follow the organizational aspects.

Deploying SharePoint – Top Tips to Follow

Deploying SharePoint for better success often turns out to be an important task and hence, requires proper planning. Following some of the best practices of successful deployment, ensure that you do away with the common problems that tend to arise with SharePoint. Here is a look at the top tips that you must always adhere to in the process:

1. Develop a Proper Plan: A clear and concise strategy is a must for ensuring successful SharePoint deployment. Whether it is for improved internal collaboration, proper document management, or effective mobile functionality, a strategy helps determining the setup and installation process of the same. Additionally, it also helps estimating the time that the deployment might take and the way you would like to introduce the software to your staff. The planning process must follow the installation of the tool and extend post the installation as well.

2. Configure the tool: Once, you get accustomed to SharePoint in terms of what make the tool useful to businesses worldwide and its capability to customize to specific business needs and interests, you must follow the planning stage with configuration aspect. From offering an access of some particular documents to a specific staff group to analyzing the benefits that deployment of this tool can have on your business, this stage is for all such considerations. Additionally, you might also like rolling out mobile access for your staff enabling the feature of work on the go.

3. Maintain the deployment throughout: Well, when it comes to getting more from your SharePoint deployment, you must remember that the process does not end with installation of the tool. It is important to update the same for a smooth and secured operation. The administrators must avoid loss of any data. Additionally, the servers and databases must also be checked regularly for preserving them in good condition.

4. Formation of a committee also helps: Forming a SharePoint committee within your company or business for better management and monitoring of the same is essential. It is advisable to form the committee with administrators from various departments of your organization. The next step obviously includes creating a forum, as it would help communicate on the development aspect and share thoughts on the next proposed direction. The forum would also let you share rules and templates alongside managing requests efficiently.

5. Focus on the prerequisites: The servers of SharePoint come with few prerequisites, which must be installed essentially for a better deployment of the tool. These essentials include the Sync Framework Runtime 1.0, Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0, and several other hotfixes. These can be easily installed through an Internet connection of the server.

6. Make the tool available for alternative access mapping: SharePoint holds the capability of providing separate URLs for accessing similar kind of site collection or a site. This is achieved through the feature named Alternate Access Mappings. When it is about making the tool function with reverse proxies, for example Forefront TMG or load balance, the AAMs work wonderfully.

7. Prepare a SharePoint support featuring add-ons from third party: Typical to Microsoft, SharePoint too features some strong and robust functionality and lack specific functionality in some areas. This is where support to third party must be accessible for benefitting through the deployment.

8. Obtain in front of Office 365: This particular application is certain to make SharePoint cost-effective and affordable. Additionally, the tool can also be easily implemented with the help of Office 365, which is sure to benefit the businesses largely.

9. Strive towards timely wins with collaboration and portal: Incorporating the high value workload and setting up operational stability, prior to moving onto risky and challenging applications also help in better deployment of SharePoint.

10. Planning must match the budget: If you want to receive the best from SharePoint deployment, the focus must lay on correlating the planning with the budget. Financial support for staff training, resources, and change management must match with the environment of Sharepoint.

Following the above-mentioned tips diligently will surely help you leverage the maximum benefits of SharePoint application development for your enterprise.

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

SharePoint Webparts Application Development Services

MS SharePoint is a web-oriented platform for collaboration and document management system. SharePoint webparts solutions are used to create various websites with shared documents and numerous other applications. Microsoft SharePoint webparts application development services is a software platform for collaboration and web publishing combined under a single server. In a nutshell we can state that SharePoint application development is a document management system, is a communication platform, is an Intranet/Extranet, is a rapid development environment, easily manages documents and helps to ensure integrity of content. SharePoint custom Development Services deploys solutions tailored to your business processes, builds a collaborative environment quickly & easily, reduces the complexity of securing business information and provides a very cost effective foundation for building web-based applications. SharePoint application development services easily scales your collaborative solutions to meet your customized business needs. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) enables organizations to easily setup collaborative enterprise tools and manage enterprise content based on their custom needs. SharePoint Application Development technologies provide an extensible solution platform and offers a wide array of buit-in features & applications hostings. SharePoint Webparts development Services facilitates exchange server functionality, is highly customizable, creates dynamic storage systems, pulls databases from external databases etc. There are various offshore companies in India that help clients to develop such softwares. Mindfire Solutions is a top software development and IT consulting company in India. SharePoint Application Development Services is one of its core area of expertise.

Mindfire Solutions is one of the premier SharePoint Application Development company in India. Mindfire Solutions has deep expertise SharePoint 2010 application development services. The services provided by us in SharePoint Application Development Services are SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS), SharePoint Site Branding, SharePoint Web Development & Portal Development, SharePoint Custom Webpart development, SharePoint Enterprise Content Management, SharePoint Enterprise Portals and Business Intelligence, SharePoint integration with Microsoft Info Path 2007, SharePoint Site Migration, SharePoint Installer applications, SharePoint SQL Reporting, SharePoint QA and Testing. Mindfire Solutions is the ultimate destination to hire dedicated offshore SharePoint programmers and developers. You get the benefit of most flexible hours of working, affordable cost, experienced SharePoint web Development consultants and time savvy benefits. We have a highly experienced team of dedicated SharePoint application Developers with years of experience in Offshore SharePoint application development services. We also have 100 hours risk free trial* for new clients.

To know more about our expertise in SharePoint Development Services and outsource your SharePoint webparts Development requirements, please contact us at sales@mindfiresolutions.com or call 1-248-686-1424. We will be glad to help you.

About Mindfire

Mindfire has been awarded as the best IT unit award in the SME sector by govt of Orissa. We have also been declared to be in the "Breakout Zone" in Software/ISV category in the ‘Global R&D Service Providers Rating 2011’ released by Zinnov Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Mindfire Solutions is now on its path of rapid growth and expansion. Mindfire currently operates with 4 floors at Bhubaneswar Advanced Development Center and 2 floors at New Delhi Advanced Development Center.