Getting Started–Social Media

Although I’m not a qualified social media consultant by any stretch of the imagination, I’ve been involved in setting up, running and expanding a couple of company’s and community’s social media presences online.  With that being said, herewith some of the basics I use when setting an entity up from scratch.

I’ll focus on the 4 big ticket items – Email, Facebook, Twitter and WordPress.

Note:  LinkedIN & YouTube are different animals all together, so won’t be covering them for now.  YouTube is a biggy, but the investment and time required to establish a proper channel is not for beginners, so for now I suggest putting it on the back burner.  LinkedIN is less complex to get started and ultimately drives down recruitment costs.  Also not for beginners, but something that needs to be started before YouTube if you’re strategy allows for it..

Email

As Microsoft homer, I’m definitely going to recommend going to www.outlook.com and registering an email address.  I find the email functionality, coupled with Office Web Apps, Skydrive and Calendar functions a charm to use.

Once you have your email sorted, example my_company@live.com, it’s time to move onto your twitter feed.

Twitter

So step one is to register your new twitter account by using the email address you have just created.  Try your best to keep your twitter username short, but descriptive.  Remember you only have 140 characters to tweet with, so having a loooooooonnnnnnnnnnggg twitter handle, will make tweeting difficult.  So I suggest a little abbreviation for example @my_comp considering your full company name is my_company.

So, once you’ve registered the account, you can customise your page via settings (stick to the basic themes, don’t go crazy with too many add-ons.)  After you’ve done this, its important to follow accounts or people relevant to what you are doing and in the same industry.  This will expose your account to them and also give you insight into what is going on.

Twitter – Super Important

Don’t go live with your twitter account unless you intend to use it.  A dormant twitter account won’t win you any followers.

Twitter – Widgets & More

Once you have your twitter account rocking, it’s time to look into the additional features that it provides.  Basic uses are embedded tweets and timelines shown on Intranets, Public websites and other.  In order to use them you will need to have a basic understanding of widgets.  Not going to delve into the detail, but for great info on how to get started, have a look at https://business.twitter.com/.

Facebook

I have to confess, I probably utilise about 20% of Facebook’s true power, but herewith some basics.  When starting off, register your account and then create a page.

The account is used to interact with facebook in terms of posting comments, making friend requests and spreading word on your brand throughout the network.

The page is there to advertise your brand & notify people that ‘like’ your page of what the latest happenings of your brand or cause.  To understand the difference between pages and groups, have a read through this article on MASHABLE (http://mashable.com/2009/05/27/facebook-page-vs-group/).  In terms of social a large benefit of having a page and NOT a group is the fact that a page is indexed by search engines, where as the group is not.

Connected Facebook to your fans works in a similar way to twitter in terms of exposing widgets that can be used on intranets & internet sites to expose comments, likes and more.  More info on how this works can be found here – https://developers.facebook.com/apps.

WordPress

Microsoft replaced their live spaces blogging platform with WordPress a couple of years ago.  That alone should tell you a lot about the nature of the platform.  I used to use blogger, but since moving to WordPress I haven’t looked back.

Creating your blog and managing multiple blogs are really easy via the dashboard, but to get started, simply register your WordPress account and get going.  Once you have your first blog, posting is easy via a couple of options, namely:

• Windows Live Writer
• Browser WordPress.com (quick post & full blown authoring)
• Mobile & Tablet applications
• Email (a feature enabled via Dashboard)

Spending a couple of minutes customising the design is both crucial and easy as pie.  Pick a theme, add some widgets and publish the changes.

Personally, I love how WordPress handles tags, categories and seamlessly makes them available via SEO with NO interaction from the author.

Another groovy feature is the WordPress reader which allows you to browse through blogs that you follow and “reblog” posts that you think are relevant.

Other than posts, WordPress also gives you the ability to create pages and forms.  The out of the box forms element is pretty limited, but widgets for sale quickly take that functionality to the next level.

As for pages, use it to create the “About”, “Contact” and other pages required to round off you blog nicely.  Another groovy feature is decided how the landing page is handled.  It can either be a custom page OR a list of your latest posts – LOVE THIS!

#SUMMARY

Before embarking on a social strategy, it’s important to have an internal policy in place that governs communications of your employees on social networks.  After that, ensure that you have dedicated staff that are responsible for keeping the various platforms up to date.  There is nothing worse than a dormant account be it Facebook, LinkedIN, twitter or a non responsive email address.

Tweet daily, post to Facebook & LinkedIN weekly and create a blog post at least twice a month.  I would say those are the bare minimums, but stay consistent.

Separate the type of updates into the logical areas, for example Facebook (events & social), twitter (opinions & announcements), LinkedIN (job posts) and WordPress (opinion posts & blog).

Most importantly, be passionate, fair, stay humble and keep a good balance between social media and real life.

Win at SharePoint Saturday Jhb 2013! #SPSJHB

Reblogged from Views from Veronique:

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We are getting some awesome prizes for you at next month's event!

Are you interested in more SharePoint certifications?  Salem has very kindly donated TWO Certified Salem Practitioner Courses worth $3100 each! Download the flyer here.  There have been a few SharePoint people that have done this course, their feedback is in the flyer.  Thank you so much Salem!

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Going to be an amazing event. Mint is still considering what to give away as prizes, but watch this space! Thanks for putting this together V! You're a SUP SUP SUPPAASTARRR.

Permission Basics–SharePoint

I often take the basics for granted, but throughout my consulting realize that in some cases even the most basic of concepts can have a large effect on an enterprise and their governance plans for SharePoint.

In this instance, I’m referring to permissions with a specific focus on SharePoint Site Groups vs Active Directory Groups, their use, pro’s and con’s and so forth.

I had this discussion with one of my customers just the other day and decided to share some of my notes with you.

Permission

So, before we get into that, let’s look at the various elements that can have permissions assigned to them, they are Site Collection, Site, List and List Item and relate to one another as follows:

For the Site Collection piece you can simply add / remove an overall administrator and for all the other levels, you can work with the full permissions levels of Full Control, Contributor, Reader etc.

These items obviously exclude Farm related elements such as service applications, web application policies and the like, but I just wanted to keep this short post practical and specific to how a Portal will function.

SharePoint Site Groups vs Active Directory Groups

In a nutshell, SharePoint Site groups allows for the grouping of users in a group and the assignment of permissions to the group rather than individuals.  Active Directory groups are the equivalent, but specific to Active Directory.  Active Directory groups are managed by domain administrators (via Active Directory) and SharePoint Site groups are managed on SharePoint.

SharePoint Site groups can contain Active Directory groups, but not the other way around.

Okay, so when do I use which one and how?

Active Directory Groups

For large corporates with an established plan for governance, I would suggest creating Active Directory groups and adding them into SharePoint Site groups.  This allows for IT staff to manage permissions from within Active Directory without ever touching SharePoint.

This approach is recommended to be implemented in the more formal or publishing area (where permissions seldom change) of your portal as changes might need to go via formal change control.

A combination of direct assignment and SharePoint Site groups should be used for team sites and areas that change often.

SharePoint Site Groups

Smaller companies that need flexibility and quick turnaround times on changes, I would recommend a pure SharePoint Site group approach.  Large corporates will also utilise SharePoint Site groups, but purely in the their team site / divisional site areas, not for the entire portal.

Utilising only SharePoint Site groups can be hugely effective, but an extra step is required when new people join the company as the onboarding process (usually done via IT) won’t be able to assign permissions across the company (via AD) in one go.  Unless of course you use an awesome tool such as @K2onK2. 

In a nutshell

Ultimately SharePoint Site groups should always be used to manage permissions on SharePoint.  The consideration is just whether or not to assign users directly into it or via Active Directory groups.  If you have a large formal publishing area in your intranet, I suggest using AD groups within SharePoint Site groups and getting your IT department to manage the members of those groups.  For the teams / divisional site collections, I suggesting the use of SharePoint Site groups only as this gives the SharePoint administrators (that are more often than not, NOT Active Directory domain admins) the ability to manipulate permissions.

Resources

For a summary (in pictures) of what I’ve explained here, please have a look at a presentation that I uploaded to slideshare – Permissions Overview.

Veronique, from Let’s Collaborate has also done a really cool poster on end user permissions, download it here – Poster – Site Permissions for End Users (Thanks V!)

SharePoint Saturday Jhb 2013 #SPSJHB

Reblogged from Views from Veronique:

We have lift off people!  The website is up and running, the call for speakers and sponsors is ready, and delegates can start registering from Monday.

Last year we did a lot for the environment.  This year it's all about people.  We're doing a blanket and warm clothes drive!  Please bring any extra stuff you may have so it can be donated to charity.  

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The community rolls on. Last year, #SPSCPT made quite a fuss about #SPSJHB having less like on Facebook than them. So to the Johannesburg community, let's stick it to them and get "liking" the Facebook page. To stay in touch with the arrangements, follow Veronique's blog as well as the facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/SPSJHB). And, remember, LIKE it! Looking forward to seeing the community out in full force and sharing knowledge, giving away plenty of SWAG and growing the love for this wonderful platform. If you are new to SharePoint and the concept of the saturday shindig, have a look at this site that explains things - http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/default.aspx (soon to be http://spsevents.org/Pages/home.aspx). I've also been to couple of these events myself and detailed my fun experience in 2011 in the following post. - SPSJHB '2011 (http://technicallead.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/sharepoint-saturday-jhb-my-experience/) See you guys there. Let the fun and games begin.

Building a better SharePoint Community in South Africa

A constant theme of discussion in our country is the unemployment rate.

There are no jobs.

There are no skills.

The government needs to do more to develop the youth.

This might hold some weight in certain sectors, but in the ICT one, specifically that of consulting I believe there are a number of forces at play that simply make it difficult for companies and prospective employees to connect.

The key challenges that we face in the SharePoint arena specifically are:

• Lack of experience
• Lack of formal training
• Exorbitant salary expectations
• Number of recruiters vs. recruits

Lack of Experience

This is obviously a double-edged sword as you cannot get experience without someone giving you and internship or a chance to start at the bottom and grow. The experience that I’m referring to is however quite specific to the SharePoint space. Let me explain – I interview many candidates with 2-3 “years” worth of SharePoint experience. Although the experience in time is accurate, the exposure is only 1/10th of the SharePoint wheel hence the “value” of the experience is diminished.

Consultants’ experience is molded by the type of organization they work for, but the onus still resides with the consultant themselves.  Rectifying this problem requires the consultants to get involved in the SharePoint community and attend events.  This exposure will allow the consultants to have more ammunition available for that next workshop.  Without this, the consultants will continue to work in the same way and never expand their knowledge.

For more information on how to get involved in the SA SharePoint community, please visit this website – http://www.informationworker.co.za/Pages/default.aspx.  Read more on the twitter hashtag – #IWSA and follow them on Twitter – @SharePointSA.  In terms of events, the easier one to get started on would be SharePoint Saturday.  For more information, check out the website – http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/johannesburg/default.aspx, http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/capetown/default.aspx and follow the hashtags – #SPSJHB, #SPSCPT.  More information exists on facebook also – http://www.facebook.com/SPSJHB, http://www.facebook.com/SPSCPT.

On a side note, I blogged this about the age of consultants a while ago – http://technicallead.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/are-sharepoint-consultants-too-young/.

Lack of Formal Training

As the years have gone by Microsoft have made SharePoint, the platform, easier and easier to use, administer, sell and customize.  Although this has opened up many doors, it has also introduced a lot of, with all due respect, “wannabees” into the consulting pool.  Candidates that have created 1 intranet, dragged on a couple of web parts and googled their way into getting a CQWP working, now call themselves consultants.  In some companies, they are able to survive, but quickly get found out if interviewed.  This ties in perfectly with what I noted above re: experience.  The business user has ZERO technical knowledge of what is possible and looks to the SharePoint “consultant” for guidance on what is possible and what is not.  Now if the “consultant” only knows 1 way of doing things, the business user will take this as gospel and so the cycle spirals on.

See the problem?

Without the “consultant” getting more exposure, they will never recommend different approaches to business and before you know it, the “consultant” has spent 2 yrs dragging web parts onto pages and are now ready to take on the world – “Or so they think.”

Entering into the SharePoint consulting arena is not difficult.  You don’t need a qualification, piece of paper or special introduction, you simply crack open SharePoint Designer and start hacking away.  I sincerely wish that this will change in the future and have seen pockets of it, but still, I’ve come across too many individuals that are at the wheel without their “learners” so to speak.  Perhaps my concept of a SharePoint drivers license is not too far fetched, read more here – http://technicallead.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/do-you-have-your-sharepoint-drivers-license/.

So, how can this be addressed?  Companies that pay for SharePoint services need to (A) do their homework and (B) educate themselves on some of the basics of the product.  On the other hand, individuals need to put in the time to educate themselves via formal training to advance their careers.  Get to know, not only SharePoint as a platform, but also look into supplementary courses to give business a more rounded consulting experience.  For example, if you specialize in the taxonomy, search and information architecture arena, look into an AIIM knowledge management qualification.  For more information, have a look at the AIIM website – http://www.aiim.org/.

The challenge with the above mentioned ideological view is that there are still too many people who ”get by” knowing very little.

Exorbitant Salary Expectations

Taking all the above mentioned points into consideration, its easy to deduce that an individual could build up quite a profile in ONE particular organization.  During the course of employment at said organization, the individual could be seen as the “go to consultant” and demand radical increases.  This is all fair and dandy, but the challenge only comes in when this person wants to move on.  Sadly, they might find themselves grossly overpaid and unable to find a spot at one of the top partners in the country.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting your piece of the pie, but when the industry is flooded with consultants commanding salaries above their pay grade, you start having a situation where their CVs are available, but you can’t employ them.

I guess solving this is slightly trickier than some of the previous points.  Employees will always squeeze the most out of their employers, and they should, so basically, “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.”  In this case, the onus rides on the employer to pay fair value all the while staying relevant and attracting talent throughout.

I won’t elaborate further on this point in this post, but in my practical experience of hiring SharePoint consultants and developers in the past couple of years, I find that the industry is flooded with low end consultants or super highly paid consultants.  A middle tier of skilled, well paid consultants seems to be absent, which is sad.

Numbers of Recruiters vs. Recruits

I love and hate recruiters.  A necessary evil in the game, but a game that is constantly changing.  PNET, Career Junction, LinkedIn are all eating into the market share of traditional recruits, but hey, “it’s all business baby!”

So, what is my point here?  Well, I don’t know the recruitment industry that well, but as an employer that engages with a couple of select recruiters, I get the feeling that the barrier to entry for recruiters to start-up is not tough enough.  As more and more recruiters start-up to make a couple of Randelas, so the amount of duplication that hits my desk starts to pile up.  I will literally get the same CV from 3 different recruiters in one day.  Now again, who do you blame?  Surely you can’t blame the recruiters for (A) wanting to start a business and (B) trying to do business.  You can’t blame the recruit for (A) wanted to find employment and (B) spamming his CV to 10 recruiters, so what is the problem here?

The challenge that exists and will continue to get worse is that as the amount of recruiters grow, the amount of CVs in the market don’t.  What then happens when you run out of CVs?  Well, you start placing the candidates that you have already placed, just somewhere else.  In this process, the candidate gets a slight increase and so the cycle continues.

In Summary – More Education = Better Industry

Consultants in our industry need more formal training.  Before this can become compulsory, the other cogs in the wheel need to start demanding it.  Without companies and partners demanding better, employees will continue to get by with “just enough” knowledge.  Companies need to complete introductory courses on SharePoint before embarking on projects, research the firms that are pitching for their work and follow-up on references before commencing work.  With these couple of items in place, there will be less and less space for inadequate consultants to hide and the industry could stand a chance to correct itself.

Share Conference 2013–It’s a WRAP

The eventful group (@share4business) rolled into Sandton and put up a show for delegates, partners, sponsors alike.  There was something for everyone and the mood of the conference was quickly set as the speakers get together was jovial, fun, yet business like.

The conference was held over 3 days (11, 12 and 13 of March) and I was fortunate to have multiple perspectives (speaker, sponsor and delegate).  In this brief wrap up I’ll discuss my experiences of each, but for a blow by blow, please review the hash tag on twitter – #share4biz.

A Speaker @Share

I spoke at the conference with one of my customers, Nedbank BIS.  They were represented by Nadene Brokensha.  We shared our journey of first choosing SharePoint and later delivering real value via the aggregation of CRM data into an interactive livepivot type report that lives in SharePoint  (leveraging MS Pivot Viewer control.)

The communication in the run up to the event was constant and I always felt sure of where I needed to be / do.  The speakers briefing evening (including drinks) was a total jol and the eventful team gave us great gifts from a community that they support.  <—Loved this!

On the day, the event ran 100% on time and the support in the session for the speakers were great.  Eventful also created a “Speakers Corner” which afforded delegates the opportunity to speak to the speakers afterward, thus ensuring people can interact and keep everything on time <—Great idea!

All in all I would love to continue my involvement with Share as a speaker.  Interacting with the internationals, holding my own for SA and sharing knowledge is simply a great trifecta.

Note:  I will discuss our deck and share it in another post.

A Sponsor @Share

I represented Mint Management Technologies (@Mint_Consulting).  The overall arrangements with the team was also a great pleasure and setting up and taking down the stand was a breeze.  A good balance was struck in and around value for money when you look at the cost of sponsorship, people to man it, collateral and possible leads and exposure that the company gets from such an event.

The aircon did go belly up on day 2, but that is a venue issue, not an eventful challenge.  The wifi was average, but hey now I’m nitpicking.

Share is unique in the type of audience that is targeted.  Instead of the regular IT Techies, actual business users attended this conference and the conversations that my team at the booth were having were more about “How do I extract value from the product investment?” vs. “How do I configure Search?”.

What I loved about the Share team is there directness in terms of discussing the sponsors and urging delegates to visit the stands.  Steve Morris, in the opening speech, piped up and mentioned – “Please visit our sponsors booths, without them this event will not be possible.”  Nice and to the point – Thanks Steve!

Mint will continue its support for community type SharePoint events and look forward to Share 2014!

A Delegate @Share

The price of the conference meant that serious users would attend and boy were they in for a treat.  The quality of content, food, venue, accessibility to speakers and celebrity of guest speakers made this a very special few days.

Yammer hosted a magnificent party that will be talked about for years to come.  The venue was a delight and the African sky played along to make it a special evening.

The opening keynote about governance was a fantastic talk and the closing keynote by Paddy Upton had me on the edge of my seat.  A highlight of the Paddy talk was a straight faced question from Bradley Geldenhuys (@GT_Consult) telling him that the secret to the ODI’s side success is simply to beat New Zealand.  We had a good chuckle about that one.

As a delegate I will remember the event for its great content, fantastic celebrity keynote, amazing food and constant access to speakers.

What more can one ask for?

Summary

Loved the conference in every which way.  The arrangements for speakers were world class, the parties for delegates were out of this world and the content, food and facilities for delegates made everyone feel comfortable and allowed people to be productive.

For a closer look at things have a look at these interesting links related to the conference:

http://shareconference.com/za/overview (Official Overview of the Conference).

http://shareconference.com/za/photos (Pictures from the event organisers).  Note:  Not as cool as Veronique’s pictures.  Perhaps she will comment and leave a link to her pictures which are EPIC!

https://twitter.com/search?q=share4biz&src=typd (Hash tag of conference for blow by blow on this and more Share conferences).

Ramblings about Office Productivity

Jumping on the Office 2013 bandwagon yet?  Well it’s time to get on and start drinking the cool aid.

As always Microsoft have pushed the boundaries of productivity even further with their latest offering – Office 2013.  (Excuse the cloud guys, this is an on premise post :p)  I’ve been using Office 2013 with Windows 8 for just over a month now.  The experience is really been a pleasure.  They give you the “inline editing” feel of Office Web Apps yet, it’s a thick client application on your desktop.

My passion is of course SharePoint and I have to admit, they have worked wonders with the Office & SharePoint integration.  Remember
what a drag it is to save & share documents in Office 2010?  Ever had the explorer just hang, have to login 20 different time, all of this just to save a doc?

Well, I’m happy to report that although the interface is largely similar, there have for sure been some work put in under the hood as the saving, opening and general interaction with documents in Office living in SharePoint just works.  Yes, I said it, it just works.

*gulp, I just realised that is a pretty bold statement to put out in the blogosphere, but anyway, this has been my experience.

Other bits and pieces in the mail client specifically has been the inline replying, deleting and flagging (not new, but slicker) coupled with
smart bits and bobs like letting you know when you are on 3G just to save you some bucks.  Yes, we’ve all been overseas and dumped our mail via tethering (it hurts).

The efficiencies in the collaboration space really excites me and specifically the “basics” that Microsoft seem to have focused on.  I love features and functions, but during the years of implementing office productivity software it’s in most cases some of the most basic elements that have let customers down (e.g. document stays checked our forever).

It  seems like they have really reached a point where the features are enough and they are simply bedding down the basics.

Considering other advances like SkyDrive Pro, the tablet ecosystem and better Windows phones, I think Office productivity is in for a big year!

Viva Microsoft!