January 2008 - Posts

• Sharing Links: Adding User Help to Web Parts

  I highly recommend taking a look at this post from the Joining Dots blog on how to add custom end user help information to web parts.  Extending your SharePoint environment with instructive content like this can go a long way towards improving your users experiences and increasing participation. http://www.joiningdots.net/blog/2008/01/user-help-within-sharepoint.html EDIT: My bad, I had a copy/paste error in the original post.  Thank you Joe for helping me get this fixed. Posted Jan 30 2008, 09:36 AM by ferringer with 3 comment(s) Filed under: End User, Sharing Links, Web Parts, Help

• Sharing Links: End User Resources

  This is the first post in a running series I'm going to be doing titled "Sharing Links".  The premise is pretty straightforward: I'm sharing with you a list of SharePoint links on a variety of topics.  I figured that since I read so many SharePoint-related posts in a given day (upwards of 100 a day according to Google Reader) that I ought to share my observations on some of the best sources available for the various types of SharePoint information out there. And since this blog is targeted towards the End User, I'll be kicking things off with a list of End User Resources for SharePoint.  Please feel free to add any of your own sources in the comment section, the more the merrier!  This blog - duh!  Get the Point - an End User-oriented blog from Microsoft, featuring contributions from both the SharePoint product team and featured guest bloggers.  Heavily focused on the use of metadata in SharePoint. EndUserSharePoint.com - An outstanding End User blog from Mark Miller.  I really like the running Question of the Day series and Mark's observations from his training classes are really insightful. Agnes Molnar's blog - Agnes has done a good job of consistently posting on a variety of topics, as well as dabbling in a few administrative topics like backup/restore activities. Office.microsoft.com's MOSS resources - Surprisingly, Microsoft has quite a few good articles posted for MOSS users, this site is definitely worth a check when you're looking for information. Office.microsoft.com's WSS resources - Similar to the previous link, if you're looking for WSS end user information, there's good knowledge to be found here. My End User SharePoint feed - A lot of the items from the sources above will probably be duplicated here, but the good thing about this source is that you can subscribe to it via a feed reader such as Google Reader and get it all in one location.  Plus if I see any articles from any of my normal sources that I think is end user-relevant, I'll tag it so that it will show up here. The SharePoint End User Training Kit - As I've mentioned before in this blog, Microsoft has created a free SharePoint end user-oriented training kit for use within SharePoint based on the SharePoint Learning Kit.  It may not be a comprehensive training option for your users, but it's a good starting place and you can't beat its price: free. So what do you think?  Have you found any other good End User SharePoint resources out there worth sharing? Posted Jan 18 2008, 03:45 PM by ferringer with no comments Filed under: End User, Sharing Links

• Surprising (at Least to Me) Place to Find SharePoint Videos

  Youtube.  Yep, that's right.  A coworker of mine sent me a link today to a funny SharePoint video hosted at Youtube, and I couldn't help but notice the number of other similar videos that were being displayed in the Related Videos section.  And rather than humorous, they looked pretty useful. So I did a quick search and found over 150 videos currently on Youtube related to SharePoint.  Granted, not all of those are probably on topic, but still!  On a site I think of as a source for horrendous car wrecks, Chad Vader, and other viral videos, there are actually a surprising number of videos and screencasts available on some pretty interesting SharePoint topics like: Linking SharePoint 2007 with Outlook 2007 Content Management with EMC Documentum and SharePoint 2007 Building Master Pages for WSS v3 I definitely encourage you to check it out for yourself; you may find something worth your time.  I know there are several other excellent sources out there for SharePoint video content, but it's hard to argue with Youtube ease of use and wide reach.  Here's the link to the initial search I ran: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Sharepoint And here's the linke for that funny video, if you need a laugh:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P9QlojtrWs Posted Jan 15 2008, 02:55 PM by ferringer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: End User, Training, Video