New Look Esteem Intelligent Audit!

Over the last couple of months at Esteem the development team I work in have spent a lot of time updating the Intelligent Audit tool to offer a wide range of new features which are easy to use, quick to deploy and agentless (i.e. no software needs to be installed on any machine to be audited).

I thought I would post some high level information about some of the features that we have developed, and a good starter for 10 would be to show how audit data about an organisation’s IT hardware might be of use in various parts of any organisation.

What is Intelligent Audit?

Basically it is a suite of software which can quickly be configured to scan subnets and IP ranges using a repository of logon accounts for SNMP, Active Directory, and Unix. Machines which are located on the network are then assessed automatically to find out what type of device they are, before they are then audited. Adminstrators can then turn these audited devices into assets, which allows them to be assigned to users, departments, and locations, warrantee information can be stored, along with purchase cost, and date. All the configuration and reports are published through a simple to use web interface which provides a focused view of the organisations assets.

Currently we audit any devices on the network if they are found to be SNMP devices, ESX servers, Hyper-V hosts, Windows Desktops and Servers, Printers, Solaris servers, and NetApp storage with more Operating Systems coming online in the next few weeks and months.

The screenshots shown below show how asset management greatly differs from auditing as these examples are designed to give a financial focus of all hardware in the organisation. Traditionally only IT administrators interacted with IT audit data, whilst asset management is now critical to various areas of any organisation: Project Management, Security and Compliance, Finance, and Department or Team Managers will all have varying interests in the financial investment any organisation makes in their IT estate.

One specific area where asset management is essential is when planning for desktop upgrade or refresh projects. Careful consideration of which assets should be replaced, which can be upgraded, and which should work for the next couple of years without issue. Any customer who is considering such a project must use asset management. Without it there is little chance of ensuring that the right equipment is retained and the best value is achieved. In the current financial climate all organisations are desperate to ensure every possible cost saving is maximised, both during the project’s lifecycle and years after completion.

Financial Dashboard

This dashboard details how the finances for the company are split up between departments, office location, by type of hardware, and by condition. This type of data can be critical when ensuring that businesses are covered for insurance, and also planning office consolidations to cut building maintenance and rental costs.

 

Ageing Asset Reports

This report details the assets which are reaching their end of life. Support costs generally increase as assets become older, and when warrantees expire this can greatly increase general day to day support costs.

Asset Condition Reports

This report details the condition of all assets in a department. This is invaluable information when tracking specific users who might not taking care of their assets. One solution might be to provide cheaper hardware to these users, helping to cut the constant expense of replacing their equipment. This information makes it possible to target hardware replacement to ensure that money is spent on replacing the assets that most need it.

I will send out more updates over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime you can contact John me through the blog if you would like to have some more information, or if you have suggestions on possible customer development that might benefit customers.

Thanks

John

Feature Comparison for BPOS Vs On Premise

I thought it would be good to show how Microsoft are approaching moving their current BPOS solution from the 2007 Suite of OCS/ Exchange and SharePoint into the more feature dense offerings possible from 2010, as well as make it easier to show just what you can do with BPOS.

Currently some customers have had a subset of the 2010 Features available to them if they purchased BPOS in its Dedicated flavour, standard BPOS customers are scheduled to get these new features during Microsoft’s fiscal year which is July 1 2010 – June 30 2011.

Exchange

SharePoint

 

Communications

(Information source WPC2010)

John

PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010

Just a quick post to tell you about a new video I have posted on you tube to show how PerformancePoint services work in SharePoint 2010.

The demo uses the Microsoft Adventureworks Database which details sales of bikes and associated goods by a fictional company.

What Is BPOS?

There has been a lot of talk at my company, and the wider IT community, recently about BPOS. I thought I would get some information together in quite a non-technical way which shows some of the financial and functional basics of BPOS, and also try to show what all the buzz is about.
For a start: BPOS stands for Business Productivity Online Suite. In real terms what this means is that a customer pays £6.71 per month for each user to access services which are actually hosted at Microsoft’s data centres. This means customers no longer have to have their own Exchange, SharePoint servers, OCS, or ISA servers, which saves considerable money when you factor in the ongoing support costs for looking after all the hardware and infrastructure even if they are all virtualised. The services supplied out of the box are:

Exchange Online Provide employees access to email, calendar, and contacts from virtually anywhere, at anytime, on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices—while helping to protect against malware and spam. Exchange Online can be rapidly deployed, flexibly expanded, and is designed to be securely administered using a powerful yet easy-to-use Web-based console. SharePoint Online Share documents, contacts, calendars, and tasks in a single location. Based on Microsoft Office SharePoint_® Server 2007, SharePoint Online delivers rich collaboration capabilities that enable team members to flexibly and efficiently collaborate, find organizational resources, search your intranet site, and manage content and workflow. Office Live Meeting Connect with colleagues and customers through real-time meetings, training sessions, and events using only a PC with an Internet connection. Hosted Web conferencing services from Microsoft Office Live Meeting give your employees the power to collaborate wherever they are, to set up project meetings, brainstorm ideas, and collaborate on whiteboards without the cost and hassle of travel! Office Communications Online Enable users to find and rapidly connect with the right person from the applications they use most. Office Communications Online provides streamlined access to rich presence and instant messaging capabilities that are centrally managed by IT and work seamlessly with a range of Microsoft Office system programs.

I have put together the diagram below to show how a customer’s data centre could look before and after implementing BPOS to detail all the costs associated with hosting these services and where savings might be made.
 

I hope that has helped with giving a brief overview of the key benefits from BPOS. Once more information is released about the changes with SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010 I will post again with the effect that this will have.
Thanks
John

Any costs or software license information shown should be taken to be merely indicative as required licenses and any subsequent costs are subject to Customer’s specific licensing model and needs.

Broadcast your message to the masses… In PowerPoint

How often have you wanted to talk to someone whilst presenting a PowerPoint demo to illustrate your thoughts, a concept, or even a corporate message? Chances are that this you do this frequently on a face to face basis with customers which may require a great deal of travel time, and issues with resourcing and availability on both sides. Maybe you spend a great deal of time organising training or regular communications to staff where a simple phone call cannot always convey the full message.

The new version of PowerPoint (2010) being released soon has a built in broadcast feature. It requires no server technology or configuration and is FREE! Organisations which currently use Live meeting, WebEx, or GotoAssist will argue that they can already so this, but all these offerings have their downsides……

WebEx and GotoAssist can both incur an expensive ongoing cost.

GotoAssist requires an active X component to be installed into the client’s browsers which may breach attendee’s security policies.

Live Meeting requires a full client to be installed on all attendee’s machines.

Live Meeting is licensed annually, or requires investment in software and server architecture.

When there are a large number of attendees all these solutions can be awkward to coordinate and require up front time to setup and login each user.

How does it work?

Very simply the process is…

1. Open the presentation you wish to broadcast in PowerPoint, sort out a conference call phone number (if needed).

 

2. Select “File” then “Share” then click on “Broadcast Slide Show”

 

3. Click on “Start Broadcast” and logon with your Microsoft Live account details. (if you don’t have one you can sign up for free here).

 

4. Once you are logged in you are given a link to the page that you can send to attendees. The presentation has been automatically connected to the internet and assigned a dynamic web address which is destroyed when the presenter ends the broadcast.

   

 

5. Once you want to start the broadcast click the “Start Slide Show” button, attendees will now be able to see the first slide, and you can interact with the presentation as normal.

6. While you are presenting the broadcast PowerPoint will show on the yellow bar that you are broadcasting and cannot therefore edit the presentation.

7. When you reach the end of the presentation, or you have selected “End Broadcast”, then all attendees will see that the broadcast has ended.

Overall this is an excellent, and quick, way for Sales, Marketing, Project Managers, Technical Resources, and Trainers to get their message to a wider audience without incurring any costs.

Has Social Networking grown up as a marketing medium?

An interesting article in the Evening Standard today highlights the zeitgeist which seems to currently surround Social Networking and how it may have reached a point where it may have become fully fledged as a marketing and advertising stream. (Link to article here.)

Facebook recently announced that they have reached break even and are now getting 11.8 million UK visitors: “Eleven million a day is the scale of X-Factor,” says Facebook's London boss Blake Chandlee, vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Twitter usage is also growing exponentially, the recent earthquake in Haiti cased many media speculators to suggest that this was when twitter "came of age" as it was the best source of information for gobal media immediately after the quakes.

Critics of Twitter and facebook can easily argue that these kind of technologies have a fashionable lifespan (in the case of Twitter some figures may back up this argument), but in the long term brands need to accept that the general public are not going to give up with their status updates, walls, or pokes. Terminology, semantics and software may change, but people like telling the world what they are up to, and I don't think that fundamental will change anytime soon.

Signing in...

It's been a busy week for the Business Development team at Esteem. With the launch of our new Intranet: SelfEsteem we all now have up to date information from a easy to access central location. In keeping with this theme, a new signing in and out board was installed at our Head Office.
out with the old...
 
...in with the new
  
The new system relies on our security swipe passes that we all use to gain access to and around the Office and will automatically sign staff in or out when they enter and exit the building.
Benefits of this not only include a more aesthetically pleasing front desk and an average 8 seconds saved  time per day for every employee (which translates for Esteem to 4 man days per year!) but also a more accurate and up to date emergency fire report and the ability for everyone to view when a colleague is available for a face to face chat without climbing the stairs or constantly ringing their desk. Users can do this from today by clicking the icon at the top of any page on the intranet.
Staff can also find more detailed information about colleagues through MySites, which acts like a corporate version of linked-in or Facebook. They can be accessed from various locations on the intranet usually wherever colleagues names are displayed, for example. with the current presence information for staff shown at the very top.
 
In the coming weeks additional functionality will be rolled out so that our members of staff in other offices can also record their location.
In the future we are looking at including Offsite locations, Sickness and Annual Leave status as well as allowing staff to be alerted when a selected colleague enters the office.
For all you techies out there the entire solution is written as web parts in SharePoint which can be easily reconfigured to completely alter the appearance.
If you are interested in finding out more information about how this works then please feel free to contact me.

Wildcard Search in SharePoint – Update 07/12/2009

We have added some more features in to the wildcard web part we were working on, other than the overall look and feel we have added the ability to see a thumbnail if the discovered item is an image.

In the example above the first item on the list is a news article so the icon for list item is used. All the other results are thumbnails of the images themselves. This is a massive improvement to the original search interface as it is hard to see which image is the one that the user has searched for. In environments where corporate logos, and branding assets are stored in an image library this custom web part helps speed up the process for users to find the right information, helping to make them more productive, and ensuring that next time they need information they are happy to look for it.
John

Using SharePoint for more than an Intranet

Many customers I talk to don’t fully understand what you can use SharePoint for. Document management, workflow, team sites all form part of any solution, but it is often overlooked at how simple everyday solutions can quickly be built so that users can interact everyday with SharePoint without even knowing it. The picture to the left shows the current solution used in our main office’s reception at the moment. I was asked by one of the business support team if I knew of any software which could be bought to replace the current solution to bring us a bit more up to date. Of course the answer was obvious to me and the whole business development team: sure, SharePoint can do it.

The main requirements of the solution were that it needed to be simple for users to interact with, capable of being printing off in an emergency to act as an up to date roll call, and elegant to fit in with a new reception desk recently installed.
The image below shows a mock up of part of the solution which displays the current location details of all the staff in an organisation behind a reception desk, the green staff are located somewhere in the office whilst the grey staff are out of the office. Parameters could be set to highlight in Red which staff did not check out of the building yesterday, whilst yellow could indicate which staff are working in remote offices today.

A page on the (SharePoint based) intranet will allow staff to update their location by selecting which office they are working in at this point in time. This then updates a central database with the information which is  displayed in another page using a custom web part. This web part is used on a page with minimal branding so it can be used behind the reception desk.
In the event of a fire alarm being triggered a print button on the page can be clicked by the receptionist to quickly print off a succinct list of all staff in the relevant office location.
In itself this would be a very elegant solution, but we decided to go one step further: rather than just have a screen in reception to display the data we wanted to make it the point where users could log their presence as well. We achieved this by looking at touch screen solutions, and modifying the display view so that users can click on their name or photo to mark themselves as in or out. The display then dynamically refreshes the display so that it is always showing current information. In this way all our users will be interacting with SharePoint on a regular basis, whether they know it or not.

How to Reduce Support Calls when Upgrading to Office 2007

I came across a customer last week who said that they had just deployed Office 2007 to 600 users and had almost no support calls post deployment. I was surprised. Partly because I know how every customer I talk to say that they are staying well away from Office 2007 primarily due to the amount of training that would be needed, and partly because their end users were on the whole not IT savvy as the majority were ex-builders and labourers. The ribbon in 2007 brings a great change for administrators and users alike and organisations feel that unless they cost in a lot for training as part of any roll out project they will have great problems with lost productivity.

The new Office Ribbon

How to reduce support?

The customer I was talking to had downloaded the free tools available from Microsoft which show users where different toolbar buttons and menus have moved to in the new ribbon. They then packaged these exes into the Office deployment so that they were located on each machine. They then added in a button to the ribbon toolbar so that there was a simple to find shortcut to the exe. If a user needs to know where a menu option has gone they can click on the shortcut which loads the interactive tutorial as shown below.

Finding where your buttons have gone!
There are different tutorials for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and Access.
Another approach I have tested it to put the tutorials inside SharePoint. This enables users to access tutorial content through their Intranet or training department’s site. This approach also strengthens the message that the Intranet is a place to go for help and assistance, (something every organisation could do with!)

What about Office 2010?

The good news is that this approach also applies for Office 2010 to be rolled out in the near future. The Ribbon is staying and on the whole all functionality is the same. Microsoft has redesigned the back end side of office and not the main user interface which is great news for everyone who has spent the time learning 2007. For all those customers who have not updated yet to 2007 they will be under great pressure to get 2010 installed as standard product support has already ceased. (for more information on Office 2003 supportability from Microsoft click here.)

Where do I get these downloads?

They can be downloaded from: http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/training/HA102295841033.aspx. They come in three flavours: exe, excel workbook and run online. To get them working on our Intranet I had to convert them to flash movies, but they are not publically accessible in this way at present from Microsoft.
UPDATE!
One of my collegues added that you can use this add-in to office 2007 applications which enables you to search the ribbon for commands but within the application itself, it can be dowloaded from:
http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx
Thanks Malcolm!
John

Custom Wildcard Search in SharePoint

We often get negative reactions from customers when we explain that SharePoint 2007 cannot perform wildcard searches. This was an out of the box feature in previous versions so when companies want to upgrade they would always feel that they were loosing some level of functionality.
In a presales yesterday I was talking to a customer who wanted to upgrade from SharePoint Team Services (WSS 1.0) to MOSS 2007. They are only interested in search and document libraries as archives. The interface needs to consist of one page where users search and nothing else. To them loosing wildcard search would be a showstopper.
We have just started looking into methods of providing this functionality and are looking at developing a custom web part which delivers this and other features that should really have been basic features of search in the product.
The screenshot below shows the dog-food start of our development. In the end the formatting will all be presented through CSS which gives customers a simple way to control the search results interface which is not possible at the moment. In addition we are adding in the ability to select columns so that specific metadata can be targeted.

Note: Ignore the “%” in the query, we will change the syntax to the commonly understood “*”, or add in a check box to search using wildcards.

A rose by any other name....'Social Networking', 'Business Networking', or just plain 'Networking'

I don't know how old you are but I remember the days before Internet access and corporate email being available in the workplace. Simply put, organisations could not see the immediate benefits of providing these services to their users. The risks however were endlessly discussed: staff might spend all day surfing for non-work related content, sending personal emails, legal issues around content sent and received, with all the associated HR risks. But how many companies do not provide Internet access to staff now? As for email I have not come across a company in the last 8 years that did not give some level of email access to all staff.
I feel that the same is true for the modern paradigm of social networking. Businesses find it very difficult to justify providing their staff access to these types of sites which can be with good reason: everyday more than 6 billion minutes are spent globally browsing Facebook, the ROI for workplace users can be questionable for Directors, whilst issues around legality and governance remain. Aside from these concerns though the benefits of a controlled corporate social platform are compelling.
I often get involved in presenting Microsoft SharePoint Deployment Planning Service engagements to prospective customers. These are free to certain customers who fulfil certain criteria with MS in terms of licensing and are aimed at helping customers understand the first steps they may need to take when considering implementation of SharePoint. Sometimes we focus more on the problems that organisations have and look at ways to address them, and other times we look more at more technical aspects such as Active Directory dependencies, or SQL infrastructures. Ultimately though at some point the phrase "Social Networking" will rear its head often resulting in metaphorical gasps. The ensuing conversation then follows this pattern.....

• Twitter: what is it anyway?
• FaceBook: what a waste of time!
• Blogs: Who reads them and who has the time to update them? 

Recently I have seen people in similar situations to me starting to use the term "Business Networking". As a result if I am presenting the case for SharePoint and start talking about the user profiles/ blog/ mysite/ discussion board side of things I push this term to them before anyone can utter "Social Networking". This really helps prevent the arguments, but I felt I also needed a better strategy to convince them that any type of networking has real plus points to them.
I sat down tonight and thought how to make the benefits really clear to everyone- When I ask everyone to introduce themselves, right at the beginning of these engagements, I will also ask them what they found difficult when they started in their current job, and also what they find challenging in their current role that they would like to change. I honestly don't know anyone who would not be able to answer at least one of these questions, and I suspect that the majority of people who do would also agree that if these problems were solved then the workplace would be better as a whole. When the topic of "Social Networking" then rears its head I can easily refer back to the points that have been raised and ask "have you told anyone else about the problems you identified", and "if you have were they the best people to tell".  All too often, I would imagine, people do not share their pain: they don't want to seem to be complainers when they start at an organisation, and after a while they tend to resort in complaining to peers who do not have the power to effect change.
SharePoint offers a great forum for users to interact with each other in a controlled way, in the case of team sites, or in a more ad-hoc way, as in the case of discussion boards. Regardless of the technology used giving users a "soapbox" to mount their voice can be an excellent tool in letting them feel that their voice can be heard. Even if suggestions are not adopted users will still know that they have actually tried, and maybe they can even say "i told you so"..... after all the decision makers usually work away from the ground floor and may not actually know what the day to day problems actually are!
I'm going to sign off now as I have gone on a bit more than I thought I would! I might post in a couple of days to say how this approach went.