In the present economic landscape, enterprises want quick development, real time processing and proactive outcomes. The current application development setting demands the same. How far are you agile? In various line of businesses, quick and custom based application development is required in order to reach to the masses and the markets. People want to tap on ‘go to market’ and overcome any hassles. Go with this piece of information to understand how you can create solutions upto 80% faster. Our QuickApps for SharePoint is one such solution that simply enhances one’s process of developing an application and bringing it to the market. The solution offers intelligent intranets and content collaboration which helps the client in meeting the requirements into exact needful product. What is special about SharePoint QuickApps?  

Easy to Use and Configure

• One can drag the web apps to a page and configure
• It does not require any extensive knowledge or any kind of development expertise
• No professional qualification required

  Resultant Applications

• Meet various range of requirements
• Go to any length in managing any number of projects
• User friendly with regards to support, maintain and upgrade in order to assure long-term value and ROI
• It provides value addition to businesses as it is highly customizable, as a matter of fact, it can be configured for any virtual need or any vertical
• The solution permits extreme granular permissions like edit, view only, delete/create files, and similar more and information hierarchy access for better secure sharing, it gets more critical when external users are brought in to collaborate
• The brand-able interface lets one to project a highly professional image, both internally and externally when collaborating with external partners

The SharePoint based solution is an application development framework that involves multi-purpose set of Web apps. This lets customers develop custom apps without code. Realize the fact that – it is configuration and not coding! In that case, any kind of resource, not necessarily developers, can build solutions on their own. Take a look at the following chart of the web apps and the associated key features. This will help in realizing that each web app has its own aesthetic set of features that further helps in amazing application development.

From above, let’s take one web apps and look at the amount of beneficial features it is offering to the end customers – qListView It lets you view, group and filter data in most meaningful ways which is otherwise not possible to do without coding. For instance, you can roll up data from multiple SharePoint sites, site collections, lists, and web applications. Following are the benefits of qListView:

• Customize the appeal with the help of pre-packaged skins or one can create a custom skin
• Export list view data into formats like PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or CSV formats
• Configure parent-child relationships in a two-level hierarchical list view
• Create complex filters and sort list view data in relevant ways
• Unlimited grouping
• Point and click roll up of data in multiple lists
• Point-and-click CAML filtering editors for both list items and folders

Similar to above, every web app has its own set of features which lets the user create a solution that he has been aiming in quickest time. SharePoint QuickApps lets people meet with a large variety of business specifications and requirements from across the verticals. Customization within SharePoint lets you extend base functionality that meets with any project need (charts, dashboards, forms, menus, data filtering etc.) of the user. This helps in cutting on time investment and the required developments are made upto 80% faster. Use Case: Take the scenario of an eLearning vertical where the user wanted to create an app for children (from 10 -15) where they will be able to create math problems on their own. In his SharePoint environment, the user wanted an application with little application of resources and minimum time investment. He had two choices, either he could hire SharePoint resources for the app development or he could leverage SharePoint QuickApps to create an app on his own. He decided to use SharePoint QuickApps as an easy and cost effective solution for developing the app. He used some of the features like:

QChartView This feature enabled him to create charts and dashboards which involved drill-down reporting, dynamic filtering and rich user experience. Further, it involved features like:

• Customize chart elements like fonts, labels, backgrounds, canvas, logos, tooltips etc.
• 30 plus chart types to meet with various visual, BI and dashboard requirements

QCascadingMenu This enabled improved site navigation with multi-level cascading menu bar around the top of the page.

• Apply the pre-packaged skins so as to customize the appeal
• Hide or show various menus dynamically as per user’s group or permissions

In this manner, the user applied various available features like qHelpLink, qManagement and qMediaView and related others. Upon integrating such features, the user was able to create an app that met his immediate requirements. In one way, the user is able to exploit the potential of SharePoint investment to the fullest as per his business requirements. Explore QuickApps to understand how better you can explore SharePoint environment and make better returns.

Arindam Ray Chaudhary

COO at AgreeYa, Arindam is more than 25 years old in the technology domain. He has meticulously contributed to Consulting, Outsourcing and Technology Services within AgreeYa. His key areas involve integrating a global team, defining technology and business vision of products and services, business development, establishing large scale client engagement, leading time -cost -quality driven value via project governance and solution engineering. To reach him out – arindam.rc@agreeya.com

Some wise person told, we create our own demons. Sometimes, without us knowing about it. And this is what is happening with many enterprises who bring SharePoint to “fix” their problems.

SharePoint and Office 365 are excellent productivity tools widely used for enterprise collaboration, content management and search. And with the 2007 setup, there were two flavors of SharePoint viz. Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) which was technically free SharePoint that came along with Windows Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 that was a licensed product. Then came SharePoint 2010 with Foundation which was free and licensed version SharePoint Server 2010.

But then Microsoft started SAAS based product like called BPOS that featured skimmed down version called SharePoint Online. And as these products matured, we ended up with SharePoint 2013 and Office 365, the SAAS based offering of SharePoint, Exchange & Skype for Business. The choices increased and so did complexity. Enterprises started evaluating SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business in parallel with their SharePoint On Premise installation. They liked what they saw.

• Minimum administrative overhead, maximum productivity, no upgrade or patching headaches. And the onus for downtime goes to Microsoft.
• End users would demand just one more site collection on SharePoint Online. Power users would demand just one more APP. Infrastructure Managers started moving their network drives on OneDrive for Business. Sweet!!! 
• And then comes chaos. Chaos on what content goes where? When to use OneDrive for Business? When to use SharePoint Site? And most importantly, when not to use SharePoint? To add to the confusion, questions like what content goes on premise? what content goes online? How do we search? Where do we search? What gets priority? 

Hence, Governance for SharePoint Hybrid. So let’s start with the basics, how does SharePoint Governance help? 

Governance is important and essential part of every SharePoint deployment. A solid and real governance plan helps answer the most critical question any organization has

How do we effectively manage our SharePoint environment?

This question has haunted IT Leadership for long.  And Governance is the answer because it helps define Policies, Processes, People and Tools that control your IT teams, Business teams and executive sponsors to work in harmony.  

How can Governance help in hybrid scenario? 

• Avoid content chaos.
• Consistent user experience.
• Enforce standardization and best practices.
• Eliminate redundancy and ambiguity in content life cycle process. 
• Establish a consistent mechanism to identify whether SharePoint Online, SharePoint On Premise or OneDrive for Business is the right tool for given classification of content. 
• Governs storage and compute power. 
• Improve find ability. 

What is a Governance Plan?

Governance Plan is more than a document. Its a complete guide that keeps IT & Business goals as central focus and defines policies, processes, people and tools to effectively manage the SharePoint environment. IT points to resources, templates and guides to execute tactical and operational activities related to SharePoint. 

• Policies – The governance plan needs clearly articulated policies. These policies have to be in line with business, legal and compliance needs of an organization.  
• Processes – The governance plan would require processes to enforce policies, escalate in case of non-compliance and process to request for overriding of policies along with service level agreements to complete the processes. 
• People – The governance plan would require clear definition of people (roles) involved, their responsibility, escalation matrix, operational level agreements and authorization matrix. 
• Tools – No all policies can be enforced manually or via a document. It is imperative to define tools to execute various processes. E.g. Backup tools, compliance tools, etc. 

Governance Segments

• IT Governance: This segment defines policies and processes around IT Infrastructure like storage, backup, restore, high availability, disaster recovery and content security. It also deals with identity, authentication and access management plan.  
• Information Governance: This segment defines policies and processes around content and how it is organized and presented to end users and content owners. It also deals with taxonomy and hierarchy of content along with its findability. 
• Application Governance: SharePoint is as much of a platform as it is content management system and customization using API and services is possible. It is imperative to have Application Governance defined to ensure user experience, system performance and customization standards are consistent and adhered to. It also deals with application life cycle management and dev ops procedures to minimize disruptions.
• Governance and Site Types: Different type of sites require different policies. And in case of hybrid, the importance varies depending upon whether the content is on premise or cloud. Published sites have tighter governance over information and application management than team sites, personal sites and OneDrive for Business. Generally, the larger the number of people who get information from a particular type of site, the more tightly it is governed, and vice versa. This is shown in the following graph. For example, if your intranet home page is available for everyone in your organization, it’s generally much more tightly governed than the site for the accounting department, which is more tightly governed than most group or team sites, and so on. Personal sites are generally the least governed types of sites. 

Governance Operating Framework

GOF or Governance operating Framework is the various area of SharePoint Operations where Policies & Processes are defined. The following diagram depicts the Governance Operating Framework for which the Governance Team would establish policies and processes. In my subsequent blog post, I would create a sample governance plan taking the below into consideration. In case of hybrid environment, it is imperative to have these broken down for clear demarcation between SLAs and processes for On Premise and Online environments. 

Best Practice for Governance Plan

• Goals: An effective governance plan anticipates the needs and goals of your organizations business functions and IT teams. IF you have a goal defined, you will have a metric to measure it.
• Uniqueness: While the intent is to standardize processes, the governance plan has to be unique to your organization. Templated one size fits all plans are useless and misdirect governance team energies towards tweaking processes other way round.
• Classification: Classify your business information. Build Taxonomy or Buy Taxonomy that’s tailored to support your business needs.
• Educate: Establish training and education plans. It is imperative that every SharePoint user is educated to organization’s policies and processes.
• Phased out approach: Governance plan is an ongoing initiative. And you many not achieve perfection on day one. Plan phases. Start with small governance team. Build the foundational policies and processes. Aim high but execute in phases.

To summarize, hybrid SharePoint environment needs to be governed and control to avoid the content and information being scattered. A back up plan for on premise might not apply on Office 365 and license management plan for Office 365 might not apply on on premise environment. In my subsequent blog post, I will publish a template and elaborate on how to approach establishing a governance plan. Till then keep watching this space.

Sanjit Debroy

Sanjit Debroy, General Manager at AgreeYa Solutions — holds hard core knowledge of technology developments, industry trends and market dynamics. He is the man behind areas such as Technology consulting, Knowledge Management, Design Thinking, Services Delivery and Corporate Strategy at AgreeYa. A decade old professional he is – collaborations, key decision making and business interventions fall into his kitty. To reach him out – sanjit.debroy@agreeya.com

The RTM release of SharePoint 2016 in March was an important milestone for SharePoint Product line as a whole which include new capabilities for end users, IT professionals, administrators and architects. And this release is a next step towards hybrid capabilities across on premise and Office 365 after a cumulative update for SharePoint 2013. Let’s look at what’s new in SharePoint 2016 and what’s deprecated.

MinRole allows you to install and configure the role that you want in particular for that server in the farm. Not only from an installation standpoint that it would configure the required features for that role but also from administrative standpoint it would make sure that the roles the server belongs to are complaint. You can at any point of time convert to new roles if required. You can look at the services to verify compliance status.

User Improvements

• A document library could go upwards of 25 million documents with a threshold of 5000 view threshold beyond which SharePoint would start throwing weird messages unless you index your columns. While the technical threshold still remains for performance reasons, SharePoint would auto create index columns and the user won’t have to worry about explicitly adding index.
• Support for ODF document is added.
• Files are now shared via durable links which is combination of site id and document id. Will not break the link if file name changes.
• Filename length and other character restrictions are removed. However, Restricted characters such as % and # are still not allowed in file names.
• Project Server is now consolidated into SharePoint content database.
• You can now rename files, create new files, and share files from within the WOPI iframe on the browser page.
• You can now preview images and videos in SharePoint Server 2016 document libraries.
• You can now apply themes to your Suite Navigation.

User Profile Management

• User Profile page will now include content from Delve and Open Graph API.
• Forefront Identity Manager is now no longer included in user profile sync service application. Unidirectional sync is available though.
• Using Microsoft Identity Manager to sync identity is now supported.
• Blogging feature now supports drag and drop of images and enhance user experience.

Performance & Security Improvements

• Reliability improvements to Distributed Cache.
• SharePoint Logging API allows easier ability to record and report on analytics and telemetry across a whole range of objects in the farm.
• Fast Site creation based on copying a master template Site Collection from the database level using “SPSite.Copy” function
• SMTP connections now support TLS.
• SAML claims based authentication will be preferred though NTLM/Kerberos would still be supported.
• SharePoint Server 2016 now provides the same data loss prevention capabilities as Office 365.
• The compile time for customized XSLT files used for Content Query, Summary Links, and Table of Contents Web Apps is improved.

Hybrid Improvements

• eDiscovery and Legal Hold will now traverse SharePoint Online in O365
• Search Service can query SharePoint Online in O365 and provide a single ranked results set with integrated relevancy (no separate verticals)
• Consolidation of Social features to ensure followed on premise and online content appears in a single social profile
• Delve and Office Graph API can surface content from on premise services along with content in O365 (will be released for 2013 this year)
• Item level encryption using Azure AD Rights Management Services

High Availability & Scalability

• Patches would be much smaller.
• Patching would support nearly zero downtime to the farm and no disruption to the users.
• Content DBs would scale to terabytes. (although I would prefer it much smaller and structured)
• Maximum upload size has increased from 2 GB to 10 GB.
• Index partitions support upto 500 million maximum items.
• BITS now replacing FSS over HTTP and Cobalt to reduce IO between servers and bandwidth to the end user
• Traffic Management endpoint automatically routes user requests based on server health.

Upgrade options

• There is no direct upgrade path from 2010 to 2016 (sites and databases must be running in 2013 mode)
• The upgrade process is the same as 2010 to 2013 (2013 databases are attached to a new 2016 Farm and are upgraded)

Deprecated Features

• SharePoint Foundation is not supported.
• No Stand Alone option which installs SQL Express. Only Supports use of SQL Server.
• Forefront Identity Manager is no longer included. Instead support for Microsoft Identity Manager is encouraged.
• SharePoint Designer will not be shipped with SharePoint 2016. Instead, support for SharePoint 2013 Designer will continue.
• Duet Enterprise for Microsoft and SAP cannot be deployed with SharePoint 2016.
• Excel Services and its associated business intelligence capabilities are no longer hosted on SharePoint Server. Excel Services functionality is now part of Excel Online in Office Online Server (this is the next version of Office Web Apps Server), and SharePoint users can use the services from there.
• The Tags and Notes feature is deprecated in SharePoint Server 2016. Users can no longer create new tags and notes or access existing ones. However, an administrator can archive all existing tags and notes by using the Export-SPTagsAndNotesData cmdlet.

SharePoint 2016 comes with number of features that were either missing in SharePoint 2013 or half-baked. While there are financial implications due to some of the deprecated features, Microsoft has certainly poised SharePoint for growth and user adoption.

Arindam Ray Chaudhary

COO at AgreeYa, Arindam is more than 25 years old in the technology domain. He has meticulously contributed to Consulting, Outsourcing and Technology Services within AgreeYa. His key areas involve integrating a global team, defining technology and business vision of products and services, business development, establishing large scale client engagement, leading time -cost -quality driven value via project governance and solution engineering. To reach him out – arindam.rc@agreeya.com