Fpweb.net SharePoint Blog

So you finally have a SharePoint 2013 environment and you’re ready to start adding users. Great!

After logging into your Windows Server 2012, you ask yourself, “How do I find Active Directory in this new Server Operating System?” Luckily, your internet search brought you to this page! (If it didn’t, please contact Google and petition that this gets a higher SEO ranking…) Otherwise, buckle in as we explore the new realm of Windows Server 2012 and how to add a user in Active Directory.

First, you will want to search for the Active Directory Users and Computers application. This can easily be accomplished in two different ways.

When you first log in, your desktop should be staring at the “Server Manager Dashboard”. We need to get into the Start Page to access your programs. Move your cursor over the right side of the desktop until a bar appears presenting you with the Search, Start and Settings icons. Click on the Start icon to take you to the start page.

Typical work day scenario: You arrive at the office, Starbucks Vanilla Spice Latte in hand, set down your Encase backpack, greet your fellow colleagues, plop your bottom in the desk chair and start working away. Maybe you start strong. Maybe you’re mowing through your work. And then it hits you.

Suddenly your concentration is broken and you can no longer focus on the tasks at hand due to the constant drone of ambient noise. Papers shuffling, chairs squeaking when someone rocks back and forth, the nervous tapping of Kenneth Coles against the floor. Will it ever stop?

<Don’t worry, this isn’t a commercial for 5 Hour Energy…>

Nowadays, it’s very likely that you have to share office space with a colleague or two… or four. While it may seem like your privacy and any quiet time are a thing of the past, there are a few tips that can help you get your work completed, distraction-free!

If you’re purchasing a product from a company that has a service department, get an idea of how well they support their customers and their products before you make the purchase. Never underestimate the importance of receiving the help you need, the second you need it.

Certain products require support from time to time, but how much thought do you give to the product’s company support? Most likely, your focus is squarely on the price and features of the product and the level of support that backs it up can go unnoticed… until you need it. So, what do you consider good support?

Being a Support Manager, I may appear biased but I’ve spent a lot more time being a consumer! When I think of great support from a service provider that I use, I think of three things:

1. Speed of response to my need
2. Accuracy of the help provided
3. Ownership of the situation

These three things are what I look for when I am in need… whether my need is as simple as a refill at a restaurant or my need is a more detailed explanation of my phone bill (every month) or just about anything you can think of that needs further attention.

Let’s examine each of the three elements that create great support:

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s your private cloud! Right now it is all about the cloud, but not all clouds are created equal. The public cloud may fit your business, but is it providing the most value to your company? Companies who choose to move to a private cloud frequently experience improvements in three areas:

• Employee agility
• Operational performance
• Financial growth

The infographic below breaks down the most common reasons that companies choose to move to private clouds, as well as changes they experience that lead to agility gains, operational gains, and overall cost savings for the company.

Why move to a private cloud?

Of all the benefits that the private cloud has to offer companies, there are five main drivers that impact a company’s decision to move to a private cloud:

1. Gains in agility and speed
2. Reduces company costs
3. Improves overall service quality
4. Moving aligns with company initiatives and plans
5. Increases in data security

Last week, Fpweb.net sponsored and attended the Spring SharePoint Workshop and Expo hosted in the Microsoft building in Manhattan, New York. This event was organized and emceed by our good friends at DataLan. It was a fantastic free event with a strong turnout (140 attendees or so).

I enjoyed catching up with Tony Smith and listening in on his ‘What’s New in SharePoint 2013′ session. We had many insightful conversations with folks who were exploring moving to the SharePoint 2013 cloud as part of their upgrade strategy and we also had the opportunity to catch up with some partners and fellow SharePoint solution vendors.

Get excited! We’re proud to announce that free daily backups now come standard with SharePoint hosting contracts signed in the month of May.

The skinny: It is available for Enterprise plans and above with pre-paid, one-year terms or longer. Free daily backups will be available for your entire term, whether it’s one year or ten. This promotion cannot be combined with any other Fpweb.net offers.

Gone are the days where time passed slowly in front of you as you lay awake with bated breath hoping the data you created today would survive the night to fight another day. Now you have free daily backups!

“80% of businesses who don’t properly backup their environment and suffer a significant data loss will go out of business within the month,” said Fpweb.net CEO, Rob LaMear.  “We wanted to create a promotion that draws attention to the importance of daily backups and then hands them over for free with each new contract. It’s just another way we can bring value to your hosted SharePoint environment.”

Well, it’s another month under our belts with several new articles, tweets and posts to broadcast.

While April was teasing sunshine and flirting with rain, the social medias were churning out all you could read regarding SharePoint 2013, the Cloud, security, and a lot more. And while you may have caught an article or two as it passed by your social radar, we did our best to corral the best of the month and put them all in one convenient place for you. Because we’re sweet like that…

Most of the time we post things that we have created for the SharePoint Community – things like resources and comparison charts, top ten lists, tutorials, quick overviews, etc. – and sometimes we post great articles that we happened across and want to share with you. We hope you find these links useful, entertaining and shareable.

Make sure you follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook to get the news as it’s happening.

So, without further ado, here are our posts that got the most engagement this month:

To outsource or not to outsource, that is the question!

Well, at least it may be a question that your business has discussed in a recent meeting or two. This question is even more important to companies who use SharePoint because it can often be difficult to manage in-house and to utilize all the great features. Based on a report from Vistage, only half of companies using SharePoint are doing so efficiently, and the other half is missing out on many benefits that SharePoint can offer their company. Unfortunately, those companies are continuing to sink more and more money into handling all the heavy lifting in-house.

So, the question becomes:  Is there a solution that will help make your company more efficient, help save money, decrease the risk of unpredictable events (such as outages or need for quick changes to scalability) and make your company as agile as a puma? Yes. The answer is a private cloud.

How do you know if private cloud SharePoint hosting is for you? It’s easier than you may think. To help you decide, here are a few benefits of private cloud SharePoint hosting that can save your company time, money, and headaches. Check out the presentation below for all 10 benefits!

With SharePoint 2013 now in full force, customers often call in asking if it’s time to upgrade. It’s a valid question but the only one who can really answer it for your company… is you!

Fpweb.net is certainly here to assist with the upgrade process once you’re ready, but we also want to make sure that your reason for upgrading goes beyond the excitement of a new version and is because your business is ready for the next version. Which leads me to a perfect example of a customer situation that’s worth sharing:

The Problem

A customer contacted me recently with the urgent news that he HAD to upgrade to SharePoint 2013.  I asked if his business was honestly ready to upgrade to SharePoint 2013? His answer was no. Apparently a recently upgraded computer at his office featured the new Internet Explorer 10 and they could no longer update documents in SharePoint, so they HAD to upgrade!

As Sales Director at Fpweb.net, I’m certainly open to helping my customers upgrade, but I also want them to upgrade to SharePoint 2013 on their own terms or because they like the new look and feel (reminiscent of Facebook) or because their users all access the site with their phones and tablets. Basically, move to SharePoint 2013 because of the improved mobile and tablet support, not just because they HAD to.

The Solution

So after a quick check with my SharePoint team, I was informed that you can simply run your SharePoint site in compatibility mode, and it should resolve most of the issues you may be experiencing with Internet Explorer 10 and SharePoint. It’s a relatively simple solution, yet not something people without technical experience may troubleshoot. I quickly realized that we probably have a few of our customers who’d want to know this information, hence this blog.

Today, we dig back into SQL Server 2012 to look at AlwaysOn, Clustering, Log Shipping , Mirroring , Replication & Snap Shots, focusing on the what, the why and the who cares!

I’ve been asked about these different items repeatedly by various other engineers and users.

Each of these represents a technique which affects a production server. Some are a means to protect data or ensure data access. Others are a means to reduce the stress on a production server by off-loading report-writing, or data-analysis from the production server to another server. One combines both protection and stress-reduction.

Each has its benefits and its costs. Whether one, more than one or none at all fit your needs depends on just what your needs are.

So let’s discuss them. Let’s analyze them in detail to determine what they do, what they cost, and when they are of benefit. As there is so much to cover, I’ll divide this between two separate blogs.