I recently read a very interesting blog post from Ricardo Wilkins on his SharePoint Cowbell blog. He describes his recent SharePoint development experience using the Developer Preview edition of Microsoft Visual Studio 11 in Deploying a Visual Web Part to your Remote-Hosted Fpweb.net SharePoint Site using Visual Studio 11 (Dev Preview).

The new and (actually) improved features for SharePoint development in VS 11 are quite impressive. Ricardo explains “the ability to deploy visual web parts as sandboxed solutions”, and automatically deploy those solutions to remote hosted SharePoint sites.

It’s no secret that document collaboration is essential in today’s business world.

Frequently, the expertise and roles of multiple people are required to complete a single business document; sometimes an editing process has to occur before a document can be approved for publishing.

Unfortunately, too many companies still rely on the network share as the center for document collaboration. Companies create a ‘share’, assign security, and let people create folders and save documents on an as-needed basis. Emails fly from one person to another saying “Your turn” or “Please review this” or “I’m done.”  But the network share methodology is never efficient. Plus, managing documents and collaborating with team members in this manner presents several serious problems:

The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 is the product of a Post-9/11 world, a new legislation created to change U.S. policy regarding gathering intelligence for the purpose of preventing further attacks. Deemed a knee-jerk reaction by many and intrusive by others, the unadulterated power and confusion surrounding the Patriot Act have now directly impeded much of U.S. data centers’ cloud services.

Many cloud services companies are feeling the sting of potential clients that are avoiding U.S. governed providers subject to the Patriot Act. This paranoia springs from the risk of their data being swept up in the Act’s net if invoked, and as a result, some firms are avoiding U.S. cloud providers altogether. It is important to note that although it is used as a counter-marketing tool for U.S. data services, such as web hosting companies, similar counter-terrorism laws exist in places like the UK and Canada as well.

The purpose of this article is to outline the basic principles of the Patriot Act, explain how it affects your business, examine how to represent the issue to your clientele and identify the European work in motion to shorten its reach. 

 In this post, Fpweb.net’s Director of SharePoint Engineering Chris Schwab shares his experiences at a recent SharePoint Saturday community event.

After a month and a half break in my travel schedule, I hit the road again. Over the first weekend in January, I packed up the Fpweb.net booth and headed out to spread the word about Hosted SharePoint to members of the SP user community in Virginia Beach, VA.

Virginia Beach… in mid-January… that alone means this event is destined to be great. Of course it did SNOW on us out there last year, but this one was different… much different. Temperatures in the 60s, sunshine, and a great venue at the Tidewater Community College made this one stand apart.

The first surprise was meeting up with Eric Harlan (@ericharlan) and Geoff Varosky (@gvaro) on the flight into Norfolk, VA. It was a short 35 min flight, but it was nice having some people to talk to on the way over. Later that night I headed over to the Speakers dinner at the Shifting Sands Club and found out what a fantastic lineup of speakers were brought in for this event.

It’s hard to believe that it’s 2012 already, but for all of you SharePoint users out there, this means one thing: It’s been over five years since SharePoint 2007 (MOSS/WSS) was released. My assumption is that all of you are aware that SharePoint 2010 is out there by now, and if not, well perhaps you have traveled to the wrong website.

Just like any “new and improved” Microsoft product that’s released, many end users are hesitant to upgrade right away. Simple math tells you that SharePoint 2010 has been used for over two years, and now that all the guinea pigs have ironed out the wrinkles, guess what? It’s time to upgrade!

So, what are you waiting for? Order the software, throw the CD in the drive and click Setup! Not so fast… SharePoint is not your average Microsoft software that allows you to click Next a couple times and you’re done. There is a whole lot of planning that needs to go in to upgrading from your 2007 version to 2010, and the Fpweb.net SharePoint experts are here to walk you through it.

The Cloud just got its driving license!

“The car in the cloud is more than just cool technology; it’s the harbinger of a fundamental shift in the way automakers will do business in the future. ” – William Clay “Bill” Ford Jr.

Need further proof “the cloud” is gaining momentum in the marketplace? Look no further than this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

This week, for the fourth year in a row, Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally takes the stage at CES in Las Vegas, NV. His keynote speech, however, will introduce a new buzzword to the automotive industry: the cloud!

Ford’s ingenuity has always helped set the pace of auto innovations, whether it’s saving gas or producing greener emissions, and now they’re the latest enterprise to embrace a future in the cloud.

The Ford Evos Concept car’s design is straight out of a sci-fi mag (if Ray Bradbury could have been this forward thinking!) The Evos Concept’s target audience is the busy, working professional. Someone who runs on as many cylinders as their car and can benefit from having all of their data and info (be it work or home related) cloud connected. Ford is presenting the ideal of not just relying on your phone to be connected to your work station, but for your car to play the in-between and manage the lot.

The medical industry is realizing the great potential to streamline and organize their business processes and data with SharePoint 2010. Many healthcare organizations require a HIPAA-compliant SharePoint solution to store and process electronic protected health information (ePHI).

The HIPAA Security Rule covers the standards and implementation specifications that are required to become compliant. The Security Rule only applies to ePHI where the Privacy Rule refers to PHI which may be electronic, oral, or paper form.

I’ve recently been researching what makes a HIPAA-compliant SharePoint 2010 environment.
NOTE: I’m not a compliance expert. I’m simply recording my thoughts in hopes of sparking conversation and receiving feedback on real world compliance projects involving SharePoint.   

Whether your cracking the champagne or applying to the gym – whatever your New Year resolutions call for – we’re happy to be ringing in the New Year with you!

Hope your 2012 hosts many blessings and adventures!

-All the best from the Fpweb.net team

This is the last of a four part series. If you haven’t read parts 1-3, please check out the complete SharePoint Content Types and Metadata series.

Okay, we’re almost finished! We have our content types created. We added our content types to the document library. Now let’s look at adding a document to a library and adding metadata:

1. In the document library, click the Documents tab on the ribbon bar.
2. Click Upload Document.
3. Use the Browse button and locate the document you want saved. Click OK.

After the file has been uploaded, you must now apply metadata. Notice the Content Type drop-down. You have the option to choose from content types currently associated with the library.

Clear your mental mystification of SharePoint hosting

As a SharePoint architect at Fpweb.net, I hear questions all the time about hosting SharePoint in a private cloud vs. hosting SharePoint On Premise. Trust me, I completely understand the mental mystifications that you and your organization are going through when considering this.

Have you been scratching your head over the potential infrastructure investment that you’ll incur with your upcoming SharePoint Farm deployment? Are you feeling a sense of bewilderment over how you’ll have full control of your SharePoint environment if it’s not On Premise? Or, perhaps you’re perplexed over how you’ll manage the around-the-clock IT support and overhead costs that come with the 24/7 monitoring and the recapitulation of OS upgrades and patches in your On Premise environment. Well, the good news is that you’re not alone.

These and many other factors are all very important to consider when making the decision to host on premise or to host in a SharePoint cloud. As Mark Miller, our Senior Storyteller and Community Advocate says, there is “the good, the bad, and the ugly” with any option. My intent is to make you aware of the various ways of implementing SharePoint. It’s not meant to be prescriptive or used as a roadmap, but more as a set of talking points around Hosted vs. On Premise SharePoint.

Let’s break it down.