Let’s say you’ve come dangerously close to solving a tricky SharePoint problem, only to run into a hitch in the home stretch. You know there’s a way to make SharePoint do what you want; you just need to find someone who has had the same problem and come up with a smart solution. When you’ve got questions, where’s a good place to go? In general, how can you find out more about the beast known as SharePoint?

The good news is SharePoint’s got groupies. Tons of them in fact, scattered all across the globe. When you google “SharePoint Community”, more than 13 million results pop up. Most of these sites belong to friendly, SharePoint hungry folks – members of the SharePoint community – who love to dish about what’s new, what’s changed and how they can help.

Want in on the action? Here’s a few of our favorite resources you can use to get your questions answered and become more familiar with the many faces and facets of SharePoint.

1. For answers, visit a few of these:

• EndUserSharepoint.com and EndUserSharePoint2010.com

Run by SharePoint superstar Mark Miller, you can find answers to an enormous variety of SharePoint questions on either one of these great sites. Both contain thousands of articles, with questions ranging anywhere from ‘how to install SharePoint on a small farm’ to ‘creating SharePoint 2010 managed metadata with Excel 2010’. Almost every article on these sites is written in a concise, user-friendly language that’s really easy to follow.

• Microsoft’s Get The Point Blog

This blog, written by the Microsoft End-User Content team, highly encourages contributions from the SharePoint user community. Related links, useful blogs and articles separated by category make this blog a top-notch resource for any SharePoint qualms that may arise.

• SharePointcommunity.com

This site can be a SharePoint user’s life raft in a sea of SharePoint-related questions. Completely community driven, it features useful links to SharePoint discussion boards, blogs, articles, vendors and books. There’s even a survey you can take to help make sure the site is doling out the information you need. This site is constantly being updated, so it’s best to check back often.

2. See a live demonstration courtesy of SharePoint Saturdays.

There are great community events happening every weekend, driven by SharePoint powerhouse Michael Lotter, called SharePoint Saturdays. These free, community-driven, not for profit, one-day conferences happen every weekend in various cities across the US. The events always feature leading SharePoint superstars who voluntarily share their expertise to help the SharePoint community.

3. Network and learn at a SharePoint conference.

Pack a suitcase and prepare to learn about the latest and greatest in the SharePoint world. Each conference has a different agenda, so make sure you pick one that aligns with your goals, your user level and your current projects. SharePoint vendors will be present at each of these, including the Road Crew from Fpweb.net, to deliver advice and offer their services.

• With class levels ranging from beginner to expert, SPTechCon Boston (October 20-22) is well on it’s way to becoming THE place to go for SharePoint technical information. Whether you’re an IT administrator, a developer or a business user, all classes are taught by SharePoint greats and are geared toward users who are wishing to become experts in the field.

• Best Practices Conference in Washington, DC , (August 24-27) will help you avoid common pitfalls during deployment and features content that will appeal to almost everyone involved in SharePoint. This conference will tend to focus more on the “why” of a decision instead of the “how”, while teaching core methods that achieve the best outcome.

4. View some of Fpweb.net’s support archives.

We’ve got tons of information on our site, including tips on getting started and popular questions and answers. Check out one of our many tutorials, with topics such as Email Alerts, Web Part creation, SharePoint Wikis and more.

5. Join a local SharePoint user group.

SharePoint user groups are springing up all over and it’s easy to find one that’s close. Visit www.sharepointusergroup.com to see if there’s a group near you or google your city’s name and the words ‘sharepoint user group’. Just by simply joining, you can participate in online discussions, ask questions and find helpful tips, tricks and information. These groups usually meet once a month or more to discuss various SharePoint topics and network.

This is just our starter list! This is not by any means a complete list of all those SharePoint lifesavers out there. Valuable community sites, events and tips are created daily, so make sure you give yourself time to explore!

Know a site or tool that has gotten you through a sticky SharePoint situation? Feel free to add it below!

Some organizations have discovered the hard way that SharePoint is far easier to implement in theory than it is in practice, particularly when IT resources are scarce and training budgets have evaporated.  Sure, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is easy to download and SharePoint Server requires a bit more thought, but either way, users may find themselves faced with a blank slate that they don’t know how to use.  Even the initiated may discover they need immediate help or fast access to SharePoint templates, but have nowhere to turn.   Rather than grappling with the inner workings of SharePoint, companies large and small are turning to Fpweb.net so they can spend more time innovating and improving business processes.

“A lot of times, people in organizations are ready to go, but because SharePoint isn’t easy to customize, developers can take as long as eight months to deliver the solutions business managers are looking for,” said Rob LaMear IV, CEO of Fpweb.net (www.fpweb.net).

SharePoint 2007 is complex to administer, and SharePoint 2010 is going to be even more complicated.   Meanwhile, business managers are tired of waiting for SharePoint customizations because IT departments are busy putting out other fires.  On the flip side, overworked IT departments are secretly dreaming of SharePoint genies who can help them get to market faster and reduce related costs.

Fpweb.net simplifies SharePoint adoption, deployment, maintenance, and customization, and the company can provide access to SharePoint server farms at a fraction of the cost of on-premise builds.  More recently, customers have been using Fpweb.net for backup and production builds, or to operate disaster recovery sites.  Entrepreneurs and innovators are executing proofs-of-concept, while heavily regulated organizations are turning to Fpweb.net for on-premise management.   Some companies have even started outsourcing their SharePoint help-desk functions to Fpweb.net.

“Companies are hiring us to manage just about everything related to SharePoint,” said LaMear.

About 80% of Fpweb.net customers choose WSS while the remaining 20% opt for SharePoint Server (MOSS).  Despite the dramatic cost differential and benefits delivered by the two options, LaMear said the size of the company does not dictate the choice of one over the other.  As an example, a large delivery company chose WSS for document management purposes, but has since decided to migrate to SharePoint Server to take advantage of its powerful enterprise features.

Because Fpweb.net solutions are hosted, getting started is quick and easy even for those who lack technical prowess.  WSS users are benefiting from better communication and collaboration and intranet and document sharing, while SharePoint Server users are enjoying world-class enterprise search, business intelligence and content management.

For organizations that prefer SharePoint Server, Fpweb.net handles everything from the build to customization and maintenance, which shields customers from the complexity.   Customers can also avoid large capital outlays for expensive datacenter servers and support staff, purportedly reducing costs by as much as 60% when compared to internally managed systems.  Fpweb.net guarantees 100% uptime and maintains world-class SAS 70 Type II certified datacenters, so customers can maintain biometric access-point security, as well as comply with PCI, HIPAA and SOX.

The big news is SharePoint 2010.  Along with Microsoft’s formal announcement will be announcements of Fpweb.net’s support for SharePoint 2010 and a new SharePoint cloud computing service.

“All you have to do is give us the number of users and your storage requirements,” said LaMear.   “There’s no need to talk about processors or memory.”

Fpweb.net will also be unveiling QuickStart SharePoint Business Suites, which LaMear predicts will be “game-changing.”  It will include CorasWorks apps, Nintex workflows and AvePoint admin tools that streamline business processes.  It will also have admin features such as reporting and auditing (Fpweb.net is teaming up with AvePoint for auditing and reporting).

Companies turn to Fpweb.net to manage just about everything related to SharePoint WSS and MOSS.

In the absence of using a hosted service like Fpweb.net, SharePoint users can get about 80% of the functionality they need out of the box, but it’s the remaining 20% that can hold up customized deployment for months.  According to LaMear, QuickStart SharePoint Business Suites will give customers about 95% of what they’re looking for, which will dramatically reduce the need for one-off customizations.

“Users will be able to do more with SharePoint 2010, but it’s more sophisticated than SharePoint 2007, which means it can and will break,” said LaMear.  “Customers are hiring us to take care of SharePoint so they can take care of business.”

Fpweb.net customers will not necessarily be migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, because it’s neither prudent nor cost-effective.  However, some customers will be launching new initiatives using SharePoint 2010 while maintaining existing deployments in SharePoint 2007.

LaMear expects migration from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 to be a “challenging” experience for those who dare to manage the process in-house, particularly given that the migration from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007 was “painful,” and migration to SharePoint 2003 was “a disaster.”

To avoid pain and boost internal productivity, more than a million users are already relying on Fpweb.net.  WSS hosting options are available for as little as $29 per month; MOSS hosting options start at just $795 per month.

The preceding copy was an excerpt from the fall 2009 issue of “SharePoint Sourcebook”, a supplement to “Software Development Times”.  Used with permission.

A shot of the Fpweb.net booth at SPC09 (iPhone quality)

I’ll give you a few highlights among the many:

I lost $100. Huey Lewis and the News rocked! What a great party Microsoft threw. The ka-bobs and appetizers were many, and the 8,000 plus in attendance were partying like rock stars. On day 1, I had a Joel Oleson sighting, which then happened again, 3 times on day 2, and 4 times on day 3. On day 4, I received a subpoena asking that I stay back 500 feet. I was also able to meet the infamous, the mysterious and the all-powerful SharePoint Samurai, Michael Gannotti. He was talking about all the new features in 2010 in a live video-blog along with Laura Rogers from SharePoint 911, Mark Miller from EndUserSharePoint.com and Dux, the SharePoint Project Management guru. That famed crew even pulled the guys from Fpweb.net in, including yours truly, to talk about the difference between Microsoft Online Suites (BPOS) and Fpweb.net SharePoint hosting. The Samurai is a genius and we hope to work with him in the future on a very cool project he’s rolling out. It’s cool, but it’s a mystery. The Samurai would have it no other way.

Besides the great sessions, the great magicians at various booths and all of the incredibly talented and good-looking SharePoint community gathering in one spot, I’d have to say the very best part of the conference was being able to meet some of our clients face-to-face. We rarely get to meet the people who allow us to receive a paycheck and it’s always great to put a face to a name. I would tell you more, but as they say, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!

According to the article, Joel Oleson was the first SharePoint administrator when he started working for Microsoft in 2000. One year earlier in 1999, Fpweb.net became the first and only SharePoint hosting company. Today we are one million users strong.

The interview with SharePoint Joel is a little shaky and hard to hear in the beginning, but it’s certainly worth watching the 5:50 minute video to hear how it all began, and we’re proud to say we were there every step of the way.

It seems Jones is a SharePoint “guru” of sorts. He and his now-wife went to Las Vegas for the conference, however, they also squeezed in time to get married at an Elvis Chapel yesterday, and got a photo with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Fpweb.net, the SharePoint Hosting Pioneer™ would like to make a toast and congratulate Jones and his (very understanding) spouse for this special occasion.

The conference is only one week away and Fpweb.net is proud to be a Gold Sponsor.

If you’re attending the conference, you can connect with us on our Facebook and Twitter profiles. Share information before, after and during the event, or you can find us at booth #420. Did we mention we’re giving away a Samsung NC20 NetBook every day?

We’re hoping our experience in Las Vegas isn’t as wild and crazy as what happened in the movie The Hangover, but we are certainly looking forward to a great time and learning from keynote speakers such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and VP of the Office SharePoint Server Group Jeff Teper.

To learn more about the conference, check out the Microsoft SharePoint 2009 website.

October 19-22 is marked on our calendar—it should be on yours too, that is, if you want to be one of the first to get the insider scoop on the soon-to-be released Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Close to 250 sessions are planned—and the majority of the topics will answer questions and debunk the rumors surrounding the much anticipated SharePoint 2010. A brief sampling of what you can expect:

• Overview of SharePoint 2010 (the sneak peak!)
• Improvements and exciting new features (learn more about FAST Search and Groove)
• Upgrading from SharePoint 2007 (it’s going to be easier than you think, especially if Fpweb.net is already your SharePoint hosting provider!)

Las Vegas is the perfect locale for the tight-lips at Microsoft to loosen up—what will they disclose? You know the saying, “what happens in Vegas…” so if you want all the buzz, first hand, you should be there yourself. If you register now, you’ll have a guaranteed spot before the conference sells out! (We’re a Gold Sponsor of SharePoint Conference 2009, so they tell us our seats are saved.)

Amid all the excitement over SharePoint 2010, let’s not forget that this is also a Vegas vacation! It’s okay to break away from the conference, for just a little bit, to check out the sights and sounds of the entertainment capital of the world.

You won’t need to go far, either. Mandalay Bay, where the conference is taking place, has a lot to offer. Do you want to swim with the sharks? Yeah, no kidding, just like in the movies—you’ll also see sawfish, stingrays, piranha’s and sea turtles in Mandalay Bay’s Shark Reef Aquarium. This is definitely on our list of “must see attractions.”

After the sharks, come stop by our booth (# 420). We won’t bite, promise!

That’s I.T. for now, see you in Vegas.

We all know SharePoint is an awesome tool, but is not necessarily the prettiest or easiest tool to use right out of the box. That is about to change. Fpweb.net has joined ranks with CorasWorks to bring the SharePoint community a set of applications built on top of the CorasWorks AppEngine for a robust and stabile application environment like no other in the world.

This environment will allow us to quickly and easily add applications for departments (PMO, HR) and verticals (Federal, healthcare, energy). This will increase adoption dramatically, making SharePoint useful from day one. This is going to change everything, and make all of you IT heroes. Get ready for a tidal wave. It is coming.

Fpweb.net will have SharePoint Application offerings for both WSS and MOSS. The WSS App offerings will have basic but much needed functionality, such as department dashboards, workspaces, project dashboards, task management, work order approval and QuickStart templates. This set of SharePoint Apps provides department focus.

MOSS AppEngine will include all of the above and project portfolio management, help desk, service engagement management, virtual slide show and blog-style announcement service. This set of SharePoint Apps extends to deeper application and multi-site, cross environment apps.

That’s all I can give you right now. We have a soft launch date of September 15th with the official launch at the Las Vegas World SharePoint Conference October 19-22. Stop by the Fpweb.net booth daily (booth #420) for a chance to win a tricked out Samsung netbook. You will also be able to demo our SharePoint menu of DocAve admin tools, Nintex workflow and CorasWorks apps. All delivered on demand via a low monthly subscription in the Fpweb.net SharePoint cloud computing network. Welcome to the future of SharePoint.

Did you know President Obama is a big fan of SharePoint?  Fact: Microsoft SharePoint helped President Obama win the Presidency.  I’ll explain.

My impression of the current administration is that they are shrewd and tech savvy.  I first got wind that President Obama uses SharePoint when he showed up as a customer of Fpweb.net during his nomination for the Democratic Party.  His campaign manager was using one of our small shared WSS v3 plans to coordinate their nationwide campaign teams.

This really didn’t get my attention since he wasn’t listed as a real player yet and we had 3 or 4 other candidates as well from both major parties.  Microsoft SharePoint is a great tool for political candidates.  Out-of-the-box it has everything they need, and the managed hosting model is perfect since they can dial it up or down and turn it off after the election.

But then President Obama won the nomination and you could see the push coming.  I had one of my sales guys call his campaign manager to get him into a more robust plan since I knew he was going to stress test the network with a Presidential campaign.  Poof, he was gone.  Strange.

About two months later, I was covering the Enterprise phone line while the sales team was meeting at lunch and the campaign manager called in.   I signed him up for a middle of the road WSS v3 plan and gave him a significant discount.  I bleed red, white, and blue and will do whatever possible to help our great country.  Again, they were using the portal site to help coordinate their nationwide campaign teams and I could tell from the amount of data and traffic that they were turning up the heat.

We decided not to publicize their usage during the election to limit any online attacks and keep his campaign running as smoothly as possible – this was not a time for distractions.  FYI, we offered our services to the Republican candidate but never heard back from them which struck me as odd because they did use our services up to the party nomination for some of their folks.  Perhaps they took it in house or bagged SharePoint.

After the election, President Obama’s team kept the portal up for a bit and then took it down, I’m sure they archived everything for future use. For those of you who don’t know, SharePoint (WSS and MOSS) is a big piece of our nation’s government.  Local, state and federal agencies have been using it extensively since 2003.  It is now a mandated platform.  At Fpweb.net, we helped the Library of Congress adopt SharePoint back in 2002.  When hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the nation’s largest natural disaster to date, we were called upon by numerous organizations to help get them back on their feet.

Katrina created a real mess and exposed a terrible weakness in our country.  First responders, local, state and federal agencies had (and still do) a difficult time communicating with each other.  Collaboration was almost impossible.  So besides the Radio Interoperability issues, they had no way to easily exchange documents or collaborate online.  Enter Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and SharePoint Portal Server (now MOSS).

Our SharePoint hosting served as instant government, emergency and temporary business sites for groups like Homeland Security, FEMA, Red Cross, Louisiana Judicial System and hundreds of local businesses.  We gave all the services away gratis as these guys had been through the ringer.  It was the least we could do to help them.

I distinctly remember having one conversation with an ex-special forces guy who called in on a Sat phone from New Orleans.  He was contracted by the Army to maintain stability in New Orleans.  Great guy, he had served in the Middle East and said that nothing compared to the devastation he saw on the coast. He was using SharePoint as a project management portal for various teams who were keeping the peace.

There is no question that it took too long to get resources to the coast and coordinate their efforts.  Communication was literally blown away.  Infrastructure was gone.  SharePoint certainly helped but there is more we can do.  Let’s be ready for the next “scorched earth” scenario.

Fpweb.net is in the preliminary stages of working on a solution that includes SharePoint which will make this country able to respond to faster and easier to a national emergency.  President Obama knows that SharePoint technology is such an enabler and I look forward to helping him make this a reality.  We can and will make a difference.

Long time, no blog, well, I’m back in the saddle and writing again. The Fpweb.net team and I have a busy schedule next week. We are speaking at SharepointConference.org, I am meeting with Microsoft and an ISV in Seattle and then I’m having lunch at the White House. Really cool stuff is being knocked around: Fpweb.net SaaS and SharePoint capabilities, more information on both coming soon. Exciting – and busy times – we are in.

My Seattle trip is prompting this blog post. There are hundreds, if not thousands of Independent Software Vendors (ISV) who have built a solution that sits on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. Most are starting to realize that SaaS is not a fad. Software-as-a-Service is not going anywhere and is particularly attractive in the current economic downturn.

Here is the title and description of our session at SharepointConference.org:

SaaS – The SharePoint Easy Button: Robert E. LaMear IV, Founder & CEO, Fpweb.net

Find out how to get on-demand IT infrastructure and expertise without a big capital investment. Forget budgets, steering committees and vendor dog-and-pony shows. Flip the switch and leave IT worries behind, so you can focus on your core business.

This session will highlight the benefits of hosting SharePoint in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environment rather than on-premise. Benefits discussed will include significant cost savings, rapid deployment and access to SharePoint expertise. We will also cover what to look for in a SharePoint SaaS provider.

Take-Aways: In this economic downturn, many companies are looking for ways to make their business more efficient with less capital investment. SharePoint SaaS solutions are a mature and viable option. Once you have chosen a trust-worthy SaaS provider, get ready to roll out quickly, save money and utilize SharePoint experts 24/7/365.

It applies to ISVs as well. You guys have invested thousands of man hours in a kick-butt product and are probably struggling to move it in this market. Big price tags are big barriers right now. In fact, I’d say they are a deal killer. SaaS lowers the entry point and widens your market. Selling is still a major challenge but a monthly subscription model will give you a fighting chance, a much easier pill to swallow. Plus, if you are selling your big ticket item and you have a competitor offering a SaaS pay- as-you-go product, well, it’s an uphill battle at best.  If you’re Lance Armstrong, the yellow jersey is within your grasp;  for the rest of us mere mortals, prepare to be swallowed up by the peloton. Bottom line – a SaaS offering can give you a big advantage or level the playing field.

Did I mention we just rolled out Sales Force CRM internally? Here is a perfect SaaS model and it made sense for us. And we’re a hoster! We tested it free for a couple weeks. Worked great, fast and is easy to use. Absolutely blows MS CRM 4 and Microsoft Productivity Online Services away. Don’t believe me, test them for yourself. I could either spend big dollars bringing in a consultant, buying all the software, training and customizing or pay a small monthly fee. Hmmm, let me think about this a while…That’s enough deliberation, option B please.

The point is that SaaS is mature and folks are begging for it. We have several SharePoint partners who I think would do very well if they moved to the on-demand model. We have helped quite a few companies develop a SaaS model and partner with them to be their SaaS enabler. They manage and maintain the code, bill the customer directly and we keep their solution available to the Internet. The ISV can also leverage our MOSS expertise as needed during development or major upgrades.

ISVs flip the SaaS switch. Get your MOSS platform solution to market now. Stop missing out on lost opportunities and sales. The recession will make or break a lot of companies, surge ahead instead of falling behind. We know MOSS. It’s all we’ve done for the past 10 years. Give us a call or check out our new web site: ISVsMakeBigDollaWithFpwebSaasyMoss.com. We’d love to help you.

If you succeed, we succeed.