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| Home - Industry Article - May 08 Issue |
Utilizing SharePoint to Serve-up ‘Gourmet’
Business Solutions |
By Eric Baughman, Director Training and
Education, CorasWorks Corporation
What can a TV dinner teach us about solutions on the SharePoint
platform? I experienced this little lesson during a recent visit to the
supermarket. In the frozen food section, I noticed a five course meal in a box
and questioned why they’ve lost popularity. They are inexpensive, convenient,
cover the spectrum of food groups, and even include dessert – all on the same
plate. It’s not unlike off-the-shelf software or business applications, where
we’re given a number of pre-set features, served up together in a single
package, all to fulfill a particular need. In both cases, however, there is
evidence that consumers want and need more. They want more flexibility and
choices, better quality, and usually need it all within certain time and budget
constraints.
You Don’t Have to be a Programmer…You Just Need the Secret Ingredients
for Success
So what’s the response to the market’s ‘gourmet’ demands? The ingredients
available are getting better, with more choices, allowing us to do more.
However, whether we’re talking about the produce aisle at the supermarket or the
SharePoint technology platform in business, working at the ingredients level
requires the time and the skills to bring it all together. Two things I am not:
a chef or a programmer. Fortunately, there are options for me.
My supermarket experience ended in the last aisle, where I
picked up an assortment of fresh sushi for my wife and myself,
and a hot roasted chicken with stuffing and a side of fresh
vegetables for the kids. This alternative was a far cry from my
other options of i) the frozen dinners – least expensive, least
appetizing, ii) making it all from scratch – more time, more
money, or iii) going to two different restaurants to be served
by the experts – most time, most money, maybe get what we want.
In the SharePoint world, consumers can meet some of their needs
out of the box through pre-built templates and web part
capabilities. The modularity of the platform gives us more
choices than many standalone, pre-built point solution products.
However, whether it is on the current v2 or upcoming v3
platforms of SharePoint, users find themselves wanting and
needing more. They want more in terms of the parts (navigation,
data aggregation, and the ability to take action and drive
business activity), but more importantly, how the parts come
together as an integrated system. And of course, sprinkle time
and budget considerations on top, and you’re starting to see the
recipe for success.
If we’re to build from scratch in SharePoint, it requires tools
like Visual Studio. FrontPage for SharePoint v2 and SharePoint
Designer for v3 also let us get to that ‘ingredient level’
referenced earlier, but not without some additional skills and
time to do so. For organizations looking to make the SharePoint
plunge, I’d recommend they look at investing in a workplace
software vendor for SharePoint.
A trusted workplace software vendor for SharePoint will provide
you with many of the necessary ingredients to meet a wide
variety of your application need and make the necessary
preparation easy, efficient, and cost-effective. To explore
business solutions developed on both the SharePoint v2 and v3
platform, I’d recommend you visit a Solution Tour that
CorasWorks offers. They are solutions that were configured
through the browser for rapid deployment and less time to
productivity. With dashboard displays featured in many of the
solutions, you’ll see data that is brought back from two
different sites. This is much like my sushi and chicken example,
where you’re going to need to bring two different things that
came from different places, back to the same table.
Bon appetite!
Eric Baughman is the Director of Training and Education at CorasWorks
Corporation, the leading provider of software for developing collaborative
solutions on Microsoft SharePoint. Eric ensures that all customers are able to
use CorasWorks products to build web–based solutions such as portals, intranets,
extranets, dashboards, and other business applications that meet their business
needs. Eric can be reached at (http://www.corasworks.net)
 
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