SharePoint And Building Data Portal Applications (spdata)

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted.  What have I been up to?   Lots of stuff but mostly working on some combination SharePoint / Business Intellegence solutions.  It's really interesting to build applications without writing any UI code and just using SharePoint web parts.  At first it was disconcerting… but now I'm getting used to leaving VStudio behind.  The applications are architected with most of the business logic in the Stored Procedures, it uses our NSE Visualizers for connecting data sources to web parts, and then the entire user interface is all SharePoint Web Parts.  It's amazing how productive you can be when you don't have to worry about very fine levels of control of the UI. 

The primary applications are dashboards.  Here's a sample screenshot image. 

http://cid-4cd720a9c77df5fb.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/MiscImages/ReducedScreenShot.jpg

OK, so riddle me this batman… I know that as somebody who works for a company that makes tools for SharePoint I am totally and completely biased BUT…  I hear quite a bit about how "you can't find any SharePoint people anywhere".  I find that statement to be generally true.  If you want someone who really knows SharePoint, it takes time and effort to find the right person.  Go to your favorite job search site and put in "SharePoint" and you will get a good list of SharePoint developer jobs. 

The question is, in this environment, are organizations properly leveraging tools that are available to them?  The whole idea of tools is that they should allow an organization to accomplish more than they could otherwise.  In this way tools "pay for themselves" by freeing up resources.  While the amount and types of tools in the SharePoint arena appear to be increasing, I think we have just scratched the surface of the total demand for SharePoint tools. 

Will the SharePoint skill shortage help boost the SharePoint tools market, or will the opposite occur as we see organizations shy away from SharePoint projects due to lack of (human) resources.  Thoughts?  We'll see…

I had the opportunity to speak to a lot of folks this week at the conference and a couple themes seemed to emerge (yes, I admit it's based on anecdotal information).  One was the “implementation gap”.  If you and your organization have SharePoint rolled out and are using it for anything more than document management (file share replacement) you are  probably in the top one third of all SharePoint customers in terms of maturity.  Pretty eye opening that for all the copies of SharePoint out there, a majority of customers have barely scratched the surface of it's use.   

I'm starting to think through an adoption continuum for SharePoint.  It starts with document management than moves to content management, applications, etc.  Anyone know of anything already out there?

Thanks again to everyone at the Philadelphia SharePoint Users Group for having me out this week.  It was good to talk to everyone about Data in SharePoint.  I have uploaded a pdf of my presentation. It is available here:

http://cid-4cd720a9c77df5fb.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/UserGroupPresentation

 Feel free to let me know if you have questions.

 Mike

OK, so SharePoint is now being used for all new Information Worker type applications, as well as serving as the unofficial de-facto UI for a number of other mission critical systems where it doesn't make sense to have users learn a new application.  What's next?  How about Business Intelligence, or, more correctly “BI-Light”.  Using items like Pivot Tables, Excel Services, Reporting, Charts, Data enabled web parts, etc. it becomes more feasible to build many of the view-only screens that used to use a BI vendor's user interface in SharePoint instead.  It doesn't replace the power-users desktop where interaction with data is a key requirement, but for users who mostly consume data via charts or simply view existing BI-type reports SharePoint makes another nice way to go. 

So eventually SharePoint becomes the user interface for many IW applications.  Combined with Office desktop products it is the "Most Viewed" screen for most workers.  Exactly as Microsoft planned I assume.   

 It will be interesting to see how much of this comes to pass.  The trend that first brought about portals, greater desktop consolidation, is helping SharePoint become the uber-portal that sucks up everything in its path.  Agree?  Disagree?  I'm interested in your observations based on what you have seen at your company or your clients.

The Seattle show is everything I thought it would be.  Mostly it's really big.  The vendor exhibit area has apparently reached critical mass as there are multiple solutions for just about any of the SharePoint “holes” you can think of.  Lots of training and services offerings as well which probably speaks to the need many organizations have to grow their resources knowledge into their implementations.  (That's a nice way of saying lots of people have rolled out SharePoint and don't have a clue how to use it.)  Once again I spent more time in the exhibit hall than the sessions but generally I got good feedback from participants on the quality and variety of sessions. 

I enjoyed hearing from Greg LeMond during the Wednesday keynote.  (My guess is since he only won one tour and Lance won 7 his speaker fee was probably a seventh of Lance's J).  From what I understand Greg and Lance are not exactly “close”.  After listening to him speak I'm convinced that you either have the right genes (and VO2 max) to be an elite bike racer or you don't (he won almost all of the races he entered even in his early days).   My understanding is the show sold out from both an attendee and exhibitor perspective in record time.  The popularity of SharePoint continues to roll on. 

I've been noodling over the future of SharePoint and how it makes its way into organizations.  It gets interesting once you are past the “document repository” stage for SharePoint and are beginning to think of using SharePoint as a real application development platform. 

The more I watch things unfold, the more I see the likelihood of SharePoint becoming the predominant user interface (and to a lesser extend development platform) for knowledge worker applications.  Let's think about the steps that will occur to make this happen in many organizations.

First,  SharePoint will take over every home grown app you and your company have ever built.  That is, the “low hanging fruit” is to rewrite the Issue Tracking system that “Bob the Developer” (no relation to Bob the Builder) wrote 3 years ago just before he left to go join that start up that mashed things up.  This app is undocumented and contains a bunch of bizarre asp and ASP.Net spaghetti code.  It also is build on an Access/MySql/SQL Server Express/Excel back end (we think) to store issues.  So in a couple of days, somebody replaces the database with a bunch of smart lists, then they build the functionality into the lists via views, etc.  This lets people view new issues, create ad-hoc “reports”, get notified as items are added, search for keywords when a customer calls in with a “new” problem, etc.  It doesn't replace 100% of the functions of Bob's old system but it replaces 90%, it costs almost nothing to build, and best of all, it is easy to maintain and change.

Now an edict comes down from the guys in corporate architecture, who “get it” that SharePoint can help them replace these hundreds of rogue applications with a system that is maintainable and sustainable.  They issue a decree (written on parchment and sealed with the Chief Architects Royal Seal?) that henceforth all internal knowledge applications shall be written and supported in SharePoint.  The java programmer who's been building Linux/Apache apps for years immediately resigns. 

To be continued.

Just got back from the ODC in San Jose.  So many sessions, so little time.  Of course I spent most of my time in the Expo hall but I did get a chance to hear some of the speakers.  In talking to people a couple of themes seemed to come out.  I sensed the more senior developers had a "nothing new here" attitude.  It seemed the folks that got the most out of the sessions were people who attended sessions in areas they were just moving into or were interested in getting a wide but not necessarily deep knowledge.  I think that makes sense.  It's hard to have a lot of "300 level" type courses in a general developer atmosphere like ODC just based on the numbers.  Also, the food was "sub par" (how do you ruin hot dogs?) and the facilities/setup seemed to be sufficient/reasonable.  For us cold weather types, the 60 degree temperatures were a nice plus.

 I'm REALLY sick of most of the songs on Rock Band and Guitar Hero now (our booth was 20 feet away).  Thanks to all the would be James Hetfields out there for ruining "Enter the Sandman" for me forever. 

Keynote this morning from Bill Gates was great.  Awesome to hear him spend so much time talking about SharePoint.  Also some good questions from the crowd regarding support for SharePoint.  Implication seems to be that SharePoint grew faster than they (Microsoft) anticipated and they need to get caught up with documentation, technical support, samples, best practices, etc.  Great to have our booth right across from the Rockstar and Guitar Hero booth. :-)  More to come…

 Check out Bill Gates' retirement video shown this morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRD-0h7PiiE