SharePoint - Please Sir, can I have some more?

More and more companies are now rolling out SharePoint 2007 and seeing it's many exciting features. It looks good, it is easy for users to master, it has a snazzy search engine and can do basic workflow. Great until the Managers and Super Users start asking for MORE. When Officetalk lead SharePoint projects across UK and Europe a typical initial response from customers is "Great, I never knew it did so much", but very quickly they are asking for more. We often hear comments like "Yes, the calendar is nice, BUT can we see all the Board Meetings in dark blue", or "Yes, I like the Announcements, BUT wouldn't it be nice if they rotated" or "Yes, BUT I want to link data from tables on different sites". Always they want more and MORE.... At first SharePoint consultants were frustrated by the "can I have some more?" comments because they either had to spend weeks writing clever developer code or leave their customer disappointed. The list of 'mores' went on the more they really started using SharePoint. Customers wanted to improve Charts, improve Alerts, Change Passwords, improve SQL views, perform bulk imports and combine data sources from different sites. Enough demands to make any SharePoint consultant weep. Until they discovered the SharePoint Magic Wand. Officetalk now can offer customers 'More'. They have the SharePoint Magic Wand and it is made out of Bamboo. Bamboo solutions provide over 46 SharePoint webparts that enhance many of the basic SharePoint features. If you want anything 'More' from SharePoint or an extra feature then check out Bamboo Solutions first because if they aren't already selling a webpart that does what you want they are probably developing one as you read this. To find out more about the impressive Bamboo range of webparts visit http://www.office-talk.com/pages/bamboo.html. Now if you, or your customers, want 'More' from SharePoint you know where to look.

Sharepoint Vision

In the words of Martin Luther King, Benny from Abba and that bloke who sang the Scotland World Cup song in 1982 - 'I have a dream'. SharePoint popularity is growing every day and the number of companies offering SharePoint services is expanding faster than Robbie William's waist-line. So as I have previously said 'I have a dream'. No, not the one about the Villa winning the FA Cup in my life-time or the one about the leggy Icelandic twin sisters, but a dream to find everything SharePoint under one roof. A single virtual Shopping Centre where I could find everything SharePoint. There would be shops for Consultants, shops for companies offering 'SharePoint add-ons', a Library for sharePoint reference, a SharePoint Hall for SharePoint, discussion groups, another shop that just sold the best 'webparts' and enough SharePoint goodies to keep a SharePoint junkie going for years. This Sharepoint vision, of Andy Dale's, is now going to become reality because officetalk are currently building such a site and they are calling it 'Sharepoint Village' (you see I even managed to get the name Villa in there). The http://www.sharepointvillage.com is starting to take shape and already some of the biggest names in Sharepoint are signing up to have a shop in a prime location on this virtual Shopping Centre. It really is an exciting development in the SharePoint world and I can't wait to see its grand opening in July. So what next for the Andy Dale dreams? The vision of Gareth Barry holding up the FA Cup in May 2009? Hopefully he is still a Villa player at the time. Coming soon Sharepointvillage at http://www.sharepointvillage.com. Take a look at it now and sign up for further information.