Did you know that your SharePoint site automatically has a mobile version of itself? It's just one of those great hidden features nobody seems to talk about. Not sure why...

Take care of tasks, projects, issues...all from your mobile phone and sitting at the airport (or wherever).

What's most appealing about this feature is that you're not having to deal with the difficulties of scrolling around the site on your tiny mobile phone screen. It's a lightweight environment that won't bog you down. You get in, find the info you need, you get out. Bada Boom, Bada Bing.

Check out the video included in this post.

Andrea

Branding your SharePoint site with your own logo. It's one of the first things people do when setting up a SharePoint site. It's really easy, even if it is rather hidden.

Check out the video included in this post:

Andrea

It's that time of year again!

Getting ready to do your holiday card mailings? Preparing to send invitations to your next big event? I show you how to do a label mail merge with Outlook and Word by using your Outlook Categories.

This same process is good for any reason you want to do a letter or label mail merge for any specified group of contacts, and categories is the key. Any contact folders in Outlook will work, including SharePoint contact lists and Exchange Server public folder contacts.

Check out the video included in this post to see this process in action.

since this is Part Two, I'll just repeat what I wrote in Part One...

I just love this feature! This is one of the best integration features between Office 2003/Office
2007 and SharePoint.

The task pane is named something different in Office 2003 than it is in Office 2007, but the
functionality is still the same.

These task panes allow you to access and modify content in a SharePoint site from within Office
without having to navigate to the site using your browser. The feature is available in the following
Office 2003 and Office 2007 applications: Word, Excel, Microsoft Project, OneNote, PowerPoint, and
Visio.

The Shared Workspace or Document Management task pane provides a link that will open the site in a
browser window and an Update button to refresh the site contents and displays the following tabs of
information:

1) Status
2) Members
3) Tasks
4) Documents
5) Links
6) Document Information

All of these tabs include a Get Updates button that retrieves the latest information from SharePoint
and refreshes the task pane.

Check out the Part Two video below.

For 10+ hours of full end-user SharePoint Services training, check out our E-Learning Center. Only $24.95!

I just love this feature! This is one of the best integration features between Office 2003/Office
2007 and SharePoint.

The task pane is named something different in Office 2003 than it is in Office 2007, but the
functionality is still the same.

These task panes allow you to access and modify content in a SharePoint site from within Office
without having to navigate to the site using your browser. The feature is available in the following
Office 2003 and Office 2007 applications: Word, Excel, Microsoft Project, OneNote, PowerPoint, and
Visio.

The Shared Workspace or Document Management task pane provides a link that will open the site in a
browser window and an Update button to refresh the site contents and displays the following tabs of
information:

1) Status
2) Members
3) Tasks
4) Documents
5) Links
6) Document Information

All of these tabs include a Get Updates button that retrieves the latest information from SharePoint
and refreshes the task pane.

Check out the Part One video below. Part Two is coming in a few weeks.

I’ve found that people have a general idea of what SharePoint is, but many have no idea how to apply it to their own business.
I’d like to share with you the top 20 ways that SharePoint can solve your common business needs. And I want to emphasize that these 20 are only a few of the many ways to utilize the SharePoint Services. Once you start using it, you will begin to realize the many other valuable benefits that can easily be accomplished by the everyday user.

As an additional bonus, the accompanying audio podcast includes a description of what SharePoint Services is, the key components of it, how you can get it, and how much it costs.

Shall we get started? Let’s see if you can find a few productivity solutions here that you've been trying to find for your own organization.

With SharePoint you can:

1. Store all your emails on a secure and centralized Website for easy archive.

2. Keep a central task location for assigning tasks to team members. These tasks will automatically show up in your team's Outlook 2007 To-Do List. Those tasks will also link to your projects so you can easily find out what tasks are still open for each project.

3. Organize large events and store the related documents, assigned tasks, and generally post anything and everything related to the events. It will also integrate with Outlook for added efficiency.

4. Collaborate with team members on all documents and stay on top of who did what. Earlier versions can easily be restored in case someone has made too many mistakes. Projects can also be linked to related documents.

5. Assign tasks to your team members, and automatically notify them that they have a new task. Alerts are sent when there have been updates to the tasks.

6. Quickly manage all projects for your team or organization so there's no need to explore buying an expensive project management solution.

7. Use the efficient check-in / check-out management feature to sort your documents.

8. Implement a help ticket resolution for your organization or  team without breaking the bank.

9. Start a private company blog to communicate and share ideas with your team that's viewable only by those you give access to.

10. Gain more control over your company's documents with the content approval function.

11. Offer training materials to your teams, clients, and/or partners in a password-protected Website that can be accessed anywhere in the world.

12. Offer a secure and private place to share documents and other information with clients and/or partners.

13. Access and work with your data using your Internet-enabled mobile phone for added convenience while traveling or out of the office at client meetings.

14. Create better team communication and brainstorming sessions where everyone can participate when their schedules permit.

15. Centralize where company and team project announcements are posted. Everyone will receive a notification via email or mobile phone automatically, anywhere in the world.

16. Work offline on the files, project tasks, tasks, discussions, contacts, calendars, blogs, etc. and then sync the updated information later on.

17. Create "central" documents (and syncronize), so all team members, clients, and/or partners are able to work on the same document and make changes. Updates are accessible with a click of a button. Everyone can then sync back to the "central" document and have all edits merged into that single document.

18. Easily add custom fields to any area and capture the information that's most important to your company, all without the help of a web designer or IT person.

19. Pull up and update Microsoft Access 2007 database from a local desktop and sync information to a central location that can be accessed from any where at any time.

20. Create a project dashboard where on one page you can view and filter on common project elements, such as: project details, project documents, project tasks, project issues, project calendar, project milestones, project lessons learned, project risks, project change orders, and more.

On top of it all, you won't spend a fortune to meet these communication, collaboration, and organizational needs.

Don't even get me started about the integration features between SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office 2007 - particularly Outlook 2007 - IT'S INCREDIBLE!  A few of the ideas above do require Office 2007.

Keep in mind that a little training goes a long way in increasing productivity in the products you use in your business. I highly recommend taking the time to learn this efficient and effective tool and watch your productivity, along with your profits, soar!

All of my SharePoint Services video tutorials (over 10 hours) are available for free when you join the Productivity Club as a Club Member...which is also free. Register to Join

ADDITIONAL GOODIES:
As promised, here's a link to my website where I have a long list of SharePoint Hosting companies

Happy SharePointing!

Listen to the podcast below:

Increase the effiectiveness of how you're using a SharePoint Project Tasks list by adding a few extra fields to capture some all-important information.  By adding a lookup field that points to a client list, a multi-select field that allows me to associate project tasks to each other, and an appended comments field where it's easy to track who has done what on the project and when, I'm able to greatly enhance the data I'm able to capture and use. Three simple fields, that's it.

Now, imagine what you could do if you gave it some thought to determine just what other information your company wants to capture in SharePoint Project Tasks. I'm sure it won't take you long to realize the potential.

Happy SharePointing!

Andrea

Dashboards. This term has been around for a long time now. In a nutshell, it describes displaying various related information on a single page, making it easy to see the big picture. SharePoint provides a way to create dashboards on whatever you want by utilizing Web Part Pages, Web Parts, and Web Part Connections. Fancy terms for targeted filtering on a page.

The video shows you how to use this feature to create a customer dashboard, but you can create dashboards for so many different things, like a project management dashboard, an employee dashboard, a client orders dashboard .... the list goes on and on. The best part about it is that it is SO easy to do in SharePoint.

*Video available in both formats: m4v (for small portable media players) and wmv (for larger desktop viewing)

Recording interviews using Skype - yes, it can be done successfully

For those of you that assist your clients with audio services, such as helping them record and edit interviews, I found this blog posting on how to produce broadcast-quality interviews using Skype. It's 22 minutes, a bit technical in some spots, but they explain it in easy to understand terminology. I really like how they show you the difference between the interview done via a phone conference and the interview using this method in Skype. Phenomenal results!

http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/23/skype-for-interviews/

It's really a great video tutorial. I'm looking forward to trying this out.

Sometimes the old saying "It is better to give than it is to receive" may not always be the case when assigning work to other people. I guess it depends on what side you're on: the one giving work, or the one receiving work.  However, it is a common and necessary part of business. Someone gets to be in charge of making sure a project gets done and has to assign things to others in order to accomplish that.

Whether you're in an Exchange Server environment or not, assigning Tasks through Outlook can easily be accomplished.  The non-Exchange environment doesn't have all the bells and whistles when doling out task assignments, but it's still a very doable process.

Watch the video to see how this works.

*Video available in both formats: m4v (for small portable media players) and wmv (for larger desktop viewing)