The SharePoint Musical

Audience participation

#SPSUK2014Simon HudsonDirector, Cloud2Musician, songwriter, physicist, classic car nut, skier. Occasional SharePoint

@simonjhudson@FictionalLiveBlog: http://simonjhudson.wordpress.com

SharePoint Song

Written and performed by Simon Hudson

© 2014, Simon Hudson

Refra

inIf you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

Verse

1It's a website!

I don't think so.

Just a file server. No, no, no!

Database ain't it?

Are you crazy?

So what is SharePoint? Damned if I know.

Cho

rus There's more to SharePoint than one person knows

For god's sake don't leave it to IT

Don't leave it to comms and don't write code

With great power comes complexity!

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

Verse

2IE 6 is a piece of crap,

Seven and eight are pretty bad

Use 9 or 10, or use Chrome

Eleven has a compatible mode,

Use it now before you grow old

Trying to decide why your page won't load

Cho

rus There's more to SharePoint than one person knows

For god's sake don't leave it to IT

Don't leave it to comms and don't write code

With great power comes complexity!

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

Verse

3

Say “No!” to Office 2003

2010 or above...That works for me

Life's too short to ever work that hard

So if you're on 2003, it's elementary, you're in purgatory

Move on to modern technology

Brid

ge

Instrumental

Brid

geFolders! How I hate them.

They are the work of…

Beelzebub.

Spawn of Satan, you must forsake them;

Metadata... That's your saviour.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

Verse

4It's a platform not an application,

It does stuff all out of the box

Got to build the apps you need

Invest your budget on more than shiny servers,

expensive good looks; pointless doofers

You got to build the sites you need

Cho

rus There's more to SharePoint than one person knows

For god's sake don't leave it to IT

Don't leave it to comms and don't write code

With great power comes complexity!

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

OutroIf you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

If you like SharePoint

give me your hands.

Totally Successful SharePoint Projects

Outright failure

IT think it succeeded

Users think it succeeded

Other

SharePoint Success…

Talky b

it –p

art 1

• Not understanding what SharePoint is and is not

• Vesting all your SP knowledge in one person

• IT or Comms led projects

• Code driven projects

• Assuming business problems are simple

• Using mismatched technology

• Investing in design at the expense of function

• UI <> UX

• Investing in the platform at the expense of the applications

• Using SharePoint OOB, rather than designing a solution

• Not changing habits

Reasons why: http://tinyurl.com/FailSharePoint

SharePoint is a bit complex and hard to do

Developers, how hard can it be?

Visual Studio Blues

Written and performed by Simon Hudson

© 2014, Simon Hudson

Learn

ing

the ch

oru

s

All you really need is

Visual studio.

Your bit:

“And a couple of hundred years to learn to code…”

Verse

1If you're a SharePoint dev, please raise your hand

'Cos this song is about you; I hope you understand

I know that your passion… is to write code

So this little song should tell you some things you should know

Coding SharePoint's easy, yes easy if you know

Your 1, 2, 3 & A, B, C; Sharp is how it goes.

Said "coding SharePoint's easy, easy if you know"

Your JSON, CSOM, XSL, Powershell and so…

Cho

rus

All you really need is

Visual studio

“And a couple of hundred years to learn to code…”

Verse

2I said to my dev team, "wouldn't it be cool

If we appified all that we do?"

With SharePoint on the backend, it shouldn't be too tough

So I'd like it all by Wednesday, I'm sure that's time enough"

"And, while you at it, the thought occurs to me

With that stuff on Codeplex, all of which is free

We could make a killing, replacing CRM

You could knock it up this evening, I'll pay in M and M's"

Cho

rus

All you really need is

Visual studio

“And a couple of hundred years to learn to code…”

Verse

3The function of a dev, as everybody knows

Is to convert pints of coffee into copious lines of code

Give them boiling water and endless Nescafe

And they'll reward with sweet sweet apps every single day

'cos

Model View Controller is all very well

As a code writing paradigm I'm sure that it's swell

But Model View ViewModel seems better to me

I know because I heard it at this year's SPC.

Cho

rus

All you really need is

Visual studio

“And a couple of hundred years to learn to code…”

Take it to the bridge…

Brid

ge

Now here's the bridge, it's kinda strange to use

But treated as a link library it's kinda cool.

Some sort of subroutine, it's own kind of groove

I can call it when I want it, to do something new

Verse

4To keep you working late, there's pizza for tea

No, don't thank me,[aside] this overtime is free.

You can leave when it's finished, tested and compiled

Fully documented, and released into the wild.

So you've got your IDE, and everything is swell

For favourite behaviour you've VSIKs as well

With Intellisense correcting all your code

There's not much I can do, so I'm going home.

Cho

rus

All you really need is

Visual studio

“And a couple of hundred years to learn to code…”

Outro…

Talky b

it –p

art 2Some observations on requirements…

Top

thin

gs a

com

pany w

an

tsCorporate

branding and ‘exciting’ UI

Flashy animations and

imagesFantastic Search

Document ‘Management’

Corporate Communications

(News etc)

Department Sites

Discussions & Social

HR processes Project Sites

Top

thin

gs th

e u

sers w

ant

Engaging home page/good UX

Simple navigation/ease

of useFindability

Their stuff and somewhere for all their stuff

Insight into what’s going on

Team Sites

Instant Messaging

Staff Directory/social

Project Sites

Top

thin

gs a

ctually u

sed

on

an

in

tran

et Business

ApplicationsFaceted Search Administrivia

Really strong metadata

Corporate alerts

An easy way to sweep ‘dirty’

content into the intranet

Integration with Office and the

desktop

Remote, Offline and Mobile access

Personal profilesStaff directory and

profilesCollaboration OneNote

Th

ing

s they re

ally n

eed

(b

ut ra

rely w

an

t to p

ay fo

r)Intranet

managementAdoption

programmeClear security

model

Tablet/touch Workflow eForms

AD and staff profile update

process

Go Live plan & sufficient staff

training breadth

SharePoint Admin,

infrastructure etc.

Talky b

it

Time to celebrate the long suffering PMs…(with apologies to Mr. P Simons)

Fifty ways to screw up

SharePointWritten and performed by Simon Hudson

© 2014, Simon Hudson

Verse

1

The problem is with the users, the PM said to me

They just don’t have a clue, as anyone can see

… that's not unusual, when considered logically

There must be fifty ways to screw up SharePoint!

There must be fifty ways to screw up SharePoint!

Verse

1

You know you do your best, but problems do intrude; From server

… installation to requirements misconstrued

So I must say again, at the risk of being rude

There must be fifty ways to screw up SharePoint

Fifty ways to screw up SharePoint

Cho

rus Avoid feedback, Jack

Don't make a good plan, Stan

Leave it to comms Tom,

Don't need an IA

Go live in a rush, Gus

Don't even consult much

Blame IT, Lee

Get devs to write code

Verse

2

We did the very, very best we ever could

We did all the things the manual said we should

Installed with every single option set to on

There must be fifty ways to set up SharePoint,

There must be fifty ways to set up SharePoint!

Verse

2

So we uninstalled it all to start again from scratch, but we

...realised too soon we'd met our match

The default settings just won’t let it fly

There must be fifty ways to screw up SharePoint!

There must be fifty ways to screw up SharePoint!

Cho

rus Avoid feedback, Jack

Don't make a good plan, Stan

Leave it to comms Tom,

Don't need an IA

Go live in a rush, Gus

Don't even consult much

Blame IT, Lee

Get devs to write code

Verse

3

She said, "It grieves me to see users in such pain; There must be……something we could do to make them smile again."I said, "Thank heavens, and could you please explain

About the fifty ways?"

Verse

3

She said, "Why don't we both start again, anew;With business strategy and a major goal or two

Appoint a steering board who'll navigate us throughThe fifty ways to screw up SharePoint

The fifty ways to screw up SharePoint

Cho

rus o

utro

Heed feedback, Jack

We'll make a good plan, Stan

Engage with comms Tom,

We'll craft IA

We'll even discuss with Gus

We gonna consult very much

Work with IT; you'll see;

SharePoint set free

So

me ta

keaw

ays

• It’s really bigDon’t eat the elephant as the entrée

• It’s really broad and flexible

With great power comes

complexity

• Invest in Admin courses

Ensure key users are trained

• Gatekeepers block progress

Empower users and delegate

• Evangelise, promote, support

Don’t launch without a go

live plan

• Stick, carrot, crowbar

Users don’t like change

• But don’t mistreat the developers

Writing code should be a

last resort not a first instinct

• It won’t...

Don't just do a standard install

and hope it will be ok

• But configure it to your needs

Use standard functionality

wherever possible

• It’s so easy to replicate the mess seen on file systems

Develop and maintain the IA

• And everything elseKeep the

permissions model simple

Mo

re ta

lky stuffQuestions

No

tices a

nd

Take

Aw

ays

@simonjhudson

@FictionalLive

@cloud2ltd

Blog: http://simonjhudson.wordpress.com

Web: www.cloud2.co.uk

Eve

ntsSharePoint best practice in the cloud webinar

4th December 4pm: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/pjoin/345453537/105735863

http://tinyurl.com/SPO412

#SUGUK Yorkshire6th January, Leeds

http://www.suguk.org/Event.aspx?id=14611119251

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