10 Awesome Things We’ve Done With SharePoint

Colin Phillips :: SharePoint MVP :: itgroove

Who I am: Colin Phillips

My Background

15+ Years in Technology

Today: SharePoint Consultant and MVP (with itgroove)

Previously:11 Years Developing Software, IT Infrastructure Projects, Workflows, and Many Other Related Topics

B.Sc. in Computer Science from UVic

My Blogmmman.itgroove.net

Where to learn morecphillips@itgroove.net

Research…

• Quickly 10 things became 25 / 30 / 35+

- Ok, we had the odd less than stellar project

too

• Started with just internal projects and then

remembered we make stuff for customers

too.

• Decided to focus on internal projects for this

presentation, and get our customers (those in the

audience) to show off their own sites at a future

vSharePoint themselves

SharePoint Awesome Thing #1 (in no particular order)

You’ve probably seen this one before, but guess what, it’s still awesome.

SharePoint Home Page Search Rotator

• Eliminates the whole “what’s the most important stuff to put on the home page” problem

• Most people probably don’t look at your home page anyways, it may as well be gorgeous

• Combined with Mega Menus, this is killer

• Powerful navigation that follows you

everywhere (same experience, with

slightly different look and feel)

And their cousin… the Mini Menu, which

hangs off the Quick Link Anchors (below)

SharePoint Awesome Thing #2 (in no particular order)

Mega Menus

Above – Normal view (in lists

and libraries)

Above Right – Search Home

Page

Right – On Dashboard Pages

• A combination of 4 of our favourite

Nintexisms – Including:

• Orb (and baby orb)

• URL Shortener

• Report Cards

• Cheque Deposits

SharePoint Awesome Thing #3 (in no particular order)

Our Nintex “IT Superhero Utility Belt”

• Helped solve a major business

problem for us:

How do we successfully track

“project based” work (large or

small) for a given customer –

especially one who has numerous

ongoing projects simultaneously

• Still being refined further as we

use it and come up with additional

ideas, but it becomes more

valuable everyday

SharePoint Awesome Thing #4 (in no particular order)

SOW (Statement Of Work) Tracking System

• Helps guide everyone by tracking

what’s on their plate, and what

individualized priorities each task

has

• Additionally allows consultants to

break down items in a SOW into

individual issues and track each

separately

• Ties together with the Orb and

issues are “auto” generated from

customer submitted requests

SharePoint Awesome Thing #5 (in no particular order)

Issues Tracking System

• Dashboard / Report data includes the following (plus much more)

• Client Hour Breakdown (by month (default) / any other date metric)

• Consultant Hour Breakdown (weekly by billable and total time logged)

• Combined Client / Consultant breakdown (by month / year / other)

• Historical Time (for all billable work)

• Monthly Service Contract Progress

• Time broken down by SOW

• And it all gets ported into QuickBooks via a custom utility we wrote

SharePoint Awesome Thing #6 (in no particular order)

Time Tracking System & Associated BI (with *BONUS* QB Integration)

• It mostly speaks for itself – we slice and

dice tasks, time, issues, risks, SOWs,

client details, etc. in so many different

ways, even our own staff don’t seem to

know about half of them (I’m not kidding

– right Keith?)

SharePoint Awesome Thing #7 (in no particular order)

All Our Amazing BI

• Simple & straightforward - makes requesting time off painless

• Everyone who needs to, gets their say

• Nintex workflow logic fits perfectly, & lazy approval makes the process easy for those who don’t even want to touch SharePoint

SharePoint Awesome Thing #8 (in no particular order)

Holiday Request System

• Allows individuals to request the

company to pay for items

• Items can be ordered for

personal use as well ($ comes

out of your wallet)

• Workflows run in the backend to

notify purchaser of new request(s)

• When items arrive, the purchaser

can mark the order as processed,

and the originator is notified (and

asked for $ if it’s for personal use)

SharePoint Awesome Thing #9 (in no particular order)

Purchase Request System

• Simple, but very useful system to

keep track of upcoming items which

will be expiring in the coming days,

weeks, months

• Used to track customer products with

a regular renewals (anti-virus, etc.) or

items coming to end of life (server

warranty)

• Also used to track our own internal

expiring products – license renewals,

SSL certs, warranty’s, support

subscriptions, domain registrations,

etc.

SharePoint Awesome Thing #10 (in no particular order)

Product Expiry Tracker

Honorable Mentions

• Dashboards Galore

Document Dashboard

Presidents Dashboard

Client Dashboard …

• Mileage Tracker

• Storing All Documents in SharePoint

• Blog Knowledge System

• Suite Tracker

• Expense System

• “While You Were Out” (Phone Messages)

• Client Remote Access

• Lunch & Learn Topic Manager

• Change Control Manager

• Scheduled Tasks Tracker

• Go Social

• Sales Pipeline

• The Matrix

Portfolio

Bulk Document Storage

• Best Practices Wiki (Living Document)

Oh Yeah, And Sampling of Awesome Stuff We’ve Made For Clients Too!

Projects Sites – Numerous Government Agencies

Many Branding Projects

• Including Royal Roads SharePoint

Customer "Kiosk" Sites

• Such as for board members

Complex Project (End-to-End) System

• Project Initiation Request System

• Project Cycle (including Charter, with tracking

BI)

Custom Nintex solutions

Custom Windows applications (that integrate

with SharePoint)

Employee Evaluation Systems

Cash Report System

Daily Deposit System

Large Scale Document Approval System

And much, much more!

Questions?

Contact Info

Colin Phillips

cphillips@itgroove.net

www.itgroove.net

blog: mmman.itgroove.net